What do you already know about hosting WooCommerce stores? When it comes to hosting WooCommerce stores, you may have already read some of my articles on choosing a WordPress host, or how to think about WooCommerce already. But maybe you haven't. Or maybe you read the super sharp article by Carl Alexander on using a ... Read more

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For most business owners, the main reason why they would outsource their call center services is that it’s usually the least expensive option. Be that as it may, there are several factors that go into the final cost of doing so—including the type of call center, its location, and the […]

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Imagine the convenience of a hotel concierge, but with a recording that you can customize. That’s the draw of an at-home wake-up call service—which is far more affordable than booking a hotel room just to get access to a concierge. In any case, for less than the cost of a […]

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If you’re looking for a robust tool that transcribes your calls in real-time, integrates with the most popular meeting platforms, and can even attend meetings in your place, Otter.ai is for you. In this post, we’ll share exactly how to use Otter, plus we’ll give you some alternative options for […]

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A local call is one that is placed and received within the same zip code—or technically within the same switching center. Below, we’ll break down what a local call is, how it differs from a long distance call, and why local calls are now irrelevant. An Example of a Local […]

The post Are Local Calls Still a Thing? Not Really appeared first on .

You want your call center to be prepared to tackle any challenge and come out safely on the other side. While many may brush over their business continuity plans and adopt a so-called “agile” approach to potential disasters, having a plan in place will make all the difference when facing […]

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Setting up a good IVR (interactive voice response) call flow can pay dividends for your business because it can keep more customers on the line and route more of them to the exact resources they need without delays.  Below, we’ll explore 12 call flows that you can implement in your […]

The post 12 IVR Call Flows You Can Steal (and Use) in Your Call Center appeared first on .

If you work in an outbound call center, you know how important it is to hone your skills and keep outperforming the competition. At the same time, you also know not to waste time with useless gimmicks and low-level advice that was written by AI in two seconds.  What you […]

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Visual IVRs (Interactive Voice Response) combine traditional IVR technology with visual elements such as images, videos, and menus that make for a fast, user-friendly experience. In call centers where there’s a large volume of incoming calls and customer inquiries to handle, visual IVRs can help customers get their answers more […]

The post A Visual IVR Can Do This One Thing That Regular IVR Can’t appeared first on .

Electronic voices have been destined to answer phone calls ever since Bell Labs invented the Voder machine at the tail-end of the 1930s. These days, everybody and their mother has been greeted by an IVR (interactive voice response) phone system to walk them through a customer service calling menu in […]

The post Intelligent IVR: What it Can (and Can’t) Do…Yet appeared first on .

Recruiting and hiring call center employees can be a pain, but it doesn’t have to be so bad. For example, depending on the roles you’re looking to hire, you may not even have to write a job description—because you can just use ours instead.  Below, we’ve put together four of […]

The post Steal These Free Call Center Job Description Templates appeared first on .

A cloud IVR (interactive voice response) system is a call center solution that combines automated voice prompts with integrated features like payment systems and access to live agents. As cloud computing has moved from niche to mainstream, most IVR operations have followed suit by migrating from on-premises to cloud-based solutions.  […]

The post 10 Signs to Know You’re Ready for Cloud IVR (+How to Use It) appeared first on .

Data makes the world go round, but without proper context, it can only tell a small part of the story.  At a call center, for example, the average time that agents spend on calls tells you very little about the success of those calls. If the calls are super short, […]

The post What Your Average Call Duration Says About Your Team appeared first on .

If you’re getting unwanted calls from people and numbers you don’t recognize or wish to hear from, call blocking is the answer you’ve been waiting for. Whether it’s relentless spam, overzealous agents, persistent recruiters, or someone from your personal life, call blocking can put a stop to all of it—and […]

The post Call Blocking Done Right (The First Time) appeared first on .

In today’s digital world, information spreads like wildfire. That includes information about you. What people read about you online—whether accurate or not—impacts your reputation and potentially all aspects of your life. You want the things people read about you to be true. But keeping track of everything that appears online […]

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Reputation management involves monitoring and influencing your reputation with the goal of both protecting and enhancing it. Given that negative press can spread quickly through news, social media, and other digital outlets, this practice has arguably never been more important than it is today.  What Reputation Management Includes Here are […]

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White label reputation management involves offering reputation management services under the name of another agency. An example would be a digital marketing agency that doesn’t specialize in reputation management entering a white label agreement with a specialist reputation management agency to deliver services on its behalf.  In some cases, certain […]

The post Should You White Label Reputation Management? It Depends appeared first on .

As a celebrity or public figure, society holds a magnifying glass to everything you do. With the world hanging on to your words and actions, it’s no surprise they’ll spin things to suit their world views, take quotes out of context, or paint you in a negative light every chance […]

The post 7 Essentials to Reputation Management for Celebrities appeared first on .

Call simulators can be nice tools when you want to provide supplemental training and practice for your agents, but they can’t replace the hands-on experience they’d get from dealing with real customers. In other words, call simulators work, but they’re not very practical for training purposes—especially in the long term.  […]

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Managing a call center well requires a lot of careful decision-making and even more data to back it up. At the same time, though, it can be extremely difficult to know which KPIs and metrics matter the most to your specific business. There are three types of call center reports […]

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Staying on top of what people are saying or writing about you is about more than ego. It helps you amplify the positive and quickly resolve anything negative—before it blows up. Healthcare providers face a unique challenge when it comes to their reputations. How current and future patients view you […]

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This one is simple. The metric that matters when defining a "successful" landing page is profitability. You need to make more than you spend to bring the traffic. If you're spending X to get traffic, and you're profiting X-plus-anything after...

