I’m a movie buff, enjoying most genres and all eras, including silent movies and especially Buster Keaton films. One of them, Our Hospitality, set in 1830 Appalachia is a classic tale of boy meets girl, who only finds out too late that her family is set on killing his. Will love prevail or will their […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD For years, some answering service owners have pursued remote operator stations, while others have avoided them with staunch opposition. For the TAS, the benefits of remote operators are many, including running multiple offices from one system, tapping into new labor markets, and hiring qualified but homebound staff. For employees, the […]
When I first entered the workforce, I asked an older, wiser friend to review my resume. She chastised me for using the word telephony, laughing at my “made-up word.” Even though I used it correctly and my prospective employers would (likely) understand it, my friend’s mirth and Master’s degree intimidated me, so I removed telephony […]
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E-Books Gain Traction
Yesterday I listened to a nationwide radio program, where the host interviewed an author with a soon-to-be-released e-book. This wasn’t a print book and an e-book; it was just an e-book. Usually, the media only considers traditionally published, printed works, while dismissing e-books as irrelevant. Though I’m sure it’s happened before, this is the first […]
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What I Learned at Call Center Week
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD In mid-June, I enjoyed attending Call Center Week, the premier call center conference, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. I talked with attendees and heard about the latest innovations from vendors. In addition to the other coverage of Call Center Week in this issue, here are some of the […]
Last week we considered four aspects of a writer’s voice. Today, we’ll discuss how to find our voice. This isn’t mysterious or evasive; there’s no multistep process—and it isn’t hard to understand. Seriously. Here are four thoughts on our writing voice. We Already Have a Voice: We need to recognize that if we write, we […]
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3 Customer Service Lessons
A Saga of Shoe Shopping By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD When my daughter visits, we enjoy certain father-daughter activities. One of them is going for walks. Unfortunately, I’ve lately been skipping this, not due to a lack of interest, but because blisters would be the painful result. When my daughter was in college and on […]
It’s a lot easier to understand what our writing voice is as a writer if we first look at its components. I see four elements that comprise a writer’s voice. Writing Voice Personality Each person has a personality: how we act, appear, and relate to others. Likewise, each writer has a personality, how we come […]
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Kill Passive Writing
The sentence, “In my opinion, passive writing is bad,” exemplifies the passive voice. The active voice says, “Kill passive writing.” My title proclaims this. By nature, my words, both spoken and written, are passive. Many years ago, I became so irritated with Microsoft Word pointing out the passive sentences that I turned off the option. […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Although the number varies with who’s doing the telling, it’s many times more costly to obtain a new customer than to keep an existing one. The sad reality is, though, no one at the giant mega corporations gets this – or at least their actions belie that they do. For […]