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Achieving the Right Balance in Retail Customer Service
04/19/2018Blending Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Agents We live in a world where a “digital-first”…
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Gavin Woody Goes the Distance — and Then Some
04/06/2018Forward-thinker and Long-distance Runner Ask Gavin Woody, former vice president of operations at A…
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How Traditional Call Centers Have Evolved
03/29/2018
(and What You Should Know about Them)The Modern Contact Center: In with the New This, of course, is not exactly…
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Call Center Operations Audit
03/27/2018Are You Measuring the Right Things to Perform Well? Got a good handle…
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3 Call Center Metrics for Successful Operations
03/13/2018Considering Outsourcing? Review your Call Center Performance. After much thought, you’ve realized your in-house…
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Working Solutions Earns REBRAND 100® Global Award
03/08/2018Refreshed Brand Reflects a Modern Call Center Outsourcer This before-and-after blog showcases the modernization…
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Myths vs Facts of Call Center Outsourcing
03/06/20185 Call Center Outsourcing Myths Dispelled You’ve never outsourced your call center operations. As…
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5 Tips to Make Your Call Centers More Efficient
03/05/2018You’ve probably watched a Farmers® Insurance commercial, with the familiar tagline: “We know a thing…
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Remote Work Model Validated
02/27/2018FlexJobs Top 100 Work-from-Home List For businesses big and small, remote work is just…
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Call Center Security Tips
02/19/2018Security Fundamentals In an information-driven era data security tops the list of importance in…
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4 Key Metrics to Finding the Customer Service Sweet Spot
02/13/2018Feeling the Love Year-round with Sustained Call Center Performance For Valentine’s Day, many…
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Disaster Recovery in Contact Centers
01/31/2018Business Continuity and Minimizing Impact from Disasters In the rock classic, “Call Me the…
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3rd Year in a Row to Rank Top 10 in FlexJobs List
01/18/2018Named to FlexJobs Top 100 Remote Companies For the third straight year, Working Solutions…
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Contact Center Customer Experience Takeaways of 2017
01/12/2018Work shifts into overdrive at year-end and the New Year. I bounce from laptop…
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What disaster recovery plan do you have in place for the next storm?
01/09/2018So far, the winter of 2017-18 is so bad that news outlets are coining…
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A Special Holiday and New Year Video Card
12/22/2017Sing along to our holiday contact center carol to the tune of God Rest Ye…
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Doing Something Extra for Clients
12/20/2017Christmas Pickle Signifies Giving More As a kid, I traveled the world, the son…
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5 Most-read Business Blogs of 2017
11/30/2017Here’s to Great Experiences in the New Year Before 2017 ends, we’d like to…
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WSOL Business Highlights of 2017
11/29/2017Working, Living and Loving in 2018 Baseball great Satchel Paige often said: “Don’t look…
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Customer service shouldn’t be trick or treat
10/31/2017Crypt Keeper Running Your Call Centers? Halloween is one of the scariest times of…
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3 Technology Trends to Increase Customer Engagement
10/23/2017Increasing Customer Engagement Through Technology Whenever the topic of customer engagement or service comes…
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3 trends Shaping Customer Service in 2018
10/11/2017Trends that get business traction Is the business year ending the way you thought…
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Do offshore call center services benefit business?
09/27/2017Politics aside, the decision to use offshore vs. onshore call center services is a…
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Refreshed Brand: What’s in it for me?
