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My New Book (Kinda) will be out on Jan 4th! We have taken "MORE Advice from a Call Center Geek" and added 10 chapters to it and over 50 pages.

New chapters on AI, KPIs, Engagement, Outsourcing, WFH, new pricing guide, and more!

We also included a Final Exam that you can take with your team that will allow for a deep dive into your contact center to improve every facet of it.

If you are a listener to the podcast and want the new book FREE, all you have to do is join our Linkedin Call Center Tips and Tactics Group.  Not only will you get the book free, but you will also get to join a community of like-minded call center pros that can help with any issues or contact center questions you may have!

I will be offering my new call center ops book free for three days in the group! 

Click here to join Call Center Tips and Tactics:
https://lnkd.in/dqPnN3Nm

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "New Book" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel

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I got a Linkedin inMail from a listener that said:
Hey Tom!
Thanks for accepting my connection request so quickly.
I recently stumbled across your "Advice from a Call Center Geek" podcast and have been loving the content.
I'm a supervisor in a 25 head center about to apply for the manager position. I've listened to your New Manager cast from August and was wondering if you have a cast (or simply any advice) around what advice you would tell your 25-year-old self?
Thanks!
John- Avid Learner

This really got me thinking about what I would tell myself if I could go back in time and teach my 25-year-old call center self.  Being this episode is being recorded 2-3 days before the new year, I thought a self-reflection episode would make sense.  So I did it.  

I hope this helps all the younger (and older) call center team leads, supervisors, and managers out there!

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "New Year" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel

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Let's look at your contact centers efficiency as we head into the new year.  In this episode, we look at:

Call Routing and Skilling Mistakes
Utilizing Self Service the Right Way
Making sure we are Measuring the Proper Efficiency KPIs
     *Adherence
     *Occupancy
     *AHT

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "New Year" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel

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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!  As we record this episode, it is December 23rd, 2021, two days before Christmas.

We wanted to take some time at the time of year when you are off with family and away from work with an episode to get you to think a little about what will be happening in the contact center in 2022.  Here are our Top Ten trends that we are looking at and talking about in our contact center, what we have seen at all the contact center conferences, what what is being talked about in the industry.

*AI Revolution?
*Agent Assist Becomes Real
*New KPI's Emerge 
*Emergence of Non Contact Center CX
*Security for 2022
*At Home Training
*Realtime Reporting Upgrades
*NFT's, Smart Contacts, Metaverse
*Cloud Apotion in All Parts of Business
*Crypto from Payments

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "Call Center Manager" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel

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I am doing a down and dirty episode here with my knee-jerk reactions to the Customer Contact Week (aka call center week) conference. 

This episode has not been edited and has been recorded on my iPhone as I left my mic back at home but I didn’t want to wait to record as I didn’t want to forget anything. 

The is my CCW recap episode. 

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "Call Center Manager" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel

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Friends, we have done deep into the law here with our attorneys to create a full policy for the upcoming January 4th mandated date for all companies, (we are focusing on contact centers) that have over 100 employees to comply with the government vaccine mandate.

After you listen to this episode, you will be fully versed in the law, the dates that are of importance, what constitutes vaccinated, and what you can and cannot legally ask your employees about their vaccination status.

On top of all that, if you do not have a Vaccine Mandate Policy, I am more than happy to not only give you ours, but also our one-pager for the employees, and the documents you need to keep track of is employees are vaccinated, unvaccinated, getting weekly testing, or have exemptions.

To download our policy, we have posted it here on Linkedin:
Vaccine Mandate Policy

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "Call Center Manager" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel

Send us a text

The week before Thanksgiving is a great time of the year.  It's time where you can reset some of the negativity that you may have in your contact center, and accent the positivity using some motivational tactics that really get a boost when paired with the holiday season.

In this episode (129) we talk about ways to engage and motivate employees during the holidays, ways you can utilize social media with your teams better to motivate and enhance culture, and we also discuss bonuses and some bonus structures that I have used in the past in the contact center environment.

This episode is all about your agents and helping develop the culture you want.

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "Call Center Manager" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel

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I am always thinking about how can my contact center be different?  How can we have better quality, how can we as management engage our employees better?

One of the thoughts that I had when I was out sick with Covid, was doing a Reddit style Ask Me Anything (AMA) and having all the employees do just that, and me anything they want.

It was AWESOME!

So many times we just assume that people understand why we do what we do, why this policy is in effect, why we don't allow that.  If we dont explain then may times there is the assumpltion of "thats just how it's always been done" or " they just want to be mean", or even "that makes no sense!"

This allowed me to explain questions, policies, procedures, and topics that I did t realize needed to be discussed in more depth.  It was a great experience and really enhanced our corporate communication culture.

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "Call Center Manager" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel

If you are going or think about going to Customer Contact Week (Aka Call Center Week) Dec 13-16 2021 at Caesars Forum, Las Vegas we want you to come to our Party!

We are taking all the money that we would have spent for a booth at the show, to have a one-day party on our suite at Caesars.  Networking, industry talks, booze, and fun... it's all here.

Listen to the podcast, know me, interested in call center networking...you are invited.

All you need to do is shoot me an email at [email protected] to get a free ticket to the fun!

Call Center Geek Palooza!!!

This episode is brought to you by Balto.

• Balto's Real-Time Guidance helps your agents say the right things on every single call
• Get 26% more sales and cut ramp time by 75%.
• In just a little over a month.
• Head over to balto.ai/tom to get a free pair of Bose headphones for a demo

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This episode is a little different than what we normally do, much more personal.  10 days before recording this, I tested positive for covid, this at a time when Covid has hit our Expivia contact center family petty hard, much harder than in 2020.

I want to give you my perspective on how I dealt with this and how it changed my perception of my WFH agents and my thought process on dealing with agents, even WFH agents that test positive.  This was a big wake-up call for me.

I also want to talk through the vaccine mandate that will be coming into play for many of us the first week of January, how we are dealing with team members that don't want to get vaccinated, policies that we are having to put in place, and just overall how we are dealing with the mandate.

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Schedule time with me to talk about anything call center related:
https://calendly.com/call_center_advice/15min
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
Text Me: Text "Call Center Manager" to 814-247-0633

 Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform selection, AI implementations, and NICE Studio and integration services. 

Same honest, vendor-neutral advice you hear on the Call Center Geek podcast, applied directly to your specific operational challenges. 

Schedule a consultation at ExpiviaDigital.com to discuss your contact center technology strategy. 

Click here:

expiviadigital.com

Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel