Call Center Innovation | eBook

The largest, most comprehensive call center event in the world is back for 2013. Our 70+ high-level speakers will present innovative and practical case studies to our 1200+ attendees. To introduce you to our speakers, we asked them to share their insights on the most pressing call center questions. Here’s what they had to say..

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Table of Contents

Leading Executives

Marc Bernica | Bright Horizons…………………………..…………….… 3

Shawn Castle | Valvoline Support Center…………….……………… 5

Lisa Church | 1st Advantage Federal Credit Union…………..…… 6

Alexandra da Silva | NH Hotels……………………………………….…… 7

Jamie Haenggi | Protection 1……………………………………..……….. 9

Toni-Ann Mills | Fenwal, a Fresenius Kabi Company…………… 11

Meg Neafsey | American Water………………………………………….. 12

Lynn O’Neill | New York Life……………………………….………………. 14

Jane Pearson-Wray | Electrolux…………………………..……………… 15

Kevin Wilde | General Mills…………………………………….………….. 16

Jonathan Wolske | Zappos.com………………………………………….. 17

Call Center Thought-Leaders

Mike Ashe | Mattersight…………………………………………….……….. 19

John Bardamill | TMG International…………………………………….. 20

Bradley Baumunk | Genesys………………………………………………… 22

Mike Burke | IQ services……………………………………………….…..… 23

Neil Hooper | Plantronics………………………………………………..….. 25

Umesh Jain | NowAnalytics…………………………………………………. 27

Tara Kelly | SPLICE Software……………………………………………….. 29

About Call Center Week……………………..………………….……….. 30

Sponsorship……………………..…………………………………….……….. 31

Editor’s Welcome

One of the great perks of working on Call Center Week, the largest Call Center event in the world, is that I get to talk with the industry’s leading executives. Every executive in our Call Center Innovation | Speaker eBook has an impressive knowledge set, whether it is about customer experience, operations, marketing, technical applications, process management or company culture. Each of the speakers in the eBook was kind enough to share their insight ahead of their speaking engagements at Call Center Week. They will share their knowledge with over 1,200 attendees, and this is just a small preview of the lessons you’ll take from Las Vegas. I hope you enjoy.

- Shawn Siegel

http://www.callcenterweek.com/

http://www.callcenterweek.com/

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Marc Bernica VP Back-Up Care Advantage & Contact Center Operations

Bright Horizons Fortune Top 100 Places to Work 14 straight years

2012 Center of Excellence, BenchmarkPortal

At Call Center Week:

Creating a Winning Call Center Culture When families call looking for care for their loved ones, they need to be served by people who do more than process a transaction; they need personal service from someone ready to provide a customized caring solution. Bright Horizons is a 2012 recipient of the Center of Excellence Award and has been on the Fortune Top 100 Places to Work for 14 straight years. Find out how the company’s guiding principles are engrained in the culture to the point where every employee is living and breathing its core values. You’ll hear outstanding results caused by their employee engagement including 80% of their new hires are employee referrals and their customer satisfaction averages 97.3%.

MARC’S INSIGHT:

What are some of the biggest challenges of keeping employees engaged and excited about their work? Marc Bernica: I think how you frame someone’s job is important. If people feel like what they do is valuable and important, they are far more likely to invest themselves in it. In a vacuum, many of the things that we measure people on in contact centers imply that they are just cogs in a call-answering machine. Efficiency and productivity are important, but “being productive” isn’t really the type of mission that get’s people out of bed excited to go to work in the morning. We try to help people understand the important role they play in providing service to our customers, explain why the products and services our company provides are important, and reinforce this by sharing examples where good service made a difference for a customer. Additionally you can’t ask for people to be engaged without providing an outlet for that engagement. We ask for their input on how things can improve for both employees and customers and act on it. We ask them to use their brains, not just process and procedure, to solve customer problems. Continued..

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MARC CONTINUED:

How does superior customer service impact your company’s bottom line? Marc Bernica: We can directly correlate a customer’s service experience with both their likelihood to reuse our service and likelihood to recommend it to others. For example, one of the businesses supported by our call center is back-up child care. Customers using this service are in need of spur-of-the-moment care for their children. In many cases this means leaving their child with someone they have not met before or at a child care center that they have never visited. As you can imagine, parents don’t do that if they don’t trust you. We have found that our initial interaction with them over the phone is the single biggest way to build their trust and confidence. When we are empathetic, responsive, and cover all the bases, the parent comes away reassured that their child will be in good hands.

