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 [email protected].

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.