When most people think about using artificial intelligence to write, their mind goes to people who may abuse the technology. Yes, some people will use AI to churn out sub-par books. But don’t worry about them.
Instead, look to how you use AI. View AI as a tool to help you write better, just like word processing software or spell and grammar checkers.
Your goal as a writer should be to produce the best possible book you can to delight your readers, be it to entertain or educate. Use AI tools to help achieve this goal, and don’t worry about others who may misuse it.
If you tap AI as a writing tool to enhance your work, you can be satisfied that you’re properly using it and not abusing it. Then, with a clear conscience, you can move forward to produce excellent work, which should be the goal of every writer.
Takeaway: Embrace AI as a tool to help you write better, and don’t worry about how others may use—or abuse—it.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
We Should Embrace AI as a Useful Toolset and Not Fear It
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a fad that will soon go away. It’s a fundamental shift in how all businesses—and even every person—will function in the future. And though you may not yet realize it, that future is here. Even if you haven’t openly invited artificial intelligence into your call center operation, it’s already arrived, albeit via circuitous points of entry.
Many people already use AI and don’t even know it. Artificial intelligence helps us draft e-mail messages and compose text messages. It facilitates online searches. And it targets advertising—both the ads we receive and the ones we send. And AI works to keep us secure online. In doing these things—and many more—AI saves us time and helps us work with more effectiveness.
We’ll talk about artificial intelligence in general terms because the specifics will be out of date within days. That’s how fast artificial intelligence technology is advancing.
Consider these areas where artificial intelligence can help us in our call centers to do our jobs more effectively and efficiently.
AI Management Tools
Artificial intelligence can help us manage our call center operation and our call center staff with greater ease. One key area, for example, is in quality assurance (QA). AI can perform a QA analysis on our agents to measure the overall effectiveness of their work. This not only removes the tedium of doing so manually, but it also makes sure it is actually done and not put off. And it also does so for every call, which is something that is not feasible from a human standpoint.
This is just one example of an AI management tool that will fundamentally change how we oversee our call center staff.
Interdepartmental Interactions
While we typically think of how artificial intelligence can facilitate interactions with clients and callers, we shouldn’t overlook its potential to assist in internal communication and collaboration between departments. Consider a customer service event and the ripple effects it’s resolution causes. AI could serve to automatically notify all stakeholders and even support their work that relates to it. As appropriate AI could trigger a billing adjustment, escalate a QA report, reprogram an account, update a service record, and so on.
Agent Support
Though artificial intelligence could—and one day may—replace much of the human involvement in call center work, we’re best to view it now as supporting our agents so they can do their jobs better and faster. The above mentioned—and presently available—AI assisted email and text messaging tools are an obvious start. Though these still require agent involvement or agent approval, imagine being able to compose these messages in less time and with greater accuracy.
Customer Facing Communications
When many people think of AI in the call center, they envision frustrating bots that hamper effective communication and thwart timely resolution. Though reports of AI run amok confirm just that, it doesn’t need to be—and shouldn’t be—the case.
Chat bots are an obvious example. Though they don’t presently function well as a holistic solution and can make a mess of unusual situations, they work great as a front-end resource to solve basic problems, gather key information, and appropriately route customer requests to agents.
Now consider the same concept occurring with telephone calls. Then imagine text to speech technology producing canned responses in each operator’s voice and indistinguishable from their own speech when they need to take over a call.
Summary
We need not fear the forward march of artificial intelligence. There is much we can do to make our call centers function faster and more accurately than ever before. We’ll benefit and so will those we interact with, both inside our organization and without.
Artificial intelligence can help us, if only we will let it.
Rejection hurts. We’ve all heard stories of popular books that had scores of editors or publishers reject them before someone realized the potential and published them. The rest is publishing history.
Since writers deal with a lot of rejection, Writer’s Digest had the idea to provide a creative outlet for them to vent their frustration. They called it “Reject a Hit.” The popular feature ran for many years.