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Shawn Castle Manager Valvoline Support Center


Revolutionizing Customer Experience Across Multiple Channels Discover how to deliver a personalized customer experience by taking a multichannel approach to your call center. Walk away with strategies for customer data that converts feedback from phone calls, e-mails, chats, and social media into actionable insights.

SHAWN’S INSIGHT:

Has new technology radically transformed your call center in the last 5 years? Shawn Castle: Yes, recently, we upgraded our Incident Management system that enabled us to eliminate non-value added work. Our team can function at a higher level of efficiency and can spend more time with internal and external customers instead of performing administrative tasks. Additionally, we enhanced our Computer Telephone Integration software to included chat as an interaction type. This has allowed us to offer additional channels to our customers. Call centers can be overwhelmed with analytics. How do you figure out how to turn the data into actionable ideas? Shawn Castle: We utilize analytics to provide direction on our strengths and our opportunities. It is easy to get lost in the vast majority of data that is available to most organizations. First, we listen to what the data is revealing. We use several sources to verify that the data that we are evaluating is valid. Next, we identify sustainable trends opposed to noise. This allows us to spend our time and efforts on big issues opposed to making knee jerk reactions that are not sustainable. After trends are identified, we choose the item that will yield our biggest return. We may choose our top call driver or something that will significantly reduce customer effort. Once the target is in sight, we assemble the cross-functional team to develop a mitigating strategy.

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Lisa Church Chief Experience Officer

1st Advantage Federal Credit Union Best Customer Experience in Spain Amongst All Sectors Best Customer Experience in Tourism Sector in Spain and Latin America Best Unified Call Center Technology in Spain


Engraining Customer Experience into Culture Credit unions like 1st Advantage are not-for-profit financial co-ops. The focus is on members, not outside investors, and profits are reinvested into the credit union. Find out how 1st Advantage Federal Credit Union engages front-line and senior management employees to provide exceptional customer experience. Learn how to create the cultural environment for innovation through your values and the experience you want to provide to both employees and customers.

LISA’S INSIGHT:

How much do you rely on training to ensure your employees fully buy into the importance of customer experience? Lisa Church: A lot! We “set the stage” on day one at our New Employee Orientation program, where part of the day is set aside for an overview of our core values and how they affect the way we interact with our customers, vendors and fellow colleagues. We follow that up with a 2-day 1A Academy program that every employee attends to cover our core values and our “Member Declaration” in detail. This training helps employees understand our service philosophy and see the practical ways it can be applied day-to-day. Each year we refresh service skills for the entire staff with our Academy Reunion class, covering a new approach to different facets of customer service and the member and colleague experience. Our service values are also reinforced in all skill and product sessions as well as through ongoing coaching by managers. Have new technologies changed your approach to customer service? Lisa Church: Definitely. Technology has created brand new channels

like mobile and tablets and improved access to customer data. It also

caused a steady rise in online transactions and instant access to

information that reduces the number of opportunities for us to speak

to our customers. This has caused us to sharpen our focus on making

the most of every interaction. We understand that customers who do

take the time to speak with us expect more from the conversation than

they have in the past.

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Alexandra da Silva VP Reservations & Contact Center Operations

NH Hotels Best Customer Experience in Spain Amongst All Sectors Best Customer Experience in Tourism Sector in Spain and Latin America Best Unified Call Center Technology in Spain


Increase Sales in a Multi-Language, Multi-Channel Contact Center NH Hotels ranks third among European business hotels and currently has 400 hotels with around 60,000 rooms in 25 countries in Europe, America and Africa. In this session, Alexandra will present a case study about how NH Hotels increased sales in the contact center.

ALEXANDRA’S INSIGHT:

What does the call center of the future look like to you? Alexandra da Silva: It seems that the trend of new call centers is

going more towards a self-service center without having a “real”

agent available on the phone. We do live in a world in which things

are changing in an extremely fast manner, and in which people

expect to have an answer immediately at any time (24 x 7). Nearly

everybody is nowadays connected through their mobiles or tablets

in any place. It is for that reason that the trend and the customer

expectations are changing.

The customer of the future will be connected through social media

and therefore will not be disappointed to receive an answer from

an automatic Voice. For that reason companies should restructure

their assets with the focus on being able to decrease Call Centre

Cost: Less Employee’s, less Infrastructure, less variable & fixed cost

etc.

But, human intervention is still and will be really important

How do you try and reduce employee turnover in your contact center? Continued..

