CallTalk™ Radio: Recent Episodes
BenchmarkPortal
CallTalk is the first on-line radio show specifically about Call Centers. BenchmarkPortal brings this show to listeners with no vendor sponsorship so the content is completely neutral. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, send it to Calltalk@benchmarkportal.com
This podcast will focus on how building and nurturing a strong community can empower women in leadership roles. The discussion will highlight the importance of collaboration, support networks, mentorship, and shared experiences in driving success and creating lasting impact. Guest Valerie McSorleyValerie is a seasoned professional with over 25 years of experience, excelling in sales, marketing, and customer success. She consistently drives strategic partnerships that facilitate client acquisition and growth.Leveraging her extensive network and relationships in the contact center, customer service, and customer experience sectors, Valerie delivers innovative solutions thatenhance client performance and satisfaction. Her passion for building brands from the ground up is evident in her achievements, such as founding Contact Center Nation. Thisnational series provided educational programming and high-level networking opportunitiesfor contact center professionals. In 2016, she launched a multi-city tour, hosting eventsacross the country that featured industry experts, best practices, and thought leadership.
The ability of AI to empower, not replace, humans is often lost in the sensational stories about AI’s impact on call centers. In this podcast we explore how conversational and generative AI are being utilized across industries to exponentially scale role-playing, and enable true scenario-based training where you can practice active listening, communication, and multi-tasking skills simultaneously.David Lawson, Co-Founder & CEO of Call Simulator, will discuss how immersive conversation simulations can be created, distributed, and analyzed by call centers of any size. He will share the success his company’s clients have had in industries as diverse as emergency dispatch centers to Fortune 500 insurance companies. David will also discuss the proven ROI of simulation training, and why it is integral to a call center's quality management. Guest: David Lawson, Co-Founder & CEO - Call Simulator, Inc.David has been an entrepreneur focused on technology, data insights, and training for decades. He is the author of Big Good: Philanthropy in the Age of Big Data and Cognitive Computing. He designed one of the first AI for Good applications using IBM Watson, and most recently co-founded Call Simulator, a company that provides Conversation Training as a Service to call centers. Call Simulator uses a combination of conversational and generative AI to enable their clients to quickly create immersive training experiences, and deliver them anywhere at any time.
Many contact center leaders struggle to get new hires up to speed, and AI will continue forcing human agents to tackle increasingly difficult sales and support scenarios. Adam Levin joins us today to discuss how to empower workers around the globe with new coaching and training tools, rather than replace them. Guest: Adam Levin, Adam is an expert in contact center coaching. He is the Founder and CEO of Reddy, coaching software that trains new sales and support hires in half the time of traditional methods. Previously he was the Co-Founder and COO of MYX, a higher-ed alternative that created in-person campuses for online learners. He has focused on developing coaching software that combines realistic training simulations, interactive live call assistants, and automated quality assurance to optimize talent across 100% of conversations.
Remote and hybrid work are not new to contact centers, but getting really good at it on scale and for the long haul, is quite new. How are organizations retaining best talent once hired, and how are they bringing people into culture folds quickly, while building excitement about these employment opportunities? How do leaders emit the energy and ethos of the organization while clearly laying out expectations and holding people accountable? How are contact center organizations adding more flexibility to the mix? Join this session for details from Michele Rowan, President of WFH Alliance. She's the leading subject matter expert on remote and hybrid work for contact centers and support functions. Air Date: Wed., March 27, 2024 - 10:00 AM/PTHost: Bruce Belfiore | CEO & Senior Research Analyst | BenchmarkPortalGuest Speaker: Michele Rowan | Work From Home AllianceSeason: 15 | Episode Number: 3 Guest: Michele RowanMichele Rowan, President of Work From Home Alliance, has spent the last 13 years exclusively helping companies design and continuously improve their remote working programs. Through gap analysis of workflows, business process, guidelines/policies and organization structures, she helps companies achieve best in class work from home and hybrid operating status. She facilitates conferences and workshops on remote/hybrid, bringing together leaders to share their insights and experiences. Prior to establishing her own consulting business in 2011, Michele spent 12 years with Hilton Hotels as Global VP of Reservations and Performance Management.
Customer service surveys are no longer effective. Response rates are low, customers are tired of endless requests, and it’s becoming more difficult to get actionable data. A new technique called sentiment analysis analyzes the conversations you’re already having with customers so you don’t have to pester them with survey requests. This technique can reveal immediately actionable insights, including trends you might miss with a traditional survey. Guest Jeff Toister:Jeff's first customer service interaction ended in a service failure. Vowing to learn from that experience, he became obsessed with customer service. Today, he is ranked as one of the Top 30 Customer Experience Professionals in the World by Global Gurus.He's written four books including The Service Culture Handbook, a step-by-step guide to getting your employees obsessed customer customer service.More than 12,000 customer service professionals around the world subscribe to Jeff's Customer Service Tip of the Week email. Over three million people have taken one of his video-based training courses on LinkedIn Learning. His Customer Service Foundations is LinkedIn Learning's most-watched customer service course in the world.
Chad Tatton brings tremendous experience in using quality assurance to improve customer satisfaction, efficiency, effectiveness, time to proficiency, and sales in the contact center. During this conversation with host Bruce Belfiore, Chad will relay his experiences in helping organizations identify the right blend of people, processes, and automation to achieve improved outcomes.Chad will include some “out of the box” approaches to automation and AI implementations of QA. He will also talk about approaches to improve the reliability and accuracy of automation by balancing technology, people, and processes. Guest Bio: Let me say a few words to introduce Chad Tatton to our audience, for those who don’t already know him. Chad is a 24-year contact center veteran and Founder and COO of Call Criteria, a Quality Assurance as a Service company. Chad is currently focused on helping clients fully exploit AI and automation for their QA needs. I note that Chad owned and operated multiple contact centers before launching Call Criteria in 2012, so he has a lot of practical management experience. His work with Call Criteria has included human resources to improve quality and customer outcomes, and, over the last few years, Call Criteria has extended its solution to include automation, speech analytics, and artificial intelligence. He has a wealth of experience and insights to share with us today. So let’s dig in.
Summary: This episode of CallTalk will focus on explaining the different types of Generative AI, as well as best practices to follow in selecting an LLM (Large Language Model). The discussion will help you understand what you should know, and helpy you identify the right LLM for your business. Important areas will include picking the right use cases, and the elements you should consider (cost, latency, hallucination, etc.) before pinning down your roadmap. Guest: Jimmy Padia Founder, CEO & FounderJimmy Padia is an Expert in Generative AI-based Conversational AI applications for Contact Centers. He is based in Sunnyvale, VA, and leads Floatbot.AI in USA, India, MENA and APAC markets. He completed a Bachelor’s in Engineering (Computers) from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI) in India. Jimmy has worked at General Electric as an IT Project leader, and graduated from GE's elite IMLP leadership program. He has 18+ years of experience in GenAI-powered Conversational AI, Digital Transformation and Customer-facing contact center solutions.CallTalk is a monthly internet radio program for the customer service industry featuring the most innovative managers and thought leaders in the customer contact field, interviewed by BenchmarkPortal CEO, Bruce Belfiore. Broadcast monthly, directly over the Internet to your desktop, CallTalk covers hot topics that impact today's call center. CallTalk airs without the participation of vendors so that topics will be free from their influence and guided by the needs of its listeners. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, send it to CallTalk@BenchmarkPortal.com.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Chat GPT are invading the minds of contact center managers around the world. But what will they mean for you and your operation? Join Bruce Belfiore and AI futurist Mark Coudray for a CallTalk episode that confronts AI and its implications for contact centers headon. Mark will share his experience and thoughts in an episode all managers should hear - - to be prepared. About Mark Coudray: Recognized as a premier thought leader & practical strategist who delivers documented gross margin gains and net profit results in todays highly commoditized, price-driven markets.His passion is inventing exceptional business models and processes that excel to their fullest potential.Mark’s work has been published globally more than 500 times. He has also presented at hundreds of industry events over four decades. His work has received multiple international awards for innovation and lifetime achievement.As a life-long learner and problem-solver, Mark has always used his businesses as a proving ground to develop unique strategies. They are known for their innovation and profitability, which are then syndicated within their respective markets.His current focus since 2016 is on the use of Artificial Intelligence, accelerated learning, and “The Physics of Profit” to make any business Competitively Unique. This advantage results in double-digit profitability with significantly less effort.A mandatory requirement is the foundations of his processes be universally applicable. He has worked with companies in the following industries: printing, specialty graphics, apparel decoration, steel fabrication, contact centers, wholistic wellness resorts, contracting, remodeling, and service/professional practices.
From medical marijuana to recreational marijuana, to when you can test, how you can test and what you can test, the laws vary by jurisdiction, so be extremely careful if you are a multi-state employer who is using a one size fits all drug testing process. I suspect this area will see an increase in litigation as the laws continue to change or are unclear and employers struggle to keep up. There are 51 pending bills at state legislatures related to testing for Marijuana.
Answering services have been around for 100 years. But times are changing, and today, customers want to text companies. Businesses are text-enabling their business lines every day. But often, they’re too busy to respond to customers themselves. Join Bruce Belfiore as he interviews Gary Pudles about how easy it is to make your business “textable,” as well as being the first answering provider with on-demand live agents to respond to texts and chats when companies can’t. With Guest Gary Pudles, President & CEO of AnswerNet.Gary founded AnswerNet in 1998 and is a self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur.He’s a recipient of the prestigious "Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year" award for business service providers, and was named a 2022 “Philadelphia Titan 100,” for CEOs who demonstrate exceptional leadership, vision, passion, and influence in their field.Also in 2022, Inc. Magazine named AnswerNet a “2022 Inc. Power Partner” in telecommunications.
Hiring agents has become more difficult and managers are looking for new ideas and approaches to increase success. Join Bruce Belfiore as he interviews Ravin Shah about today's market for contact center agents - and how to win with top candidates using a structured, speedy methodology. Ravin Shah is the Founder & CEO of Hellohire, a software platform that helps contact centers hire the best agents faster, while reducing recruiting time and costs. Ravin is a serial tech entrepreneur on a mission to expedite and humanize the hiring process
Join Bruce Belfiore for the first CallTalk episode of 2023, with the theme "Maximizing the Human in the Call Center". He will be interviewing Nicholas MacDonald, director of Customer Experience at C-Lect Consulting. Nicholas will draw from a career in contact center leadership at Machias Savings Bank in Maine, where he put employee culture first, fostering employee engagement and teamwork that empowered his colleagues to provide excellent customer experiences. He is a believer in the power of incremental changes, and will share his approach and results. Air Date: Wednesday, January 4, 2023Host: Bruce Belfiore | CEO & Senior Research Analyst | BenchmarkPortalGuest Speaker: Nicholas MacDonaldSeason: 14 | Episode Number: 1 Guest: Nicholas MacDonaldDirector of CX at C-Lect consulting, Nicholas MacDonald transferred from a career in contact center leadership for Machias Savings Bank in Maine where he fostered a culture built on employee empowerment and growth, allowing agents to develop exceptional experiences for themselves and for customers. Nicholas will share insights from projects that brought significant efficiency gain and customer experience improvement, including implementing a unified contact center solution, Voice Authentication, and Workforce Management. He is a national public speaker in Customer Experience and coaches leaders to grow their teams He also owns and operates a small goat dairy farm and spends his downtime training his young Quarter Horse. Nicholas holds his B.A. and MBA from Ashford University.
Join Bruce Belfiore as he interviews industry veteran Mark Brody about getting your center "unstuck" by supporting your front line agents - - and making them stars. Providing the right technology, training and leadership, combined with dedication to data-driven decision making will smooth the path to better performance. You will take away insights into CX, AX, VOC from an expert in contact center transformation." - - or something like that
Guest: Mark Brody
Mark Brody has worked for and with several industry leaders during his 32-year Contact Center career. His consultancy, Brohawk Solutions, LLC, was born out of Mark’s passion to help organizations become more effective and efficient through understanding how their people, processes, and technology impact the employee experience and ultimately the customer experience.
In Mark’s spare time, he currently leads The Austin Contact Center Alliance and works with The United Way of Greater Austin’s Community Impact Council. Mark is a graduate of The University of Kansas and currently resides in Round Rock, TX with his wife, daughter, and two dogs. He is a relatively new hacker in the world of golf and is an avid Jayhawk Basketball and New England sports fan.
This episode of CallTalk will have Keith Fiveson talk to Bruce Belfiore about boosting your customer experience and employee engagement using leadership techniques he has developed over a lifetime of experience. Use these techniques to empower greater resilience and create positive experiences using breathwork approaches based on science.
CallTalk is a monthly internet radio program for the customer service industry featuring the most innovative managers and thought leaders in the customer contact field, interviewed by BenchmarkPortal CEO, Bruce Belfiore. Broadcast monthly, directly over the Internet to your desktop, CallTalk covers hot topics that impact today's call center. CallTalk airs without the participation of vendors so that topics will be free from their influence and guided by the needs of its listeners. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, send it to CallTalk@BenchmarkPortal.com.
