Giva Blog

Whenever we think of a call center, what comes to our mind can be the image of a warehouse-sized room packed with desks and air conditioners where you can hear phones ringing continuously and agents working tirelessly answering queries. However, such visuals are rare these days.

A contact center is an essential part of a company as it provides customer support and generates leads, and the latest call center innovative ideas have made them economical and scalable for companies. If you are planning to start one for your company, below is everything you need to know about innovations and best practices for a call center which are essential for its effectiveness. But before exploring, we first need to understand a few foundational ideas about call centers.

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The major obsession of companies using social media in the past was to make every customer or visitor fall in love with their company or their products. Because of this, companies used to panic whenever they received any negative reviews on their social media pages and did not know how to respond to them. Some of these reviews were genuine, and some were fabricated by their competitors. It is easy to fake a review to malign a company's reputation, thanks to the anonymity provided by the Internet. People these days conveniently post a negative review without hesitation, remorse, and without even thinking how much damage a casual negative review can do to a company's position if a company does not know how to respond to a negative review.

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The ITIL Guru sat at his desk, looking over the latest monthly IT performance summary. Since he was the Continuous Improvement Practice advisor, he tried to make sense of it. The phone rang.

"Good morning. How may I help you?"

"Hi, Guru. I am the new CIO, Bill. I met with the executive board today. After investing in an ITSM (IT Service Management) tool and ITIL 4 Foundation training, the board is concerned that our IT performance has not significantly improved. I understand that you came to our company with a lot of ITIL experience. Do you have any insights?"

"I was reviewing the performance summary when you called. You are right, and the reports do not show a significant change. There is only one reason for such an overall result. We have not fully embraced ITIL through roles and responsibilities."

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We know Agile project management to be a continual approach to planning and performing tasks related to a project. It breaks project tasks into smaller chunks, usually referred to as sprints and iterations. Sprints sound quick, but they can take up to a few weeks - depending on what needs to be done. This approach to project management has many benefits including more freedom, efficient resource use, better collaboration, and so much more. 

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Sometimes, information not intended to be public knowledge is inadvertently shared with others. Just as easily as it can happen in a casual conversation with a friend, it can also happen in the workplace. So, what is an incidental disclosure? The incidental disclosure definition, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is a, "disclosure that cannot reasonably be prevented, is limited in nature, and that occurs as a result of another use or disclosure that is permitted by the Rule." What happens when there is an incidental disclosure in a healthcare setting? There is not a clear-cut answer. It simply depends on the magnitude of the situation. In general, healthcare settings are fluid environments. That means that a patient overhearing another patient's diagnosis or a visitor catching a glimpse of a screen with some personal health information (PHI) is not common grounds to facilitate a HIPAA violation. 

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Organizations in the healthcare field will be familiar with HIPAA, formally known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Signed into law in 1996, it sets a national standard for protecting personal health information (PHI). It ensures that patients know how their information is stored and shared through consultation and consent. According to the HIPAA Journal, in the twelve months leading up to October 2023, there were 678 reported data breaches that contained 500 or more records across the country. There is room for improvement in protecting sensitive PHI, especially when dealing with large databases.

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The ITIL Guru sat at his desk, looking over the latest additions in the Continuous Improvement Register (CIR). As a CIR review board member, he liked what he saw -- more IT staff contributing improvement ideas, making him feel good about the progress. The phone rings.

"ITIL Guru. How may I assist you today?"

"Hi Guru, this is Betty. I want your help. The CIO asked me to come to her office tomorrow. She wants me to take over the role of practice owner for Service Level Management (SLM). Since the previous owner did not communicate very often to IT, I don't know what the practice does or accomplishes. Can you give me your expert opinion about the role of SLM?"

"Betty, I am always happy to help explain ITIL.

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Have you noticed people seem to be angrier these days? It is more than a coincidence. Polling company, Gallup, surveyed 160,000 people in 116 countries during 2020 and early 2021. The results, shared via Forbes, show that anger, stress, and sadness are at all-time highs. Interestingly enough, it is not solely due to the global pandemic - which has certainly raised tensions. These statistics have been trending in the wrong direction for many years now. Uncertainty seems to be the biggest contributor to people feeling down or upset. As is highlighted in the survey, 4 in 10 adults have experienced some form of stress or worry in recent times. 

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With the development of many software applications and web-based platforms, it is now easy to access healthcare facilities and information electronically. Gone are the days where patients had to wait for a long time to even get an appointment. Now it is a matter of minutes to get an appointment, purchase insurance, get access to health reports and other data online.

But with the development of new and sophisticated technology, these software apps and web-based platforms face security threats along the way. Because of these security threats, there is a need to implement rules and regulations to make sure that the technology is not misused. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) introduced in 1996 is a standard created to ensure that the privacy and health details of the patient are safe at all times and would not be disclosed to anyone without the consent of the patient.

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