09/20/20173 Reasons Why It Matters To You Working Solutions, a leader in on-demand contact…
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Building on 20 Years of Great Service
09/20/2017Refreshed Brand Inspired by Clients When Working Solutions began in 1996, an on-demand workforce…
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Refreshed Corporate Brand
09/19/2017Refreshed Brand With more than 20 years of success, Working Solutions introduces its refreshed…
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Kim Houlne Featured on KRLD’s CEO Spotlight
09/19/2017David Johnson Interviews Industry Pioneer Working Solutions chief executive Kim Houlne and her company,…
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Reasons to Keep your Call Center Texan
09/14/2017Texas Call Center Solutions Maximize Business Does your company value great customer service? Then…
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Ensuring Empathetic Service
09/11/2017Ensuring Empathetic Service Finding the right agents is key to building a client’s trust…
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Partner with Texas-based contact center
09/06/2017Call center outsourcing model Our flexible business model honed over 20 years allows you…
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Creating Great Experiences in Sales and Service
08/30/2017Ensuring Excellence in Execution Selling white-glove contact center solutions is a lot like running…
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5 Steps to Proactive Customer Delight
08/28/2017Delighting your customers is a critical component that drives your brand’s success. Therefore, measuring customer…
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First Contact Resolution – The Foundation of Customer Experience
08/25/2017Customer experiences are the make or break metric for contact centers. We are very aware…
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Focusing on Customer Experience in Energy & Utility Industries
08/14/2017Many energy and utility companies have considered the foundational element of their customer acquisition strategy…
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Hiring Contact Center Agents? Don’t Forget Multi-Lingual Markets
08/04/2017When considering trends for customer service and how to best empower agents, it is easy…
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Woman-owned Business Pioneered an Industry
07/28/2017On-demand Work Benefits 10,000s of Women As it goes with some of the best…
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Workplace Reviews Influence Business Success
07/26/2017Companies Should listen to, learn from workers’ comments Remote workers—employees and contractors—are expanding in…
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Benefit of Using a Work-from-Home Contact Center Model
06/29/2017Managing Call Volume Fluctuations Our client, Gavin at A Place for Mom discusses the…
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Working Solutions: Leader in Remote Workforces
06/27/2017Early Adopter of the “Gig Economy” Model Much is written about the “gig economy,”…
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Women in Business 2017 Awards
06/22/2017Contact Center Chief Named as Influential Businesswoman Working Solutions chief executive and founder Kim…
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Is Your Customer Service Kick-Ass?
06/12/2017Agents Step in Where Self-service Leaves Off Normally, I don’t associate the term “kick-ass” with…
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Travel and Hospitality Call Centers Secrets to Success
06/01/2017It’s all about Recruiting, Developing and Culture Any call center manager will tell you good…
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Five Trends for Travel and Hospitality in 2017
05/18/2017Consumers are Willing to Pay for Better Customer Experience For travelers, the more responsive the…
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What’s Really the Best Way to Manage Retail Seasonality?
05/02/2017White Paper: What’s really the best way to manage retail seasonality? For retailers, the holiday…
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Manage Retail Seasonality with a Flexible Workforce
04/20/2017Capture More Sales, Elevate Service during the Holidays with Scalable Staffing As more consumers shop…
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How prepared are you for the holiday season?
04/13/2017Strategies to Capitalize on In-Store Sales While Courting More Digital Dollars The 2017 retail holiday…
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How far can Self-Service go?
03/27/2017Balance between Self-Service and Customer Service Agents In the call center and contact center industry,…
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Improving Private Equity ROI
03/22/2017Aggressively Improve ROI with These 5 Tips With public stock market levels hitting all-time highs,…
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The 32nd Flavor: Sweet Success
02/28/2017Entrepreneurial Lessons Learned As founder and chief executive of a woman-owned company, entrepreneurs—women and men—often…
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Internet of Things Refined: Internet of Trespassers
02/14/2017True Security Resides Everywhere. Since I work in IT, a colleague sent me this recent…
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Forbes, CNBC & Yahoo Finance Report on WSOL
02/09/2017Ranked in the Top 10 Companies for Remote Jobs From CNBC to Forbes to Yahoo…
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Named Again to FlexJobs Top 100 Companies with Remote Jobs
02/07/2017Increasing Value of Remote Workforce Good news never gets old. Especially when it occurs year…
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Partnering to Find the Best Contact Center Solutions
01/24/2017Customize Solutions –From Sports Franchiser to Retailer Business partnerships specifically in call center outsourcing make…
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Ensuring Continuous Business Operations
01/18/2017White Paper: Ensuring Continuous Business Operations In business, it’s best to prepare for the inevitable—which,…
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Business Continuity Planning Checklist
01/13/2017In business, the inevitable always comes. Shutdowns. Breakdowns. Letdowns. Best prepare beforehand. That means having…
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Steps to Ensure Business Continuity
01/03/2017Steps to Ensure Business Continuity With today’s technology, mega-storms are predictable—hurricanes or blizzards. No surprises.…
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Top 5 Blogs of 2016 from Working Solutions
12/30/2016Connecting in the Workplace and Marketplace Before 2016 ends, we’d like to reprise a few…
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Creating a Caring Culture with Emotional Intelligence
12/27/2016Kim Houlne is student of different psychological management styles, having experienced good and bad. As…
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Happy Holidays from Working Solutions
12/23/2016Happy Holidays Wishing you a beautiful holiday season and a New Year of peace and…
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Cloud Call Centers – Better for Business & Customers
11/29/2016Cloud-based call centers have a host of benefits to both the organization deploying them and…
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What’s the “ketch” to business success?
