Article by Preston Mane

At every customer-focused company there is a desire to provide the ultimate customer experience, from the CEO on down. What gets lost in translation is the extreme impact that delivering this level of customer service, or failing to do so, has on a company’s bottom line.

Consider the impact of a customer’s experience when contacting your company: a satisfied customer typically tells one to three people about a good experience, while an unsatisfied customer talks to as many as 10 people about the bad experience. Businesses today are reaching an inflexion point where their customers are demanding more from their interactions with customer service representatives; simply answering a customer contact in a specified timeframe is no longer enough. Your customers want to speak with someone who understands their needs without detailed explanations or constant repetition.

What many companies are learning is that there is an easy way to make sure they have the most qualified and professional team of customer care employees answering calls from their customers each day: through the home-based employee model. The home-based employee model has proven to be the most effective way for companies to address the challenges they face with their existing customer contact solutions. These include customer satisfaction, agent quality, business flexibility and business continuity.

There are substantial benefits to using home-based customer service employees that ultimately result in a win-win-win situation for your company, your customers and the agents. Mirroring Agents to Your Customer Base Provides Increased Satisfaction and Loyalty The reason the home-based employee model can deliver on the promise of providing higher quality agents is straightforward: the larger the pool of candidates from which a company hires its agents, the more selective the company can be in the quality of those agents.

Traditional, bricks and mortar call centers are typically constructed in areas with a population seeking hourly wage jobs. These centers, however, are limited to a recruiting pool that is within a thirty minute commuting radius around a physical center. They suffer stiff competition from the call centers of other companies that build facilities in the same location to take advantage of similar business benefits. In a very short time, the limited recruiting pool has been used up, and these same companies are forced to lower their hiring standards or move elsewhere in an endless search for quality employees.

In the home-based model, the work is delivered to the employee, making commutes and recruiting burnout irrelevant. Further, the allure of working from home enables access to an even broader range of potential applicants – people who wouldn’t consider working in a traditional bricks and mortar call center. This includes stay-at-home parents, people with disabilities and retirees. All have exceptional skills and work experience to offer and good reasons why a home-based work environment is ideal.

The percentage of agents with some college education is more than 75 percent among agents working from home, compared to 20 percent or less among agents in traditional contact centers. Similarly, the average age range of agents working in home-based contact centers is 35-40, compared to 18-23 for agents in traditional, physical contact centers. With increased education levels and higher average age comes increased maturity and professionalism. These home-based contact center employees therefore bring a broader range of work and life experience that allows them to be more empathetic and understanding when on the phone with your customers.

“I worked for 10 years as a clinical and education services director for a large, national ambulance company before deciding I wanted something with more flexibility,” said Martha Libby, a home-based agent working as a customer service employee and taking calls for 1-800-Flowers. “Throughout my career I’ve worked with many different personalities and encountered a lot of difficult situations, which definitely makes me a better customer service agent.”

In addition to providing more mature, experienced agents, the home-based employee contact center model can also enable your company to match the unique needs and interests of the agents with those of your customers.

“I’m passionate about gardening and have even won some awards for flower arranging in the past,” said Libby. “It’s a perfect fit – I can explain the difference between a Shasta daisy and a Gerber daisy and help the customer make the best decision. It’s easier for me to generate larger sales because my advice is genuine, and the callers are happier because they get great, knowledgeable service and are confident in what they’ve selected.”

Scalability

In addition to allowing companies to tap into geographically dispersed contact center agents, a home-based contact center solution can also enable your company to respond quickly and effectively to sudden increases in call volume, whether expected or unexpected.

By enlisting the help of agents who are trained on a given call type, but not normally scheduled during that time, it is possible to increase staffing significantly – doubling staff or more – to address forecasted volumes such as seasonal peaks. The model works equally well meeting unforecasted volume spikes.