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ALEXANDRA CONTINUED:

Alexandra da Silva: One of the most important points to me is to

hire the right people, not only with the right skills but also who fit

into the company culture and the existing team. I think creating a

positive working environment, in which the employees feel part of

the company - which in the call center is obviously quite challenging

to do – is also an extremely important issue. How can they feel part

of the company?

Through communication by mailing, internal meetings, informing

about daily -, weekly -, monthly -, quarterly -, yearly results; creating

Action Plans together with the Agent and yearly appraisals so that

they know where they stand. The team leader should have an eye

for detail and a proactive way of approaching and encouraging

his/her employees. The Call Center Agents needs to understand in

which direction the company wants to go, what is important and

what are the KPI’s and their own Goals. Those Goals and KPI’s must

be achievable, but not as easy.

Another point which does not affect in any way the cost of running a

Call Center is the advanced planning of the employees holidays or

working schedule.

I’m sure every Agent feels more motivated and appreciated if his/her

wishes are being addressed.

Also creating special incentives – playing different motivating games

throughout the working day will help them to achieve their goals in a

more enjoyable environment.

Congratulations from the manager for a team member should be visible

to the whole team.

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Jamie Haenggi Chief Marketing & Customer Experience Officer Protection 1


Ensuring a Clear and Consistent Message About Customer Experience Protection 1 has over 65 locations but actively ensures the company thinks and acts like one team. Protection 1’s culture can be described as a demanding, yet caring, environment. The company believes that setting high expectations inspires employees to be the best they can be. Find out how Protection 1 has created a culture that allows for employees to reach their true potential.

JAMIE’S INSIGHT:

How does superior service impact Protection 1’s bottom line? Jamie Haenggi: The strategy for our call centers is to ensure that

we create a differentiated customer experience that is beyond

what the rest of the security industry has to offer and incorporates

the “ideal experience we would want when dealing with a

company.” By keeping our strategy based on “how we would want

to be treated,” it allows all front line employees to understand why

we do certain things and creates a company-wide alignment in our

customer and employee experiences. That’s why our employees

embraced our “perfect day” measurement, which they have

met >97% of the time in 2012.

How customer service has delivered on the company’s bottom line

is by helping to reduce customer attrition year over year while

maintaining the lowest attrition in the industry. We reduced call

volume and handle times through a Six Sigma focused approach to

process improvement and delivered a 4% decrease on our

operating budget, while the company grew 11%.

Continued..

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JAMIE CONTINUED:

How do you keep your employees engaged and excited about their work? Jamie Haenggi: In all of our centers, we engage our employees to

help create the culture they want to be a part of. Through these

efforts, we have employee led initiatives that include:

• A welcome committee that helps new team members feel

“plugged in” and part of the P1 family

• A mentor program that helps build employee leadership and

aids the development of newer employees

• An employee speakers bureau that provides an outlet for

employees to share their interests with others as well as develop

their public speaking and presentation skills

We also have other clubs that include interests such as local art,

biking and running—all employee led, fueled by team member

communication and support. This level of employee engagement

helps encourage employees to not just be here, but want to be

here and impact the lives of their customers and peers in a

positive way.

Secondly, we engage our employees through training and coaching.

Because of our standard of less than 10% of calls being transferred,

cross-training has been a core element of our culture for the past two

years. Employees enjoy the empowerment that comes from cross

training and often seek out additional training. We enable employees

to cross train not just in other departments within the call center, but

also outside the call center in our field offices. Our Branch

Engagement programs allow selected call center representatives to

spend a day with a technician in customer homes, a day with a sales

rep knocking on doors and designing security systems or sitting with a

branch administrator understanding the issues they deal with. This

cross education also helps develop a culture of “one team” vs. “center

against field office.”

These efforts have led to a 22% drop in absenteeism and a 50%

decrease in turnover, year over year.

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Toni-Ann Mills Global Director – Learning & Development Fenwal, a Fresenius Kabi Company


Competency-Based Learning and Development Competency–based training allows consistency and standards on a global basis, while at the same time ensuring that local needs our met. Our distinguished speaker from Fenwal, a Fresenius Kabi Company, which is a diversified medical equipment company based in Germany, has over 12 years experience managing global operations.

TONI-ANN’S INSIGHT:

How do you keep employees engaged and excited about their work? Toni-Ann Mills: We are all challenged by one or more of the following motivators - ego (I did it), task (satisfaction from the completion of the job), social solidarity (being member of an identified group), external rewards (certificates, gifts etc.). We make sure that we are focusing on these motivators on a regular basis. Publicly recognizing individual performers, undertaking group celebrations and fun events, ensuring that people can complete the task and it is measured in a way that provides them with satisfactory feedback.