Don't over-complicate things, a successful landing page is simple and focused. When visitors land on your page, they have a few questions in mind, and your landing page should answer them. Does it offer what I need? What does it...

If you haven't seen the new Think Vitamin Membership offering from Carsonified, and you're a web developer of any kind, it's worth checking out. Below I've embedded one of their free videos (most are behind a pay wall) that does...

Rounding out my landing page coverage, I'd like to share some insights from a page in the wild that does a nice job incorporating the principles we've been discussing here. Stu Green, the creator, was kind enough to answer a...

Finding a good domain name is hard. If you're like me, you've spent absurd amounts of time on this task. Including time which would be much better spent building your product/website/company. Here are a list of tools I use which...

What is it? Answers.OnStartups.com BrightJourney.com: A question and answer site focused on Startups and Entrepreneurship. Who makes it? Stack Exchange (with a dash of clout from Dharmesh Shah) Why is it the killerest? Stack Exchange (the company behind this) have...

I enjoy entrepreneurship, startups, business and the like the same way my brother in law enjoys baseball and basketball. Which is to say, I'm a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth fan. Rarely a day goes by that I don't read, study, research, observe,...

What is it? Launch Effect: A free WordPress theme anyone can use to quickly create a professional looking, virally inclined pre-launch page for your upcoming product website, app, service, etc.). Who makes it? Barrel LLC Why is it the killerest?...

Today I was struck again by what an amazing time it is to build an internet startup. I was on a phone call with a startup in the early stages. They've got an awesome idea, a smart team, good connections,...

What is it? Gumroad: A service that lets you "sell anything you can share" which is to say - anything you don't need to collect shipping information for. Each purchase ends with a download link. You create "links" that send...

I call myself an entrepreneur, but to be honest, a lot of times I don't. When someone asks me what I do - I often punt. I feel like if I'm going to describe myself as an entrepreneur, the next...

There are few segments more exciting right now than alternative payment systems. Earth's collective contempt for the entrenched payment tech industry is ardent. This industry has abused users, built regulatory walls to competition, made things insufferable for customers, and as...

What is it? LaunchRock: A service that provides a pre-launch page for your startup (you know, the "signup to be notified when we launch" type of site). Heres the one I created for a project I'm working on for startup...

I've enjoyed recreational fishing since I was a kid. Over the years I've had the chance to fish and associate with some top anglers, and I've noticed something about them - they don't waste time in an unproductive location. If...

First, let me tell you a little story involving butterflies and bladders. I've spent the past few days at MicroConf. Just a phenomenal conference, full of like-minded folks, loaded with actionable content. Not to get too carried away, but it...

Windmill – Digital Art Electron-based displacement map generator. (tags: 3d javascript displacement textures )

The Healing Power of JavaScript | WIRED "With static sites, we've come full circle, like exhausted poets who have travelled the world trying every form of poetry and realizing that the haiku is enough to see most of us through our tragedies." A line that particularly resonates in this lovely Craig Mod article on the […]

CG Cinematography Archives – Chris Brejon A remarkable book – and resource – from Chris Brejon. All on lighting for CG animation, but as usual with this sort of reference, so much to say about cinematic lighting fullstop. (tags: animation 3d compositing lighting book reference cinematography ) R Luke Dubois on Joel Chadabe A deeply […]

GitHub OCTO | Flat Data Github experimenting with a formalised approach for using Actions/repositories as datastores. Interesting to see their end-to-end approach, including, in particular, custom VS Code plugins for generating configurations; it's a neat and accessible way to build end-user UI. (tags: data git github tools storage patterns )

Mare’s Hair | Avidly "Here’s an important and (as far as I can yet tell) unaddressed question for Mare of Easttown criticism: when, exactly, did Mare Sheehan stop dying her hair blond? This question may seem trivial compared to more pressing Mare of Easttown questions, such as “was that ending good?” and “is this copaganda?” […]

Frog Vision and Tom’s Diner – Valhalla DSP "However, the most important factor for me at this point is that I have heard “Tom’s Diner” so many times that *I no longer hear it*. Like frog vision, I no longer notice what remains the same, only what has changed. I don’t hear the song anymore, […]

Primož Roglič – Path to 2021 Tour de France Glory Wonderful writing from Kate Wagner, on Primož Roglič, and cycling, and the arcs of careers, and change. (tags: cycling primozroglic sport katewagner writing ) playing the believing game – by Sara Hendren – undefended / undefeated "… believing, Elbow says, is a separate muscle entirely, […]

Oddkin: A working letter · Buttondown "Either your workplace is a family or it’s not. It’s not, of course. The very concept of the workplace as family is a tool for exploitation. But if it’s not, where does that leave us in relation to each other? What does it mean to care about your colleagues, […]

George and Ann "My only objection [to the coverage of le Carré's death] would be: not enough discussion about the relationship between le Carré’s greatest character, George Smiley, and his wife, Ann, which plays out over the five novels where George Smiley appears as a central figure and is one of the weirdest portraits of […]

This turned into an even longer essay than expected, and whilst it’s a personal narrative about cycling, the important part is: I’m riding RideLondon 100 for charity, you can find a link to the details – and the fundraising – at the end. But first, an essay about riding bikes. Since moving to London, I […]

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Twitter is one of the closest things we have today to a de facto "public space" on the internet.

Today our comment and review media lurch from Hot Takes to History without pausing for a moment to get a sense of what actually happened. The concept of the One Year Later Review was that we might be able to get a better understanding of what mattered and what effects it had with a little […]

It feels odd, writing your first blog post in seven years. It used to be such a large part of my life—and this blog used to be such a core part of my work and engagement with my community—that you’d think you’d never forget how to do it. I wrote here almost every day for […]