Traditional call center agents are unlikely to drive in to a physical call center in an emergency, and the time required to mobilize and affect any significant increase in staffing would likely be measured in hours instead of minutes. This can be critical; the longer it takes to react to an unforecasted increase in call volume, the more difficult it is to dig out of the resulting queue while frustration builds among your customers waiting on hold. Home-based employees need only walk to their computer to be ready for work.

The home-based employee model provides a further flexibility benefit in that it can more easily expand its capacity to handle forecasted surges in call volume, such as peaks during the holiday season, summer months, or on Mondays, when most call centers experience the heaviest activity.

Redundancy

Another important benefit of home-based contact center outsourcing is the unique opportunity to create a true, fully-redundant service offering. Traditional call centers can implement redundant hardware and software infrastructures to provide high systems availability, but being able to route calls and data to an alternative location in an emergency is not very helpful if the agents all live near the primary (and now non-operational) facility.

Building comparable multi-location redundancy in a home-based employee model, with agents dispersed over wide geographic areas, provides the ultimate redundant infrastructure. Florida-based Office Depot took full advantage of the redundancy offered by its home-based contact center partners during the devastating 2005 hurricane season.

“I was able to continue working uninterrupted and the customers didn’t even know that the company’s headquarters were located right in the path of a hurricane,” said Lisa Seaman, a home-based employee handling customer service and sales calls for Office Depot. “While the company and the region was busy dealing with power outages and natural disaster conditions, I was busy taking care of their customers from my home office in Colorado.”

Tangible Business Benefits

While the home-based employee model provides a number of specific operational benefits, the true test of the model’s success is demonstrated by the business results reported by companies using home-based agents.

Because of benefits like higher quality agents, scalability and redundancy, companies using the home-based employee model typically see an increase in key customer service indexes and higher customer satisfaction. In addition to customer satisfaction, companies realize improved employee productivity through better one-call resolution rates, higher conversion rates, and higher average order size. It is important to figure in the reduced recruiting burden, increased employee retention rates and reduced training costs, all of which leads, ultimately, to increased profitability and a greater ROI for your contact center operations.

“It really is a win-win-win situation,” said Libby. “The company wins because its customers are happy and loyal. The customers win because, when all is said and done, they just get better service, and people like me win because we can balance families, travel and other priorities with a flexible at-home job.”

Given the compelling value proposition, people often ask why more companies haven’t made the move to home-based agents. The reason? It is more challenging than most companies assume to extend traditional operational models out to the home.

About the Author

The leaders of the great call centers in each industry meet once a year at the call centre awards ceremony of SQM Group. They award the most prestigious North American contact centre awards.

A Modest Mouse slide show set to the song Dark Center of The Universe

Article by Joe Sloboda

Almost every potential EB-5 investor has asked us if it is truly safe to invest in the EB-5 Regional Center Program. This question may be one of the most important questions for foreign investor, given that they will be investing US0,000 or US,000,000 in said approved Regional Center and there is no guarantee that the funds will be returned to the EB-5 investor.

Let

Article by Joe Sloboda

Almost every potential EB-5 investor has asked us if it is truly safe to invest in the EB-5 Regional Center Program. This question may be one of the most important questions for foreign investor, given that they will be investing US0,000 or US,000,000 in said approved Regional Center and there is no guarantee that the funds will be returned to the EB-5 investor.

Let

Article by Kurt Duncan

Many physicians and physician office managers never once consider just how helpful a call center could be for the practice. The biggest thing that sets your type of business apart from other businesses is that your clients/patients need medical advice at all hours of the day. You deserve your relaxation time, however. So what happens when your patients need medical advice and they can only reach your answering machine? Most patients will turn immediately to a source that offers answers, and that could result in you losing a patient to another physician practice. All it takes is this happening a few times before you start to see a major difference in the revenue your practice brings in.