11/18/2016The karma of ketchup and how it applies to business in several ways.
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Improve Call Center Performance with Diversification
11/10/2016You’ve probably heard the expression: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
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Daughter’s Love Goes the Distance
11/08/2016Running is Stacy’s passion, something she attributes to and does on behalf of her father.
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Cancer Awareness is Year-round
10/31/2016Cancer doesn’t abide by any calendar. Fighting the good fight all year.
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Celebrating Entrepreneurs
10/17/2016Entrepreneurism is alive and well, Working Solutions chief Kim Houlne said after a Chase conference.
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5 Ways to Foster Emotional Intelligence
10/13/2016The workplace is filled with four-letter words. “Work” itself is one. Also “hire” and “fire.”
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Kim Houlne Makes Virtual Viable on KERA
10/10/2016A forerunner in remote contact center solutions, Working Solutions made virtual work viable.
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20 Years of Contact Center Solutions
10/06/2016In an industry crowded with competitors today, Working Solutions continues to stand out.
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Tune into KERA: Kim Houlne Interview
10/05/2016KERA’s CEO series features Working Solutions chief Kim Houlne at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7.
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5 Ways to Engage Remote Agents
09/20/2016For some companies, remote workers began as retrofits of brick-and-mortar business models.
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5 Ways to Find On-demand Agents
09/13/2016Apply a little search engine optimization (SEO) thinking to recruit work-at-home agents.
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Behind the Scenes: KERA Interview
09/01/2016Take a look behind the scenes at Kim Houlne, featured on upcoming KERA’s CEO series.
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Giving Has Its Rewards
08/15/2016From Backstage to Center Stage At work, Rhonda is front and center, helping customers book…
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Work at Home: Avoid Scams
08/01/2016As a kid, my Dad taught me caution when working. “Careless gets you hurt.”
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Reduce Agent Attrition
07/27/2016The bane of call or contact center services and businesses they serve? Agent attrition.
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Disrupting Retail – Again
07/20/2016The "fluidity of the buy" is reshaping how consumers shop. Online to your doorstep.
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Experts Validate Our Value
07/18/2016In business, there's no such thing as unconditional love. That's for Moms, kids and dogs.
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NPS: Is It Really the One Number You Need to Know?
06/22/2016How satisfied are your customers? Do you know how to truly measure customer satisfaction beyond…
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Introducing Our Website
06/16/2016New site marks 20 years of success delivering on-demand solutions. How can we serve you?
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Speak the Culture
05/24/2016Companies should focus more on culture vs. language to serve U.S. Hispanic markets.
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Pay for Value Delivered
04/18/2016Getting full value from your contact center agents? If not, time to run the numbers.
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Balancing Tech and Touch
04/11/2016Technology, by itself, isn’t enough. You also need high-touch care to personalize service.
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AARP Makes Driving Safer
04/07/2016Serving Others Karen is a relative newcomer to Working Solutions, but she’s long on…
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How Secure Is Your Provider?
03/31/2016Nothing is more personal than your identity. Unless it’s your customers’ data and privacy.
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Feeding Children Everywhere
03/03/2016Doing a World of Good Ruby’s days are as long as they are fulfilling. She…
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Six Tips: Finding Best Contact Center Provider
03/01/2016If you don’t ask the right questions, service excellence can be elusive.
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Retailers Turn to Outsourcing as Consumers Shop at Will
02/03/2016Retail hopscotching makes serving customers trickier than ever.
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Take a Lesson from Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction
01/21/2016Listen before you talk? Take the time to learn and leverage what’s said.
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Bruce Lee Had It Right: “Be water, my friend.”
04/15/2015To deliver great customer service, you must first be fluid in thought and action.
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Our Company: What Was—and Still Is
03/09/2015In business, some things change. Others don’t. Like why you began the company.
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Making the FlexJobs Top 100—Second Year in a Row
01/28/2015Working Solutions is again recognized by FlexJobs in its Top 100 Companies.
