Communications Products, Inc. was one of 119 companies that recently took place in the WorkplaceDynamics  Central Indiana’s Top Workplaces 2013 survey. 22,981 employees responded to 20 statements covering areas such as company values, leadership, management, benefits, pay, growth opportunities, appreciation, work/life balance and retention.

CPI recently held a ribbon cutting ceremony to unveil a new state-of-the-art conference/demo/training facility at its corporate headquarters in Indianapolis. Michael Hylton, Membership Manager of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, and Mike Dickman, Senior Vice President of Construction at CitiMark were in attendance.

We, at CPI, are thrilled to be hosting a new quarterly Lunch & Learn event, Queued IN, for contact center professionals.  There are so many exciting things happening right now in the contact center world.  We want to help give you an edge with powerful and current industry information to empower your agents to provide a more remarkable customer experience.

Guest Post by: Roger Collings, Managing Director of RDC Communications Ltd in the UK and a telecoms consultant specializing in business VoIP.

Often, the first interaction that customers have with your company is with your phone system, and a good first impression is critical to the relationship with these customers. This requires great, well-designed call flows. There are many articles, videos, and classes devoted to this subject.

They cover topics such as the following:

CPI enabled the SBHC contact center to provide extraordinary service to Super Bowl fans from around the globe.

CPI was honored to be on the team with the SBHC Control Center to ensure that the fans could get quick and easy access to all of the resources that Indianapolis had to offer.

One of the biggest challenges I see in the IT world today is the inability for techies/analysts/managers to be able to make meaningful change happen in their organization.  The typical story goes something like this, in a moment of brilliant insight; you come up with an idea to make a meaningful impact at your company. That idea could be anything from adding workforce management software in the contact center to simply hiring a developer.

In many cases, the first thing a customer hears when calling into your phone system is a recorded prompt – perhaps something like “Thank you for calling XYZ! For sales, press 1. For support, press 2.” This relatively simple prompt creates a first impression of your organization that may be difficult to change. Whether it is a greeting, menu, or compliance message, the prompts a customer hears should accurately reflect your business and give them a positive impression… even if they haven’t actually spoken to an employee.

Something important crashes to the floor from the desk in the rush to get to your phone for the executive conference call you were supposed to join three minutes ago. After looking up the number and quickly punching it into the handset, you hear “bee-Bee-BEE. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number…”

A quick Google search for call troubleshooting tips returns a few possible first steps:

• Everything is true, look for what isn’t
• Keep an open mind
• Maintain complete objectivity]
• Trust your data

Last week, on a sweltering, sun-filled afternoon, I happened to be driving through a small town and noticed this hole-in-the wall restaurant… I couldn’t help but notice “FINE FOODS” emblazoned on the awning.

We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today. This article was written by Lori Bocklund, President of Strategic Contact. The article was originally published in the July 8 edition of the National Association of Call Centers “In Queue” newsletter. Lori is a leading expert in the Contact Center field and NACC is a great resource for the industry.

It wasn’t very long ago that I was shopping for a very specific product and learned that a specialty retail outlet had just what I needed. Three days later, I had an opening in my morning schedule, which made it possible for me to go and pick it up. I called the store to make sure that they were open, no answer…

I am in training to run the Indianapolis 500 Festival mini-marathon this year. I’ve never run a half-marathon before – actually, I’ve never run anything before. A friend asked if I would join her in this adventure and, in a moment of weakness, I agreed! There have been lots of long training runs to do. During those runs, I keep myself going by picturing what it will look like to receive my medal at the end of the race. I saw a shirt recently that said, “It’s all about the medal.” Yes, I am motivated by the medal!

Call center leaders are always measuring something. We’re buried in data and reports. One of the things we struggle to measure is “CSat” – customer satisfaction. We try post-call surveys to assess this; but privately, I think most of us would admit that we’re not sure those reports really amount to much of anything. If the customer is satisfied, they’ll keep coming back, right?

The Contact Center 2011 conference continued on Wednesday. Many more great speakers presented. Here are a few of the highlights I picked up from the day.

Change thought for the day: “Home agents – if you’re not doing it, do it. If you are doing it, it’s time to expand it. All of the excuses to not do it are gone.”

Tuesday was the first full day of the Contact Center Conference and Expo 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve met a wonderful variety of contact center staff and leaders and I had the opportunity to attend several excellent sessions. I could write for a long time trying to recap the various sessions, but you’d get bored with that! Instead, I’ve pulled three things that stuck out to me today.

We hear so much about customer satisfaction, but is “satisfaction” enough? Moving a step beyond to delighting – even astonishing — our customers helps build loyalty that keeps customers coming back. What does it take to create an astonishing experience? I had one of those experiences recently and I saw 3 things I’d like to share with you.

CPI was recently named as one of the 2011 Best Places to Work in Indiana – for the second year in a row. The awards program was created in 2006 and is a project of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, BizVoice®, Inside INdiana Business, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Best Companies Group.

Unified Communications is a somewhat abstract term that is used in the IT world to describe the linking of several different types of communications together such as your phone, email, instant message, faxing, video conferencing, mobility and most important of all presence (the ability to see the “status” of another person such as “away,” “in a meeting,” “on the phone,” “available,” etc.)