Fortunately, there are answers available to you. With a call center, you can be sure your patients will reach a live person every time they call in. A medical call center is a relatively new idea, but the possibilities are truly endless. These centers are staffed by medical professionals who have been trained in HIPAA regulations, which means they are qualified and equipped to give your patients medical advice. For anything from post-operation care to questions about prescription medication, the employees of an answering service will be able to take care of any concerns. Your patients will be thrilled with the service and attention they receive, and that will prevent them from finding another practice.

There are so many benefits to a call center, with patient attention being just one small part of it. Sure, your patients are happier with their treatment, but that also means they will refer other patients to your care. More patients mean that your practice will grow, and that’s always great for the bottom line. Contracting with a medical answering service is not inexpensive, but it is certainly worth the investment in the long run.

Rather than attempting to carry your own calls or assign someone from your own staff to handle after hours calls, you should seriously consider the call center environment. With only a monthly fee, you can avail of the services at any time. You won’t need to worry about losing your precious relaxation time, and you also won’t need to worry about payroll and scheduling issues for staff members who work after the office is closed. It’s the best solution for any busy physician who is trying to grow his practice while showing his or her patients excellent care.

About the Author

MedConnectUSA is a leading provider of medical answering services and telemessaging services. MedConnectUSA has been serving the health care industry since 1991. MedConnectUSA handles routine and emergency calls for the medical industry only and all calls are answered by HIPAA trained, US operators.

If you are dreaming of becoming a mother or just found out you are pregnant, we invite you to attend our Exciting Expectations Class. Give your baby a healthy start to life and get information on pregnancy nutrition, exercise and prenatal care. Preregister for an upcoming class in August, October or December 2011. We’re giving birth to the new Nettleton Mother & Baby Care Center opening in 2012.

Find More Care Center Articles

Article by Nick Wilson

Drug and alcohol rehabilitation is an arduous process that can only be done under proper supervision and with the help of specialized personnel. For this reason, today we are able to find different alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers, which literally help many individuals to fight against addiction. Therefore, if you are searching for a drug rehab KY center, you must know that you can find various centers within this location. These centers are ready to help you or your loved ones to defeat this type of dependence.

Treatments

Most drug rehab centers KY include various types of treatments, which are meant to respond to the needs of different addicted persons. Therefore, many of these centers promote programs, such as residential treatments for 30 days, short-stay detoxes and even outpatient alternatives. The outpatient options include Suboxone therapy, support groups and counseling. The drug rehab KY centers help many people to begin a new life through some of the best rehabilitation methods. In addition, every single drug rehab center Kentucky is ready to support the efforts of the friends and families that are dealing with addiction cases.

As rehabilitation is all about restoring lives, the professional teams of drug rehab KY centers are dedicated to achieving this goal. These people are providing professional assistance to all those who intend to get rid of alcohol and drug abuse. Obviously, the help these professionals provide consists of the right care for all addicted persons. As well, these centers organize involuntary treatments, which represent a great help especially for those persons who are not fully aware of their dependence.

The drug rehab KY programs include different levels of intervention like medical detox and inpatient rehab from different substances such as heroin, Vicodin, Oxycontin and Opana. And if you wonder why the professional drug rehab KY centers succeed in helping people to give up drugs and alcohol, you should know that the secret consists of their approach and life philosophy.

A Different Philosophy and Approach

The drug rehab KY centers provide proper care, which comes along with a comfortable setting. These centers are trying to create perfect combinations of treatments and conditions that can literally help people to fight against different addictions. As well, admission highlights an easy process, which can help people to start the treatment as soon as they reach the premises of these centers.

The philosophy focuses on the fact that drug and alcohol addiction is a relapsing, chronic and potentially fatal disease, which takes control of people’s life, body and finances. And although addiction is treatable, unfortunately it cannot be completely cured. However, the appropriate therapies that exist in rehab centers can help any addicted person to stay away from alcohol and narcotics.

The most important thing that people should bear in mind is the fact that addiction highlights a relapsing disease. For this reason, falling back is very easy. Therefore, the drug rehab KY centers are continuously trying to find the best methods, which can help people to fight against addiction and literally defeat it by maintaining their sobriety and hope.

