Call Center Conference Sessions

Session 102: Contact Center Operations 101

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Level: All

Are you new to call centers, and not quite sure what you’ve gotten yourself into? Or are you a seasoned pro wanting a refresher or a way to validate your experiences? This information-rich session will focus on seven key operational dynamics in the customer contact environment: the unique characteristics of call centers; the link between resources and results; the relationship between service level and quality; how accessibility impacts productivity; schedule needs versus base staff requirements; staffing and telecom issues; and, the increasing demands on agents. End result: you’ll be armed to improve your operations, manage with confidence – and better meet the needs of your customers.

Rose Polchin

ICMI
Senior Consultant

Rose Polchin is a senior consultant for ICMI. She brings over 20 years of contact center experience, including five years as an independent consultant and 15 years in contact center leadership roles in the financial services and health care industries. During her tenure as senior director of customer service strategies for one of the country’s largest health care laboratory services, Rose’s leadership was instrumental in creating and implementing a common vision, strategy and processes across the company’s multi-site contact center network, which helped establish the contact centers as strategic assets for the business. Rose now continues her commitment to excellence in customer service through her delivery of ICMI seminars and by partnering with customers on key projects. Customers and attendees of her seminars praise her energy, knowledge and dedication to assisting them in creating value for their respective organizations and its customers. Rose is a member of the American Society of Training and Development, and is a certified DISC behavioral styles trainer. She is a popular speaker at seminars and conferences throughout North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and authors articles on key topics for industry publications.

Session 202: The Secret Sauce...Sales Metrics That Really Matter

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Level: Intermediate

Achieving substantial growth in revenue and profit while improving service may sound impossible – but it’s not! Successful sales teams require superb planning and consistent performance tracking to achieve optimal results and identify missed opportunities. By identifying and utilizing the right sales measurements, you will not only drive business results, but also foster a rewarding culture that boosts service to new heights. In this compelling and highly interactive session you will explore a number of real life case studies of contact centers that have implemented the right sales metrics and right sales goals. And you’ll learn how the proper use of key metrics and incentives can result in significant new revenue streams, improved customer satisfaction and enhanced customer loyalty.

Chris Brown

Frontline Performance
VP of Consulting Services

Chris Brown has helped businesses in over 100 cities across the United States, Canada, Europe and The Caribbean dramatically improve their service-sales effectiveness and subsequent profitability. He possesses 22 years of customer care and sales experience in the tourism, restaurant, hospitality and automotive industries including 11 years in operations and sales for Hilton and Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group. Since joining Khoury Performance Group in 1999, he has become a leading authority on improving organizational service and sales performance, as well as a sought after speaker and professional coach. He has delivered over 200 seminars for clients across ten industries and been a featured speaker in numerous industry conventions. Most recently, Chris was a major contributing author to Khoury Performance Group's new book, Frontline Profit Machine. An avid baseball fan, Chris lives in Tampa with his wife Eleanor, and their two young boys.

Mary Murcott

Performance Transformations
President

Mary Murcott is a business transformation consultant and industry analyst who is often described as a call center futurist. In partnership with senior leadership teams, Mary designs strategies and develops the technical and leadership competencies within companies to deliver integrated world-class service and sales experience at best-in-class economics.

Mary is founder and president of Performance Transformations, Inc. Her clients include high profile Fortune 100 companies, as well as medium sized firms in the financial, healthcare, travel and other service industries. As a senior executive, Mary was instrumental in driving performance turnarounds, startups and consolidations at many companies, including American Express, DHL, Ryder, Budget Rent-a-Car and Cox Communications. A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Mary recently delivered keynotes at the International Productivity and Quality Council’s European Consortium in Monte Carlo, the Telecommunications Users Conference in New Zealand, an ICMI Sales Seminar in Shanghai, the Time Warner Customer Service Conference, and the opening address at the IMI 2008 Call Center Conference in Istanbul.

A noted authority on first call resolution and sales, Mary has designed a series of webinars and in-person seminars, which are held both in the US and in 26 other countries. She is author of the popular book, Driving Peak Sales Performance in Call Centers (ICMI Press).