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Developing Gold Medal Agents for Your Contact Center
02/11/2014The Olympics are in full swing and there is nothing more exciting than watching athletes…
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5 Tips to Find and Hire the Best Remote Agents
01/09/2014Work-from-home opportunities are in great demand, especially among the recently unemployed, underemployed, and those juggling…
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Contact Center Technology Predictions for 2014 – Are You Ready?
01/02/2014Predictions are certainly interesting, particularly when you read them years after they are made. Yet…
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13 in 2013 – The Best Contact Center Advice
12/31/2013As 2013 comes to a close, we wanted to share the 13 top blog posts…
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Prepare For Bad Weather With Business Continuity Services
12/10/2013Inclement weather is a great equalizer – no one is immune and there is no…
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Amazon’s Mayday Button Sets a New Standard
12/05/2013Just when you thought customer support was going the way of self-service, Amazon introduces a…
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Living the Dreamforce
12/03/2013I was pleased to attend the 2013 Dreamforce with over 120,000 of my closest friends…
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Balancing the Two Prongs of Healthcare Customer Service
10/22/2013In the world of healthcare, agents are required to strike a delicate balance between serving…
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The Secret to Minimizing the Impact of TCPA Rules
10/08/2013The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) became law in 1991 to protect consumers from receiving…
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Self-Service – A Positive or Negative for Customer Experience
09/26/2013Self-service options are standard in today’s contact center environment. It’s typical to dial support and…
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4 Ways Contact Centers and Marketing Go Hand-In-Hand
09/24/2013Positive customer experience requires leadership teams to understand every point a customer engages with an…
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Develop with Style – Learning Styles That Is
09/19/2013In this online, get it now, instant gratification world we live in, delivering training, particularly…
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Affordable Care Act Means Rapid Agent Ramp-Up for Insurance Providers
09/17/2013Healthcare Reform brings a tidal wave of changes, compliance challenges and adjustments for almost any…
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NPS – A Tool in Your Metrics Toolbox
09/04/2013A lot of time is spent in contact centers gathering and reporting metrics. What really…
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Looking to Improve QA Coaching? Go Peer to Peer!
08/29/2013It is not unusual for quality assurance teams to get into a routine. Evaluate transactions,…
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Contact Center Outsourcing – Go Traditional or Non-Traditional?
08/21/2013The benefits of outsourcing all or part of a contact center go beyond the cost…
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7 Facts on Virtual Contact Center Outsourcing
08/13/2013There are long-standing and compelling reasons to consider outsourcing contact centers, including cost savings and…
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Top 4 Traits of Virtual Contact Center Solutions Providers
08/01/2013Outsourcing contact centers has been a positive for many organizations. Unfortunately there are companies that…
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Creating a Win-Win-Win for Call Centers, Customers & Your Bottom Line
07/30/2013Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the power of customer experience, particularly as it pertains…
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Social Media – The Elusive VOC Platform
07/25/2013There has been much discussion about social media and the power it has as a…
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Looking for Ways to Improve Performance? Add Scenario-Based Learning!
07/23/2013e-Learning is an important part of continued improvement and performance for all virtual contact centers.…
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Customer Experience – the Common Metric in a Multi-Channel Center
07/18/2013Customers have the ability to reach out to your contact center at any time, any…
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The Positive Customer Experience – Customer Loyalty Formula Requires the Virtualpreneur™ Factor
07/16/2013Loyalty programs have really taken off since 2008 and are widely used, particularly in consumer…
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The Impact of Virtual Outsourcing – Part 2
06/27/2013In part one, we discussed how the New World of Work has changed the very…
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The Impact of Virtual Outsourcing – Part 1
06/25/2013There is a move worldwide to send jobs to independent contractors. Whether its virtual technicians,…
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The Secret to Handling Summer Schedules – Accurate Forecasting
06/20/2013It’s critical to ensure that you have agents handling transactions at the time they come…
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Does Your QA Need a Boost? Try Speech Analytics!
06/13/2013As business continues to rapidly evolve in today’s constantly changing global markets, we’ve seen a…
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Customer Engagement Requires Understanding Emerging Channels
05/10/2013With new and better ways to communicate with customers, it is important that contact center…
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A Customer-Focused Strategy Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
05/07/2013JC Penney recently released new ads apologizing to their customers. While work reportedly began on…
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Is Your Contact Center Plagued with Spring Fever?