About the Author

The author of this article is working for Stepworks- the Kentucky based drug and alcohol treatment center. Drug rehab KY offers permanent healing from addiction through our drug and alcohol treatment at our highly relaxed drug abuse rehab facilities.

Article by Ira Spere

The Inbound Call Center and Customer Relationship Management

Call centers are created by organizations to receive inbound calls for varied day-to-day business reasons. Since companies invest tremendous amounts of money into customer-care relationships, they carefully monitor customer perceptions of their efforts to serve them. There’s a growing awareness in the business community that customers are unhappy dealing with computerized message delivery systems. Callers tend to perceive interactive voice response systems (IVR), voicemail, and even a standalone answering machine as too formal and not user friendly. Call centers and answering services that feature live phone operators are viewed much more positively by callers, and give companies a more personal, caring and relaxed image.

Inbound calls to any organization generally fall into one or more categories; calls are placed to obtain information, report a problem or error, or ask for assistance. This is different than outbound calls placed by a sales agent with the purpose of selling a product. This practice is known as telemarketing, which entails a different set of methods and requirements for successful operation. Inbound call centers can be expensive to run, but they are invaluable to today’s businesses.

Companies increasingly outsource their call center needs to large call center companies located in India, The Philippines and some parts of Latin America where there is a large population of professionals who are fluent English speakers. Overseas outsourcing isn’t always necessary. There are many call centers located throughout the United States that large and small companies utilize for inbound customer service and sales calls.

. The definition of routine business is constantly expanding to include transactions that used to be handled on site, in person. Call centers offer more to inbound callers than simple message taking, order taking and the like. Call centers are quickly growing to meet the needs of retailers, taking orders for fast-food giants and local restaurants. The agents are taking orders for flowers, gourmet food items, direct-to-video DVDs and just about any other product that’s sold on the open market. Some large call center companies are broadening their range of offerings by increasingly dealing in complicated solutions aimed at low-cost service enhancements. Bundled with automatic services, live inbound call centers thrive all over the globe.

About the Author

Ira Spere is a writer for EFLS. com where you will discover a wealth of resources on inbound call centers and other related information.

Article by Frank O’Hara

One of the easiest of all businesses to establish, publishing shopping center papers CAN MAKE you very rich almost as fast as finding gold, or inheriting an oil well.

Revenue and profits come from two main sources: The businesses in the shopping center your paper serves, and the people reading the paper. It doesn’t matter that there’s already a “Shopper’s Paper” in your area, or that you know nothing about the publishing business and don’t own a printing press.

The first thing is to understand the specific needs of your market. The stores, shops and businesses in the downtown area advertise to reach all the people, and thus, they’re hurting from the competition of similar stores, shops and businesses in the neighborhood shopping centers closer to where the people actually live. Yet, these shopping center stores, shops and businesses ONLY SERVE CUSTOMERS LIVING WITHIN A 5-MILE RADIUS OF THEIR BUSINESS LOCATION.

So, the thing to do is organise a plan, and then work that plan. Contact the store owners or managers of the stores in each shopping center in your area.

You can include stores or shops and businesses not in the shopping center itself, but clustered within the same immediate area. However, it’s important that your emphasis be placed on the individuality of each shopping center.

Explain to each of these business people that you’re starting a “shoppers paper” that will carry advertising only for businesses in that particular shopping center. With this kind of “local advertising media,” the competition, nor have to bear the advertising costs of city-wide circulation.

The second selling point in your distribution or circulation system. Take a section of your city street map; draw a 5-mile circle around each shopping center; then take it to your local quick print shop, and have him give you several printed copies blown up to twice the original size.

Then as you’re selling each business owner, show him the shopping center location on your map with the 5-mile circle around it. Explain that your door-to-door distributors leave a copy at each home or apartment within that circle only. This means you’ll have to estimate how many homes or apartments are within each shopping center’s customer circle.

