Pre-Conference Workshops

Pre-1: Treating Employees as Customers to Reduce Frustration and Increase Success

Monday, June 14, 2010 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Level: Intermediate

Most managers spend their time catching employees doing things wrong. They believe that the key to improved service is more coaching, motivation and training. In fact, TARP has found that 98 percent of employees want to do a good job – but lack the tools, persuasive response rules, flexibility and confidence that the back office will follow through. In addition, they found that cashless broad recognition and storytelling are the best ways to both motivate and train CSRs. This session will help you understand the true underlying barriers to first contact resolution. Learn to identify gaps in tools and support, and how to construct tools on an issue by issue basis to address employees' key points of pain. Get tips and techniques for catching people doing things right, and make successful storytelling the foundation of your training and recognition program. Case studies with measurable results will be referenced, from AAA, NJ Natural Gas, MoMA, Fedex, Compass Bank and Ford.

John Goodman

TARP Worldwide
Vice Chairman

John Goodman received a B.S. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. His book, Strategic Customer Service, was published by the American Management Association in April 2009.

Mr. Goodman was a cofounder of TARP in 1971. He has managed more than 600 separate customer service studies, including TARP's White House sponsored evaluation of complaint handling practices in government and business; studies of word of mouth and the bottom-line impact of consumer education sponsored by Coca-Cola USA; Business Week credits him with instigating creation of the GE Answer Center and the use of toll free telephone and web self service systems by hundreds of major corporations. In addition, he has developed frameworks for building and assessing Voice of the Customer processes in B2B and B2C environments.

He has taught service quality and service reengineering courses at Wharton Business School's executive education program. He has appeared on “Good Morning America”, the ABC Evening News, and as a panelist on PBS.

Pre-2: The Principles of Effective Contact Center Management

Monday, June 14, 2010 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Level: Beginner

This always-popular course has been a favorite at ICMI conferences for over two decades, and for good reason: it covers the skills and knowledge you need to run an effective contact center. In step-by-step format, Brad Cleveland walks you through principles that will remain with you throughout your career: the immutable laws and service dynamics that are part of any customer contact environment; what it takes to accurately forecast, staff and schedule; the tradeoffs between service level, agent occupancy, staff and costs; how service level and quality are highly interrelated; how to apply time-tested management principles to new contact channels, i.e., social media; and, how to explain these principles to others in your organization in order to engage them. Whether you are a new manager or a veteran in search of a dependable refresher, this session provides the essential knowledge and confidence you need to succeed!

Brad Cleveland

ICMI
Senior Advisor And Former President/ceo

Brad Cleveland has been a tireless innovator of and passionate advocate for highly effective customer contact and support services for over two decades. Current Senior Advisor to and former President/CEO of the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), now part of Think Services, Brad has worked with organizations ranging from small startups to national governments and multinational corporations, and has delivered keynotes, training and consulting services across 45 states and in over 60 countries. He has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, as well as on major television networks, NPR’s All Things Considered, and the in-flight programs of several airlines. Brad is author/editor of eight books, and recipient of an Amazon.com best-selling award for his book, Call Center Management on Fast Forward. He produces ICMI’s Global Report on Call Center Practices (www.icmi.com) and his blog is available at www.bradcleveland.com.

Pre-3: The Social Web: A Channel Just Like Telephone, Email, Chat and Fax?

Monday, June 14, 2010 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Levels: All

The next evolution in customer care is here, and so we must respond. Customers expect to tweet, yam, and/or post to their favorite social web medium and expect a timely answer on the very same medium they posted on. Are you ready? If you’re looking for a nuts-and-bolts primer on social media in the contact center, this session is for you. You’ll learn social media basics, why this matters to your call center, and how to make it a win-win for you and your customers. We’ll discuss what should be included in your social web customer service strategy, and the myriad details that must be defined in order to be successful. You’ll leave with a clearer view of how to move forward with a social media strategy that works for your organization – and your customers.

Bob Furniss

TouchPoint Associates Inc.
President

For more than 28 years, Bob Furniss has worked with companies to help them understand and improve their customer experiences. As President of Touchpoint Associates, Inc., a boutique consulting firm that offers strategic consulting and frontline training, he has worked with some of the top companies in the world to help them re-align their customer strategies.