Session 205: Serving the Needs of Hispanic Customers and Employees

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Level: All

Effectively serving the U.S. Hispanic market requires sound Spanish language strategies, the right processes, and qualified bilingual personnel. This presentation will describe best practices for meeting the needs of your Spanish-speaking customers. Learn how to use neutral Business Spanish in written, verbal and recorded communication, and the importance of language proficiency assessments. Discover how to deliver effective bilingual training, and explore contact center tools to improve customer retention in this market. You’ll leave with expert advice on recruiting, managing call duration, and maintaining a supporting culture, as well as exploring possible outsourcing partnerships.

Astrid Rial

Arial International
None

Astrid Rial is President and Founder of Arial International a multi-cultural, multi-lingual consulting, training and services firm that helps companies improve the satisfaction of their Spanish-speaking customers in call centers, branches, customer service, customer retention, sales and collections in Latin America and in the US Hispanic market. Founded in 1992 the firm has worked with clients in 30 countries on six continents and over 30,000 professionals have participated in their seminars.

Ms. Rial is a 28-year business veteran and Hispanic professional. She is fully fluent in English and Spanish and has worked and traveled extensively throughout Latin America. She has trained thousands of business professionals around the world in English and Spanish in tools and skills to improve customer service, customer satisfaction, customer care, financial services topics and collections. She is a sought-after expert who has spoken at conferences throughout the world in Spanish and English.

Ms. Rial is the author of the best-selling book published by VRL Knowledgebank, Best Practice in Consumer Collections, written in English and Spanish and sponsored by Visa International. She has lectured at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), and the UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autotónoma de México, prestigious universities in Mexico, spoken on television and radio talk shows and served on the Board of Directors for Consumer Credit Counseling Services of San Francisco and Mexico City, as well as for Collections and Credit Risk Magazine from 1999-2007. A frequently interviewed and quoted speaker, her work has been published in numerous publications including Entrepreneur, Credit Card Management, Collections and Credit Risk, Collector's Ink, Business Mexico, El Financiero and many others.

Session 302: Contact Center Metrics as a Competitive Advantage

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
Level: All

Call centers are often caught in the middle of growth and change – keeping both the organization and customers engaged and satisfied. Figuring out which metrics are truly important is often a challenge. Too often, the focus of the center shifts from managing people to managing real-time numbers. Instead, you need to have visibility into the right metrics and use them to help everyone in the organization focus on where to spend more time – and where to stop wasting time. In this engaging session, Tim Montgomery shares what he's experienced in working with some of the most recognized service organizations in America. You'll learn how best-in-class contact centers use metrics as a competitive advantage - creating an environment of continuous improvement and employee delight.

Tim Montgomery

The Service Level Group
Principal

As a seasoned industry executive, popular speaker and highly regarded consultant, Tim Montgomery has guided thousands of contact center agents and leaders to improve individual and team performance, and exceed operational objectives. Tim is part of an elite group of independent consultants who have earned a certified associate designation from the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI). He is also a professional member of the National Speakers Association (NSA).

During his career, he held a variety of leadership positions – everything from Call Center Manager to Vice President of Sales and Operations. Tim’s contact center leadership experience was fine-tuned by leading contact center and customer service operations for three of the most celebrated companies in the world – USAA, The Coca-Cola Company and The SCOOTER Store. His consulting clients have included some of the most recognized organizations in America – DELL, AIG, Lifetouch, ADP, Mitsubishi, Farmers Insurance, Allstate, Kodak, Liberty Mutual, Cinergy, Gartner Group, Amerigroup, Prime Therapeutics, Sykes, Prudential and many more.

Tim has written articles and whitepapers on a variety of management, customer service, and contact center topics. His work has been translated into several languages and featured in many global publications, industry journals and position papers. Tim earned both his BBA in Accounting and MBA degrees from the University of Texas @ San Antonio and a Lean Six Sigma Certification from Villanova University.

Session 402: Using Real-Time Customer Feedback to Improve Customer Service and Save Money (Case Study)

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Level: All

The integration of real-time customer feedback into call center business processes and operations can reap big rewards in customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and the strategic value of your contact center. Join us as Cellular South shares how they use feedback gathered through immediate, live-agent call-back surveys to improve agent productivity and drive key metrics including overall customer satisfaction and first call resolution. Hear how insights gained from customer feedback are used to reduce costs and help drive behavior change in the contact center. Discover how to use the voice of the customer to uncover opportunities to enhance the customer experience, and learn how you can become a strategic contributor to your company by disseminating customer insights outside the contact center.