Managing work-at-home agents has moved from pandemic emergency mode to representing a long-term challenge for most contact center managers. This episode of CallTalk will focus on tips and best practices that you can use immediately to improve performance. Bruce Belfiore interviews Marcia Presberry and Shannon Smith of National General for a half hour of valuable insights.
We have dedicated courses and CallTalk episodes on coaching for agents - an important topic indeed. However, contact center managers need coaching as well - - coaching that may go beyond the training curricula that are in the market. Tune in to this episode of CallTalk for some real insights on how you, as a manager, can benefit from coaching.
Guest: Mitchell Levy | Author, Speaker, Global Credibility Expert
Global Credibility Expert Mitchell Levy is a 2x TEDx speaker and international bestselling author of over 60 books. After interviewing 500 thought leaders on credibility, he created the Credibility Nation community, published a 5-country international bestselling book, delivered a TEDx, created courses, and is working on getting the definition of credibility rewritten in the dictionary. He's an accomplished Entrepreneur who has created twenty businesses in Silicon Valley including four publishing companies that have published over 750 books. He's provided strategic consulting to hundreds of companies and has been the chairman of a board of a NASDAQ-listed company. Mitchell has been happily married for thirty-one years and prior to covid-19, regularly spent four weeks a year in Europe with family and friends.
A place For Professionals Who Want to Be Seen as Credible
The keys to success and happiness in the global village are credibility and relationships. Since technology has enabled us to connect with more people, how we live and do business can easily be seen. Thus, presenting ourselves as credibly as we can allows others to want to get to know, like, and trust us.
Credibility Nation is The go-to community to learn/grow your credibility with the "right" people on a similar journey.
Imagine coming to a place where you can immediately know, like, and trust
those around you.
Where you can be safe in an environment where others want to support you.
This is Credibility Nation.
All those in Credibility Nation live by the following pledge:
"I pledge to live credibly every day without hate in my life. I strive to be a good human and make this a better planet for myself, my family, and for other people’s families in this generation and the next."
A big part of credibility is clarity. How do you answer the question when someone asks, “What do you do?”
Does it take you five or ten minutes to answer?
In a world where we're inundated with content, somebody who takes ten or twenty minutes to answer
this simple question may not be considered someone who is likeable or trustworthy.
If this is you, you need CredClarity.
Video Link: Why You Matter as a Customer Service Professional https://youtu.be/CBOALI_98uc
An experience guarantee goes beyond merely warrantying a product against defects. It encompasses the entire customer journey to promise an experience that never falls short of expectations.
Customer loyalty skyrockets when people trust your brand, product, or service. That trust is earned not by the occasionally wow moment, but by being remarkably consistent.
…And that’s why we wanted to talk more about how to guarantee an amazing customer experience, and we have brought in an expert on the topic for you, Jeff Toister, author of The Guaranteed Customer Experience.
Guest Jeff Toister:
Jeff Toister is an author, consultant, and trainer who helps companies develop customer-focused cultures.
He's written four books including The Guaranteed Customer Experience. Thousands of customer service professionals around the world subscribe to Jeff's Customer Service Tip of the Week email. More than 500,000 people on six continents have taken one of his video-based training courses on LinkedIn Learning.
Jeff has been recognized as a top influencer by many organizations: Top 30 customer service professional in the world (Global Gurus)Top customer experience influencer (Unymira and Panviva)Top contact center influencer (ICMI and ProcedureFlow)
The pandemic has intensified many of the challenges facing contact center managers. Join Bruce Belfiore as he interviews Bob Kobek of Mobius SVP for a lively episode of CallTalk centered on issues of worker recruitment and attrition and other remote management challenges in this new age of at-home workforces.
Guest: Robert Kobek | CustomerCount
Prior to forming Mobius Vendor Partners in October of 1999, Mr. Kobek spent more than 30 years in the direct marketing industry and government. Specializing in the design, implementation and marketing of products and services, Bob has designed more than 150 outbound telemarketing, inbound customer service and order processing operations and interactive information systems. In 2007 Bob and Mobius launched CustomerCount℠, a cloud-based survey solution providing intuitive real-time reporting, designed for the contacy center industry. Mr. Kobek is a member of the American Resort Development Association and sits on numerous committees. He is a board member of PACE and serves as the chair of the Government Affairs committee. He attended Holy Cross College at Notre Dame, Indiana and Indiana University.
Customer service allows for limited face-to-face or physical interaction, making it challenging to provide genuine support and lead generation. Instead, people are focusing on virtual interactions to continue driving growth. On this episode, Bruce will talk with Todd Fisher, CEO and co-founder of CallTrackingMetrics about how companies can leverage text messages for customer service use and help generate leads, nurture and convert leads.
Text message marketing holds massive potential for lead generation, but only if executed correctly. There are ways to maximize the success of SMS marketing. A few tips Todd will discuss in order to maximize SMS marketing and generate, nurture and convert leads are adjusting your strategy to:
1. Meet Customers where they are
2. Determine optimal timing for outreach
3. Avoid cold-texting; Opt for organic list creation
4. Give your customers an offer they can’t deny
Join us for a conversation with industry practitioner Patrick Ebrahimian on the processes that impact access and availability of contact center agents. He shares proven ways to improve service levels and the customer experience using creative lean methodologies. You will love his football-themed playbook that transformed his center's performance.
Guest: Patrick Ebrahimian is the Director of Transformation at UnitedLex, driving transformation throughout the entire legal ecosystem. He is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt, and a LEAN Master, with over 18 years of experience. Throughout his career, he has consistently executed process improvement projects within the hospitality, financial, and manufacturing sectors including call center environments as well. He believes that business and process improvement practitioners should not only look for innovative solutions to help improve processes but also teach the business how to utilize the tools and techniques so that will enable them to become successful. In his previous roles he was the Director of Business Improvement and Quality for Wyndham Destinations, and a Master Black Belt at Johnson & Johnson and Bank of America.
We had a great conversation. With so much going on across all industries with regard to post-COVID operations, changing laws affecting marijuana and criminal justice reform, and employer lawsuits, Ms. Lipnic offered a refreshing perspective on the issues that affect us all.We had a great conversation. With so much going on across all industries with regard to post-COVID operations, changing laws affecting marijuana and criminal justice reform, and employer lawsuits, Ms. Lipnic offered a refreshing perspective on the issues that affect us all.
…And that’s why we wanted to talk more about Key Takeaways on Hiring Insights in 2021, and we have brought in an expert on the topic for you, Christine Cunneen, CEO of Hire Image. Welcome to the show Christine.
Efficient agents not only make the contact center run smoother, but they create a better experience for your customers. We sat down with Matt Duncan from CommunityWFM to discuss how leveraging some of the best practices in workforce management improves agent efficiency and impacts the bottom line.
In this session we plan to cover four major areas of workforce management. Shrinkage Management (or overhead agent costs)Agent Skill Set ManagementMaking Changes for the Sake of ChangeThe Need for Ongoing Training
Guest: Matthew Duncan
Matthew Duncan, Director of Onboarding and Support, has twenty-five years of workforce management (WFM) experience. For the past twenty-one years, Matt has worked for CommunityWFM in a number of WFM consulting, training, and support roles. Prior to joining CommunityWFM, Matt spent four years working for Disney Direct Marketing, Disney’s online merchandise catalog performing WFM tasks and handling contact center intraday operations for 1,200 agents.
CallTalk is a monthly internet radio program for the customer service industry featuring the most innovative managers and thought leaders in the customer contact field, interviewed by BenchmarkPortal CEO, Bruce Belfiore. Broadcast monthly, directly over the Internet to your desktop, CallTalk covers hot topics that impact today's call center. CallTalk airs without the participation of vendors so that topics will be free from their influence and guided by the needs of its listeners. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, send it to CallTalk@BenchmarkPortal.com.
Operating a contact center efficiently and profitably is not an easy task due to balancing so many challenges—high employee turnover usually being at the top of that list. Not only is it expensive to hire, but it is also not cheap to train and onboard. The average contact center turnover rate is between 30-45%, which means they hire for the same seat every year or two. In contact centers with bilingual agents, yet another element of expense and complication is added—hiring based on language proficiency. With so many factors to improve hiring, an efficient process for agent recruiting is key.
Guest: Brigham Tomco | Emmersion
With experience living and working in several countries around the world, Brigham has an extensive background in language learning and international business. He has played a founding role in over 10 companies in various industries, including a BPO based in the Philippines and 500-seat market research contact center.
CallTalk is a monthly internet radio program for the customer service industry featuring the most innovative managers and thought leaders in the customer contact field, interviewed by BenchmarkPortal CEO, Bruce Belfiore. Broadcast monthly, directly over the Internet to your desktop, CallTalk covers hot topics that impact today's call center. CallTalk airs without the participation of vendors so that topics will be free from their influence and guided by the needs of its listeners. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, send it to CallTalk@BenchmarkPortal.com.
Covid-19 has had a terrible impact on people and economies around the globe. But it has facilitated accomodation of at-home work for the disability community. Guest Kate Brouse of nonprofit NTI helps disabled Americans and veterans open employment doors. She outlines how today's environment has allowed NTI's services to disabled Americans to double. Discover how. you can leverage this willing and dedicated workforce in your business.
Guest Bio: Kate Brouse is a disability advocate for national non-profit NTI@Home, the leader in helping Americans with disabilities train for and find work-at-home jobs. Kate has appeared on talk shows and podcasts discussing remote work, accessibility, diversity, and disability. Kate has a bachelor's degree in English from Brigham Young University and is an avid bicyclist, roller blader and reader.
About CallTalk
CallTalk is a monthly internet radio program for the customer service industry featuring the most innovative managers and thought leaders in the customer contact field, interviewed by BenchmarkPortal CEO, Bruce Belfiore. Broadcast monthly, directly over the Internet to your desktop, CallTalk covers hot topics that impact today's call center. CallTalk airs without the participation of vendors so that topics will be free from their influence and guided by the needs of its listeners. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, send it to CallTalk@BenchmarkPortal.com.
Knowledge management is foundational the effectiveness of the modern contact center. Metrics from cost per contact and handle time require agents to rapidly find the information they need, and customer satisfaction demands that agents have complete and accurate answers in every situation. Even agent satisfaction is impacted by how a center manages knowledge because their job becomes easier when information is readily accessible and intuitively organized.
Guest: Burgoyne Hughes
Burg has over 30 years of contact center leadership experience. He designed and implemented the quality assurance program for Staples North American contact centers, then went on to lead the first multi-channel contact center for Staples. He served as Vice-President of Consumer Service at Teleflora where he drove a 20% increase in average order value while establishing industry leading customer service in a highly seasonal environment. Burg then Vice-President of Operations for BuySeasons where his teams regularly earned BIzRate’s Circle of Excellence Award for demonstrating exceptional end to end customer experience. Burg is currently in his fifth year as Senior Manager of Call Center Operations for GE Healthcare, where his team recently achieved Center of Excellence recognition from BenchmarkPortal. Burg has presented at a number of industry conferences, including ICMI’s Contact Center Conference and Expo, The National Conference on Operations and Fulfillment, CRM Evolution and KM World.
The contact center world has been pushed ahead 4 to 5 years in 1 year in terms of technology, because of COVID. The rate of adoption of existing tech just exploded. What’s next? What does 2021 bring?
Guest: Steve Bederman | President and CEO | NobelBiz
Steve Bederman is a published author, accomplished leader, and a highly regarded Contact Center industry innovator. With a phenomenal journey throughout his career, his expertise in corporate restructuring and strategic growth brought him the reputation of a renaissance business leader. He is also an Amazon best-selling author having released a very successful series of corporate thrillers.
Now, Steve is the President and CEO of NobelBiz, a Contact Center Technology Company. From a unique carrier-of-carriers network to a complete omnichannel software with social media integration, NobelBiz offers state-of-the art solutions for companies that want to keep their clients happy.
Digital CX is meant to provide a more effortless customer experience across multiple engagement channels. As the channels customers can use to interact with us multiply, customers demand a personalized, consistently positive customer experience as they navigate their engagement. Companies subsequently have developed increasingly complex CX strategies, and these strategies need to empower the contact center agent with smart tools to support traditional voice, live chat and email channels while augmenting these channels with AI-supported digital channels and virtual assistance. While some industries, including financial services and telecom, have eagerly embraced multi-channel CX and the integration of several digital channels, consumer utilities have been slower to adopt these solutions.
But it doesn’t need to be this way. The current scarcity of digital CX and integrated multi-channel support within consumer utilities presents a greenfield opportunity. Consumer utilities willing to craft a modern, integrated voice-and-digital CX strategy can realize cost savings and resource efficiencies, reducing cost-of-support for customers, while crafting a customer support environment that makes for happier employees and more satisfied customers. Join Cary Cusumano and Sarah Simon, a pair of CX design professionals at Verizon Business Group, as they help utilities understand “what’s in it for them” in adopting digital CX solutions to make their customer support operations both more efficient and more effective. With capital dedicated to meeting regulations and maintaining infrastructure, CX is not always a top priority for utilities. Yet serving a captive audience of utility customers shouldn’t mean resigning your support organization to using the last generation’s support strategies.