The premise was to pick an immensely successful book and write a fictitious rejection letter. It offered a safe way to allow authors to poke fun at the gatekeepers who blocked their path to publication. You can read some of these letters online.
I sent them my contribution, but the magazine shuttered the column about the time I made my submission. It never ran, and there is no suitable outlet to share my prose.
So, I’ll post it here:
Reject a Hit: The Bible
God,
I was a bit surprised to receive your submission for the Bible. Though I had lofty expectations, the writing left me disappointed, and the substance perplexed me.
First, this is an anthology—sort of. Anthology contributors should be contemporaries, not span several centuries. And you must pick one genre. Jumping from historical nonfiction to poetry is a stretch, and the prophetic works are repetitive.
Though I like the biographies of Jesus, do you really need four?
Dystopian is hot now. Could you rework it?
The writing styles are also jarring. Paul’s rhetoric annoys me. John’s words have a lyrical flow but confuse me. David’s poems seem bipolar. Luke’s writing is solid, though he does switch perspectives in the middle of Acts.
Also, there are too many layers here. It would take a lifetime to grasp; no one will invest that much time in one book.
Plus, the Bible is no place for violence, incest, and rape. Your characters must be wholesome if you want acceptance by religious book buyers. Additionally, I suggest you remove “Song of Songs.” It borders on erotica.
With great trepidation, I must reject your submission—all the while praying you don’t strike me dead. From a business standpoint, I don’t see an upside to this. I can appreciate that you expect the Bible will become the most popular book ever, but that’s unrealistic. Not even your contributors will buy a copy—they’re all dead.
Though I don’t see any future in this as a book, you may want to consider movies. There are a couple of good stories hidden in its pages. With some poetic license and the right director, you may be able to salvage some of this.
Sincerely
Rev. Uptight Preacher, PhD
Religion Editor, Pharisee Press
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
Technology Provides More Communication Channels to Serve Patients Better
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD
The label of call center referencing outward-facing communications is an historically accurate term. At one time it handled calls from a central location. Hence, we formed a descriptively accurate name of call center.
But many call centers have moved beyond calls to embrace a more inclusive descriptor of contacts. It’s likely your operation has too or plans to do so.
Here are some of the communication channels available to call centers:
Telephone Calls
Yes, calls still make up the bulk of contacts for most operations. While older generations tend to prefer phone calls and younger generations tend to avoid them, the complex nature of healthcare communications often makes the telephone the most efficient and effective communication channel. This will continue to be the case until a channel emerges that’s more efficient and effective.
Text Chat
Overall, younger demographics like to text. As such, text chat has emerged as a channel of choice for many consumers, and a preferred channel for many contact centers. It’s easier to juggle multiple text chats than phone calls. Also, whereas phone callers hope to not be placed on hold and expect immediate interaction, text chat users tolerate—and even accept—some short communication lags.
Email
While text chat is a preferred channel for many, email remains the go-to-choice for others. Though futurists continue to predict its demise, email has persisted as a default communication channel. Email shines in its ability to facilitate longer and more complex communications.
A benefit of email is that its users expect time delays. This allows email to dovetail nicely into an operation’s workflow mixing the real-time expectation for phone calls and the near-time expectation for text chat. Even so, email users will not tolerate a long delay. A few hours is an acceptable interval, with same-day response being the minimum expectation.
Social Media
A fourth channel consideration is social media. For some users it’s their default communication option. Though most healthcare-related communications are inappropriate for social media, providers should still monitor it to be aware of requests and handle what they can on social media. For overtures that carry a privacy concern, social media can still serve as an initial contact point, which can then more appropriately migrate to another channel.
Summary
Though many still think of a call center as handling phone calls, we must embrace an expanded vision of processing other communication channels. This includes text chat, email, and social media. And we must stand poised to embrace future channels as they develop.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words
Peter Lyle DeHaan’s latest book is Successful Author FAQs.