04/23/2013Flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and plants are greening up. Spring is here…
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Beyond the Numbers – Quality Assurance Encompasses Coaching
04/02/2013The merging of training and quality assurance (QA) programs strengthens virtual contact center agents. At…
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Training for the Future
02/28/2013Have you noticed that we are currently in a professional environment that expects people to…
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Quality & Training – Like a Hand in a Glove
02/07/2013Training is such an important component of preparing atHome™ agents to not only accept transactions,…
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Build a Solid Foundation for Positive Multi-Channel Customer Experiences
01/22/2013There are a multitude of discussions on contact centers using cloud technology, adopting multi-channel interactions…
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Beyond the Metrics: They are People, People!
01/10/2013Metrics are good. They give a snapshot of the state of a contact center. Whether…
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Do Magic Metrics Exist?
01/08/2013Due to the number of metrics needed to effectively measure contact center performance, there is…
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Want Improved Customer Experiences? Think Virtual.
01/03/2013Customer experience is a much-touted metric that, while a positive goal, can prove to be…
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Winter Is Coming – Time to Review Your Inclement Weather Policy
12/18/2012One of the benefits, and there are many, to operating a virtual call center is…
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Want a Solid New Year? Use Objective-Driven Budgeting
12/11/2012Contact centers are driven by resources, in particular people and technology. Headcount is one of…
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‘Tis the Season – For Increased Customer Transactions
11/29/2012The holidays bring an unusual dichotomy to business. Those that provide consumer products popular for…
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Future Proofing Contact Center Technology
11/27/2012Contact centers are continually progressing, in no small part to the continued evolution of technology.…
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Virtual Business Models – The Future Is Here
11/13/2012The New World of Work is creating the virtualization of industries at a rapid rate.…
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Transitioning Knowledge – Beyond Basic Training
11/08/2012When you envision training new hires in a contact center, you think about the first…
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How to Implement a Remote Work Solution for Your Company
10/11/2012When I first launched Working Solutions in 1996, virtual call centers were a largely unknown…
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When Is It Time to Outsource Your Contact Center Operations?
10/05/2012In the past, the primary motivator for outsourcing contact center operations was saving money. However,…
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Tim Houlne to Speak at Dallas Business Growth Summit, October 11th
10/02/2012Back by popular demand, Working Solutions CEO Tim Houlne will be speaking at the Dallas…
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What a Virtualized Workforce Means for the American Economy, Part 2
09/18/2012Last week I wrote about some of the possible negative effects that a virtualized workforce…
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What a Virtualized Workforce Means for the American Economy, Part I
09/13/2012I’ve already written about what the “New Worker” looks like in a world where job…
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The New Contact Center: Solutions, Not Service
08/21/2012A recent article in DestinationCRM.com got me thinking about how customer service has evolved –…
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Announcement: CEO Tim Houlne on Dallas radio show tonight!
08/05/2012I’m sorry for the last-minute announcement, but we only received word of this yesterday so…
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Phone, Chat, Email, or IM? The Best Call Center Solution for Your Company
07/31/2012There was a time when call centers were populated mostly by headset-wearing “operators” (as in,…
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Emotional Intelligence and Its Importance in the Call Center
07/10/2012In 1995, psychologist Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., rocketed to stardom with the publication of his book,…
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Habla Customer Service? Why You Need Bilingual Call Center Agents
06/14/2012Once upon a time, customer service came in one language in the United States: English.…
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Business Continuity in the Contact Center
06/06/2012A sudden ice storm can shut down your contact center for a day, or a…
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Measuring Customer Satisfaction
05/10/2012Of all the measurements used to quantify call center performance, none is as important as…
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The Value of Customer Loyalty
04/16/2012Often in sales-focused organizations, a lot of time, money and effort are placed in acquiring…
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Social Media Is More Than Just Marketing
04/12/2012In any company, the debate rages: what department “owns” social media? Should marketing so they…
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Content Is Not Enough
03/29/2012Content is the focal point of any marketing campaign. Whether it’s a flyer, a billboard…
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Astute Solutions 2012 Customer Conference
03/08/2012Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Astute Solutions 2012 Customer Conference in…
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Welcome to the Working Solutions Blog
03/05/2012In his 2012 State of the Union address to Congress, President Obama said, “Ask yourselves…