What are the biggest challenges of reducing employee tunover? Toni-Ann Mills: Being able to provide personal professional

development in the fast pace of having to get things done.

People move on to find new challenges or a place that will

allow them to develop as individuals.

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Meg Neafsey VP Customer Service American Water Winner IQPC 2012 Call Center Excellence – Best in Class (over 200 staff)


Driving Performance with Solid Operating Principles and Objectives American Water employs approximately 6,700 dedicated professionals and provides an estimated 14 million people in 30 states with water and wastewater service. Their success can be attributed, in part, to investment in technology as well as a culture of performance, accountability and measurement. Get an inside look into their key operating principles.

MEG’S INSIGHT:

What are the biggest challenges of reducing employee turnover in the call center environment?

Meg Neafsey: The biggest challenges of reducing employee turnover in call centers are finding the best recruits and offering a worthwhile career path.

To find the best recruits we utilize local recruiting channels to identify potential candidates. We have a well-defined candidate profile and predictive testing tools to support identification of the candidates most likely to be successful in our environment. We also work with local temporary agencies/vendors to keep the candidate pipeline full to help reduce cycle time for filling positions.

In order to offer employees a worthwhile career path and ensure the long term viability of the staff, we utilize a talent review process to identify key talent and then work to create development plans to help the individuals develop skills/knowledge/experience for future roles. We also utilize special assignments and/or projects to continually challenge individuals to grow within their current roles. Finally, we give our internal candidates preferential treatment "key candidate" status when filling positions before seeking external candidates.

Continued..

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MEG CONTINUED:

How do you keep your employees engaged and excited about their work?

Meg Neafsey: American Water uses strategic efforts and good communications to ensure that all department projects and activities support the overall corporate mission, vision and values and that all employees are engaged in the effort to achieve them. Each year, our company’s executive leadership team communicates its targets. Using these, our CSC management team works to develop an action plan that will ensure we meet standards set for customer satisfaction, quality, first contact resolution, and other performance measures. To make sure all employees understand and support the targets, we hold short overview meetings and ask for employees’ input and support in brainstorming ways to achieve success in key areas. This process has helped us to identify areas of opportunity for improvement and has helped employees engage in the process of bringing value to our customers.

The management team works together and with their teams to make

sure they are able to look at projects and opportunities to assess the

real value to American Water and our customers. We work hard to

make sure we are doing the right things and that we are doing them

well, all while trying to make our center a fun environment.

Transparent open communications, collaboratively seeking input and

ideas, balanced feedback recognition and celebration of successes are

important to keeping employees engaged.

Our employees are empowered to make decisions and encouraged to

ask questions and challenge the process. For example, customer service

representatives were involved in determining methods for awarding

overtime. They helped develop the policies for swapping of overtime,

volunteering for overtime, and a policy change that includes rest periods.

This created mechanisms for them to make decisions on their own work-

life balance. By working together we were able to identify and

implement practices that help support individual needs.

Our employees enjoy and feel very engaged when our supervisors create

healthy and fun performance competitions. Our CSRs hold themselves

to high standards and like to showcase what they can accomplish as a

team. We take time to celebrate our successes. Individual, team and

overall center recognition is frequent. We find that a often a simple

“thank you” for a job well done goes a long way to keeping employees

engaged and excited about their work.

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Lynn O’Neill Corporate Vice President New York Life


Finding the Best Fit: Recruiting for Your Culture & Hiring Assessments for Talent Development Find out how New York Life reduced turnover from 2.5% to 1% and firmly believes that you “should never settle” with your hiring selections. During this session you’ll learn about New York Life’s hiring assessment process and how they’ve streamlined it for top efficiency. You’ll have a chance to see the actual hiring assessment dashboards used by the New York Life. Walk away with strategies for uncovering the right fit for the right jobs - all in accordance with your overall culture and mission.

LYNN’S INSIGHT:

What are the biggest challenges of reducing employee turnover in the call center environment? Lynn O’Neill: We are very lucky and have low turnover. We

always want to focus on our attrition levels and the key

drivers. It's important to set realistic, achievable metrics and

to ensure that employees clearly understand the

expectations. Additionally, our recognition program rewards

top performers for their achievements. This keeps all of us

focused on a common vision.