If you are measuring your customer experience and not measuring your employee experience you are missing a great opportunity to discover the gaps in critical issues like customer loyalty and employee loyalty. As the saying goes, if you don’t measure, you cant manage.
Recruitment, Hiring and Training techniques during the Pandemic- the traditional models of in person recruitment and training are not feasible during COVID pandemic how can you successfully hire and train CSR in a street to seat manner
…And that’s why we wanted to talk more about the shift to remote contact centers, and we have brought in an expert on the topic for you, Fabrice Martin, CPO at Clarabridge. Welcome to the show Fabrice.
Guest: Fabrice Martin, CPO at Clarabridge
Fabrice is responsible for the vision, roadmap and go-to-market strategy for the Clarabridge CX Suite of products. He brings more than two decades of experience launching new products and business applications focused on solving large, complex analytical problems and delivering valuable insights.
2020 has created an intense focus for companies to reconsider their relationship with customers and how they serve them. The vision and promise of good Customer Experience often talks about creating“wows” with customers at scale. Yet many of the tech stack tools and operating metrics that dominate the industry discussion can detract from the fundamental human interaction that drives those positive customer responses. And many companies have yet to create true Customer Experience capabilities tied to their fundamental growth strategies. Craig Binkley, Managing Partner of Fidelum Partners, will talk with us about The Human Brand in all our companies and how to connect our customer service vision and our operating approaches and tools.
Guest: Craig Binkley | Fidelum Partners
Craig Binkley is Managing Partner of Fidelum Partners, a strategy consulting firm using customer and employee insights to drive loyalty and growth. Before Fidelum, Craig was CEO of Northstar – an award-winning insights agency working in over sixty countries from offices in Toronto, New York, Atlanta and London. Craig was also EVP of Strategy for MDC Partners, where he led the network’s insights into digital transformation that is disrupting traditional marketing models and the overall customer experience. Previously, Craig worked at Coca Cola as Worldwide Director of Marketing for Diet Coke, Coca-Cola light and Minute Maid.
Are you implementing new contact center technology? Join us as we discuss tips and benefits on how to embrace the technology to transform the customer, employee and business experience by leveraging it within and beyond your department while promoting the benefits, results and successes throughout your organization.
Are you struggling with scaling cll capacity in this time of pandemic? Could you leverage artificial intelligence to make your calls smarter? This episode of CallTalk will provide tips and insights on how to properly assess AI for your center's needs, keep the call flows going, and make you a hero to your CFO by reducing costs. This will include definitions of AI and examples of implementations.
Guest: Tim McLain
A passionate technologist at heart with more than 25 years of marketing experience, Tim loves using technology to help businesses solve problems and grow their bottom line. Tim is happiest brainstorming new approaches to marketing and communications to help thinQ’s partners better understand, trust, and embrace our cloud communications solutions. As a lifelong learner, Tim has helped bring four Internet startups to life since 1993, spent several years as a newspaper reporter and TV news producer, and boasts long marketing management stints at ProQuest and Netsertive (a top Google Premier Partner).
Agents complain they can’t find customer data because the software is out of date. Managers take too much time to finish weekly reports. BI software is out of date and not capturing the right analytics. If these things sound familiar, you will want to join our discussion on the next CallTalk podcast. Our guest Nancy Munro, CEO of Verbal Transactions will speak about the importance of aligning back office functionality to improve customer service and ensure you’re managing to the right metrics.
Guest: Nancy Munro | Verbal Transactions
Nancy Munro, CEO of Verbal Transactions, has over 28 years in helping organizations implement and deploy voice enablement solutions. Nancy has worked with organization’s like CVS, AT&T and Microsoft, helping them decipher how best to address performance challenges that align to their structural capabilities and revenue goals. Nancy pioneered voice-enabled technologies in the corporate space and was the first to launch an interactive audio role-playing simulator. Her current solutions leverage speech recognition and AI to provide a scalable and immersive learning application.
Nancy speaks at various conferences such as the eLearning Guild, ASTD, and AA-ISP and was the Chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Chicago for three years.
Join us for a free, fact-filled session on what you can do to manage your center through the Coronavirus pandemic. Information you can really usePanelists representing large, medium and small contact centersFocus on new insights, not same old platitudes
Forty-five minutes of meaty discussion and storytelling from managers who are on the front lines managing through this crisis right now.
No sponsors, no vendors, no commercials. Just great information and tips on how to manage through this crisis and emerge better and stronger as the leader of a flexible and successful contact center operation.
Moderated by BenchmarkPortal’s Bruce Belfiore, who has taken a thought leadership position on the COVID-19 crisis:
Join Christine Cunneen, CEO of Hire Image, a nationally accredited background screening company, as she shares helpful information about the latest drug testing and background screening trends facing call centers. Learn what is happening with marijuana legislation across the country, the latest drug testing developments, and other state and local updates affecting the industry in 2020.
Guest: Christine Cunneen | Hire Image
As CEO of Hire Image LLC, Christine Cunneen sets the company’s vision and strategy while overseeing the operations, finance and business development functions nationwide.
Ms. Cunneen is a frequent guest speaker at business, human resource and background screening association events throughout the U.S., educating employers and other professionals about background screening topics, and is often quoted for her expertise in the news media. On a regular basis, she travels to Washington, DC to meet with legislators and is active in campaigns and advocacy pertaining to laws and regulations that impact the background screening profession, business owners and small business entrepreneurs.
Guest Dr. Charles Fenzi and our host, Bruce Belfiore, author of Coronavirus and your Call Center: Don’t Panic – Plan and Prepare, which focuses on how to show true management leadership in the face of this crisis.
This special episode of CallTalk™ is dedicated to providing you information and advice that will make you better able to display, and develop, your management skills in a time of Coronavirus. Learn ways to protect your most precious assets - - your colleagues - - while serving your callers and keeping the corporate mission in mind.
Join Bruce Belfiore as he talks with Mike Dershowitz about the market and corporate forces that push us to offer compensation based on market conditions, and about the human and political elements that push toward offering “living wage” compensation. Mike will build on concepts he first shared with us during his previous appearance on CallTalk (“Fair Trade Outsourcing: Ethical and Profitable”) and will unpack the many issues surrounding the living wage issue. He will draw on his experiences managing centers in urban America and offshore sites. He will share his opinion that the $15 national minimum wage is not the right way to go to achieve living wage objectives. You will find this a lively but very practical, manager-focused discussion on economic justice, employee engagement and performance results in the contact center environment.
Are you endlessly trying to get agents to improve their customer service? There might be a culprit you’ve never considered. Discover hidden and counterintuitive obstacles that hurt agent performance.
You’ll learn: Why rewards and games often makes service quality worseHow wall boards can increase your queuesWhat secret your agents know that can immediately improve service
Guest Jeff Toister
Jeff Toister is a best selling author who has written three customer service books, including Getting Service Right: Overcoming the Hidden Obstacles to Outstanding Customer Service. Feedspot has named his Inside Customer Service blog one of the Top 50 customer service blogs on the planet. Jeff has been recognized as a customer service thought leader by Global Gurus, ICMI, and Comm100. Thousands of customer service professionals subscribe to Jeff's Customer Service Tip of the Week email, and have taken his video-based training courses.
Ever have a bad experience with a contact center agent? Why do you think this happened? One answer may be poor training or poor coaching – either way these situations can be avoided. Join us for our next discussion to hear Nancy Munro share tips and advice on how contact centers can build better and more effective training programs.
Guest: Nancy Munro, CEO of Verbal Transactions, has over 28 years in helping organizations implement and deploy voice enablement solutions. Nancy has worked with organization’s like CVS, AT&T and Microsoft, helping them decipher how best to address performance challenges that align to their structural capabilities and revenue goals.
Nancy pioneered voice-enabled technologies in the corporate space and was the first to launch an interactive audio role-playing simulator. Her current solutions leverage speech recognition and AI to provide a scalable and immersive learning application.
Nancy speaks at various conferences such as the eLearning Guild, ASTD, and AA-ISP and was the Chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Chicago for three years.
Gamification and Engagement have been used in contact centers for some time now and so far, the results have been… mixed. Why do some Gamification and Engagement programs work so well for some organizations, and fall flat for others?
Fresh out of the military and religious service, Elijah stumbled upon Snowfly, a leading gamification-based incentive, engagement, and analytics company, that did things differently. It’s a company that focused on people and understood and leveraged human psychology. He’s seen and participated in effective programs and created tools that have completely transformed organizations and its people. He’s now on a mission to spread the message the Gamification, Incentives, and Engagement have a new look.
Guest: Elijah Cox, COO of Snowlfy
Elijah is the Chief Operating and Technology officer at Snowfly, a leading gamification-based incentive, engagement, and analytics company. Elijah started as a junior programmer for Snowfly and within a few years was involved in all operations and consulting within HR, product, and Employee Experience/Engagement. Elijah is passionate about self-improvement, leadership, and organizational health.
Contact center industry associations can contribute a lot to the success of your center and your career. However, many managers don't consider joining or, if they do, fail to make the most of their investment. We have brought in an expert who has seen this from both sides, and can tell you how to make the most of the opportunities that associations offer.
"Conversational Virtual Agent (sometimes known as chatbots) are all the rage. There has been an explosion, with easily accessed and low-priced conversational frameworks from the likes of Amazon and Google. However, while it’s easy to put together a bad conversational application, developing and deploying one that actually provides a useful service for everyone
involved is a different matter.
Join this show to hear about the different channels on which virtual agents can act, how their knowledge base should be structured, the best approach to training, the necessary integrations, and why machine learning, with
all its promise, is not enough to build a conversational agent that you can trust to talk with your customers."
Technology is impacting every aspect of our lives from home shopping, home deliveries, video streaming, voice activated home hubs, to kids paying to watch their favorite gamers … well play Video Games. Technology developments in Customer Care world are also developing at a dizzying pace and the increased use of live chat, SMS, Social Channels and Chat Bots in customer care are staggering)
The Call Center industry can be full of drama that can be a poison to the customer experience, employee satisfaction, agent retention and your overall center performance. In this episode, we will learn how to identify different types of drama and discuss things you can do right now to overcome the negativity associated with drama.
Has the collections industry taken a few black eyes through the years? Yet, your specific company was not at fault? Does your company get “stereotyped” unfairly Our guest today, owns a collection agency that is intent on changing the way collection agencies are viewed - - by being ridiculously nice. Not just nice, ridiculously nice.
Today, we are going to talk to CEO of Americollect, Kenlyn T. Gretz who will explain how to change the way collection agencies are viewed by being ridiculously nice to consumers. He will explain how data + nice = results.
Guest Speaker: Kenlyn T. Gretz | Americollect
Kenlyn T. Gretz is the President & CEO of Americollect, which has been in business in Wisconsin since 1964. Americollect prides itself on changing the way collection agencies are viewed by being Ridiculously Nice. In 2008, Kenlyn and Americollect were awarded the “Small Business Solid Growth” award by “Corporate Report Magazine”. For nine consecutive years, 2009-2017 “Inc. Magazine” included Americollect in its list of “5000 Top Growing Privately Held Companies in America”. Americollect has been consistently (2009-2018) ranked as the Best Place to Work in Collections, according to InsideARM.com.
Contact centers are under increasing pressure to become profit centers and leverage new channels of engaging customers. Live chat is growing in use--especially among millennial customers--and chat communications can be optimized using machine learning in order to improve engagement, reduce cost and grow sales.
Workforce Management is both science and art. Hear the voice of experience as Rick Lee, Workforce Manager for Convergys, is interviewed by host Bruce Belfiore on his WFM best practices tips. Practitioners who are looking for a deeper level of WFM insight should join this episode.
Nowadays you hear a lot of companies who are doing ‘something’ with Automation (RPA) or Artificial Intelligence (AI), however what is the real story behind it, is it truly as easy as the vendors pitch it or does it require effort?
Information feedback is the lifeblood of continuous improvement for contact centers. However, most centers don't employ a structured approach to originating, processing and acting on feedback. In this session, guest Pam Wilson explains the 4 stages required for a feedback loop to have full efficacy. We will discuss the four stages and Pam will share how she has seen them best implemented in call center settings.
Join Bruce Belfiore and Mike Dershowitz, CEO and Managing Director of Rethink Staffing, as they discuss a novel approach to managing call centers for outperforming results and creating social and economic impact at the same time. Mike shares his philosophy behind fair trade outsourcing, and some real-world examples that illustrate its sustainability, ethicality, and profitability.
