CallTalk™ Radio

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.