Austin Fisher

Cellular South
Manager, Customer Contact Center

Austin Fisher serves as Contact Center Manager for Cellular South Inc., the nation’s largest privately held wireless provider, servicing Mississippi and parts of 4 southeastern states. Austin is responsible for the operations of the contact center. His responsibility spans across process improvement, coaching culture, and performance management.

Prior to coming to Cellular South Austin worked for 8 years with Sitel, a global contact center company, based in Nashville, TN. He served in various roles involving process improvement and operations management. During his tenure he spearheaded several improvement projects that led to two sites becoming flagship sites within Sitel.

Peter Leppik

Vocalabs Inc.
CEO

Peter U. Leppik is president and CEO of Vocalabs. After several years as an investment analyst following call center technologies, he founded Vocal Laboratories, Inc. in 2001 to apply scientific principles of data collection and analysis to the problem of improving customer service.

Leppik is a frequent industry speaker on the topic of measuring and improving customer service quality in call centers and automated speech environments. He is also coauthor of Gourmet Customer Service: A Scientific Approach to Improving the Caller Experience. Leippik has led efforts to measure, compare and publish customer service quality across a range of industries through third party, independent research, and works with industry associations to sponsor research to advance the state of the art in customer service. At Vocalabs, Leppik has assembled a team of professionals with deep expertise in survey methodology, data communications and data visualization to provide clients with best-in-class tools for improving customer service through real-time customer feedback.

Mr. Leppik holds B.S. degree in Physics from the University of Minnesota and an M.S. degree in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Bonnie Meadows

Cellular South
Customer Satisfaction Analyst

Bonnie Meadows serves as Customer Satisfaction Analyst of Cellular South, Inc., the nation’s largest privately held wireless provider, servicing Mississippi and parts of 4 southeastern states. Meadows is responsible for the development, implementation and analysis of customer research that enables the company to understand the customer experience and provides actionable insights for continuous improvement. Meadows joined Cellular South in 1997 as the Vice President of Human Resources. In 2003, she shifted her focus solely to measuring and improving the customer experience.

Prior to joining Cellular South, Meadows served for 5 years as Senior Consultant for Dean Consulting based in Birmingham, Alabama. Her responsibilities included contact center management and the redesign of contact center processes to improve efficiency and enhance the customer experience.

Meadows earned her Master’s degree in Human Resources Management from LaRoche College and her B.S. in Business Administration from Elizabethtown College. Meadows lives in Miississippi with her husband and 2 young sons.

Jeff Richardson

Cellular South
Director, Customer Advocacy

Jeff Richardson serves as Director of Customer Advocacy for Cellular South, Inc., the nation’s largest privately held wireless provider, servicing Mississippi and parts of 4 southeastern states. Richardson is responsible for the quality of the customer experience through all of Cellular South’s sales and service channels. He is responsible for the analysis of customer impacting issues and the timely resolution of problems through root cause analysis. Richardson joined Cellular South in 1994 as a retail market manager. He has served as Manager of Customer Care, Manager of Revenue Assurance, Director of Business Operations, and Director of Customer Contact Operations.

Prior to joining Cellular South, Richardson served for 7 years as Credit Manager for MS Financial Services directing the lending efforts of the company’s indirect automobile division.

Richardson earned his B.S. in Business Administration at Mississippi College. Richardson lives in Brookhaven, Mississippi with his wife and 2 teenage daughters.

Session 502: A New View for Customer Service Quality

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Level: All

How about a new take on the same old quality program? Traditionally, customer service centers have focused on evaluating “x” number of calls, per representative, per month. Feedback is provided to staff, results are reported, and the scores are used in evaluating a representative’s performance. Using six sigma principles, NCCI has created a quality program that evaluates calls based on customers calling patterns and is based on what their customers have said is important. The result is a service center accuracy rate between 95 and 97 percent! This enlightening presentation will take you through the methodology and process of developing a quality program based on customer feedback and calling patterns. You’ll gain insight into the lessons learned around staff buy in and participation in the process, and how to create measurable results that resonate with senior management.

