Prosci Releases Research with 400 Companies in New Fieldbook for Creating World-Class Customer Service

LOVELAND, CO, May 2002 – After research with more than 400 companies, Prosci and Vanguard Communications have released the most definitive fieldbook for creating world-class customer service, A Blueprint for Building a Successful Contact Center. 

“Serving customers every day through call centers is a requirement for companies today, whether it be airline reservations or support for your cell phone.  However, it takes more than the latest widget to deliver great service at low cost in today’s environment,” stated Lori Bocklund, author of Call Center Technology Demystified.  “With the increase in eCommerce, the new planning toolkit from Prosci and Vanguard Communications is a ‘must have’ strategy tool for planning and designing a world-class customer contact center.”

Companies can use this new planning toolkit as a roadmap for a new customer contact approach or to create a future strategy to provide top-tier service at the lowest possible cost.  The planning and design toolkit, A Blueprint for Building a Successful Contact Center, gives operational and call center managers worldwide the concrete tools, checklists, guidelines and templates to create world-class customer service.

This toolkit is designed for managers who are:

• starting a completely new customer service call center
• consolidating two or more call centers
• upgrading an existing call center to a multi-media contact center
• taking over call center management from someone else
• managing a portion of a new call center implementation
• opening a second call center
• looking for a better understanding of the components of an effective call center

“This is a unique product in the customer service marketplace,” commented Jeff Hiatt, president of Prosci.  “Based on our research, we predict that email and web will outpace voice contact for customer service in the next 5 years. Even on the business-to-business front, all you have to do is look at your inbox to see the trend between phone calls and email. Contact centers must be able to respond.”

In addition to answering the question “where do I start?” with concrete tools and checklists, the toolkit addresses Business Strategy, Processes, Technology, Human Resources and Call Center Facilities. Each section includes descriptions and examples of each topic, benefits and implementation issues, checklists, additional resource references and sample documents when appropriate.

A Blueprint for Building a Successful Contact Center is a collaborative effort by industry leaders Vanguard Communications Corporation (www.vanguard.net) and Prosci Research.  It brings together Prosci’s benchmarking research with Vanguard’s more than 20 years of consulting and real-life experience in the call center field.  The toolkit combines operational call center expertise with lessons learned from independent research.

For more information about A Blueprint for Building a Successful Contact Center, visit the Call Center Learning Center at www.call-center.net/planning.htm, call (800) 700-2831 or (970) 203-9332, or email callcenters@prosci.com.

Prosci is a research and publishing company serving businesses around the world with research-based products for the call center industry.  Prosci’s materials are developed by call center experts with years of experience and insight in call center operations and technology.  Prosci has worked with over 400 call centers from 24 countries on benchmarking and research related to call center best practices, and over 1000 organizations in change management research.  Contact Prosci at 970-203-9332 or visit one of Prosci’s online learning centers:

• Call Center Learning Center, www.call-center.net

• Change Management Learning Center, www.change-management.com

• Human Resources Learning Center, www.human-resources.org

Vanguard Communications is the leading independent consulting company in the contact center industry.  Founded in 1980, Vanguard helps clients meet business goals by planning, designing, and implementing solutions for customer contact and for managing customer and partner relationships.  Core services include strategy development, assessment and design, requirements definition, and implementation management, for both traditional call centers and emerging ecommerce technology, including ACDs, IVR, CTI, Web access, CRM and other software systems, and business process design.  Lori Bocklund is the Vice President of Vanguard Communications. Call Vanguard at 973-605-8000 or visit www.vanguard.net.