Can you discuss a successful recruiting program that New York Life has initiated within the past few years? Lynn O’Neill: We typically recruit 10-20 associates at a time.

We cast a wide net to identify candidates through internal and

external recruiting efforts. We've fine tuned our interview

process and the questions we ask to ensure a right fit for the

candidate to our culture. We really want the candidate to see

the environment, understand the expectations and get a clear

vision of what a real day will consist of

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Jane Pearson-Wray CSG – Sr. Manager, Continuous Improvement Electrolux


Transitioning from Service to Sales

This session will focus on improving your agents’ ability to strengthen customer relationships and drive more revenue for your organization. Electrolux Major Appliances, a global leader in household appliances selling more than more than 40 million products to customers in 150+ markets, manufacturer’s strong brands including Electrolux and Frigidaire products. In 2011, a new CEO started and launched 10 “smart initiatives” with one directed to the contact center – generate revenue dollars for after market needs. Find out how the company converted calls into a sales opportunity and achieved a 325% growth in consumable goods revenue in just one year.

JANE’S INSIGHT:

What are some of the biggest challenges of keeping employees engaged and excited about their work? Jane Pearson-Wray: Working in a call center by nature is challenging. Most consumers are not contacting you to tell you how great you are (although we do occasionally get those calls). Most are contacting you because they have an issue requiring your attention and resolution. So this means, as a leader, you are often faced with attrition, absenteeism and morale issues. With this in mind, we often have team and individual contests. We have monthly and quarterly rewards and recognition programs. When special projects come up, we reward high performing agents with an opportunity to work on those projects. This presents a huge opportunity for cross-functional learning. And when we hear or see an agent doing a good job, we make an effort to acknowledge it right then and there Can you briefly discuss the success Electrolux has had converting calls into sales opportunities? Jane Pearson-Wray: The obvious success was the increase in revenue. In 2012, we delivered almost $5M in revenue due to the focus on converting calls into sales (up over $3M YOY). Agents are able to earn additional money through commissions. Additional funding is provided for rewards and recognition programs.

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Kevin Wilde Chief Learning Officer General Mills @GeneralMills

2012 #1 Learning Elite company, CLO

magazine

2012 #2 Leadership Development, Fortune


Dancing with the Talent Stars : Tapping into Talent for Growth Wheaties is an iconic brand. The world’s most prominent athletes have endorsed “the breakfast of champions.” Our distinguished keynote’s primary job as a practitioner in the field of talent management has been to nurture the internal champions – dedicated employees. This thought provoking session will draw on Kevin Wilde’s years of experience at two companies renowned for talent development – General Electric and General Mills. Talent has become a natural rhythm of the business, developing a mindset where the employees are a product which to invest and build for the future.

KEVIN’S INSIGHT:

How do you keep your employees engaged?

Kevin Wilde: Engagement is a matter of connection to the job,

the company and the mission, but also the immediate

manager. And we have had an initiative here for a number of

years now from going from a company with good managers to

great. And we have done some internal studies that show the

difference between good and great and show the enormous

high levels of engagement. So we have been spreading the

news, and doing training and encouraging managers to take

their good skills about being a good boss and being great. We

have seen traction on that. We have seen employees

reporting higher levels of having a great manager experience.

And all that translates to engagement, innovation, and extra

motivation.

https://twitter.com/generalmills

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Jonathan Wolske Culture Evangelist Zappos.com @ZapposInsights


Zappos.com Site Tour Join us for a tour at the Henderson, Nevada corporate headquarters to learn about the Zappos Family approach to customer loyalty, human resources, recruiting, training, and culture creation. During this tour, you’ll get to experience the inner workings of the Zappos Family of companies, learn the history of Zappos.com and find out how $1 billion dollars in gross merchandise sales was achieved in less than 10 years. You’ll also experience how a values’ based organization uses strong culture to live out every day.

JONATHAN’S INSIGHT:

How does superior customer service impact your company’s bottom line? Jonathan Wolske: We are very lucky and have low turnover. We

always want to focus on our attrition levels and the key drivers. It's

important to set realistic, achievable metrics and to ensure that

employees clearly understand the expectations. Additionally, our

recognition program rewards top performers for their

achievements. This keeps all of us focused on a common vision.