Getting your papers out to all of these homes and apartments needn’t be that big a problem. Simply talk with the 7th and 8th grade counsellors at the schools within the service circle. Arrange to pay the counsellors per thousand papers delivered for you. The idea is to get the counsellors to line up the students to do the delivering for you, and pay them a percentage of the total you give him. The same plan can be worked with boy scout and/or girl scout troops. You might even contact the youth organisations at the churches within the service circle, and propose your delivery operation as a fund-raising project.

At the bottom line, the businesses gathered in or near each shopping center will buy advertising space in your paper because your rates will be cheaper; you’ll be carrying advertising for a specific location only; and your distribution will be direct to their customers only.

You can begin, and handle all phases of your business operation single-handedly, but after the first couple of editions, you’ll make much more money by hiring others to do the selling for you. Simply run an ad in your weekend newspapers, promising big incomes to commission type advertising sales people. Word your ad so that those interested call you on the phone.

When they callget their name, address and phone number. Then explain that you’re looking for just a few top-notch go-getters who can handle several thousand dollars a week in advertising commissions from individual merchants located in neighbourhood shopping centers. Ask them to tell you a little bit about themselves, and then invite them to get acquainted meeting in the banquet or meeting room you’ve reserved in a local restaurant or motel. Give them the time, and date, then tell them you’ll see them at the meeting.

As the meeting, show them a prototype or dummy of one of your papers. Tell them they’ll each be assigned a territory that includes 3-shopping centers. You then explain/teach them the reasons why there’s big money in shopping center papers just as I’ve explained to you.

Explain your advertising rates— per column inch for a press run/circulation of 5,000; for 10,000 and/or for 15,000 copies distributed—and that you pay 50% for each sale.

Each paper has room for ,400 worth of advertising as a single 8 ½ by 11 sheet printed on both sides; double that for an 11 by 17 sheet folded in half; or 4-times that much as two 11 by 17 sheets. Multiply the salesman’s commission of &700 per paper times three for each of them to make ,100 per weekassuming that you publish your papers on a weekly schedule.

Remember, your basic idea should be to create an individual “shoppers paper” for as many different shopping centers as possible. Because of the closeness of prospective advertisers in a shopping center, a good salesman will be able to sign all the stores in at least three different shopping centers in a week.

Once you’ve explained the marketing philosophy behind your papers, and the money potential available, you should have all the eager salesmen you care to sign on. Remember, each sales person is assigned 3-different shopping centersyou give him a dummy of your paper for each of his shopping centers, with the space availabilities markedsend him out to fill those spaces with paid advertisersand you’ll both be home free.

Whenever possible, ask for and get your money up-front or at the time of the sale. In many instances, this won’t be possible, so you’ll need some sort of standard contract. A short visit to your local community college advertising department, or your local public library for a look at a few instruction books on how to draw up a space advertising contract, will give you a form to copy and use as your own. Billing your advertisers at the end of 30-days will bring in lots of sales, but it will also require a bookkeeper/secretary and statements as well as letterhead envelopes and postage.

Allowing your advertisers to buy now and pay later will also require that you allow your salesmen to “draw” against the commission they have coming. This too will present some special problems, namely a need for operating capital. Most of the time you’ll be able to sell or factor your accounts receivable for about 80% of the total due. When you do this, you’ll be giving up another 20% of your gross income, but you will have immediate cash available. The thing you must do is weigh your operating costs against the overall benefits and make your decision based upon these factors.

The design, layout and production of your paper should be quite simple. Visit a local stationary and/or office supplies store—pick up a blue printers pencil, some larger transfer (rub-on) letters (either 60-point or 72 point size should be sufficient for your needs), and alsopick up a pad of “fade out” graph paper and a roll or two of border tape.

Use the rub-on letters to print or write the masthead or title of each of your shopping center’s papers at the top of the graph paper. With your border tape and razor blade, make a U-shaped frame around the page, a half inch in from the outside edge of the paper.