Bob founded Touchpoint Associates, Inc. in 2003 and has developed a network of industry experts to support his client list which includes leading organizations like DePaul University, FedEx, University of Kentucky, Dell, HP Computers, Hewitt Associates, State Farm and others.

Faith Legendre

Webex Communications
Senior Global Consultant, Customer Advocacy

For more than 10 years Ms. Legendre has been leading organizations through learning strategies to business results excellence. She is an organization and training expert, virtual and in-person knowledge speaker and is also a new technology and social networking enthusiast. She eagerly shares her creative ideas on how electronic collaboration both internally and externally can benefit organizations. She was awarded Trainer of the Year for 2008 by Training Magazine. She has aided organizations in achieving Training Top 100 multi-year status as well as ICMI’s Global Call Center of the Year Award. She has held learning and training, Director and Vice President, positions at international Fortune 1000 technology companies as well as ecommerce retail organizations. She has lead teams who worked both in physical site locations as well as from home. Her vision of “nibblet learning” helped to embed knowledge application into daily business practices. Over the past few years Ms. Legendre has also been coined and consulted with organizations as a Virtual, Collaboration and Social Networking Strategist. The Training Journal UK recently tweeted that Ms. Legendre is “a great re-tweeter of business based tweets from all over the twittersphere.” One of the top ranking bloggers Chris Brogan said that Ms. Legendre “sources a lot of great posts.” Ms. Legendre has a certificate in Project Management from Hofstra University and a Masters in Management from Antioch New England Graduate School in New Hampshire.

Pre-4: Contact Center Technology 101: What Every Professional Needs to Know

Monday, June 14, 2010 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Level: All

If you're wondering (or downright perplexed) about technologies such as Voice over IP (VoIP), speech recognition, multimedia routing, multi-site virtualization, knowledge management, speech and data analytics and the rest of the performance tools, and the buzz around UC and Web 2.0, this session is for you! Operations and technology leaders alike should attend this course to learn more about the technologies you have – or might be considering. We'll cover the technologies every center needs, as well as the innovations that are changing the landscape. You will learn practical information about today's technology that will arm you for a discussion with your contact center or IT counterparts, as well as vendors. Most importantly, you'll leave the session ready to successfully tackle your own projects.

Lori Bocklund

Strategic Contact, Inc.
President

Lori Bocklund is President of Strategic Contact, an independent consulting firm focused on helping companies optimize the strategic value of their customer contact technology and operations. Strategic Contact helps companies succeed through projects that develop and execute plans tied to business goals, such as VoIP migration planning, outsourcing evaluations, technology requirements and selection, technology strategies, and project management and implementation. Lori Bocklund is a recognized industry leader in contact center strategy, technology, and operations. During her 20 years in the call center industry, 15 of them as a consultant, she has acquired an understanding of a broad spectrum of systems, applications, and operational environments. She shares her knowledge and experience through speaking engagements, articles, a two-day call center technology course delivered through ICMI, and the book she co-authored, Call Center Technology Demystified (Call Center Press). Attendees of Lori's seminars and courses appreciate her enthusiasm, energy, and humor. She has a great ability to use her technical and industry knowledge, along with her excellent communication skills, to make today's complex technology environment more readily understood. Lori has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from South Dakota State University and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University.

Pre-5: Proven At-Home Call Center Best Practices and Strategies (Case Study)

Monday, June 14, 2010 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Level: All

The home agent model is rapidly becoming mainstream in contact centers. This interactive session provides an opportunity to learn from seasoned experts in this arena as they share their big wins, pitfalls and lessons learned in designing, piloting and scaling a remote work force business model. What are the real cost savings? What were their objectives and strategies for the at-home model, and have they been met? You’ll get invaluable advice on best practices in virtually every discipline of call center operations – including sourcing, recruiting and hiring at-home, training, administration, performance management, and technology. Finally, this session brings together a panel of at-home technology pioneers, who will share their firsthand experiences supporting the tremendous growth of the at-home model. Whether you’re just experimenting with the home agent model or looking for ways to improve your current program, this session is sure to provide practical tips you can use immediately in your center.