How do you go about keeping employees engaged and excited about their work? Jonathan Wolske: We hire people who are aligned with our

company’s values and vision. We are a service company that just

happens to sell clothing and shoes, so everyone fully understands

what we are all about. The culture includes the value ‘Create fun

and little weirdness’, which means that our individual personalities

shine through all we do, so there is the sense of ownership in the

customer experience. We also celebrate lots of ‘wins’ and share

great customer responses with everyone, which helps to reinforce

the importance of ‘Delivering WOW through Service’ and reminds

contact center reps that we truly value the work they do.

https://twitter.com/ZapposInsights

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MIKE ASHE Vice President Mattersight @Mattersight


Personality Matters Each person has different behavioral characteristics that define their world view, psychological needs and the way they interact with the world around them. The way they communicate and the language they use, on a second-by-second basis, are advertisements that provide a clear window into their personality and behavior. Knowing how important personality and behavior are to human interaction, behavioral connection can advance Customer Relationship Management to the next level.

MIKE’S INSIGHT:

How does superior customer service directly impact a call center’s bottom line? Mike Ashe: Every customer interaction is an opportunity to catapult or damage your brand and business. Call Center Agents are often a company’s primary touch point for customer service needs. Agents serve as the bridge between their company’s customers and the management team, which ultimately affects the bottom line since a good or a bad experience in the call center can have a direct impact upon retention/renewal, additional sales, cost of service, brand loyalty or other metrics. And with today’s social media environment, the result can be amplified from one interaction to millions of customers and prospects. What does the call center of the future look like to you? Mike Ashe: We see a future where call center agents have more information to satisfy customers and avoid customer frustration. Solutions like our Behavioral Analytics are built upon the premise that a multi-channel view of the customer is critical. For instance, knowing that your caller is contacting you because he just tried to complete a mobile transaction, and failed, is important. We also see the information at hand going beyond transactional and demographic data. It is now possible to know the callers state of mind, likely intent, personality and communication style. Even among friends, you engage one person differently than another, based upon what you know about

their personality. The same will be possible with callers in the future

when Behavioral Analytics is more widespread.

https://twitter.com/mattersight

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JOHN BARDAWILL Managing Director TMG International


When Training Isn’t Enough: An Agent Development Methodology that Improves Business Results Hear how TMG International Inc. developed a unique competency framework and methodology to help Aeroplan re-engage and re-orient its agents around the organization’s new vision and mission. Key components of this methodology will be explored including how to develop an organizational model that allows for sufficient and ongoing coaching.

JOHN’S INSIGHT:

What are the biggest challenges of reducing employee turnover in the call center environment? John Bardawill: Creating a caring culture that allows for constant

growth is a critical staple in today’s call centers. Typically today,

there are three types of people working in these operations: They

are baby boomers, gen X’s, and gen Y‘s. Each of these groups has

different needs, goals and life objectives. Contact centers, as they

have become more sophisticated, need employees who are

committed for the long-term due to the need for greater product,

systems, and sales knowledge and the associated training and

related costs. In addition, over time, consumers and business

customers have come to expect a higher level of service, which

means that employee retention becomes even more important.

Against this backdrop, gen x and y have greater expectations for

promotion, income, and job expectations than their predecessors

(the baby boomers), creating in essence a perfect storm. In

summary, while there is always a challenge to find good people, it is

going to get considerably more difficult to find great people, train

them well and then retain them.

Continued..

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JOHN CONTINUED:

What does the call center of the future look like to you? John Bardawill: The call center of the future will be only referred

to as a contact center. It will be smaller in size, more technology

centric, and be composed of multiple channels including social

media (blogs, twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc.). In addition, it will

support sophisticated transactionally focused websites. The skill

sets of agents will be expanded to accommodate and manage

these multiple channels. All contact centers will be viewed as

profit centers and managers will be trained to act as true general

managers. Critically, these operations will have an overriding

revenue focus relative to customer experience and efficiency

which will be driven through ongoing technology enhancements

that drive lower cost, and more time-sensitive ways of

communicating.

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BRADLEY BAUMUNK Solution Marketing Genesys @GenesysLab


Complete Customer Experience The key to taking your business to the next level in today’s world is through positive customer interactions. Find out how to implement solutions for winning new customers, increasing customer loyalty and achieving key business goals.

BRADLEY’S INSIGHT:

What are the biggest challenges of reducing employee turnover? Bradley Baumunk: Pay is always important, but pay for performance is more important. Give your employees the opportunity to earn more based on their performance and make sure you have a solid performance review plan in place. But, turnover is primarily driven by poor leadership. From Supervisors to Managers to Directors, make sure you have the right training plan in place for your leadership. Without great leaders, you will have high attrition. How do you keep employees engaged and excited about their work? Bradley Baumunk: First and foremost, include top performers in the decision making process. Your front line employees know more about your systems and customers than anyone in your organization. Engage them early and often for their feedback to ensure a smooth transitions to new systems and processes.

https://twitter.com/genesyslab

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Mike Burke VP Sales & Marketing IQ Services


Interactive Roundtable Peer-to-Peer experiences, led by subject matter experts. Mike will lead a discussion on “Optimizing Customer Experience Management.”