Why Drug Test?Drug Testing OptionsNationwide Positivity RatesLegalization of MarijuanaMedical and Recreational Marijuana LandscapeDrug Testing ChallengesPolicy ConsiderationsRecent Workplace Marijuana Case ReviewFuture of Drug Testing
How contact centers can leverage agent knowledge to improve the products they support. Design for improved Customer Experience while sharing valuable input with other departments: marketing, product development and sales.
Information gathering, analysis and distribution are keys to a quality customer service organization. Feedback shows you the weak spots, while analysis and communication with other parts of your enterprise bring value to the enterprise as a whole. Dr. Van Bennekom will draw the lines between inputs and great outcomes for contact center operations.
Guest Host Bio: Dr. Fred Van Bennekom helps organizations collect and apply customer and employee feedback in a statistically valid manner. The author of “Customer Surveying: A Guidebook for Service Managers,” Fred teaches operations management in Northeastern University’s Executive MBA program. Before earning his doctorate, he served as an information systems consultant for Digital Equipment’s field service organization. Through his company, Great Brook, Dr. Van Bennekom conducts workshops and advises clients on their survey practices.
Join CallTalk host Bruce Belfiore as he talks with author and speaker Mitchell Levy about ways to bring thought leadership into your life and your organization. Hear the tips he shared with his Ted Talk audience about listening, hearing, connecting and leading. Mitchell will provide you with insights you can use immediately in your center, and will explain his H.E.L.P. paradigm that will get you thinking and acting to improve yourself and your work place.
Let's face it, finding the right work-life balance in a contact center isn't easy. It takes guts to make changes in your center that allow agents to balance their personal life with the company's needs. Unfortunately for contact centers, ignoring an agent's need for work-life balance has high costs. One study from Indeed found that "More than one in four employees (27%) in organizations that are not perceived to support work-life balance plan to leave their companies within the next two years." High turnover is extremely expensive, and employees who feel like they don't have time for family and personal time are more likely to abuse sick leave, experience burn-out, and avoid tasks. If you want to hear ideas about what you can do to improve work-life balance at your center, attend this CallTalk episode.
Guest Bio: Sean Vierling
During his career, Sean has worked with many Fortune 500 companies that want to optimize call center operations. He has been involved with benchmarking call centers, with contact center training and with workforce management solutions that enable call centers to be more efficient and cost-effective.
Previous to his position with LoxySoft, Sean worked with Teleopti. He served as President of BenchmarkPortal, where he helped launch numerous initiatives including CallTalk in 2009.
Sean graduated from Northern Arizona University with a degree in international marketing. He then obtained a degree in international business from the Haarlem School Business in The Netherlands.
Sean was a member of the U.S. National Whitewater Rafting Team, and took part in the world championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Join Bruce Belfiore for a timely interview with Bob Kobek, President of Mobius Partners and CustomerCount. Bob will address items of interest to both outbound centers and inbound centers, focusing on ways to get to the prize of customer loyalty. He will discuss both the concepts and the practical tools needed to get the results every manager seeks. He will include his thoughts on call center technology and online feedback, such as CSAT, NPS and CES. Bob will also share his ideas on the importance of HR in attaining success. (paragraph break) As a veteran board member of industry association PACE, Bob is tuned in to what our peers are saying, and will bring his industry insights and tips to the table for this info-packed episode of CallTalk.
Guest Host Bob Kobek Bio:
Prior to forming Mobius Vendor Partners in October of 1999, Mr. Kobek spent more than 30 years in the direct marketing industry and government. Specializing in the design, implementation and marketing of products and services, Bob has designed more than 150 outbound telemarketing, inbound customer service and order processing operations and interactive information systems. In 2007 Bob and Mobius launched CustomerCount?, a cloud-based survey solution providing intuitive real-time reporting, designed for the travel industry. Mr. Kobek is a member of the American Resort Development Association and sits on numerous committees. He is a board member of PACE and serves as the chair of the Government Affairs committee. He attended Holy Cross College at Notre Dame, Indiana and Indiana University.
Maureen Lewandowski of Delta Dental of Wisconsin shares tips on how to get buy-in from your people for major initiatives. She illustrates the roles of well structured processes and carefully chosen technologies to empower and incentivize employees to improve performance as a team – and attain certified excellence. These are great, practical insights that most mangers can quickly implement in their centers.
Guest Bio: Maureen Lewandowski is the Director, Operations at Delta Dental of Wisconsin. In her current role Maureen oversees claims processing, customer service, data entry, and benefit administrative services. In her 12 years in the call center industry, Maureen has become well-versed in the science of call center staffing, staff management, LEAN methodology, and project management. Currently Maureen is pursuing her MBA through UW-Madison, School of Business, Executive MBA program.
Change surrounds contact center managers: mergers, systems changes, organizational changes are all high-impact events that present managers with huge challenges. Join us for the final CallTalk episode of 2017 as we explore these issues with our Change Management expert, Steve Ellis. Steve will share his exceptional experiences and walk us through a structured approach to leading contact centers during major changes. Be ready to take notes on tips to prepare your team for both change – and success!
Excellent customer service requires excellent training - - and a culture that supports learning and doing. You need to articulate the results you hope to obtain in order to determine the training you need.
In this episode of CallTalk Bruce Belfiore and Conner Burt focus on the importance of access, speed and data to your center's success. Please join us for a lively discussion that will both explore these themes and give practical suggestions on how to leverage them best.
Conner Burt is the Chief Operations Officer at Lessonly, the leader in modern team learning software. He directly oversees Services and Client Experience. Conner lives in Indianapolis with the love of his life, Lena, and a placid dog named Titan.
Huddles can be the team’s daily opportunity to communicate and plan. They can also be used to circulate other important company or product information. If there is a special focus on a particular metric or initiative the huddle can be used to remind the team and reinforce these initiatives each day. Announcements, such as a scheduled downtime, can also be made during this dedicated time. Communication is the grease that makes things happen smoothly in contact centers. It is also an area in which there is often the greatest variance between management and agent perceptions. Managers sometimes feel they are doing a good job of communicating to agents who, instead, feel their superiors are doing a mediocre or poor job on this count. In fact, in our groundbreaking report on agent attitudes and satisfaction, intra-office communication ranked only 14th among the 18 categories
Contact center managers know that a strong, positive, can-do culture will improve their metrics and make their customers satisfied. However, culture can seem like a complex, difficult thing to turn around, to build, and to maintain. There are some important tips that will help you with this important element of your operation. Bruce Belfiore will ask Jeff Toister to give you the benefit of his experience regarding issues such as: - The importance of leadership in fomenting, forming and furthering customer-focused cultures in the work place - Ways to foster engagement in a way that will build morale - Encouraging senior executive involvement in the life and culture of your center. Join us for an information-rich session of CallTalk, the industry's online talk show since 2009!
What do Google, Netflix, Apple, Uber and Amazon have in common other than rapid growth and amazing profits? They all are considered among the most innovative companies, perpetually seek ingenious ways to delight their customers. Remarkable service for today’s picky, fickle and vocal customers requires a constant and deliberate pursuit of innovative ways to make the customers’ experiences sparkly, but consistent; enriching, but profitable. Since value-added has gotten way too expensive; smart organizations focus on value-unique—novel, not just more.
Chip R. Bell is a renowned keynote speaker and author of several best-selling books including Take Their Breath Away, Managing Knock Your Socks off Service, The 9½ Principles of Innovative Service and Sprinkles: Creating Awesome Experiences through Innovative Service. His newest book is the bestselling Kaleidoscope: Delivering Innovative Service That Sparkles released in February, 2017. Dr. Bell has appeared live on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, ABC, CBS, NPR Marketplace and his work has been featured in Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, Businessweek, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine, CEO Magazine, Money Magazine, and Fast Company. He can be reached at chipbell.com.
Call Centers are full of many moving parts, we will dive into as many as we can and get the viewpoint of a long time Call Center Pro, Michael J. Tamer, CEO and President of Proponisi.
Michael is a 25-year veteran of the customer contact industry. Michael is the author of the book, The Four-Minute Customer, which outlines his Customer Experience management philosophies, and was at the forefront of the contact center quality monitoring industry. Throughout his career, Michael has been teaching the benefits of quality and customer experience to organizations all over the world, including the United States Senate.
As the President and CEO of Teknekron Infoswitch, Michael introduced the industry's first quality monitoring product, which led to the "this call may be monitored for quality purposes" phenomenon heard today on all 1-800 numbers.
Proponisi offers a SAAS solution that provides a Voice of the Customer solution designed with the Call Center in mind.
Some of the things we hope to touch on:
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values alignment
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?Why can't my work life be like my personal life?
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Employee engagement ROI chain
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Culture + Tech + Data = engagement
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Description of Ohana
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Unifying the on-boarding experiences of different areas (pulling together best practices)
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Improving the new hire experience
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Use of AI in evaluating and career-pathing employees
David Kingsley is an experienced organizational effectiveness executive who currently serves as Salesforce's Senior Vice President, Global Human Resources Strategy and Operations (S&O). He leads a global team of 85 professionals in 12 offices around the world in HR Strategy, Analytics, Program Management and Employee Relations, serving the 25,000 employees of Salesforce across 26 countries. David is focused on the design, development and delivery of the employee experience with the perspective that company culture is a thread which runs from the candidate and new hire experience, to the employee experience, through to the customer experience.
David holds a B.A. in International Relations from Catholic University and an M.A. in Organizational Science from George Washington University. Prior to Salesforce David held leadership roles in management consulting with Accenture and Booz Allen.
Joe LaTorre, Director of Innovation at Employment Technologies, will talk with host Bruce Belfiore about emerging practices that every contact center manager should know about. Focus will be on giving you take-aways that will make your recruiting and screening efforts more cost efficient as well as more successful in terms of hiring the right people for your center. Join us for this illuminating episode of CallTalk!
Joe has designed and directed the development of more than 100 custom simulations for employee hiring. His design team has earned an unprecedented five national “Top Product of the Year” awards, and has participated in the development of video-based and computer-based simulations for a variety of domestic and international clients. He holds an M.S. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Valdosta State University and has more than 20 years of global consulting experience. He has presented at national conferences related to advancing the science and accuracy of personnel selection and will share his expertise and unique perspective with our CallTalk audience.
Bruce Belfiore interviews Michael Sanders on his efforts, with the non-profit NTI, to help Americans with Disabilities and Disabled Veterans back into the workplace. Through his work, he has actively placed over 650 work-at-home employees, per year, in Fortune 500 companies. Michael talks about the challenges and opportunity of hiring Americans with Disabilities within the Call Center, Customer Service, and IT Help Desk industries and the solutions NTI can provide.
Michael Sanders is the Director of Marketing and Communications for NTI, a non-profit focusing on placing Americans with Disabilities and Disabled Veterans in Call Center, Customer Service and IT Help Desk work-at-home positions. He is currently partnering with multiple Fortune 500 companies, such as Amazon, Apple, IBM, and the IRS, to build relationships and provide jobs to individuals with disabilities. His extensive 20 years’ experience in advocacy and marketing strategy, along with his Master of Science in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, have contributed to his success building NTI as the leader in placing Americans with Disabilities in the workplace.
Contact Mike if you would like to see if NTI can assist with your staffing needs:
Miake Sanders
877-248-8912
msanders@nticentral.org
Bruce Belfiore interviews Mark Coudray on his brand new methodology that creates vastly improved connections between agents and customers. A recent trial resulted in an increase in reservation closure rates from 24.9% to over 70%, as well as an increase in satisfaction. Leveraging his knowledge of the human mind and decision-making processes, Mark has created a unique approach that begins with listening to customer calls very carefully, then coaching agents in ways no one has ever done before.
Mark's professional activities involve the strategic planning, direction, and transition for companies moving from an analog marketing delivery model to a digital model. Mark is actively involved in the R&D of sales, marketing, and analytically driven social media technologies as well as the implementation into commercial environments. This is the third round of digital disruption within the communications industry, and the forces and drivers for this disruption have now spread to all businesses. Segments served include health, retail, entertainment, education, and industrial/manufacturing. Prior to his current activities, Mark focused on developing and implementing digital technologies for the specialty printing industry. His work has been published globally in more than 400 articles, papers, and columns. Mark’s columns have appeared continuously in multiple industry publications for more than 25 years. He has worked with client companies in 41 countries. His implementations, products, and services are offered in the areas of digital workflow design, consulting services, software development, technical seminars, workshops, technical assessment, and expert witness testimony. Mark received a BS degree in Graphic Communications in 1977 from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, California.
Learn more about this new sales approach by reaching out to Mark directly at: coudray@DScisive.com
A thoughtful review of employee rewards and recognition programs will provide you with ideas for improving your operation. These programs do not have to be expensive - many motivational techniques cost little or nothing. Applying latest best practices to your organization may be the way to attain better results and a more satisfied, stable workforce. This episode of CallTalk(TM) will give you the ideas you need to address this important issue.