Michele Rowan

Customer Contact Strategies LLC
president

Michele Rowan, President of Customer Contact Strategies LLC has spent the last 12 years with Hilton Hotels Corporation as VP of Performance Management. Her last key assignment was to lead both US and International strategy development and deployment of the remote agent program. Michele moved over 1000 agents home in 18 months at Hilton, and is established as one of the industry’s leading experts of at-home business models.

Rowan currently conducts all-day At-Home Strategy workshops around the country to help companies develop business cases and operational plans for moving customer contacts home. In addition she has written a book on the subject, and speaks and writes often on this high-growth distribution channel.

Prior to Hilton, Michele spent three years with a large US based outsourcer in the lead Human Resource role. Her expertise is diverse and includes strategy development, operations, performance management and support, training, quality and human resources. Michele has served as President of IARE and is a current board member. Her benchmarking insight and experience, coupled with her broad range of global experience with Hilton makes for an extremely interesting learning experience. Michele studied business management at St. Petersburg College.

Sue Brinker

The Hartford
AVP, Training

Sue Brinker is the Assistant Vice President for Property and Casualty Training & Development at The Hartford. She has been with The Hartford for 22 years in a variety of underwriting, training and management roles. In her current role, she manages a staff of 70 training experts that support over 9000 personal and commercial lines insurance staff and management in over 50 locations.

Bibi Brown

1-800-Flowers.com
Director Customer Experience, Enterprise Service Center

Bibi Brown is Director of Customer Service for 1-800-FLOWERS.COM and has been with the company for over 21 years. In her current role, Bibi drive improvement of the Customer Experience, Revenue Capture, and Brand Integrity in every customer touch point by improvements of processes, systems, and regular collaborative communication between the Service Center and the Brand. She is also responsible for the overall management of the call center to ensure customer satisfaction, improved call efficiency, low abandonment, increased revenue, and improved employee product knowledge and training. Develop and maintain close relationships with the business units Stakeholders to ensure outstanding customer experience. She also assists senior executives on making critical business and operational decisions. A pioneer in the work-from-home community, Bibi has experience working with home-based agents as employees, independent contractors and outsourced representatives since 1996. Bibi currently resides in Orlando, FL and works from her home office.

Patricia Wisehart

The Hertz Corporation
Senior Director, Reservations Development and Performance

Tricia Wisehart is the Senior Director, Reservations Development and Performance Planning for the Hertz Customer Contact Center. In that role, she is responsible for workforce management which includes forecasting call volumes and staffing requirements, agent scheduling, and monitoring performance to ensure established KPI’s are met. In addition, Tricia is responsible for various specialized customer contact areas including the new Hertz venture, Connect by Hertz. Tricia holds a Bachelor of Business Management degree from the University of Central Oklahoma. She has been with Hertz for 36 years and assumed various roles throughout her career including two European work assignments and multiple reservations projects that impact customer contact centers on a global basis. Tricia was responsible for initiating and developing a successful home agent program for Hertz and continues to be involved in expansion of the program.

Patrick Botz

VPI
Vice President

Patrick serves as the Director of Workforce Optimization at VPI, a premier provider of interactions recording, contact center quality management and workforce optimization solutions. Leveraging more than a decade of field experience as a contact center management practitioner, he focuses on the mission-critical aspects of capturing customer intelligence and optimizing business processes and workforce performance. Patrick is asked frequently to speak on proven contact center workforce optimization and at-home agent strategies and best practices, and his work has been published in dozens of industry trade publications. Patrick holds an MBA from Pepperdine University and a BSE in Engineering from Arizona State University.

Joe Mcgrogan

Plantronics Inc
Director, Contact Center Solutions

Joe McGrogan has more than 25 years of contact center management experience and, as a Director at Plantronics, is dedicated to developing new headset technologies and strategies that help contact centers improve operations, customer satisfaction and business performance. Plantronics is regarded as the worldwide leader in communication headsets. To learn more about Plantronics’ headset solutions, please visit www.plantronics.com.

Mike Perry

inContact
Senior Director Product Management

Mike Perry is responsible for product development and international expansion for inContact. Mike Perry joined inContact in March of 2004 and brings over 19 years of experience in communications leadership, technical operations, voice and data planning and implementation, global account support and technical product development. While at inContact he introduced IP-based products including VoIP, SIP Trunking, and MPLS transport for IP telephony.