MIKE’S INSIGHT:

What does the call center of the future look like to you? Mike Burke: Though each and every C2B interaction won’t

have to be multi-modal, those that should be will be. My

favorite example is “My furnace isn’t working and it’s cold

here in Minnesota – help me please!” Imagine, if you will,

waking up some January morning to discover a very cold

house & your boiler leaking water. You call your service

company and when the agent asks what the issue is, you tap

the camera icon on you smartphone and show the agent

what’s leaking, and then pan over to the boiler label so there’s

no doubt about the age or type of boiler. The agent makes an

educated guess as to what’s needed to repair your system and

places the order so the tech will have the right parts on the

truck, and then pushes a list of possible appointment times to

your phone. You bring up your calendar to figure out when

you’ll be home in the next 12 hours and pick a timeslot that

fits your schedule with the tap of a finger. That’s where call

centers are going.

Continued..

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MIKE CONTINUED:

How do you keep employees engaged and excited about their work?

Mike Burke: We’re really unique at IQ Services because we have a

lot of fun doing what we do every day. Our company was started

17 years ago by call center people for call center people, to provide

our colleagues in the industry with three things that were missing

in the good old days:

a) Real data from the customer perspective regarding contact center performance under load before a new solution is put into production

b) Factual information & real-time alerts regarding availability & performance of customer-facing self-service solutions 7x24 post-cutover

c) The confidence that comes from knowing you can “Go live” without the fear of catastrophic failures day 1, as well “Go home” every day following cutover knowing you will find out immediately when something goes sideways

Our team is pumped up every day because we know that what we

do really helps our clients take care of their customers.

We provide the information we wanted way back when that would have

made us confident we could cut a system into production without fear of

a meltdown.

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Neil Hooper Senior Marketing Manager, Contact Centers

Plantronics


Interactive Roundtable Peer-to-Peer experiences, led by subject matter experts. Neil will be discussing “Home Agent Best Practices.”

NEIL’S INSIGHT:

What new technologies have transformed call centers over the last 5 to 10 years?

Neil Hooper: Social media as both a technology and a cultural

phenomenon created new threats to companies’ brand value. The

social media monitoring tools which emerged in response have

enabled companies to spot and constructively engage in ill-

informed or potentially damaging public discussions, protecting

their brand. The net result has been to morph the role and

heighten the importance of the contact center in the context of a

company’s highest level business goals.

The shift of analytics capability from retrospective to real-time has

enabled monitoring to be more effective, and prompt, proactive

intervention to become practical, helping protect the company’s

brand and improve the customer experience.

Cloud/SaaS is not a new technology, but over the last half decade

the level of sophistication, reliability and security available has

matured to the point that it has become a credible solution for

Customer Care, the most sensitive aspect of any company’s

business.

Continued..

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NEIL CONTINUED:

What will the call center of the future look like?

Neil Hooper: On a business level, the call center of the future will

be much more tightly integrated with marketing efforts, both as a

key brand promise element by delivering a competitively superior

customer experience, and as a source of information to guide

company strategy through data mining of interactions to reveal

trends in customer behaviors, preferences, etc.

Operationally, the use of remote agents will have stabilized with in-

house full-time personnel a (substantial) minority. The degree of

sophistication and empowerment of all agents will be higher.

Use of cloud-based resources, whether as a total solution or a

tactically scalable extension to in-house infrastructures, will be

prevalent. This will also drive adoption of thin-client or hybrid

agent end-point solutions.

Technically, use of wireless to provide the now more highly

empowered agent freedom of movement will be prevalent. Desk

phones will be a minority legacy choice for voice path.

Sensors in equipment such as screens and headsets will enhance agent

productivity by automating processes such as updating agent login status

based on if they are connected or not, choosing between screen and

voice-based agent-alerts depending on if they are looking at or even near

their terminal or not, gestures will replace common menu/mouse clicks,

and so on.

A reasonable crystal ball would be to look at new interface and context

enablers that appear on smartphones and assume they will later appear

as a business process enhancer.