Christopher Tomsa is a seasoned contact center manager who is currently a BenchmarkPortal Senior Consultant and is a lead instructor for the College of Call Center Excellence in-person and on-line training courses. He has held senior leadership positions in the call center industry at Citibank and at MetLife Group, where he was Director of Client Services for a MetLife affiliate company. His operations earned numerous awards, including BMP’s Top Call Centers award. He shares his experiences on the topic of employee recognition in ways that today's managers can use in their operations.
Your own kids, the team you coach, the scouts you lead, and the people you manage at work. How much do you reel them in by rules, and how much do you let them run on trust? It’s often a struggle to figure out how to get the balance right, and many managers have been hurt by situations in which they have trusted people too much, or have been humbled by situations in which they have erroneously relied too heavily on rules.
Our guest, Marge Robba, has more than 30 plus years of experience in management, training, coaching and consulting. She is focused on; Leadership development, corporate coaching, behavioral change management and cultural transformation. Helping organizations transition from the traditional transaction focus to a value add, learning environment.
She has excellent interpersonal skills with an ability to foster and maintain positive professional relationships. Delivering success through building high performance teams and cross team collaboration. She accomplishes this by understanding the communication needs of each level of the organization, from the C-suite to frontline employees.
International experiences include assignments in South America, Europe and Asia. She has worked in diverse industries such as; travel, banking, manufacturing, technology and health care.
We talk with Debbie Frazier on what accountability in a call center means and how to ensure it is alive and well!
Debbie Frazier is a Senior Consultant with Benchmark Portal. She has over 3 decades of experience in customer service managing captive agents and most recently a vendor relations manager for outsourced contact center operations both in the US and outside of the US. Her previous responsibilities included recruiting, hiring, quality assurance, workforce management, customer relations and process improvements.
Agent turnover is one of the costliest issues for Contact Centers and when the agent is heading out the door, it's usually too late to save the agent or the day.
Our guest, Chris Mulligan, from Talent Keepers, will be talking about Stay Interview and in particular, a 4 step methodology that based on years of research, improve results in employee engagement.
Chris has over 25 years of experience in the human resources industry, the majority of which has been in the employee engagement, selection, assessment and retention arena. Chris co-founded TalentKeepers in 2000, an organization dedicated to the issue of employee engagement and retention. TalentKeepers products have twice been recognized as “Top Training Products of the Year” by Human Resource Executive Magazine for their innovative and effective approach to employee on-boarding, engagement and retention. Chris has worked with organizations around the world on employee engagement and retention issues including: Accenture, AT&T, BMW, Coke, EDS, GE & UPS. Prior to co-founding TalentKeepers, Chris was the Vice President of Business Development for AlignMark, a division of Thomson Rueters, a multi-billion dollar and leading global e-information and solutions company serving the business and professional marketplace. Chris is a member of the American Psychological Society and an Associate Member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from the Florida State University, and a Master of Science degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida
"Intentional Coaching is an innovative coaching approach in which supervisors are out on the floor with their agents, reinforcing what’s right and helping them go beyond fast, efficient transaction handling, to creating a positive customer experience. Intentional Coaching reduces escalated calls by 50%, improves handle times, first call resolution, customer satisfaction, as well as agent engagement. Join Bruce and Barbara as they discuss what happens when supervisors use this common sense approach to coaching."
Recognized as an international expert and thought leader on creating customer-centric contact centers, Barbara Burke specializes in enabling customer service organizations to focus on what’s really important — the quality of the experience customers have with their front-line agents.Barbara is the author of two popular business fables about life in a contact center — The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey: How to Be Happy & Successful by Simply Changing Your Mind, and The Monkey, the Moon & Maybe: How to Embrace Change & Live Fearlessly. Her popular e-newsletter, Monday Aha! Sage Advice for Customer Service Leaders has over 2500 subscribers worldwide.Barbara’s extensive client list includes: Target, Microsoft, Estee’ Lauder, Proctor & Gamble, American Family Insurance, Lands’ End, Honeywell, City of Austin Texas, State of Minnesota, State of Pennsylvania, Cox Communications, Verizon, Portland General Electric, Integrys, Louisville Gas & Electric/Kentucky Utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric, Duke Energy, Georgia Power, and Time Warner.
In this episode, Charles Paelinck, Former Chief Product Officer for Ceasars, will join us to share several reasons why happiness in leadership is so important.
Charly has been in senior IT leadership for over 20 years and was most recently the Chief Product Officer for Caesars.
In this episode, you will learn "Five Keys To Call Center Consolidation".
They can have other positive impacts on your operations such as culture, resources, technology and processes. These five keys will aid in looking at financial and operational benefits.
Tim has over 30 years of experience working in the customer service field, serving in leadership roles both internally and within the BPO outsourcing sector. Tim’s role at Benchmark Portal is to help organizations to improve business results by changing how they deal with customers. Tim examines strategy, culture, marketing, interaction and technology design, customer service, and leadership practices;all through the eyes of the customer.
Tim started his career at Disney, and had the opportunity to see the Disney Institute built from the ground floor. Later Tim led U.P.S.'s customer service organization during their service transformation Recently Tim headed customer service at Amazon.com, and lead a team within Amazon that formed a customer experience road map that provided that highest customer experience and loyalty rankings in the history of the retail sector.
Tim holds a B.S. in Business Administration at Indiana State University. Tim also serves as a board member on a number of industry and charity organizations, and is an author, speaker, and award recipient in customer experience and servant leadership.
Knowledge Management tools and resources are the brain of your contact center, providing your agents with the information they need right when they need it…when developed effectively and working properly. The effectiveness of your Knowledge Management tools have an impact on several of your key performance metrics, including First Contact Resolution, Sales Conversion Rate, Average Talk Time and Handle Time, as well as your overall Call Quality and Accuracy.
Those tools can also have other positive impacts on your operations by providing each of your agents the capability to handle a broader range of call types, requiring fewer skill groups and therefore enabling greater efficiency. When leveraged into customer-facing resources, they increase self-service opportunities for customers who prefer finding their own answers, reducing your overall workload and improving customer satisfaction.
Brian Golden brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in contact center operations management, design, organization development, and process engineering. He partners with client companies to create and implement solutions for aligning their service strategy with market and customer demands while achieving cost effectiveness in their operations.
Brian has worked with a wide range of organizations both in the public sector as well as Fortune 500 companies, including UnitedHealth Group, AT&T, Atmos Energy, Allstate Insurance, Amgen, Toyota, Convergys, and the United States Department of the Interior. Along with having a master’s degree in organization development from Pepperdine University he is a certified facilitator of the Implementation Institute’s “Practicing Implementation Effectiveness” workshop and was a keynote speaker at the Singapore Institute of Management.
Have you ever wondered why some people are more difficult to work with than others? No matter how hard you try, it seems impossible to see eye to eye with the other person. Believe it or not, there is a quick way to figure out why the other person is prioritizing, planning, executing, and in some instances holding back from project completion at work.
Following the Enneagram method, a form of psychology that breaks down the 9 basic leadership styles, Sheena Monnin explains how Enneagram is different from every other type of leadership assessment because it goes beyond behaviors and reveals the ‘why’ behind our actions and propensities.
It’s okay to have a different way of filtering information than your boss has, but companies are discovering how much time and money is wasted because of these differing and misunderstood perspectives. The solution is to learn what is motivating you, and that not everyone is propelled to action the way that you are, and how to respect those differences.
How can an organization increase customer satisfaction by providing a positive experience and reducing the customer’s effort? Is your organization thinking of, or looking into, more effective and less expensive says of interacting with customers? If those questions sound impoirtant, you will want to listen to todays show and here is why and how to go about it:
The mapping experience will expose roadblocks, pain points, and can come up with a journey to provide the customer with a superior experience. The exercise examines the customer experience at each point of interaction in the various communication channels to identify opportunities that can enhance the experience. The objective is to leverage all channels of customer contact center interaction and to promote satisfying cross-channel experiences.
Our guest and specialist for the show today, Amy Novack, has over 15 years of experience and has spent several years managing inbound and outbound service teams.
Prior to joining Benchmark she acted as Senior Manager of Call Center Operations, for a small to mid-sector outsourcing company. She introduced lean Six Sigma methodology for call center process improvement and design, and implemented multi-channels within her center. Amy’s focus on employees aided in driving results of consistency among staff, processes, and systems to enhance an effective and efficient customer experience.
Amy attended Walsh College where she acquired her Bachelors of Business Administration in Management.
***Here is the lin to access the slide pack that we talk about in our show: CallTalk MUG
Our guest, Alex Demczak, wrote a book on “Optimizing Outbound Calling” and has been astounded by the changes to this process over the years, and in this episode, Alex will talk about recent changes to federal and state regulations within the past year.
In 2015 Alex saw massive changes in outbound calling regulations both on the federal and state level. Find out how some of these changes will change your business now and in the future.
Some of the questions he will answer will be:
Are these changes already in affect?
Can I still call cell phones on delinquent accounts?
Can I use preview dialing on cell phones if I dial the number manually?
Alex Demczak, a lifelong resident of the Pittsburgh, PA area has been involved with call centers since 1978. Having completed the three year electronics degree at Allegany Tech, he merged his passion for electronics to the call center industry serving as a beta site for what are now standard products. Seeing the lack of ability for some predictive dialer manufactures to convey benefits and ROI of their equipment brought about the publishing of "How to Sell Dialers to Call Center Managers" .
Later he teamed with Dr. Jon Anton of Purdue University, then mainly involved with inbound call centers, to create his second work "Optimizing Outbound Calling”.
After a long successful career in banking he is now a full time consultant and the General Manger of MUG Enterprise, where he continues to develop products for the industry and provide guidance, training and reviews for call centers worldwide with such notable clients as: Microsoft, Capital One, US Bank and many others.
Lately, Bill has begun to detect some striking changes emerging in the contact center industry. He sees that contact centers really don’t want to buy software, they want to buy results. There’s a new breed of contact center vendors that is able and willing to provide results.
Bill is an industry veteran and has held a variety of sales, marketing and management roles for major contact center vendors and worked as a consultant for centers challenged with meeting their performance objectives. With more than 30 years in the market, he has practical experience with most contact center technologies and the technology segments that comprise workforce optimization, including workforce management. An author of numerous articles and whitepapers on contact center technology and management, he also has published four books: Building a World-Class Inbound Call Center, focused on a management process for call centers that drives productivity and quality;
Navigating the Customer Contact Center in the 21st Century, clarified technologies used in multimedia centers and updated management processes that include email and Web support metrics; Customer Centricity Through Workforce Optimization, focused on how to transform the workforce, maximize a contact center’s most value resources – its people – and propel center performance to the next level; and Analytical Workforce Optimization Demystified, focused upon how WFM and Quality Management are changing because of Analytics which provide powerful lenses through which management can improve the performance of the workforce and understand what customers want from organizations.
Learn how Big Data is transforming insurance and call center operations, and why your company should be planning Big Data analytics to improve customer loyalty and enhance operating efficiency.
Geoff Colgan from Attadale Partners, brings 25 years of experience leading change management for some of the most accomplished and successful public and private companies in the world. Geoff is a frequent presenter at conferences on topics such as operational performance, change management, and customer experience. Geoff’s work supporting strategy implementation has been referenced in a Harvard Business School case study. Before founding Attadale, Geoff spent almost 20 years serving global clients of Charter Consulting and Gemini Consulting, and in operations at Sun Alliance Life Assurance. As an Australian national, Geoff co-founded and is a past-president of the Australian New Zealand American Chamber of Commerce - Midwest, and remains active in the Australian and Chicago communities. Geoff earned an MBA with high honors from the University of Notre Dame and his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Western Australia. Geoff lives in Chicago with his wife and four daughters.
Sales Expert, Mark Coudray, joins CallTalk to discuss the changes that have occurred with the advennt of the digital world and how that has impacted the sales channels. We will look into the changes in communication, campaigns, and closure rates, and it's all good news!
His professional activities involve the strategic planning, direction, and transition for companies moving from an analog marketing delivery model to a digital model. This includes the evolving changes to how goods and services are marketed, sold and delivered, as well as the analytics and metrics for how performance is measured. Mark is actively involved in the R&D of sales, marketing, and analytically driven social media technologies as well as the implementation into commercial environments.
Prior to his current activities, Mark focused on developing and implementing digital technologies for the specialty printing industry. He is well known as a leader and strategist for industries disrupted by digital technologies.
His work has been published globally in more than 400 articles, papers, and columns. Mark’s columns have appeared continuously in multiple industry publications for more than 25 years. He has worked with client companies in 41 countries. His implementations, products, and services are offered in the areas of digital workflow design, consulting services, software development, technical seminars, workshops, technical assessment, and expert witness testimony.
Mark received a BS degree in Graphic Communications in 1977 from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, California. He graduated Summa Cum Laude
Leaders play a vital role in the call center, they are an important reason why people stay or leave, engage or not engage. Research show the relationship agents have with their lead, supervisor or direct boss are key.
This episode we speak iwth Chris Abel, Senior Director, Contact Center Operations and Customer Experience, Bright Horizons Family Solutions.
