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Have A Focused, Effective and Productive Day

It’s the start of your day and you’ve got a lot to get done. You’re thinking about all these things and they’re whizzing around in your mind. You may well be feeling under pressure because there’s so much and wondering how you’ll ever do it all. The temptation is to think that you just need to get started now and plough headfirst into your day. This may achieve what you want, but is more likely to be ineffective and your actions are scattered instead of focused. Your mind will be preoccupied with everything else you need to do instead of being free and in the moment to concentrate on the particular task you’re doing. Instead of this, I invite you to stop and take just 5 minutes to gather your thoughts and see a clear way forward for your day. A way for your day to be focused, effective and productive. This is what you want for your day, isn’t it?

If so, here are the steps you need to consider.

1. Write everything down: Instead of leaving everything in your mind, put it down on paper so that you can clearly see what you’re facing. While it’s in your mind continually running around it will seem to be much more than when it’s out on paper.

2. Choose your priorities: Looking at all the items, choose the one’s for today that are important to you. These are the tasks that are chosen in alignment with your vision and values.

3. Remove future steps: Some of the tasks on your list may be steps that require something else to be done first. If so, ensure that you’ve identified the first step to take and move the other steps back to their individual projects.

4. Choose a manageable step: For the items that you’ve written down, which of these are larger tasks, the projects that are not going to be completed today? Define what the one step is that you’re going to take today to move this project forward effectively and only have this one step included in your plan for the day.

5. Say no and delegate: You’ve heard this plenty of times and the acid test is are you actually doing it? Perhaps you’re stuck in thinking that you’re doing it enough or have good reasons for not doing it. However much you justify these thoughts to yourself, remember who you’re cheating. You need to move from all the thinking that’s going on in your head to your heart and really connect with yourself to see what if anything is stopping you from saying no and delegating more.

6. Choose your achievements for the day: By now your list of tasks for the day will be reduced, although there could still be way too much. You probably think that you can get it all done. But first stop and ask yourself how often do you get to the end of a day having achieved what you wanted and feeling good about yourself. Chances are for most people this doesn’t happen and they get to the end of their day acutely aware of all that they haven’t done. If this is you, then I invite you to choose tasks and action steps that you know you will comfortably achieve in the day so that you’re not facing a never-ending list. If you complete all your tasks for the day and still have free time then you can choose one more task or action step.

7. Ask yourself powerful questions: Instead of using statements that keep you stuck such as “I don’t know what my priorities are” or “There’s nothing I can delegate or say No to”, ask yourself powerful questions that open up possibilities. Questions such as

If I knew what my priorities are, what would they be?

If I knew what to say No to or delegate, what would they be?

What specific step do I need to take towards a particular project?

What will it take to only choose tasks and action steps that I know I have time for today?

Quiet your mind, ask the question and be willing to listen to and act on your answer.

8. Shift who you’re being as a person*: Being comes before doing, although most people operate the other way round. You first need to be the person who is . . . organized, focused on priorities, delegates etc. From who you’re being is where you determine what you need to do. So, at anytime during your day if you feel yourself slipping, stop and ask yourself who do you need to be? From defining who you need to be, you’ll naturally see what you need to do.

9. Schedule time for yourself: You are a priority and as such you need to ensure there’s time in your day for you to do whatever feels good for you, and leaves you feeling refreshed, energized and nourished.

10. Have fun, keep playing & experimenting: Keep all of this fun and light-hearted. When you find a way to approach all that you do with this intention you’ll find everything much easier. Keep playing and experimenting with all of these ideas so that you find what works for you as the unique individual that you are.

What I want from you is to be focused, effective and productive, every day.

The Logistics of Implementing Speech Analytics for Your Contact Center

Much of the documentation about speech analytics involves the capabilities of the solutions and a largely theoretical analysis of how it can benefit your contact center. However, implementation of these systems often requires a more detailed approach. The logistics of choosing and installing this powerful new technology can make a substantial difference in its effectiveness.

Evaluating Your Contact Center’s Needs

To successfully implement speech analytics, you must first carefully examine your contact center’s needs. Though speech analytics was once limited to larger contact centers, and primarily focused on automatic categorization of customer interactions, a logistical plan must go beyond that elementary capability.

Contact center management, supervisors and agents must collaborate about the potential use of speech analytics in three distinct areas: classifying customer demands, investigations and opportunities, and monitoring contact center traffic.

Evaluating Speech Analytics Uses

Demand analysis helps to determine what your customers are requesting. It can spot gaps in contact center service or detect a shift in the issues discussed during customer interactions. For example, a lot of people asking for assistance with “password resets” could indicate problems with the same service on the company website. Similarly, if the number of unclassified calls grows, a new product or campaign may be creating confusion.

Investigations flow from the automatic categorization and analysis of customer requests. They may suggest a change in processes, deficiencies in agent training or more serious product flaws. They can also suggest opportunities, such as adding new features or capabilities to your service.

In addition, using speech analytics to monitor contact center traffic may yield simple and effective results. The ability to automatically categorize and count different types of calls can provide significant returns on investment by pinpointing the most critical operational needs.

Evaluating the Technology

Once you have determined the goal(s) for your speech analytics solution, you need to take a closer look at various products. Speech analytics products can be categorized into keyword spotting (KWS), phonetic indexing and transcription-based analytics (TBA).

KWS, the simplest and least costly, is limited to searching for pre-defined phrases while phonetic indexing lets the user search for any word by using a phonetic index; both approaches are phonetic-based approaches (PBA). TBA converts the words into text, allowing integration with other company systems.

PBA provides the most flexibility for monitoring customer interactions and quickly detecting events such as a spike in calls. TBA is typically used for more complex and time consuming root-cause analytics.

Evaluating Personnel and Process

After evaluating your goals and the various technologies, you must determine if your staff can handle the system. In order to be useful, speech analytics must be properly applied. Someone must be able to use it, and someone must act on the information it supplies.

You must also design a process to meet your contact center’s needs as described above. Ask and answer basic questions such as, “What are we trying to achieve? Who does what? What will we do with the information?”

A carefully thought-out and strategized plan will yield the most useful and voluminous results

The logistics of implementing speech analytics involves a step-by-step approach to evaluate your contact center’s needs, personnel, technology and processes. Contact centers following this formula will benefit the most from the implementation of speech analytics.