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Umesh Jain CEO Nowanalytics


Interactive Roundtable Peer-to-Peer experiences, led by subject matter experts.

UMESH’S INSIGHT:

What are the biggest ways technology has impacted call centers? Umesh Jain: The biggest impact of technology in the contact

center has been driven by the growth of SaaS technologies

that have created a level playing field for small and medium

sized contact centers to benefit from leading edge solutions to

improve performance and customer service. Companies no

longer have to accept manual processes for reporting and

analyzing customer and in-house or outsourced contact

center data; they can adopt the best technologies for routing

and at-home agent support without having to spend millions

of dollars building infrastructure to support these; and they

can incorporate social media monitoring and servicing for a

few hundred dollars a month. SaaS based solutions with their

low cost, rapid implementation cycles and standards based

integration options, have leveled the playing field for all.

Continued..

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UMESH CONTINUED:

What will the call center of the future look like?

Umesh Jain: The next decade in call centers will be driven by three

primary trends shaped by changing customer

behaviors. Companies will need to embrace these changing trends

to keep up with customer expectations.

The first is the growth in integrated multi-channel interactions,

specifically the use of mobile technologies. Customers will demand

a multi-touch, multi-channel threaded interaction to resolve a

single issue. For example, the customer will start an issue by self-

serving themselves via the mobile device or web, and then expect

to continue the resolution process via chat and eventually via a

phone call. Throughout this process, they will expect the company

to be able to combine the data across these different channels and

not be required to repeat the information already provided.

The second major trend will be the use of analytics in the contact

center, where business intelligences tools will drive better

customer services by integrating the analysis into the operational

and issue resolution processes. In particular, the use of proactive

and predictive analysis will be incorporated as a part of operational

efficiency and issue resolution processes to enhance customer

experience in the most efficient manner.

The third trend will be the continuing growth in the integration of social

media channels in the contact center, where the call center will be able to

proactively identify an issue and resolve it based on customer’s social

network comments and interactions.

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Tara Kelly President & CEO SPLICE Software


Key Steps for a Successful Mult-Channel Marketing Campaign This case study will explore a real-world example of how call center solutions play a critical role in the success of multi-channel marketing campaigns. This presentation will detail all the steps of a successful multi-channel campaign from development to implementation.

TARA’S INSIGHT:

How does superior customer service increase a call center’s bottom line? Tara Kelly: Giving good service can appear to cost more

initially by adding time and complexity, but having the

patience to listen and deliver value will always save you

money in the end.

How do you keep employees engaged and excited about their work? Tara Kelly: Once you've worked hard to hire an A Player into

your organization, make sure that when they show up to work

they're working with other A Players or mentoring others to

become one. Give people room to be awesome and ensure

that they understand how their job contributes to the mission

and goals of the organization.

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Customer Management IQ : a division of IQPC, is a forum for sharing ideas, best practices and solutions within the business community. Simply put, you can interact, share solutions to your business problems with an incredible network of authoritative sources and practicing professionals. It's easy. It's fast. It's free. Customer Management IQ enables you to find from your peers a method, a solution, a proven best practice that solves your specific problems when you need it solved. We offer a steady stream of front-line content that is timely, relevant, practical and has been validated by practitioners. By becoming a member of Customer Management IQ you will receive complimentary access to resources that will keep you at the forefront of industry change. You will receive access to our growing library of multi-media presentations from industry leaders, an email newsletter updating you on new content that has been added, and special member only discounts on events. Customer Management IQ and IQPC provide educational conferences, training courses and expositions for Customer Management executives to network and learn the latest Customer Management developments and trends occurring in organizations today. Customer Management IQ concentrates on creating an interactive experience featuring practical, objective and up-to-date insight from leading practitioners.

Celebrating its 12th successful year, the call center community’s fastest growing call center conference returns! The 14th Annual Call Center Week, taking place June 10 - 14, 2013 joins call center leaders and gurus for a week of unforgettable knowledge-sharing and networking.

What Makes this Event Unique

The largest event with senior level practitioner speakers providing real world insight on what it takes to achieve worldclass call center status.

The event will include: 6 Keynotes; 32 Unique Tracks, 9 Workshops; 2 Master Classes, 2 Site Tours and a dozen hours of Networking

Expansive Exhibit Hall, allowing attendees to better evaluate the latest product & service offerings that will improve your operations and results

Here is a breakdown of who attended Call Center Week 2011 and who you can expect to meet in 2012.

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http://www.callcenterweek.com/Brochure.aspx

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