Chris is responsible for all operations supporting five lines of business and managing third-party vendor relationships. Prior to joining Bright Horizons, Chris spent 15 years in the financial services industry. Starting as a financial adviser, Chris managed teams working with high-net-worth clients and focused on building relationships and delivering superior customer experiences.
Employee engagement and retention are core talent management building blocks and staying abreast of key trends and new approaches is important for HR professionals across disciplines.
In this episode, we talk with Industry Expert, Chris Mulligan, from Talent Keepers, as he explains what the latest data is telling us about hot trends and those practices that are getting results, including what the “Best-in-Class” are doing to achieve strong results from their investment in employee engagement and retention.
Chris has over 25 years of experience in the human resources industry, the majority of which has been in the employee engagement, selection, assessment and retention arena. Chris co-founded TalentKeepers in 2000, an organization dedicated to the issue of employee engagement and retention. TalentKeepers products have twice been recognized as “Top Training Products of the Year” by Human Resource Executive Magazine. TalentKeepers’ annual Employee Engagement and Retention Trends Survey is the largest and longest continually running research study of engagement and employee retention - and more than 800 US-based organizations participant in the study, representing every major industry and all regions of the country.
Chris has worked with organizations including: Accenture, AT&T, BMW, Coke, EDS, GE & UPS. Prior to co-founding TalentKeepers, Chris was the VP of Business Development for AlignMark, a division of Thomson Rueters, a multi-billion dollar and leading global e-information and solutions company serving the business and professional marketplace. Chris is a member of the American Psychological Society and an Associate Member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from the Florida State University, and a Master of Science degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida
Surveys are an important tool for measuring your customers’ and agents’satisfaction along with identifying areas needing improvement. Listen in to 15 tips to optimize your surveys.
Guest Dr. Fred Van Bennekom, The author of "Customer Surveying: A Guidebook for Service Managers," teaches operations management in Northeastern University’s Executive MBA program and has served as an information systems consultant for Digital Equipment’s field service organization. Through his company, Great Brook, Dr. Van Bennekom conducts workshops and advises clients on their survey practices.
Survey Tips & Tricks – the Fast Fifteen or a Bakers Dozen plus two
Project Management Think about what you’re trying to learn – Statement of research objectivesLine up your ducks – get the resources and sponsorship lined upMotivate, motivate, motivate Questionnaire Design Talk to the people – do some field research for “attribute identification”Keep it shortOrganize into topical sectionsIt’s how you write it – look for multiple interpretationsData aren’t all created equal -- Know your data types Survey Administration Target the right peopleTarget the right people the right way – Avoid sample biasKnow the math of statistical accuracy Analysis & Reporting Fight the fires immediatelySlice and dice – look for the interesting findings among subgroupsExplain the impactClose the loop – tell them what you learned = motivate
Leveraging Industry Benchmarks to Build a Business Case for a Technology Investment.
Technology is a crucial component in many areas within the contact center. With Drew's experience he is a wonderful person to enlighten us more on this topic. As a problem solver with Technology Finance Partners he will shed some light on how industry benchmarks are used in selling and what that translates to on the buyer’s side
Drew Wright co-founded Technology Finance Partners in 2000 and has driven hundreds of millions of dollars of enterprise technology investment through strategic consultation on deal structuring and collaborative business case analysis support. This ongoing effort gives Drew a unique understanding of the real value of technology, from IT infrastructure to business application as well as a practical perspective regarding pricing and delivery models. Drew has spoken at a number of software conferences on the subjects of ROI, green IT, SaaS pricing strategies and customer analytics.
Prior to TFP, Drew was a vice president of ADAC Capital, ADAC Laboratories’ customer finance program. His professional career started in the medical device industry where he traveled to 48 of 50 states to see orthopedic surgeons implant the custom knee and other joint implants that he designed. Drew earned a BS in mechanical engineering with an English minor from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School.
A Success Formula – How to Coach and Develop Discretionary
Effort
From the coaching perspective, learn how each employee is unique and valuable through their behaviors. As a coach use this knowledge to guide them through important transformations toward top performance.
Dave Gregory is the Director of Management Training and Leadership Development for Alorica. He and his team support more than 4,800 leaders who in turn support more than 48,000 contact center associates over 73 sites around the world. He focuses on creating positive change that aligns behaviors with the strategic vision and creates positive results. Dave’s team in 2014 delivered measureable results for programs in financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, entertainment and hospitality, and other industries which exceeded $66.8M in attrition savings and another $90M incremental revenue generation. The return on investment of Dave’s team exceeded $315 for every $1 invested in 2014.
With more than 25 years of experience in the call center industry, Dave has held positions in nearly every aspect of the contact center supporting Work Force Management, Operations, Training, and Human Resources and is dedicated to delivering measurable results through a focus on Attitude, Skills, Knowledge, and Goal Setting.
Customers are demanding more efficient and effective service from Contact Centers throughout all industries.
Walt will chat with the Assistance Vice President at Provident Credit Union, Walt Sweeny, about a Lean Six Sigma approach to Contact Center process improvement that Contact Center leaders could use to make their Contact Center be the best it can be, effectively and efficiently.
Walt Sweeny has been in the Contact Center business for over 16 years. He is currently an Assistant Vice President with Provident Credit Union in Redwood Shores California.
Previously, Walt had Contact Center assignments with Greater Bay Bank (a subsidiary of Wells Fargo Bank) and AT&T Broadband. He received his Master of Business Administration from San Francisco State University School of Business. Walt is also Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certified. He serves on the Northern California Contact Center Association steering committee and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is married with three daughters.
Many of us describe our strong culture and its impact on our organization as a “secret sauce”.
In this show, we will be talking with Senior Director of Patient Service Center Operation at Sutter Physician Services, Steve Chambers, about some of the factors that can serve barriers to creating a strong and healthy culture, and keep you from finding that "secret sauce"
Steve Chambers joined Sutter Physician Services (SPS) in 2012. In his role as Sr. Director of Patient Service Center Operations, he has oversight of the Patient Service Center, a 700 employee centralized contact center in Salt Lake City, Utah.
He has over 17 years of experience in the customer service and contact center industry spanning several sectors including healthcare, telecommunications, and retail. Mr. Chambers received his BS degree from Utah State University and his MBA from Walden University.
A discussion of Quality Assurance processes and tools from a recent survey by BenchmarkPortalBest practices of high performing centers.
Dayne Petersen has been managing and consulting with call/contact centers for a number of years. She has experience managing and operating both business-to-business and business-to-consumer call centers. Additionally, she has a successful track record evaluating and implementing call center solutions that meet defined client requirements.
In her most recent management role as Director of Call Center Operations, she acted as the internal “best practice and benchmarking consultant,” leading employee satisfaction surveys, introducing Six Sigma for call center process improvement and design, and implementing multi-media in the contact center.
Dayne is a passionate advocate of measuring Caller Satisfaction and Agent Satisfaction and using this data to develop effective Quality Assurance programs that deliver the desired outcomes.
Dayne is also the Senior Consultant with Minnesota-based Call Center Solutions and is certified by the Center for Customer-Driven Quality (founded at Purdue University) as a call center auditor, specializing in all areas of contact center operations.
Cost of caller identification: Even though it's been around for decades, caller ID continues to pose problems for your contact center. Today, we'll be talking about why those problems are actually getting worse, and discuss some ways your contact centers can alleviate the burden and cost of caller ID.
Guest:
Ian Roncoroni is the founder of Next Caller, advanced caller ID for businesses. Next Caller is the world's largest caller ID database, linking telephone number to name, address, email, household income, and other personal information. Ian is the head of business development, and wrote the logic for their proprietary data aggregation algorithm. This algorithm is so unique that industry giants like Nextiva, 8x8, and Vertical Communications have made Next Caller their native caller ID product. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the prestigious Y Combinator program.
After another amazing Call Center Campus event in Las Vegas this November 2014, Bruce Belfiore and Amy Novak, will be going over some of the highlights from the event. Listen in for best practices shared in our Round Tables and Panel Discussions, as well as highlights from the guest speakers.
Breathing new life into quality. Changing the perception of quality ownership by engaging agents so they could see their ownership in the process. The mission is building customer loyalty by providing a quality service experience the first time, every time.
Join us as we talk with Toni Roberts, Diector at Delta Dental of Michigan, will be sharing her insight on Quality Transformation.
Antoinette Roberts, director of Regional Operations, has been with Delta Dental of Michigan since1983. Prior to assuming her current role in 2006, Roberts served in various positions including director and manager of customer service. While overseeing the department, she executed implementation of large and national accounts and served as the direct point-of-contact for clients. In 2002, Roberts led the customer service department to its first BenchmarkPortal award, which recognizes the outstanding efficiency and effectiveness of the company’s call center. She is responsible for providing on-going service and support for large accounts, maintaining strong working relationships, offering problem resolution and retaining existing clients. In addition, Roberts manages two large accounts including the State of Michigan and the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System (MPSERS).
Call Monitoring and Recording sounds like a great idea for qualaity control of calls at your call center, but are you putting your agents or management at risk?
BenchmarkPortal's Bruce Belfiore sits down with Attorney, Adam Losey, to discuss the leagal issues around call centers, both from an inbound and outbound perspecitive.
As privacy Counsel for Call Centers, he works with client-side management to develop and implement telephone monitoring policies governing monitoring and recording of telephone calls and electronic communications and data management issues associated with call recordings and electronically stored information.
Adam Losey is an internationally recognized attorney, author, and educator in the field of technology law. He represents a number of Fortune 100 companies in high-stakes complex litigations across the country involving challenging issues at the intersection of law and technology. In addition to his litigation practice, Mr. Losey routinely advises clients large and small on a variety of sophisticated information security, incident response, privacy, electronic discovery, and data management matters. Mr. Losey is a member of the New York, Florida, and District of Columbia bars.
Why are so many people talking about Employee Engagement? We'll find out a few tips on the effectiveness of employee recognition and how it can potentially provide financial success to your company. Zane Safrit, CEO, Business Consultant, and Author will share some of his experiences and lessons learned on building employees awareness of company goals, raising morale, and increasing productivity.
Zane Safri has spent his career in call center operations, many of them serving international customers and sales forces. From an entry level position as a customer service rep to team leader to Assistant Director and Country Manager to finally CEO he saw the language of employee recognition and employee engagement is a univeral language and so are the forms of its ROI. As Country Manager, he opened his company's first overseas office in Seusseldorf, Germany and used employee recognition and engagement to double sales and triple the number of new orders within the first six months. As CEO of a small conference call service provider he rebudgeted the company's advertising and marketing budgets towards employees and customers. This resulted in revenue growth of 80% while retail prices were pushed lower by over 70%, all the time generating positive cash-flows, the lifeblood of small business. In his book Recognize THEM: 52 Ways to Recognize Your Employees In Way They Value he has compiled many of the ways he used to recognize and engage employees, many of them require no financial inventment, research and data to show the positive impact on a company's performance and inspiring quotes from business leaders on the value of employee recognition. He also shares his mistakes to help you avoid them as you being this journey towards a culture of engagement.
Judy McKee joins us on CallTalk to help us understand the Positive Coach Approach. Designed to help call center personnel gain confidence and experience in the use of learned skills and attitudes, the Posaitive Coach Approach can help reduce the work load on managers and quality assurance departments.
Judy McKee is a nationally known motivational speaker, seminar leader, sales trainer and author. Her personal philosophy of motivation through education and commitment shines clearly throughout her presentations. Judy began her career as a telephone sales representative and knows the business thoroughly. Through trial and error, she has learned what works and what doesn't work. With her roots in real estate sales, management and training, Judy branched out into motivational speaking and training for salespeople in many different business fields, and has been continually involved in this effort for the past 19 years.
Judy communicates a totally positive approach to selling and solving sales problems. She strongly believes that effective communication is the most important ingredient to the sales success for any individual. Judy trains people to develop and perfect communication skills and delivers this information in an entertaining, optimistic way which has won her a place in the National Speakers Association and the Who's Who of National Speaking.
Her expertise in the art of telephone sales has put her in demand by corporations and small businesses nationwide. Her client list includes such notables as IBM, American Express, E-Harmony, Stamps.com, Airgas Safety, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Century 21, Pacific Telesis, Discover Card, US Bank, Sprint, SouthWestern Bell, Walt Disney World, Aetna Insurance, MetLife, AARP, The Hartford and MyLife, Guthy-Renker, Staples, Many Outsourcing Agencies, and numerous small and medium-size businesses.
Is the Customer Effort Score the new Net Promoter Score?
Just because research is published on the internet or in a business journal does not mean the research findings are true. Guest Frederick Van Bennekom, Principal, Great Brook Consulting, will be talking about survey methodology and design to determine validity.
