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Maybe you’ve heard the proverb “Knowledge is knowing what to say. Wisdom is knowing whether or not to say it.” It’s a classic piece of folk wisdom that connects to customer service and the age-old question of whether contact center agents should have “no” in their vocabulary. While there are cases when agents should avoid using “no” and “unfortunately” in conversations with customers, they remain useful—and sometimes necessary—words. Let’s look at customer service situations that require creative responses and sometimes even a “no” from a brand.

Agents are both the contact center’s greatest asset and greatest expense. Whether you are a brand-new workforce management (WFM) professional, or an experienced WFM gurum figuring out how to deal with fluctuations in headcount and appropriate staffing can be one of the most challenging parts of the job.

It’s plain and simple, using plain language in customer interactions is good business for your contact center.

E-commerce printing company Digital Room had been using different vendors for voice, email and chat. From downtime to sub-optimal scheduling to the lack of a unified picture of performance, the fragmented system presented a growing array of issues that eventually caused the company to re-think its options.

It’s easier to fall behind in today’s competitive contact center environment than it is to get ahead. The rate at which technology is moving combined with the changing demands of consumers leaves little room for error. If you’re an inbound contact center manager running a team that’s lacking some of the industry’s most essential software features, you’re instantly at a disadvantage. Luckily, it’s never too late to get your support center back on track. We’ve assembled a quick list of some of the most vital software for an inbound call center to achieve maximum success.

Every business wants to put customers first. After fielding thousands of inquiries a day, however, contact centers have learned it’s necessary to prioritize customer requests. Whether it’s segmenting calls by urgency or agent expertise, filtering inbound queries can make a big difference in both quality of service and bottom line.

In a past life I had the privilege of running contact center operations at a leading pharmacy benefits management (PBM) company. Not long ago we experienced an extended PBX outage due to some required maintenance from our vendor that did not go as planned. To minimize service level impact we scheduled this work to occur late at night, but as the patching process failed, the outage extended into our high volume hours. The patch back-out process repeatedly failed and it was determined the PBX software would all have to be re-loaded from scratch, along with literally hundreds of patches, and we needed a way to allow our customer calls to be answered quickly. With stringent Service Level Guarantees contracted with our customers, including fiduciary penalties if not met, we knew we needed to come up with a quick plan to keep the calls flowing to our agents.