Ilene Lustigman

NCCI Holdings
Director, Customer Service

Ilene Lustigman is the director of Customer Service for NCCI Holdings, Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida. NCCI is the nation’s most comprehensive insurance provider of workers compensation information, tools, and services for nearly 40 states. Lustigman manages the 70-person Customer Service Department—the primary point of contact for the initial customer experience at the company. Under her direction, more than 400,000 customer interactions and 50,000 e-mail requests are handled annually.

A 13-year veteran of NCCI, Lustigman served in training and managerial positions, gaining specialized experience in a variety of service areas before accepting her current position in 2001. She led the development and implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that unified customer data and significantly improved efficiency.

She is an experienced presenter and has spoken at several national conferences and seminars. She frequently contributes to articles and advice columns in industry publications and online where she shares her management perspectives and company’s case studies.

Prior to joining NCCI, she worked for three years as an assistant manager for a major South Florida telecommunications company.

Ilene Lustigman is active in the community through United Way, the Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce and other community initiatives. She received a BS degree in political science from the University of Florida.

Session 505: Knowledge is Power! Knowledge Management for Your Contact Center

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Level: All

How do you gather, structure, manage and disseminate the wealth of information and expertise in your contact center and across your organization? Is keeping your agents up-to-date with changes in your products and services a challenge? Does the complexity of your offerings require extensive training and multiple skills of agent groups to support? If any of this sounds familiar, it’s time to explore the benefits of implementing a knowledge management program in your organization. An effective KM program can decrease the time to resolve customer issues by 30 to 60 percent, reduce training time from months to weeks, and increase job satisfaction by 20 to 40 percent. Not to mention the efficient creation of content to enable web self-help, less redundant work, more confidence, empowered employees and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Learn the keys to designing, implementing and managing a successful KM program of your own, and start reaping the rewards!

Wendy Fowler

ICMI
Senior Consultant

As a seasoned industry expert, Wendy is a strategic thinker with a successful track record of implementing successful, world-class call center and workforce management processes and teams for companies of all sizes. She has nearly 11 years of leadership experience with a focus on developing and motivating people, reengineering processes, implementing best-practices and leveraging technology.

In her 18 years of customer service experience, she has held various positions responsible for all aspects of call center operations – from CSR to call center manager to WFM director. Prior to joining ICMI, Wendy held consulting and leadership roles with organizations like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, Washington Mutual and Humana.

She has a clear passion for Customer Service and a talent for being able to identify opportunities quickly within an organization and provide the necessary design to make cost-effective, data driven change.

Session 506: Customer Experience Management Involves Everyone - Including Your Back Office (Case Study)

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Level: All

Customer experience management is typically considered a front-line responsibility, but research shows that up to 60 percent of customer “issues” are the result of back-office operations (i.e. order fulfillment, payment processing, claims/dispute resolution). This session will explore the relationship between the back-office and the customer, and ways to improve operations that directly impacts customer experience and performance. Find out how workforce optimization tools, previously confined to the contact center, have been adapted to meet the needs of back-office operations. You’ll get real-world insights from W. W. Grainger, and learn how implementing WFO in the back-office can result in 10 to 25 percent improvements in productivity, cost management, and customer satisfaction.

Kimber Hayungs

W.W. Grainger
WFM Manager

Kimber Hayungs has over 17 years of experience in call center operations with W.W. Grainger, a leading distributor of Maintenance, Repair, and Operations products and services. Kimber has had the opportunity to speak at national conferences on Change Management and Project Implementation best practices. She currently leads a virtual Workforce Management team, which forecasts and schedules resources for over 350 call taking locations to support W.W. Grainger’s goal of providing the “Wow” customer experience. In leading this virtual team, Kimber has emphasized the importance of becoming an indispensable partner through anticipating customer needs and pro-actively resolving problems. Demonstrative of this over the last year, Kimber's team has begun to incorporate phone scheduling concepts and practices in completion of back office activities. This will allow them to lead the way in insuring that the right resources are scheduled at the right time, in the right place, completed by the right people.