Dr. Fred Van Bennekom helps organizations collect and apply customer and employee feedback in a statistically valid manner. The author of "Customer Surveying: A Guidebook for Service Managers," Fred teaches operations management in Northeastern University’s Executive MBA program. Before earning his doctorate, he served as an information systems consultant for Digital Equipment’s field service organization. Through his company, Great Brook, Dr. Van Bennekom conducts workshops and advises clients on their survey practices.
What is it, why all of the hype, and how can we use it to our daily challenges like retention of new-hires, adherence, quality, FCR, customer upselling and retention?
Special Guest Bob Cowen of Snowfly - a full service incentives and recognition company, will join us to answer those questsions and yours too!
Bob has been in the contact center industry for more than 30 years. During those years, he’s visited numerous centers across the country. At virtually each one of them, he observed an agent incentive program that used contests or games, leader boards, badges and various rewards. Creating and managing these incentive programs appeared to be labor intensive; they ran only periodically, for a relatively short duration and quite often the ROI was not even measured! And at the conclusion of most of them, the key metrics would revert to their prior state. In 2006, Bob saw an article in the Wall Street Journal describing how a large bank was using an on-line incentive application that motivated employees to improve attendance, adherence and reduce attrition, especially new-hire attrition. It used brief on-line games, leader boards and rewards and it operated full time. This sounded remarkably like what he had seen in call centers but had been automated, offered as a cloud service and could run continuously. Recognizing the huge savings potential this represented, he contacted the company that provided the on-line application, Snowfly and the rest, as they say, is history.
Unless we're in a churn and burn business, customer retention is critical to achieve long term profitability. But how do we know what drives customer retention? We may have lots of anecdotal data, but can we be scientific to identify those customers are very likely to return and to give good word of mouth? Dr. Fred Van Bennekom of the Northeastern University's Executive MBA Program, joins us shed some light on those questions!
Recently, several key metrics have arisen to measure customer sentiment. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the best known, but the Customer Effort Score (CES) is a new entrant in the field. Both are controversial. In this first presentation of two we will discuss NPS. Specifically, we will look at the research basis behind NPS and ask whether there are other metrics that might better indicate a loyal customer. Or, perhaps more importantly, might identify a customer in need of some service recovery event to move them toward loyalty.
Dr. Fred Van Bennekom founded Great Brook to help organizations collect and apply customer and employee feedback. Great Brook conducts workshops on survey practices along with advising clients on their surveying practices. Fred authored Customer Surveying: A Guidebook for Service Managers and he teaches operations management in Northeastern University’s Executive MBA program. He served as an information systems consultant for Digital Equipment’s field service organization before earning his doctorate.
We will be discussing the reasons why Support Organizations choose to go virtual, advantages to leverage, roadblocks to avoid, and some lessons learned from out in the field.
Jesse Hoobler is the Director of Worldwide Software Support at Pitney Bowes Inc., a $4.9-billion company that provides technology solutions for small, mid-size and large firms that help them connect with customers to build loyalty and grow revenue.While at Pitney Bowes, Jesse has been on a five year journey to transform the support organization into an award-winning business service, driving excellence through customer experience. By focusing on customer adoption and realized value, his support organization has seen dramatic improvement in customer satisfaction and loyalty. Prior to joining Pitney Bowes, Jesse led the support organization at Chronicle Technologies, an industry leader in management software for the restoration and construction industry. During his tenure, Jesse virtualized Chronicle’s support center, cutting costs and driving efficiency gains through a 100% work-from-home agent model. Jesse holds a Masters in Computer Science from The College of Saint Rose.
Bruce talks with Greg Van Zandt about the up and coming generation of contact center employees - The Millennials aka Generation Y.
Understanding Millennials:
Who Are They? How are they different from those before them? What drives them? What are their social attributes? What are their strengths?
Leveraging their Strengths: Considerations when managing this Generation,
Implications on: Recruiting, Screening and Training, Scheduling, Work
diversity, Training / Coaching, Contact Center and Corporate culture, Leveraging technology, Leveraging Millennials’ unique characteristicsRevving up for Gen Y: Dynamic Scheduling, Acknowledgement and Motivational Feedback and Coaching, Tinkering, Incentives.
Greg Van Zandt is a Customer Service professional with over thirty years’ experience in developing and managing customer service organizations for predominately Fortune 1000 consumer products companies. Professional services experience includes projects across many industries: financial, insurance, hotel/travel, automotive, utility, consumer and business products industries, and federal government with a focus on customer service operations. Greg has significant experience in multi-site contact center and field service management, rules based routing, and customer focused multichannel handling optimization. Greg is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Customer Driven Quality, Purdue University, past member National Board of Directors, Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, past Executive Chair Electronics Industries Association Consumer Affairs Counsel, and is a Chicago Regional Coordination team member of the Contact Center Networking Group (CCNG).
Do you want to improve your performance and the performance of your staff? Of course, the answer is yes. We all do. But first we need distinctions between managing and parenting--as well as managing and leading--so managers (and everyone else) can develop both professionally and personally.
ROSANNE D'AUSILIO, Ph.D., an industrial psychologist, consultant, master trainer, best selling author, executive coach, customer service expert, and President of Human Technologies Global, Inc., specializes in human performance management. Over the last 25 years, she has provided needs analyses, instructional design, and customized, live customer service skills trainings as well as executive/leadership coaching. Also offered is agent and facilitator university certification through Purdue University’s Center for Customer Driven Quality.
Get in touch with Rosanne!
Website: www.human-technologies.com
Newsleter: www.HumanTechTips.com
Emai: rosanne@human-technologies.com
Ed Poorbaugh, from Sysco, shares how they have improved their average quality score from 88.7% to 94%, and reduced turnover by 15%. They are delivering service with a S.M.I.L.E. Ed Poorbaugh has held a number of positions in warehousing, transportation and information technology operations during his 17 year career with Sysco. Prior to his current role, he managed the IT operations for the Southwestern United States and was the project manager for several successfully enterprise-wide software development projects. Ed was an integral part of the design and implementation of Sysco’s new call centers in Houston and Dallas, Texas. Currently, he is responsible for the operational and quality performance of the support center, including the management of telephony and other technology platforms used to deliver a cost-effective and customer focused experience. Ed has a B.A in English with a minor in Environmental Sciences from the University of New Mexico.
Steve Ellis, from Eye Med, will share five key steps to designing an effective Voice of the Customer program that focuses on the customer experience and drives continuous improvement throughout the organization. Steve Ellis is Sr. Director of Customer Care for EyeMed Vision Care. He has over 2 decades of leadership with a proven track record to deliver outstanding results at Sprint, Florida Power & Light, Comcast Cable and EyeMed. Steve has experience in marketing, sales, customer service, call center, strategic planning and general management leadership. Steve is a graduate from OH University and lives with his family in Cincinnati, OH.
Special Guest, Russell Rossi, from Ney York Life, will be joining us to share his insight on transitioning a service center, into a sales center, that will provide more value to the organization as a whole. Discussion points: 1. Developing a strategic roadmap 2. Key strategies to excite your organization for change and growth 3. Importance of measuring results for success Russell Rossi is the Corporate Vice President of Customer Experience and Strategic Planning for New York Life Tampa Operations. Russell’s responsibilities include all customer touch points and technology of the Customer Experience Program comprising the internal Quality Teams, Learning and Development Team, After Call Survey, Speech Analytics, Voice of the Customer, and Voice of the Agent programs. Additional responsibilities include oversight for all Strategic Planning and Project Management for key Member Services technologies, initiatives, and enhancements.
Russell possesses over 25 years of management experience in a wide range of industries with core competencies in Strategic & Tactical Business Planning, Project management, Quality & Process Engineering, Revenue Generation, Customer Service Satisfaction & Retention and Business Growth Development. He holds a BS Degree in Business and Marketing.
"Call" centers are now "Contact" centers, with multiple channels a client can connect with you and your business. Special guest, David Raia, will be joining us as we examine this new world and discuss the following: Identifying and selecting Key Performance Indicators for multiple channelsTracking Multichannel Metrics - Tools and TricksEfficiency (Cost) and Effectiveness (Quality) Balanced Scorecard Groupings in a multichannel CenterCalculating Multichannel Occupancy and Utilization to avoid Double CountingRobbing Peter to pay Paul - Utilization overlap and the impact of OvertimeCost per Contact - The Final Frontier David Raia bio: Mr. David Raia is highly regarded in the industry as a Contact Center Operations Improvement Specialist. He began his consulting career in 1995 and has spent the past 15 years successfully driving a variety of complex Contact Center Optimization engagements across Federal Government and Fortune 500 companies in the United States and Canada. He has successfully delivered People, Process and Technology Improvement projects for Contact Center functions that include: Sales and Service, Credit and Collections, Campaign Management and CRM Strategies and Tactics. He and his project teams have met or exceeded Business Case commitments in each completed engagement. His areas of expertise include Virtual Consolidations, Market Segmentation, Contact Management, Quality Assurance, Agent and Supervisor Training, Reporting and Performance Management and related workforce optimization. Mr. Raia has been a featured speaker on many of these topics at a variety of national Contact Center and Management Seminars.
Transitioning your call center from a typical “customer service” environment to a “sales” environment can be a challenging, however, in today’s competitive environment, it is critical to have everyone in your organization focused on upselling or cross selling products/services. My topic of adding sales to your customer service culture will provide you with strategies for making this transition and ensuring your call center is a revenue generator for your company. These strategies allowed our call center to begin to pay for our own operating expenses within three months, improved the morale of the employees and providing more opportunities for all center personnel. Susan Wolski Bio: Sue is a Performance and Metric Manager with TXU Energy. She has a long history in call center (sales and service) performance driven success. In her current role Sue measures, monitors and provides direction to a team that drives sales and service execution through more than 700 agents. Sue has held positions as call center performance consultant and has worked for fortune 500 corporations as setting up new call centers as well as improving performance of current sites. Sue is well regarded in the industry as a person who can step in to a center and find and solve for performance gaps resulting in unprecedented performance. Sue recently presented and served as a panelist at the IQPC’s Call Center Performance, Productivity & Metrics conference. She delivered a presentation on “Strategies for Driving the Sales and Service Team to Some of their Highest Metrics.”
Kimberly Parish Barrett, Director, Florida Abuse Hotline, Department of Children and Families, joins us for a disscussion on how Government Call Centers are using industry leading technology to empower the front line, manage in real time, and streamline processes to improve service levels and customer service. Kimberly Parish Barrett, Graduated Florida State University with a Bachelor's in Business and a Master's in Public Administration. Director of the Florida Abuse Hotline for 2+ years, previous experience as the Verint/Workforce Management Administrator, Data Analyst, and Call Floor Supervisor (5 years), Certified Public Manager.
With Special Guest, Steve Riddell, from Blinds.com Stop being a “Lemming” and learn how to achieve extraordinary results in record time. Contact Centers pretty much operate the same way and most call center managers are guilty of taking a “lemming” approach to management, process and growth. Lemmings plod along doing the same things in the same way, following the same path others follow. If you have been around this industry for any length of time, there’s really not that much that comes along that that is ground breaking, earth shaking and record shattering. If you want to change your course and have “Break-Out” results in short time durations then this is the session for you. Mr. Riddell will show you step by step how he “re-engineered” a small call center with Blinds.com and achieved award winning results in short time durations.
Call Centers continue to be the prime point of contact for customers. However, over the past several years IVR's, Websites, Social Media, etc have changed the way customers interact with your business. BenchmarkPortal is introducing a multichannel benchmark survey designed to capture valuable performance data for these various contact channels. We will unveil the survey and provide insights on key performance metrics that should be captured and monitored for these multiple channels. Playing a key role in its development, BenchmarkPortal's Director of Research and Analysis, John Chatterley, will be joining the call today to shed more light on this emerging culture and the first survey in the industry that takes that into account.
With Special Guest: Ed Poorbaugh, Manager Support Center Operations and Supplier Support Sysco Business Services Scheduling in a Call Center is very complex. Ed will share best practices on how to staff for OT and those undesirable shifts, as well as great ideas on ways to motivate the Representatives. Representatives are more than a resource to handle the work, they are an asset and Ed will share ways to show they are genuinely appreciated.
Organizations that make large investments in people typically have lower employee turnover, which is linked to higher customer satisfaction and profitability. Companies are investing thousands of dollars per employee in training. Are those investments paying off? Susan McDonald Osborn, Call Center Learning Strategist, will present common flaws in training programs and provide practical strategies for ensuring that training dollars translate to performance on the call center floor Susan McDonald Osborn is a Learning Strategy Consultant who assists organizations in maximizing the productivity of their workforces. With a master’s degree in human performance technology and over 20 years of experience, Susan brings best practices from both government and commercial entities to bear when working with call center clients. She has a strong background in learning solutions – from traditional classroom experiences to learning programs that combine high-tech and high-touch delivery methods. As a member of the BenchmarkPortal team, Susan conducts assessments of call center learning practices and programs, which enables her to recommend strategies for ensuring that investments in training contribute directly to top box performance.
