Jeremy Lin was just days away from being cut by the New York Knicks. Likewise, the rest of us were just days away from missing out on the best underdog story in sports since Tim… More

Is your contact center going through transition? Maybe you have been asked to significantly lower cost, implement a new CRM system, take-on a new product line, or perhaps all three. If so, experience has taught… More

By many accounts, this was the most successful Super Bowl ever. TV viewership beat all records, the big game had a thrilling finish, and Indianapolis proved itself to be much more than a flyover city.… More

On January 23 and 24 in Philadelphia, leaders from pharmaceutical contact centers and their vendor partners gathered to share industry best practices. CenterFirst attended the conference and this blog highlights two presentations. Here’s a link… More

Just yesterday, after heading out the front door to start my day, I reversed my path and walked back into the house and said, “I can’t go to work without the greatest business tool ever… More

We’ve waited for what seems like forever to discover more about the FDA’s thinking on social media.  In December 2011, the FDA formally framed how they will interpret regulation surrounding emerging media with a draft… More

Cost optimization will again be the theme for pharma call centers in 2012.  That’s not such a bold prediction given that pharma and biotech call centers have been asked to do more with less for the… More

At CenterFirst, we’ve worked with several top 20 pharma companies on big and small call center initiatives over the past eight years.  Along with success, implementation mistakes have been made and lessons learned.  Please feel… More

Even if  not an NFL fan,  you’d be hard pressed not to have heard of the on-field heroics of Tim Tebow in the last 7 weeks.
The story is really only important because it’s bigger… More

Lowering your pharma call center costs by up to 25% is not unrealistic…it’s not easy either.  Two important questions to ask before you commit to cost savings are:

How much cost optimization work has been performed… More

When we think of call center consolidation a few things come to mind, and, unfortunately, for most of us, those things are generally negative in nature.
Perhaps we anticipate less informed agents, longer hold times,… More

Before we get to this answer, we ought to answer the question, “Why do we even need SOPs in our call center to be compliant?”
If your call center is handling medical or product information,… More

“In recent years, we have fundamentally changed our procedures for compliance, marketing and selling in the U.S. to ensure that we operate with high standards of integrity and that we conduct our business openly and… More

If you are reading this blog you have already spent a lot of time thinking about how to improve your agent’s performance. You likely have quality monitoring, coaching, and reward systems in place to help… More

Congratulations to Catherine Nojiri, PharmD and Chandni Patel, PharmD of Medical Operations at Novo Nordisk for pulling together an excellent benchmarking study on call handling in pharma.
Doctors Nojiri and Patel highlighted a few interesting… More

The SOCAP Annual Meeting in October 2010 was an outstanding event as usual. The events are always terrific for gathering benchmark data from across several industries.
The organization called the Customer Operations Performance Center presented… More

We are often asked about the best way to conduct a contact center assessment. Our process is a simple 3-step approach that is based in sound internal auditing practices. The three steps include:

Gathering Data… More

Guiding Principles to Consider When Designing a Global Contact Center
1) Establish a Shared Vision:
Solicit input at the regional level. Often this step is minimized or its importance overlooked by headquarters management. Skipping this… More

Quality monitoring is a staple program in most contact centers; however, there are nearly as many variations of quality monitoring programs as there are contact centers!
To get started, let’s establish a common understanding of… More

What is the difference between a contact center implementation that is truly embraced and one that never gets off the ground or is only accepted because of executive mandate?
In our experience, it’s the leadership… More