In this episode, Jeff and I sit down with Carolina Aramayo, SVP, Contact Center Transformation at BBVA and discuss how the contact center has shifted over the last 12 months and her thoughts on if these changes are here to stay.

Jaysa Boyer is the Sr. Director of Corporate Alliances at Ultimate Medical Academy and Brandi Yates is the Sr. Director of Workforce Solutions for UMA. 

Listen is as they talk about CCW and how we are all living in a "new reality."

Listen is as we are joined by special guest, Natalie Beckerman, EVP and Chief Operating Officer for Fidelity Home Warranty. 

Natalie shares with us a glimpse into what she will be doing at CCW this year as well as some thoughts on the upcoming challenges contact centers will face over the next 12 months. 

Hear Lori talk about her involvement with CCW and get her take on how contact centers are continuing to adjust to the world of work from home.

Customer Contact Week (CCW) is coming up June 28th in Las Vegas and we are running a series of interviews with speakers and board members from the event.  

In this episode, we are joined by Mike Bowman, Director of Servicing Operations at ECSI. Mike has been managing contact centers for over 20 and you can tell that he loves what he does! 

Hear Mike talk about his experience with CCW and the trends he is seeing out there around automation & chatbots.

In today's episode of "Bridging the Gap," we are joined by Cheryl China, Director of Credit Card Servicing for Citizens Bank to talk about the upcoming CCW (Contact Center Week) event being held in Las Vegas. Cheryl is a board member for CCW and will be speaking at the conference so tune in to get a teaser into the hot topic she will be covering.

In today's episode, we interview Lisa Oswald, SVP of Customer Service at Travel Zoo about the effects of the pandemic on the travel industry and the future it brings. 

Check out a full episode coming up Wednesday, May 26th at 12:00 pm EST and hear how TravelZoo confronted the pandemic head-on and is applying lessons learned to build the CX program of the future.

In the upcoming fireside chat you will learn:

- How TravelZoo shifted priorities when all travel halted worldwide.

- How the pandemic has changed customer support now and in the future.

- What the customer experience (CX) program of the future looks like.

Listen in to hear about some exciting events coming up here at Cresta.ai

The pandemic forever changed business. In the last 14 months, we saw companies' ability to pivot become magnified, strategic initiatives such as digital transformation got accelerated, and a fast track to remote work happened almost overnight. 

The organizations that couldn't adjust fast enough either no longer exist or are about to get wiped out.

The reason is, there is a post-pandemic spending surge about to erupt. 

McKinsey estimates annual productivity will double the average it saw during the post-financial crisis and JP Morgan just reported there is $2.8 trillion more cash in checking accounts than pre-pandemic. Let that settle in for a second...

The travel bug is already busting out all over. This past Sunday recorded 1.5M folks that flew. A year ago to the day was 91,000.

In healthcare, patients are booking all the procedures they postponed.

In entertainment, concerts are getting planned and stadiums are opening back up. 

Retail is already up 9.8% in March and the list goes on and on. 

With this surge comes opportunity but also some underlying challenges that must be addressed.

For instance, call volume exploded when the pandemic hit. Reports indicate it was upwards of an 800% increase and customer satisfaction took a heavy hit as consumers were stuck waiting on hold. 

If consumers are spending at record levels for the next 12+ months, call and chat volumes are destined to spike and the contact center is about to get severely tested again.

The question is, are contact centers prepared to accommodate consumer demand without impacting customer service this second time around? 

Who will succeed? Who will fail? 

The stakes are high - $2.8 trillion is up for grabs.

Every organization has a performance gap between its top performers and the rest.   

In this week's episode, James and Jeff discuss some of the ramifications this has on a business and some of the ways companies are trying to close that gap which is not very effective.   

Have you witnessed a big gap in performance when calling into support or sales? We would love to hear about it, good or bad.