Chris Zaske

Verint Systems Inc.
VP, WFO Practice, Enterprise Solutions Group

Chris Zaske brings over 25 years of experience in enhancing business management process and helping organizations consolidate operational structures in both the front office and back office. He has managed over 100 projects worldwide generating substantive results in workforce management, process design and systems integrations. Chris manages Verint’s Enterprise Workforce Optimization (WFO) Practice for Enterprise Solutions. The Enterprise WFO Practice guides global development of the retail and back-office operations workforce solutions offering, develops the sales and partner enablement programs for these solutions and provides their industry and domain expertise in the design and implementation of WFO solutions for prospective clients.

Chris is an accomplished author and speaker, having been the feature speaker in numerous industry forums, including BAI’s TransPay Conference, the Professional Planning Forum (PPF) Back-office Planning Seminars and will be speaking this coming Spring at the ICMI ACCE 2010 and TAWPI/IAPP FUSION 2010 conferences. He recently authored an article which appeared in Insurance and Technology’s October 6, 2009 issue, “Gaining Control and Consistency in Claims Operations: Augmenting BPM and Workflow with Workforce Optimization.” Chris also authored a chapter for Bank Founder’s Guidebook – 1999 Edition, SNL’s Guide to Establishing a Community Bank, SNL Securities.

Prior to joining Verint, Chris worked as Senior Manager at a “Big 5” consulting firm and was Principal of a boutique financial services consulting practice. Also, he held various management positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Union Bank in Los Angeles. Chris is a graduate of University of South Carolina with a degree in Business and International Finance.

Session 602: Workforce Management: Are We Doing the Right Things? Doing Things Right?

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
Level: All

Workforce management is a complex and often complicated function: part art, part science and sometimes a bit of magic. Join us and we explore the components of an effective WFM function – and what it can do for your center, your customers’ experience and your organization. Learn how to assess where you are on the WFM lifecycle, and how to strategically plan your WFM team structure. Discover how to measure the effectiveness of the WFM process and team, and communicate its importance and value to all levels within the organization. Whether you have a WFM function and it needs improving, you have one and aren’t sure how it is doing, or you are deciding how to best handle this process, this session is for you!

Rose Polchin

ICMI
Senior Consultant

Rose Polchin is a senior consultant for ICMI. She brings over 20 years of contact center experience, including five years as an independent consultant and 15 years in contact center leadership roles in the financial services and health care industries. During her tenure as senior director of customer service strategies for one of the country’s largest health care laboratory services, Rose’s leadership was instrumental in creating and implementing a common vision, strategy and processes across the company’s multi-site contact center network, which helped establish the contact centers as strategic assets for the business. Rose now continues her commitment to excellence in customer service through her delivery of ICMI seminars and by partnering with customers on key projects. Customers and attendees of her seminars praise her energy, knowledge and dedication to assisting them in creating value for their respective organizations and its customers. Rose is a member of the American Society of Training and Development, and is a certified DISC behavioral styles trainer. She is a popular speaker at seminars and conferences throughout North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and authors articles on key topics for industry publications.

Brent Haferkamp

ICMI
Senior Consultant

Brent Haferkamp is a Senior Consultant for Incoming Customer Management Institute (ICMI) providing strategic and tactical consulting and training for organizations in a variety of industries. Brent has performed a number of call center assessment assignments, as well as two mid-term Executive Replacement (Director/VP) assignments. Brent’s consulting engagements have included:

Revamping and redesigning the call flow and staffing/scheduling for 5 regional claim units of a major insurance company
Analyzing and making recommendations for workforce management improvements, IVR routing changes, and operations consolidation for a large international not-for-profit
Reviewing call routing structure and recommending improvements for a 9-site field office operation for a major insurance company
Reviewing and making recommendations for operational changes, phone switch (PBX/ACD) replacement, and acquisition of a CRM tool for a managed healthcare program
Work with multiple U.S. government agencies, involving forecasting, workforce organizational design and forecast/staffing model design

Prior to joining ICMI, Brent was a Senior Manager overseeing the workforce and technical operations of a large passenger transportation company with 24/7/365 operations and annual call volumes in excess of 24 million. Prior to that, Brent was a Workforce Manager for a multiple award-winning, large international call center outsourcer, supporting up to 20 programs at any given time.

Brent graduated from Parks College of St. Louis University with a degree in Aerospace Science. He is a former U.S. Air Force Pilot and veteran of Desert Shield/Desert Storm. In his spare time, he writes Visual Basic call center tools and is very active on a number contact center related web forums.