As a manager, you are expected to uphold discipline. You ought to be in control of your team and always be prepared to face any challenges that arise during the course of work. But the common mistake which most managers do is that they take this brief too seriously.

The managers misconstrue that imposing strictest of discipline and keeping their team under tight control is their rightful duty as well as primary responsibility. The resultant excess of management transforms our managers into school Headmasters who start micro managing instead of managing their team.

Micro management occurs when a manager focuses on trivial little things and fails to see the bigger picture. The manager tends to focus on tiny irrelevant details, makes too many stifling rules and demands too many reports from the sub ordinates. Whether they actually are or not, they always enjoy the perception of being in control by reserving the decision-making authority and not sharing it with their subordinates. It can prove to be detrimental for the entire team, especially in a call center environment.

5 reasons why call center manager must strictly avoid micro management are:

1. It increases stress in the workspace

Any agent of an inbound call center who is dealing with irate callers is understandably already quite stressed. Nagging by the manager is likely to only increase the stress levels further and create a dismal work environment.

2. It demotivates the employees

Such managers usually point out the bad qualities of their team members, more than they ever appreciate them. This makes each employee feel dejected and adversely affects their morale and self-confidence.

3. It slows down functioning

These managers are usually unable to make quick decisions. A 24x7call center where each second is precious, cannot afford such delayed responses to problems that require urgent attention.

4. It leads to inefficiency

Peter Drucker has said that there is no point in doing those things efficiently, which shouldn’t be done in the first place! But contrary to this advice, a micro-manager insists on lots of reports to be made by his subordinates. So apart from the reports made for clients, the employees are compelled to make dozens of reports to appease this manager with reportomania.

5. It decreases the fun at work

They doen’t give the employees enough liberty to have fun while they work. And when employees aren’t enjoying what they are doing, their efforts would also be half-hearted and it would adversely impact the team’s performance.

So a call center manager should analyze oneself and determine whether he/ she is a micro-manager or not. And if yes, then they should shed all such habits and emerge as a successful manager who is adored and admired by the subordinates.

Source by Eric Catarino

I believe in judging a website by how well it converts visits into profits and this can be achieved with “stickiness”… the measure of how long a user spends on your site.

The longer they stay the likelier they are to spend money, ask any good salesperson worth his weight in salt!

Website Design, “stickiness” & the 8 “C’s”

Your design should keep visitors on your site AND make them come back for more so implement a few of the “C’s” in your site design to improve your conversion rate:

1.Content

“Content is king” so ensure your web copy is unique, fresh, useful to users and fits in with the overall design.

Broadcast content with RSS Feeds, e-mails and sms to your target audience and link to relevant sites to get your point across (automate this in the website design).

Interactive website design (on-line games, weather reports, etc.) ensures consumers spend more time on your website.

Include F.A.Q.S, reports, research data or on-line response forms and integrate call to actions throughout the website.

2. Community

Engage people on your website, plug-ins from Social networks should be incorporated in your website design to further develop peoples perception of your brand.

3.Communication

It’s important for prospects or customers to reach you, display your contact details on each page and use an email notifier to inform users of any updates to the website.

Your design should include a Blog and allow comments giving you a better insight of your visitors needs.

4.Customisation

Allow visitors to personalise landing pages and ensure the website design is customer centric with personal greetings and personal preferences.

5. Commerce

Customers should be able to complete the entire purchasing process on-line so incorporating on-line registration, secure payment facilities, order tracking and return policies in the website design is essential.

6. Convenience

Ensure your Hosting Company is reliable and keep your website down time to a minimum, remove dead links and ensure that information in no more than 3 clicks away (plan during the initial website design phase).

The website design should ensure a pleasant user experience with simple navigation, good graphics and clear typography.

7. Choice

The website should offer a wider selection of products than normal distribution channels or perhaps offer a product customisation option for registered members.

8. Cost

We always looking for bargains and the easiest way to find them is on-line, offer discounts for on-line purchases or bookings (check out kulula.com for a good example).

Plenty of thought has to go into website design so always plan before you launch your on-line presence (or overhaul your existing web design).

Source by Darryl D Alexander

The primary value of business success is to accommodate customer requirements in a cost effective and efficient way. Although it is agreed that customer service is important, many senior managers find it extremely difficult to explain what it is and how to do it. Customer service, in a logistic view, represents a supplier’s role in fulfilling the marketing concept. To improve the customer service, it is essential to figure out clear standards of performance for each of the activities and measurements related to those standards. In basic customer service program, the focus is typically on whether the supplier is capable of providing the seven rights to its customers: the right amount of the right product at the right time at the right place in the right condition at the right price with the right information. This concept is also true to the interlining industry.

To improve the customer service, careful analysis of competitive performance and customer sensitivity is critical to the process of identifying the attributes in a basic service strategy. The fundamental attributes of basic customer service were identified as availability, operational performance, and service reliability. These attributes will be discussed in a series of articles in detail.

In this article, availability is discussed in detail. Availability is the capacity to provide inventory when a customer needs it. The traditional practice for an interlining supplier for woven interlining, non-woven interlining and fusible interlining is to stock inventory in anticipation of customer orders. An inventory stocking strategy is typically based on not only the forecast demand for products, but also some differential stocking policies for specific items including profitability, popularity, the importance and value of an item.

For an interlining supplier for woven interlining, non-woven interlining and fusible interlining, achieving a high level of inventory availability requires a great deal of planning. The performance of availability is measured on three attributes, namely, stock-out frequency, fill rate, and orders shipped complete.

1. Stock-out Frequency.

A stock-out frequency occurs when a supplier has no product available to meet customer demand. The stock-out frequency refers to the probability that a stock-out occurs in a firm with no available inventory to meet customer orders. The aggregation of all stock-outs across all products can serve as an indicator of a firm’s performance to provide basic service commitment in product availability. Therefore, taking an interlining supplier for woven interlining, non-woven interlining and fusible interlining for example, good strategy must be applied to lower stock-out frequency.

2. Fill Rate.

Fill rate measures the impact of stock-out over time. It is important to identify the units of a product that is not available to the customer order. Fill rate performance is usually used to evaluate for a specific customer or item like woven interlining, non-woven interlining and fusible interlining, or for any combination of business segments like products and customers. However, fill rate may not always require a 100% achievement. The customer may accept a reorder on the short items at a later time. The essential of fill rate strategy need to take customer requirements for products into consideration.

3. Order Shipped Complete.

Order shipped complete is the most exacting measure of supplier performance in product availability. It covers everything in a customer order as a standard of acceptable performance. An order will be recorded as zero for a complete shipment if even the supplier failed to provide one item on a customer’ order.

The above three measures of availability help build the extent to which a supplier’s inventory strategy is meeting customer demand. They also serve as the basis to evaluate the firm’s appropriate level of product availability in a logistical perspective. With the information technology to identify the customer demand in advance and the forecasting theory application, an interlining supplier for woven interlining, non-woven interlining and fusible interlining succeeded in achieving high levels of basic service performance of product availability without a corresponding increase in inventory stocking. Understanding the measurement of product availability is the starting point to plan a great customer service strategy.

Source by Gile Lenon