If you’re getting started from your “kitchen table,” and using a typewriter, make sure your type is “elite” or the small type. Now, measure the inside of your frame from the bottom of your masthead to the top of your border tape at the bottom of your frame; and from side to side, measuring from the inside edges of your border tape along the sides. You should end up with a space 9 ½ inches deep by 7 ½ inches wide.

Take these measurements to your local print shop and ask them for the dimensions of a space 30% larger. This should amount to a space 10 ¾ by 13 ½ inchesso ask him for some 11 by 14 inch paper. Scrap paper that has a clean backside will do quite nicely.

With your blue pencil, lay out a frame 10 ¾ by 13 ½ inchesthen divide the 10 ¾ width into seven equal columns. Run the paper into your typewriter and type out the classified ads you have set. If you have a camera ready ad that’s too large for your regular column dimensions, paste it into position on this sheet. When you have this page all “written” or pasted up, take it to your printer and have him reduce it to 70 % of its current size and run off a couple of copies for you. Cut out this reduced copy and paste it inside your master frame, add any proper sized camera ready ads and you’re ready to take your paper to press.

Almost all shopping center papers start out as one page circulars printed on both sides, and put together on the “kitchen table” as I’ve described here. Working alone and trying to start from scratch, you probably won’t have all your available space sold when you go to press. If this is the way it works out for you, simply fill in the empty spaces with ads of your own.

Promotional ads inviting people to call you, for example, for ad rate information, and to place their ads.

Also, some of your better mail order offers. In order to give the impression of lots of ads from lots of different people, enlist the help of your relatives and friendsallow them to advertise a For Sale or Trade item free. It’s important that you seemingly have ads from a lot of different people with lots of different phone numbers and/or addresses listed.

For these classified ads, you should charge per line, and hence, the name “dollar Papers.” Don’t forget, your second source of income will be garnered from people who have seen or read your paper, and place ads of their own as result.

Once you’ve got separate pagesa front and a backfor your first paper ready, simply take it to your quick-print shop and have run off the number of copies you’ve promised to circulate for your advertisers. Have him print it on yellow or orange 20 pound bond, or even recycled construction paper.

Until you really get rolling, you can hire a couple of kids to hand out your papers to everyone as they drive into the shopping center parking lot, drop off a stack for check-out stand giveaways at each store or shop in the shopping center, and/or persuade a couple of newspaper carriers to include one with each newspaper they deliver. Another fast hand-out method is to hire a student to give one to each bus rider as he gets off the bus at busy “park and ride” locations.

As your shopping center papers become known, you take on sales people to do the selling for you; when you have more space to handle the requests for advertising space, contact a larger printer who works with web presses and news-print paper. Look around, and you’ll find one who’ll handle all your typesetting, layout, printing and even bulk delivery to your distribution pick-up points. Expanding to tabloid production will lower your production costs, give you greater efficiency and result in more profits for your business.

Where there is really tough competition, many publishers of Shopping center Papers include stories about the shopping center—what the land was used for before it was developed as a shopping center—profiles on the different store owners, where they’re from and what they did before opening their store or shop—and news of community interest within the customer circle. Many increase their incomes by running mail order opportunity ads from dealers in all parts of the country.

Basically, shopping center paper is the same as a mail order ad sheet. The big difference is that it serves as an advertising showcase for a small circle of merchants in a specific area, and is circulated among the people most likely to do their shopping in that specific small circle of merchants; each circle has a need for an advertising showcase of its own, and it will be to your benefit to turn away advertising requests from merchants outside that circle.

The only advertising you’ll have to do is via the quality and image you project with each issue or edition of your papers. There are a number of popularity-building promotions you can, and should run: Free ads for baby sitting and/or child care services;

0 worth of free groceries if the shopper spots his picture or name in your paper; and free merchandise or service for solving picture puzzles. Don’t look for much free publicity or help from newspapers, radio and/ or TV stations in your areaat least, not until you’re very well established, because you are in direct competition with them.

