CallTalk Radio

Customer journey mapping isn't just an exercise in theory—it's the foundation for driving measurable business results. In this episode of CallTalk, Bruce Belfiore is joined by CX expert Justin Robbins to discuss Value Force Multipliers: the key actions that transform customer insights into tangible improvements for both customer satisfaction and the bottom line. Justin will break down how to identify these multipliers, why they matter, and how organizations can move beyond passive analysis to implement real-world solutions. With his candid, no-nonsense approach, Justin will challenge you to think differently about the role of data in customer experience and leave you with actionable strategies to make a measurable impact. If you're ready to turn insights into impact, this is the conversation you've been waiting for.   The call is about value force multipliers and how they can be used to improve customer experience. The speaker discusses the concept of value force multipliers and how they can be used to drive change in an organization. They also talk about the importance of identifying patterns, cross-functional brainstorming, and the need for small but impactful changes. The speaker also mentions the importance of aligning teams and avoiding overcomplicating data. The speaker and Bruce discuss the importance of focusing on measurable, actionable outcomes and the need to shift the perception of the contact center as a cost center to a growth engine. They also talk about the role of the mission statement in financing budgets. The call is about the future of customer experience and the role of value force multipliers in shaping the industry. The speaker is excited about the potential of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to help organizations quantify the impact of their decisions. 

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 McSorley Valerie 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 that enhance client performance and satisfaction. Her passion for building brands from the ground up is evident in her achievements, such as founding Contact Center Nation. This national series provided educational programming and high-level networking opportunities for contact center professionals. In 2016, she launched a multi-city tour, hosting events across 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/PT Host: Bruce Belfiore | CEO & Senior Research Analyst | BenchmarkPortal Guest Speaker: Michele Rowan | Work From Home Alliance Season: 15 | Episode Number: 3   Guest: Michele Rowan Michele 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 & Founder Jimmy 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. 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, 2023 Host: Bruce Belfiore | CEO & Senior Research Analyst | BenchmarkPortal Guest Speaker: Nicholas MacDonald Season: 14 | Episode Number: 1   Guest: Nicholas MacDonald Director 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 ​C​ustomer ​S​ervice ​P​rofessional 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.

Highlights from Call Center Campus - Everything You Need To Know