Books

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90 Ideas for Revitalizing and Energizing Yourself: Suggested Activities to Help You Manage Stress

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A large part of managing stress comes from the understanding that you always have choices. When faced with a stressful situation, you not only decide what you can do to manage a stressful situation, you decide what you will do.

The 90 ideas in this booklet include creative strategies and tactics that many people have found to be helpful for recharging and reenergizing themselves.

90 Ideas for Revitalizing and Energizing Yourself includes tips on how to do the following:

  • Strengthen your body
  • Develop a healthy attitude
  • Improve your personal relationships
  • Lift your spirits
  • Control your job
  • Improve your environment at work and at home
  • Develop self-understanding
  • Improve your mind
  • Control your emotions
  • Live a healthy lifestyle

Agent Health/Wellness, Personal issues

A Career for the 21st Century: A Handbook for Call Center Agents

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The call center profession is one of the fastest-growing job categories in the world. In this first volume in the Call Center Agent Handbook Series, author Cliff Hurst introduces the reader to the basic terms and best practices used in call centers today. With his easy-to-read style, Cliff offers the insights needed to answer questions like:

  • Are you ready to turn your job into a career?
  • Have you ever wanted to get more out of your job than just a paycheck?
  • Do you wonder about your call center operation’s bigger picture—and where you fit in?
  • How can you tell when you’re doing an excellent job?
  • How can you become more competent and confident in your new career as quickly as possible?

Other books in this series include voice quality and conversational skills and frontline leadership in the call center.

Visit the author’s blog.

People Development, Soft skills, Continuous agent training

Better to Be a Good Machine than a Bad Person: Speech Recognition and Other Exotic User

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In this humorous collection of essays, exercises and puzzles, author Bruce Balentine offers a satirical insider’s perspective of the IVR and speech recognition industry. It’s Better to Be a Good Machine than a Bad Person provides a backstage tour of the science of ergonomics and the philosophy of user interface design, making a strong case for predictability and usability over delight as a primary design goal.

In his fun, easy-to-read style, Balentine points out that Jetsonian thinking—which has predominantly influenced phone-based self-service interface design for the past decade and a half—is on the way out. He stresses that the attempt to create humanlike applications has been the root cause of the abysmal performance in spoken interfaces that we all experience regularly.

For more information about the book, as well as contests, extras and the author's blog, visit www.beagoodmachine.com.

Speech analytics, IVR, Ergonomics

Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Customer Contact Environment (eBook)

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The industry’s No. 1 selling book on call center management! Now available in eBook format, Call Center Management on Fast Forward is the most comprehensive source available on running a call center. This book, dubbed the "Call Center Bible", covers every aspect of call center management—service level, forecasting, scheduling, resource calculations, metrics, quality, budgeting, reporting, strategy and key enabling technologies—in a format that is well-organized and easy to understand.

The updated and expanded edition contains important new information, including:

  • Trends in customer expectations
  • Best practices in performance reports and objectives
  • How to create an effective customer access strategy appropriate for today’s environment
  • How to manage multichannel contacts with quality
  • New technologies—and how they’re changing customer contact services
  • Improving the call center’s strategic impact and ROI
  • New case studies and examples from Wells Fargo, Starbucks, Aetna and many others

Please note: Due to the size of this file, it may take up to 10 minutes to download, depending on the speed of your connection.

Service Level, Forecast accuracy, Forecasting, Scheduling

Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Customer Contact Environment

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The industry’s No. 1 selling book on call center management! Often dubbed the "Call Center Bible", Call Center Management on Fast Forward is the most comprehensive source available on running a call center. It covers every aspect of call center management—service level, forecasting, scheduling, resource calculations, metrics, quality, budgeting, reporting, strategy and key enabling technologies—in a format that is well-organized and easy to understand.

The updated and expanded edition contains important new information, including:

  • Trends in customer expectations
  • Best practices in performance reports and objectives
  • How to create an effective customer access strategy appropriate for today’s environment
  • How to manage multichannel contacts with quality
  • New technologies—and how they’re changing customer contact services
  • Improving the call center’s strategic impact and ROI
  • New case studies and examples from Wells Fargo, Starbucks, Aetna and many others

Budgets, Service Level, Quality, Forecast accuracy

ICMI's Call Center Agent Resource Bundle

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3 Must-Have Books for the Superior Call Center Agent

ICMI’s Call Center Agent Resource Bundle Includes:

1. 90 Ideas for Revitalizing and Energizing Yourself: Suggested Activities to Help You Manage Stress, ICMI
2. A Career for the 21st Century: A Handbook for Call Center Agents, Clifford Hurst
3. Your Pivotal Role: Frontline Leadership in the Call Center, Clifford Hurst

90 Ideas for Revitalizing and Energizing Yourself: Suggested Activities to Help You Manage Stress

  • Strengthen your body
  • Develop a healthy attitude
  • Improve your personal relationships
  • Lift your spirits
  • Control your job
  • Improve your environment at work and at home
  • Develop self-understanding
  • Improve your mind
  • Control your emotions
  • Live a healthy lifestyle

    A Career for the 21st Century: A Handbook for Call Center Agents

    • Are you ready to turn your job into a career?
    • Have you ever wanted to get more out of your job than just a paycheck?
    • Do you wonder about your call center operation’s bigger picture—and where you fit in?
    • How can you tell when you’re doing an excellent job?
    • How can you become more competent and confident in your new career as quickly as possible?


    Your Pivotal Role: Frontline Leadership in the Call Center

    • Why leadership is so critical in call centers
    • Theories of Motivation: What makes your people “tick”?
    • Time management: Where does your time go?
    • How to improve your staff’s performance through monitoring and coaching
    • Trends that will influence the way you lead


    Agent Health/Wellness, Personal issues, People Development, Soft skills

    Call Center Agent Motivation and Compensation

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    This topical book concentrates on the four key factors for building a positive, morale-boosting, growth-oriented call center environment: motivation, compensation, incentives and career paths. Originally published in the pages of Call Center Management Review, the articles presented here include ideas, recommendations and tried-and-true processes for career progression programs, skills development, rewards programs, non-monetary incentives and agent empowerment.

    Recognition, Agent Incentives, Agent Satisfaction/Engagement, Agent compensation/benefits

    Call Center Agent Motivation and Compensation: The Best of Call Center Management Review

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    This topical book concentrates on the four key factors for building a positive, morale-boosting, growth-oriented call center environment: motivation, compensation, incentives and career paths. Originally published in the pages of Call Center Management Review, the articles presented here include ideas, recommendations and tried-and-true processes for career progression programs, skills development, rewards programs, non-monetary incentives and agent empowerment.

    Agent compensation/benefits, Career/skill paths, Agent Incentives, Employee Motivation and Retention

    Call Center Agent Turnover and Retention

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    To help you develop processes to retain your best agents, we’ve compiled this collection of articles filled with ideas, information and tools that will allow you to create an environment that inspires agents to stay and grow with your organization—and help you get the best possible ROI for your recruiting and training dollars.

    Employee Motivation and Retention, Agent Empowerment, Agent Satisfaction/Engagement, Agent Turnover

    Call Center Agent Turnover and Retention

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    To help you develop processes to retain your best agents, we’ve compiled this collection of articles filled with ideas, information and tools that will allow you to create an environment that inspires agents to stay and grow with your organization – and help you get the best possible ROI for your recruiting and training dollars.

    Employee Motivation and Retention, Agent Turnover, Agent Satisfaction/Engagement, Agent Recruiting

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