As mentioned earlier, this is an easy business to organise, requires no special education or training, and will pretty much perpetuate itself once you’re beyond the start-up stages. The important thing of course, is the opportunity for at least one such paper in even the smallest communities. The profit potential in even small to medium-sized cities is almost beyond belief…

You have an idea, and I’ve provided the organisational details to make it work for you— it’s working very profitably for a lot of entrepreneurs in a number of locations around the country—the only thing missing now, is action on your part. get with it, and start enjoying the fruits of your own success.Copyright 2006 O’Hara Publishing

About the Author

Frank O

Article by Rod MacTaggart

Alaska’s primary drug and alcohol detox center, part of the Salvation Army’s Clitheroe Center in Anchorage, has closed due to lack of public funding. The loss to the local and statewide community is tragic, considering that Alaska has the highest percentage in the USA of people needing but not receiving treatment for substance abuse and dependence problems. And when one compares the cost of keeping the center open to the costs to the state of drug and alcohol abuse – 8 million in 2003 – it seems plainly short-sighted to sacrifice a drug and alcohol detox center.

Clitheroe Center is Alaska’s largest comprehensive substance abuse treatment facility. Because of a shortage of state funding over the past 14 years, Clitheroe’s drug and alcohol detox unit has shrunk from 20 beds, to 12, to eight – and now has reached zero. The center’s drug rehab and other services, operating in the community for 30 years, will continue to be available. The closure only affects the vital drug and alcohol detox center, which treats emergency and other tough cases for which no alternatives exist.

“We could not staff it any longer with nurses,” said Major Doug Tollerud of the Salvation Army. “The nursing shortage that has hit the nation has also hit Alaska and has also hit the Anchorage community.” Tollerud says the state was giving the Salvation Army 0,000 every year – but the detox program costs more than a million dollars to run.

Dr. Marc Pellicciaro of Providence Hospital ER says a lot more people will be walking through their emergency room doors now that the doors to Clitheroe’s detox program are closed. “We’ll have to do some of the work in the emergency room ourselves, and then the rest of the community is going to have to take care of these folks as well,” he said.

In 2004-2005, Alaska was among the top eight states for illicit drug dependence, and had the highest percentage in the nation of people aged 12 and older needing, but not receiving, treatment for illicit drug use, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

But that’s nothing compared to its alcohol problem. Alcohol has long been recognized as the state’s number one behavioral health problem. Alcohol abuse and dependence in the state is at 14%, twice the national average. Back in 2002, there were 1,109 traffic crashes in Alaska attributed to alcohol and other drugs, and the estimated costs from these crashes were more than million for legal costs, property damage, workplace costs and insurance. The cost of adult and child protective services attributed to alcohol and other drug abuse is estimated at million. These costs include foster care services, adoption care services, residential care services, and social worker services.

It’s well accepted that detox programs are a potent tool in helping return alcohol and drug abusers to a life of sobriety. With the country’s worst alcohol abuse and near-worst drug abuse problems, Alaska’s inability to find funding for the Clitheroe Center is totally at odds with the need in the state for drug and alcohol detox.

About the Author

Bio: Rod is a freelance writer that contributes articles on health.Contact: info@novusdetox.comalcohol detoxhttp://www.novusdetox.com

Find More Care Center Articles

Article by Sam Miller

Call centers are customer service centers that receive and transmit multiple requests by telephone (and also usually by email and other online channels). These were originally introduced as extensions of telecommunications services especially for large companies with customer support needs. They provide an effective, streamlined way of providing consumers with customer and/or technical support. Many companies, including telemarketing companies, mail-order companies, and even computer dealers use call centers to provide customer support.

Typically, call centers handle fairly high volumes of both inbound and outbound calls. Inbound calls consist of consumers phoning in for inquiries, and to ask for product or service support. These calls are forwarded to skilled support staff employees, who then help to resolve the issue as quickly and easily as possible. Outbound calls, on the other hand, are usually company telemarketers promoting the company’s products and services to customers via telephone.

