The CX Central Podcast

Call Centre Hold Music and IVR Recordings

Host of the CX Central Podcast Justin Tippett interviews the founder of McGirvanmedia Audio Solutions, Alan McGirvan, on a critical component of contact centre management that is often neglected - message on hold, IVR recordings and voice translations.

In many call centres, it seems to be a bit of a lottery as to who's voice is used to record messages and the result is often poor.

Typically it's someone that was either 'strongly encouraged' to do it or perhaps the local extrovert that was asked to record a few lines for the call recordings.

Of course, when customers contact the call centre every little detail matters and that extends to the IVR, the music you use on hold, and of course, the voice talent.

It's all about being on-brand.

Think about this as an example, AAMI spend a fortune on advertising and driving a lot of traffic to their call centre.

Would it make sense if the voice they used in their call centre recordings, hold music etc was consistent with the advertising?

You bet!

But even in smaller call centres, having a consistent brand voice with copyright-free music can dramatically improve your customer experience.

As Alan explains in the podcast, it can also be a useful tool to help advise customers of alternatives to waiting (e.g the relevant section on the website) or to inform customers of other products and services you sell.

And technically, it's easy to implement and it's not as expensive as you may think!

Make sure you reach out to one of the industry suppliers of music on hold/messaging services to find out how simple and cost-effective it is!

Listen to the Podcast:

You can play directly in the browser below right now or you can find the Podcast in all your usual places to download and listen to later.

Watch the Podcast:

As well as listening to the podcast, you can also watch the interview on our new YouTube Channel or just click play below:

Quick links:

* Learn: View our courses for call centres

* Listen: Listen to more CX Central podcasts >

* Search: Industry Suppliers of Call Centre Technology

* Subscribe: Stay across articles, new podcasts, get special offers and more

Contact Centre Mythbusting Part 2

Global experts Justin Tippett and Daniel Ord join forces again in the Contact Centre Mythbusting Part 2 to bust some contact centre management myths focussing on success metrics including AHT, Occupancy and more!

If you're in a contact centre manager role (or aspire to be) there's plenty of gold nuggets in this podcast including:

* The metrics you shouldn't be using for agents (and why) including:

* Occupancy

* AHT

* Number of Calls

* Why Adherence to Schedule is so important

* The 'Pooling Principle'

* Normalisation and True Calls Per Hour

* The correlation between AHT and quality

* Why intervals are so important

You can also listen to Episode 1 where they bust some myths about Customer Wait Times

 

 

Listen to the Podcast:

You can play directly in the browser below right now or you can find the Podcast in all your usual places to download and listen to later.

Watch the Podcast:

As well as listening to the podcast, you can also watch the interview on our new YouTube Channel or just click play below:

Quick links:

* Learn: View our Contact Centre Management Fundamentals Course or Introduction to Contact Centre Management course

* Engage: Justin Tippett to complete a Health Check on your contact centre >

* Listen: Listen to more CX Central podcasts >

* Read: The most common call centre metrics >

* Read: Why the AHT metric should be extinct >

* Subscribe: Stay across articles, new podcasts, get special offers and more

In this episode of the CX Central Podcast Justin Tippett caught up with Geoff Crane, Sales Director Australia/NZ for EPOS to provide some insight into all things call centre headsets including:

- The different types of headsets and connection options

- The difference between Bluetooth and DECT wireless phones

- Noise cancellation and acoustic shock

- How headsets can complement the new flexible work environment

Local Team Leader coaching expert Marc Carriere joins host Justin Tippett to debunk some common myths about Call Centre Team Leaders. 

Myths covered in this episode:

- Really good team members make great Team Leaders

- Team Leaders must be subject matter experts

- Call Centre Managers have the skillset and time to train their Team Leaders

- Team Leaders have the time to develop their teams

- Only large companies benefit from developing their teams

Host Justin Tippett interviews the CEO of Panviva Ted Gannan to learn more about how Knowledge Management Systems can transform a business and how Panviva evolved and took their product to the world.

Great insight for anyone managing a business looking to expand into an overseas market!

In part 1 of their Mythbusting episodes, Justin Tippett and Daniel Ord focus on Customer Wait time including:

- SERVICE LEVELS/RESPONSE TIME

- INTERVALS

- QUALITY vs PERFORMANCE

- INDUSTRY STANDARDS

- WAIT TIME METRICS

- ABANDONMENT RATE & ASA

- READERBOARD/CALL BOARD

It's a short (under 25 minutes) fun and educational insight into contact centre management suitable for anyone who manages (or would like to manage) a contact centre.

In this episode of the CX Central Podcast Justin Tippett and Daniel Ord talk openly and honestly about Customer Experience including:

*Real-world learnings from conducting a range of CX classes (what people struggle with, what are the wow moments etc)

*A definition of what CX actually is (including a version that Daniel uses a lot in his classes)

*The difference between Customer Service and Customer Experience (so you'll never be confused again!)

*Why it's so hard to get traction on CX within organisations along with a hot tip on how to change it.

Justin Tippett interviews Marc Carriere to discuss the perils and opportunities of promoting contact centre Team Leaders from within the centre.

Includes 5 best-practice tips for being a great Team Leader in a contact centre!

Host of the CX Central Podcast Justin Tippett interviews Dr. Jason Price of Price Perrott - an independent management consultancy that helps businesses improve the quality, efficiency and performance of customer-facing services.

Jason has extensive experience in helping a range of businesses transform their customer experience and in this podcast we discuss:

- What C-suite leaders should do to change the customer experience;

- How contact centre leaders and front line staff can tackle organisation silos that prevent service improvement;

- Why story-telling based on customer complaints and feedback helps make the case for business change;

- How and why companies are still not using CX to drive improvement;

- The future of CX and remote working - what to expect.

Host of the CX Central Podcast Justin Tippett interviews Maksim Lukascuk, Sales Engineering Manager, Avaya (Nordic Region).

Maksim has extensive experience in contact centre technology delivering a range of large and complex CX and EX projects for Avaya.

But in additional to be an expert at contact centre technology, Maksim has also gained his CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) qualifications that give him a unique insight into using technology to improve the customer experience (and how the two are intertwined).

In this podcast the following topics are discussed:

- Contact centre and CX technology

- Automation

- Cloud adoption

- Customer Experience (CX)