Every call center or contact center manager wonders how to make his or her unit more productive.

Here is my list of 20 points of leverage, things you can do and have your CSR's and telemarketers do, that should boost your results.

(1) If you want to decrease turnover in service or telemarketing, double the pay! This sounds radical, but it isn't, if you factor in the true costs of recruiting, hiring, training, and then promptly losing good people.

(2) If you want to create turnover in your service unit, implement outbound telemarketing! Say, you need to downsize, but you don't have the heart to let anyone go. Enlarge the job to include selling duties, and you'll thin the ranks, pronto!

(3) Casual dress in your contact center may be getting you casual results, or worse. A major car manufacturer actually measured differential performance based on casual versus formal dress and found tatters less productive than ties.

(4) Stave off boredom & send the right message by playing “The Please & Thank You Game.” Count the number of times you say please and thank-you to customers, just for fun.

(5) Scripts are inevitable in customer service & telemarketing. Even when we think we're winging-it, we're not.

(6) Don’t be needlessly authoritarian: Let a thousand scripts bloom! There are more ways than one to make a sale or to delight a customer!

(7) CSR’s: “Call me MISTER Tibbs!” Don't lets reps sound too chummy with customers who like to be called, Mr. or Miss, or Ms.

(8) “Dear Customer: I’m Here To Listen.” Supervisors should says this when they take a call that is escalating.

(9) Reduce stress & tone up with “desktop” isometrics & free weights. Push aside those corn chips and replace them with little dumbbells. It will be a smart change that can tone you up while reducing your stress.

(10) Don’t mistake customer fear for anger. Fear is the disease that needs to be treated, and anger or customer aggressiveness is only the symptom. Reassure fearful folks; that's what they need.

(11) When recruiting, avoid using the dumb statement: “No phone calls, please!” This is a VOICE job, so you need to hear their voices. Resumes don't sell or service; people do!

(12) Manage the Three T’s: Text, Tone & Timing. These are the key variables in telephone communication. Most otherwise capable managers don't know how to manage tone, but it's crucial.

(13) Reps should self-score their calls and be scored by supervisors. Participative evaluations are the best kind because they get reps to freely commit to improvement. Assigned scores don't work as well.

(14) Gee, why not write a script that doesn’t sound like one? Use words in your scripts that sound uncontrived, like the word, "Gee!"

(15) Do Tibetan Telephoning: Take a cleansing breath between each call. Don't rush to take that next call! You could contaminate it with the mood of the last one if you don't take a cleansing breath, first.

(16) Defining customer satisfaction is half the battle, but it’s necessary. Most of us talk about "service" but that's something we do. Satisfaction is what the customer GETS and WANTS, and that's what we should be focusing on and measuring, constantly.

(17) Introduce merit pay into service work. Salespeople make commissions when they get results, so why shouldn't service folks prosper when they get results?

(18) Customer retention secret: Make an offer they CAN refuse! The gesture counts when we go out of our way to lend a helping hand even if a customer has two good ones of her own.

(19) It’s great to be a telemarketer! There are ten reasons. See my article on this one!

(20) Remember: Customers “R” Us! If you want to know how to thrill your customers, start by remembering when someone thrilled you!

Every tip is also the subject of an original article. To see approximately 500 of Dr. Gary S. Goodman’s articles, please go to ==>http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations from Santa Monica to South Africa. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

For information about coaching, consulting, training, books, videos and audios, please go to: http://www.customersatisfaction.com