Dealing with customers directly is of course a very sensitive matter, and every company strives to put its best foot forward with its call centers. These centers represent, after all, one of the company’s fronts or faces to the public. Careful management is required, and this is usually performed using KPI’s and benchmarking.

This can help avoid the common complaints of customers about call centers, which include non-expert operators, poorly trained agents unable to process simple requests, long waiting times due to automated queues, scripted agents, and so on. Benchmarking is closely related to the KPI concept, and basically aims to reform an organization from the ground up by making use of new, possibly more effective practices and methods. This presupposes, of course, a working way to evaluate performance, which is exactly what KPI’s are useful for.

Some of the more obvious and common key performance indicators for call centers include the average amount of time that a call takes to resolve, or what is known as AHT (average handling time). This combines the average time that a caller waits on hold and the average time that a caller spends talking with the agent (ATT, average talk time). Other possible measures (or metrics) include the percentage of successfully resolved calls, the number of calls per hour per agent, and many more.

Careful monitoring of these indicators can help managers to build up a complete and objective picture of a call center’s performance. Specific indicators may also point to areas of the most shortcomings, which would require immediate action. It should be mentioned here that these are only sample indicators; each particular case might come with its own set of useful key performance indicators. Thorough analysis and careful selection are key to the successful application of the KPI system.

A successful call center is an invaluable asset to any company. It can ease the communication flow between customer and company. It can greatly improve customer retention and satisfaction. It can even help to resolve emerging customer service issues before they get out of hand. The proper use of KPI’s to evaluate call center performance, and thus to make the necessary management decisions, can transform mediocre centers into stellar assets.

About the Author

If you are interested in evaluate call center performance, check this web-site to learn more about check test.

Find More Care Center Articles

Article by Lucile Taylor

In a company that provides outsourcing services, a set of best practices must be imposed. This statement holds true in the place of call centers since it is important to note that there must be a certain set of call center customer service practices to ensure that the company will provide the best of all the best call center customer services.

The term “call center customer service practices” in this sense is associated with the nature of the ways on how to acquire or polish a particular given customer service. As it is commonly noted, call center customer service practices really make a call center prosper because with call center customer service practices the people behind the call center will eventually learn to develop and perfect their skills.

Most call center customer service practices aim to fully enhance the operations and other related things in the world of call centers, particularly those outbound and inbound customer service operations. Most of call center customer service practices are made to improve the financial and service performance as well as the level of loyalty the customers and the call center agents would display. It is in fact true that the satisfaction of the customers does not have to be sacrificed in order to achieve successful and efficient operations. This notion will only be made possible with the guidance of the best call center customer service practices.

The call center customer service practices that most of the call centers elsewhere provide vary from employee resource management, telemarketing and outbound/inbound call management, to single customer operations. Among the latest call center customer service practices that most call centers applied into their own companies are the dynamic, data-driven call resolution support that enable the call centers to provide more consistent customer services. Considerably, with such kind of call center customer service practices, the efficiency and the quality of the customer service will improve, and in this mode of call center customer service practices, the quality will be acquired by considering the real-time statistics and by making possible changes to call scripts.

In addition, call center customer service practices cover the careful service business analysis in which the company will be provided with better insights into their service operations and which in turn encourage the agents to apply positive behavior inline with their performance. Some other call center customer service practices are made, such as the productive customer service request routing to increase customer satisfaction and intelligent issue recognition and resolution to provide service agents with a more organized set of requests from the customers. Also call center customer service practices tackle value-based customer engagement modeling that promotes more ordered set of schedules. Such kinds of call center customer service practices also cover the customer care activities in general.

Please check out Content-Articles.com for useful tips and info about Retail and Sales.

About the Author

Lucile Taylor is a contributor for Content-Articles.com. She is an expert in Corporation and LCC Partnership advice.