CallTalk™ Radio

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.