Do you have questions about writing? Publishing?
Veteran author, publisher, editor, and freelance writer, Peter Lyle DeHaan answers questions writers often ask.
In 15 topical chapters, tackling over 100 questions, Peter addresses finding time to write, publishing options, and platform considerations. He talks about marketing, blogging, the traditional vs indie publishing debate, and much more.
With over three decades of experience, career author Peter Lyle DeHaan has answers to questions writers commonly ask. He’ll help you move forward on your writing journey.
On this grand adventure:
Learn why you shouldn’t call yourself an aspiring writer.
Uncover tips to deal with rejection.
Expose writing advice that may not be true.
Discover how to self-edit, get feedback, and find an editor.
Determine if being a writer is worth the effort.
But there’s more. There are also loads of writing tips, submission pointers, and a publishing checklist.
Be inspired. Be informed. Be motivated to become the writer you’ve always dreamed of.
Don’t delay your writing journey any longer. Take the next step.
It’s time to start calling yourself a writer.
Read Successful Author FAQs to explore the art of writing and the business of publishing.
[Successful Author FAQs was first published in 2019 as The Successful Author. This new release contains updated text and additional sections.]
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
Turning a Telephone Answering Service into a Call Center
Industry Research Now Available
WARNING: this book is a PhD dissertation (2000) and contains academic research.
It’s made available primarily to aid others who are conducting their own industry research. If this is what you seek, here’s an overview:
The telephone answering service industry is maturing and undergoing rapid changes. In recent years, the traditional client has been vanishing, switching to alternative technologies, bypassing their answering service. Telephone answering services have reacted in various ways, such as mergers and acquisitions, pursuing niches, or expanding their businesses’ scope.
The conventional wisdom is that there will always be a need for the human interaction which an answering service provides. It further assumes that answering services will serve fewer clients and generate less revenue unless steps are taken to increase their reach or obtain non-traditional clients. Previous research has recommended becoming a call center to better tap and capitalize on the needs of an emerging non-traditional client base.
The findings of this research effort determined there were the essential elements which should be present for a telephone answering service to transition into a call center. Additionally, there were five items which are common industry dilemmas to be addressed. An inventory of significant call center characteristics was also developed. Most importantly, several areas of focus were advanced.
Last week we celebrated the short story, a work of fiction between 1,000 and 7,000 words. But what about shorter and longer works? Let’s start by looking at the types of fiction.
Types of Fiction
At the shorter end of the spectrum is flash fiction. With less than 1,000 words, flash fiction is gaining traction, as it’s quick to read. But it’s not as quick to write. It requires practice to pull off well.
Within flash fiction is a special carve-out for micro-fiction, which is less than 100 words. With only a few sentences, micro-fiction requires tight writing with a swift opening and succinct ending. The length of flash fiction seems generous in comparison.
The short story is next, weighing in at 1,000 words up to 7,000. There is some variation on the upper limit, but 10,000 is usually the maximum. Short stories are a great place to hone our skills in writing fiction.
When a story becomes too long to be called short, it’s usually labeled as a novelette. Its length starts were short stories end and goes up to about 17,500 to 20,000 words. A novelette is a great length for when a short story runs long or there’s not enough material to pull off a novella. (Some publishers ignore this category and add its range of words to either the short story or novella categories.)
A novella, which at one step shorter than a novel, fills the gap of between 20,000 to 40,000 (or 50,000) words.
The ideal length of a novel varies significantly with the genre, starting at a low of 40,000 words for some categories but 80,000 words, or more, for other categories, with variations in between. The upper limit for novels also varies greatly with the genre.
Except for the 1,000-word dividing line between a short story and flash fiction, there is no general agreement on lengths for the various forms of fiction, just a rough guideline. Each publisher defines the length as it sees fit.