Contact center managers from around the world, shared their best practices with us, in a brainstorming session at Call Center Campus, and now we want to share them with you!
Bruce Belfiore and Dee Buell will discuss some of their favorites and discuss why and how they can make a big difference in your contact center.
Taking a deeper dive into contact center operations, special guests Russ Rossi - Corporate Vice President for Customer Experience and Strategic Planning at NYLife AARP and Steve Ellis - Senior Director of Customer Care at Eye Med Vision Care, give us an inside view as to how they are continuing to ensure their contact centers stay ahead of the competition and remain best in class
Join host Bruce Belfiore and Kevin Childs, Senior Partner with OneSource Consulting and acting Contact Center Practice Leader with ManpowerGroup, as they discuss transitioning customer service teams for success with Generation Y. Your company can have a more engaged workforce, decrease your attrition, increased customer satisfaction and experience some profound financial impacts to the organization by placing a much stronger focus on redefining what development and growth means for Generation Y. Kevin will discuss four critical pillars to consider to keep their attention and engagement. Mr. Childs co-authored the book Interpreting the Voice of the Customer, with Dr. Jon Anton of Purdue University. Mr. Childs is also the acting Contact Center Practice Leader with ManpowerGroup. With career experience built on human capital/staffing and on-demand/Software-as-a- Service (SaaS) and workforce optimization industries, he has held numerous executive leadership positions that have influenced the Contact Center, Customer Service and Help Desk Industries.
Customer Service Representatives are always thirsting for more and more knowledge, whether it's regarding the markets they serve or the health benefits available to our service members. Health Net focuses on empathy with their military community. This has helped Health Net create a very unique culture where everyone feels a purpose or mission to serve those who serve our country. Guest: Fidel Ligsay is the Vice President of Call Center Operations for Health Net Federal Services, based out of Health Net's Rancho Cordova, California office. He has been in that role for the past 6 years supporting the TRICARE managed health care support contract for the country's North Region. This region supports close to 3 million beneficiaries, their families, and the providers of care in that region. Prior to that, Fidel held a similar role with Health Net's commercial managed care operation in Shelton, Connecticut. He also has extensive call center leadership experience in a number of other industries, including banking, and insurance. Fidel earned his MBA from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and currently resides just outside of Sacramento, California with his wife and two sons.
“Eliminating Your Customer Service Blind Spot with Co-Browse Technology” Customer service strategies have evolved over time to cover every communications channel - phone, chat, email, social media and more. But, with the exception of in-store service, most companies have lacked a visual component to customer service communications. Learn how Co-Browse technology is now being used in call centers to create a visual connection, enabling agents to see exactly what a customer sees on the screen during a call or chat. Dusty Stanford is the Sales Director at LiveLOOK. He has been in technology for the last 25 years and has worked with some of the leading call center companies in the world. Dusty has has held numerous positions in the contact center environment including successfully leading his own center. Dusty has extensive knowledge in call centers from an external and internal perspective.
Is employee engagement as strong as it could be in your organization? Is everyone highly motivated to do a great job every day? In this episode of Call Talk, Teresa Amabile describes a decade of research into the hearts and minds of people at work. Her results, and their implications for what managers and supervisors do every day, may surprise you. As mentioned in the show, click on the Progress Principal, for more info and how to apply it. Personal Work Diary Tool - for individuals Daily Progress Checklist -for Managers (coming soon!) Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, as well as a Director of Research. Her research investigates how life inside organizations can influence people and their performance. She is the coauthor of The Progress Principle, Creativity in Context, and Growing Up Creative, as well as over 150 scholarly papers, chapters, case studies, and presentations. She has presented her theories, research results, and practical implications to various groups in business, government, and education, including Google, Pixar, Intel, TEDx Atlanta, Procter & Gamble, Novartis International AG, and Motorola. Teresa holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University.
Leading with Labor CBRE executives reveal their unique insight and approach when addressing one of the biggest enterprise challenges moving forward - how to successfully implement solutions at the intersection of human capital and real estate.
Special Guests:
James Trobaugh As one of the founding partners and Senior Vice President of the CBRE Labor Analytics Group (LAG), Jim has spent the last 17 years developing a specialized practice within CBRE that has lead to over 800 site and market evaluation assignments, touring more than 650 cities. Mr. Trobaugh creates value utilizing his expertise, relationships and broad base knowledge of site selection, transaction services and client advisory solutions for strategic planning, market assessment and portfolio optimization, all focused at the intersection of labor and real estate.
Mark Seeley As the Senior Managing Director for CBRE’s Labor Analytics Group, Mark leads the Labor Analytics Group consulting practice. Mark has practiced corporate location and labor analysis consulting for over a decade, specializing in site selection, workforce strategy development, portfolio optimization, on-site labor assessments and economic incentive analysis and negotiations.
Applications like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and online customer communities have put the power into the hands of the consumer and customer, leaving companies at a loss for how to retain brand equity, how to interaction in these new channels and the affect of social media on their bottom-line business. Dr. Natalie’s recent research on the application of social media to customer service may be the tipping point for businesses to take Web 2.0 as a serious IT application that can literally transform a company, its customers, it culture and the bottom-line. And she’s developed an ROI model for customer service social media. Dr. Natalie provides guidance to CxOs, IT, CRM, chief customer service officers as well as customer experience and contact center professionals. She brings extensive knowledge in helping organizations understand their customers’ changing needs and the bottom-line value of acquiring and retaining loyal customers in a very competitive marketplace. Her research, founded on being the voice of the consumer, focuses in two areas. The first is by representing consumer expectations and experiences and the second is by helping companies to create customer experiences that create magnetic brand loyalty.
Does More Technology Really Make Your Center Perform Better? Learn The Just released results of groundbreaking research. Up to 30% Reduction in Cost per Call - through Technology alone! A new Research Report on Technology in the Call Center shows this and many other statistical ties between Technology and Call Center Performance. Download and read the Executive Summary first. Download Survey Here » Then tune in to our Encore Presentation on CallTalk live Wed., April 18th at 10 am PT / 1pm ET, when research team, Bruce Belfiore, John Chatterly and Dee Buell, will discuss their findings and open the floor to your questions.
Is your employee taking advantage of your medical leave policy or the Family Medical Leave Act? No one likes to be sick, and managers hate it even more when an employee uses that card for the wrong reason. However, there are legal issues protecting the employee and employer, and it’s up to you to know how to make the right decisions while managing your workforce. We are joined by an expert that will help us navigate what can be some very tricky water.
Join host Bruce Belfiore and senior contact center experts as they discuss caller satisfaction, agent satisfaction and best practices. We gathered many top managers and executives in the contact center industry during our October event, including Matt Conant of PLATO Learning - "Small changes can and did make a big difference to caller satisfaction, but sometimes the changes you need to makerequire some careful listening" Hear how they turned their center around, and Chuck Sartiano of Blue Cross Blue Shield Florida - "Facing up to the facts and acting on them created a 500% increase in Agent satisfaction" - How benchmarking, embracing weak points, and finding solutions on a collaborative basis united their center and boosted both morale and performance metrics. During the"20 Ideas in 20 minutes" segment you can listen to this rapid-fire series of best practices from contact center managers of leading centers, such as New York Life AARP and Citizens Energy Group. Each "pearl" is the fruit of actual positive, proven experiences. You will certainly come away with some actionable projects you can implement immediately. Many of the tips focus on making your employees into a team of high achievers.
We call up to one of the busiest Contact Centers in the world at time of year - Santa's Workshop. From WFM to FCR, we ask them to share their Best Practices with us. This entertaining but informative show is a compilation of call center best practices from the diverse team of Contact Center Experts here at BenchmarkPortal.
Voice User Interface Specialist, Sondra Ahlen, joins us to talk about the continuously emerging caller base of Latino speaking clients.
Two words reveal the secret of successful employee incentive programs: feedback and reinforcement. These are two of the four core tenets driving behaviors that affect KPI’s. Join Special Guest Bob Cowen from Snowfly on CallTalk to learn the best ways to utilize them to promote success behaviors in your center.
IVR's are designed to route a caller to the correct agent - but not at the cost of frustrating the caller with long menus or repetitive questions. Susan Hura, from Speach Usability, shares her insight on how to bring the IVR and agent together, creating a smooth road for the caller to travel.
Would you like to add diversity, flexibility and experience to your workforce through at-home agents? After managing a call center for one of the largest insurance companies in the world, Dee Buell shares her thoughts on how at-home agents can become successful in almost any industry.
Customer feedback is a powerful tool to improve service levels, eliminate inefficiencies, and create more loyal customers--but like any tool, it needs to be used properly to be effective. Hear Peter Leppik, industry expert, author and founder and CEO of Vocalabs, talk about proven, scientific strategies for making customer feedback work for you.
Paul Burton, author of Focus Pocus - 24 Tricks for Regaining Command of Your Day talks with host Bruce Belfiore about practical ways to get more control of your day, your work and your career. His ideas can be put to use by all call center managers to add minutes to your day...and possibly years to your life!
The IVR is a customers first contact with your business when calling in, so it is extremely important for it to start off well. Industry Expert Jay Minnucci joins us to talk about proper flow and design.
Bruce Belfiore talks again with Lisa Courteau about tested techniques that you can use in your Quality Assurance program to make your supervisors "agent advocates" and motivate your agents to embrace behavioral changes. Join us for a lively and illuminating discussion of practical best practices in this important area of call center management.
Bill Durr, an industry veteran of 25 years, joins us again for session two on our focused look into Analytical WFO. We will talk about the exciting new analytical applications being employed by enterprises and contact centers today. We will address how the changing customer demographics are forcing companies to focus on speech and text analytics, and why Customer Feedback management is equally crucial to surviving these hyper-competitive times. The episode will include interesting results from BenchmarkPortal's new Workforce Optimization study. We will be giving away 5 of Bill Durrs new book “Analytical Workforce Optimization Demystified” to 5 lucky listeners. Listen Live and be ready to email, for your chance to win!
Creating a quality monitoring program that is valued by the business requires you to have a well-developed strategy that is aligned with your organization's business objectives. But you can't stop there - it is just as important to create a culture in which agents value and look forward to having their calls evaluated. Lisa Courteau joins us to share her insights.
Bill Durr, an industry veteran of 25 years, joins us to help define Analytical WFO and discusses how certain advanced applications are used to identify and resolve skill and knowledge gaps in the workforce. We will also be covering traditional topics such as service level goals, schedule adherence and how many QM assessments are enough. The episode will include interesting results from BenchmarkPortal's new Workforce Optimization study. We will be giving away 5 of Bill Durr's new book “Analytical Workforce Optimization Demystified” to 5 lucky listeners. Listen Live and be ready to email, for your chance to win!
Workforce management is a white-hot topic for 2011. WFM expert Adam Cincoski joins us to talk about how to understand and embrace advanced workforce management as a key component of your success. Adam teaches the Workforce Management course for the College of Call Center Excellence and is one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet...really! So join us for this special WFM edition of CallTalk!
Becoming a great leader and inspiring others...in the turn and burn contact industry...is possible, and becoming a requirement. Kirk Weisler shares his techniques and ideas on employee involvement, engagement, and commitment.
Bruce Belfiore will interviews Kristin Beatty, site analytics specialist with CB Richard Ellis, on the key points to consider when selecting a contact center location. The session reveal's the latest research on site selection and the labor analytics which every manager should know before deciding on setting up at a new address.
When agents don't have the answers...some centers have them put the caller on hold so they can get the answer, while other centers have them escalate the call to a senior person via transfer. Traditionally centers with lower hold times have higher transfer rates, and vice-versa. Don't be satisfied with this old see-saw! By drilling down into call flows, agent training and knowledge management, centers can optimize results - reducing handle time, minimizing costs and maximizing caller satisfaction and enterprise value. Listen in to this very practical episode of CallTalk for ideas you can implement immediately. Dayne Petersen from Call Center Solutions shares her perspective with host Bruce Belfiore.
Chat, Email, SEO and IVR's...In the age of increasingly less humanized contact, we face a risk of forgetting how important the people behind the magic curtain really are, customers and employees included. After 25 years as the Customer Experience Executive in five major US Corporations, Jeanne Bliss will join us, to make sure we "earn the rave" no mater what the "flave" of contact.
"Hear author and industry expert Alex Demczak share his ideas and answer your questions on best practices in outbound calling. He will draw from three decades of experience and his book Optimizing Outbound Calls, written with Dr. Jon Anton. Whether outbound calls are a fraction of your activity or most of it, this session will provide you with ideas you can use."
Call Center Information: "Learn from a true expert in call center incentive plans. Dr. Brooks Mitchell will step you through the ways to optimize the bang you get for your incentive bucks - - how to avoid common mistakes, or how to design a plan if you don't have one yet. "
We apologize for the inconvenience, but our server went down and we need to postpone the show until September 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM PT
This is episode three (3) of season one (1). The next topic will be announced based on the highest votes.
This is episode two (2) of season one (1). The next topic will be announced based on the highest votes.