For novels, we need to make sure we know the expected word count for our genre before we start writing. For shorter works, we need to know what a publisher wants before we submit. Submitting something too short or too long is one of the quickest ways to have our work rejected; few will even read it if the length is wrong.
Word Length for Types of Fiction
When it comes to fiction, size does matter.
Summary: Micro-fiction: less than 100 words Flash fiction: 100 to 1,000 words Short story: 1,000 to 7,000 (or 10,000) words Novelette: 7,000 to 17,500 (or 10,000 to 20,000) words Novella: 17,500 to 40,000 (or 20, 000 to 50,000) words Novel: 40,000 (or 50,000) up to 120,000 words, depending on the genre
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
Though e-books receive all of the hype, printed books are still important, for both readers and authors
People like to talk about what is new, what is exciting, and what is fresh. That’s why the book publishing industry has so much buzz about reading digital books and listening to audiobooks.
I’m not going to dismiss those options—because they’re exciting opportunities for authors—but I do caution against overreacting. While digital and audio are fun, sexy, and viable, print is still king. Seriously.
Printed Books
Printed books have a proven history. Printed books have ardent supporters. And printed books do not require a device or a charged battery. They are always on and always available.
Print still has a role to play. Just look at libraries and bookstores, especially the local bookshops that have figured out how to compete against the national chains, online shopping, and electronic book consumption.
And don’t ignore the fact that Amazon has a physical bookstore. They wouldn’t do that on a lark. Though it may be years before we know why, be assured they have a well-reasoned business strategy for doing so.
There is also mounting evidence that younger generations prefer printed books.
They like to unplug and immerse themselves into a good read. And at colleges that only provide e-textbooks, some students, out of frustration, will actually print their own copy of the text using their PC printer.
While some independent authors shun print and do only e-publication, they miss an important, and possibly growing, market.
A success book publication strategy needs to stand on three legs: ebooks, audiobooks, and print books, which include paperback and hard cover.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
WARNING: this book is a master’s thesis (1998) and contains academic research.
It’s made available primarily to aid others who are conducting their own industry research. If this is what you seek, here’s an overview:
The telephone answering service industry is facing uncertainty due to misconceptions, rising costs, and company closures. This book presents extensive research on the industry, including a SWOT analysis and input from industry professionals. It identifies six core items for survival and success: flexibility, customer-focus, management skills, service quality, staffing practices, and employment attractiveness.
The book recommends conducting company-specific SWOT analyses and developing strategic plans, as well as increasing rates, improving sales and marketing efforts, and capitalizing on 24/7 staffing.
Readers must assess their specific circumstances to determine if these strategies are applicable. This book equips industry insiders with valuable insights and recommendations to shape the future of their businesses. By being proactive and prepared, the industry can overcome its challenges and flourish in the ever-changing telecommunications world.
Just as you would outline a book, you can also outline a series.
Consider your series outline as listing the main objective you want to accomplish for each book. Just as each book will have an arc, your series will also have one. Your series outline should reflect the series arc.
Your series outline can be as simple as a bullet point for each book. That’s what I start with. Or you can add more substance to it, but I suggest you save additional details for the book outline, which you will need for each book in the series.
Outlining a series is fun, and I recommend it. Knowing a series arc, through its outline, can inform your writing of each book in the series.
For example, if you know your primary character for book three, make a subtle introduction in book one. This restrained reveal will delight your readers when they re-encounter that person two books later. Or if book eight has a plot development you worry may seem a bit contrived, with shrewd finesse lay the groundwork for it in books two, five, and seven. This unexpected development in book eight will still surprise your readers, but they won’t feel you forced it because you prepared them for it in earlier books.
Keep in mind that if you’re a discovery writer you can’t insert any delicious titbits into earlier books—unless they’re not yet published. But with a series outline to guide your writing, you can foreshadow what is to come in future books.
In addition, having a series outline will keep you from wasting time writing passages you will later cut. And your plan will help make your books richer because readers can connect with your writing and characters more fully.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