Before joining inContact, he held various technical operations, sales and customer support positions with both McLeod USA (now PAETEC), and privately-held Access Long Distance. His education includes a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Brigham Young University and a Masters of Business Administration from Utah State University.

Pre-6: Unleashing the Enormous Power of Call Center KPI's: Including Benchmarking Case Study!

Monday, June 14, 2010 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Level: Advanced

Today’s call center technologies and reporting packages make it easy to capture copious amounts of performance data. But what does it all mean? More importantly, what does it tell us about how to manage and optimize call center performance? In this information-packed session you’ll learn which KPI’s drive performance, which have the biggest impact on cost and quality, and which have the greatest leverage to improve performance. You’ll gain a powerful understanding of how the various call center KPI’s affect each other, providing insight into the key levers a manager can pull to achieve desired outcomes. The session also features a detailed case study from a retail call center that dramatically improved its cost and sales performance through the strategic application of KPI’s. Chock full of practical tips, this session may just revolutionize the way you manage your call center.

Jeff Rumburg

MetricNet
Managing Partner

Jeff Rumburg is co-founder and Managing Partner at MetricNet, LLC. He authored a best selling book on Benchmarking, and has been retained as a call center and service desk expert by such well-known companies as American Express, IBM, Bank of America, EDS, and Edward Jones. Equally broad is his industry experience, which includes project management and delivery responsibility in virtually every major industry.

Prior to co-founding MetricNet, Mr. Rumburg was president and founder of The Verity Group, an international management consulting firm specializing in call center and service desk consulting. As president of The Verity Group, Mr. Rumburg launched a number of syndicated benchmarking services that provided Information Technology benchmarks to more than 1,000 corporations worldwide. These included the Call Center Benchmarking Consortium, and the Help Desk Benchmarking Consortium. Mr. Rumburg has also held a number of executive positions at META Group, and Gartner, Inc. As a vice president at Gartner, Mr. Rumburg led a project team that reengineered Gartner’s global benchmarking product suite. And as vice president at META Group, Mr. Rumburg’s career was focused on call center and help desk consulting.

Mr. Rumburg's education includes an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, an M.S. magna cum laude in Operations Research from Stanford University, and a B.S. magna cum laude in Mechanical Engineering. He is author of A Hands-On Guide to Competitive Benchmarking: The Path to Continuous Quality and Productivity Improvement, and has taught graduate-level engineering and business courses.

Mr. Rumburg has presented on the topic of Call Center Best Practices at numerous national, and international symposia. He has also written extensively on the topic of call center best practices, and in 2007 alone had three articles published by Call Center Magazine. Mr. Rumburg has been retained as a call center and benchmarking expert by such well known companies as American Express, Allstate Insurance, EDS, and IBM.

Pre-7: Managing Through Change

Monday, June 14, 2010 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Level: All

In today’s fast moving business environment, companies cannot settle for incremental improvements. Instead, they must periodically undergo rapid performance transformations to achieve top status, and stay at the top. Transformation requires extraordinary amounts of energy on the part of everyone within the organization. However, the principle responsibility for creating that energy lies with the organization’s managers and leaders who must rally people toward change. In this session, you’ll learn how to create an environment that is open to change, engage individuals to accept change, and build a culture of responsibility. Explore various ways to implement change through trust, engagement and empowerment, what each of these means, and how to incorporate them to bring their organizations to the next level of growth for the future. You’ll leave with the tools and inspiration to get started on your own change transformation.

Dianne Durkin

Loyalty Factor, LLC
President

Dianne Durkin is the president and founder of Loyalty Factor, a consulting and training company that enhances employee, customer and brand loyalty for some of the nation’s most prominent corporations in America and many smaller businesses. She is also author of “The Loyalty Advantage: Essential Steps to Energize Your Company, Your Customers, Your Brand.” With more than 25 years of experience in training and development, finance, direct sales and international marketing, Durkin is continually sought after to lead companies into new markets and directions, handle organizational restructures, and set up programs that will build lasting commitments with employees and customers.

Dianne Durkin has been interviewed by National Public Radio and Bloomberg Television & Radio. She has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, the Boston Globe, among numerous other publications, and was the subject of a cover story in Learning and Training Magazine.

A graduate of Rivier College, Durkin holds a Master’s Degree from Duquesne University and has completed advanced programs at University of Santa Clara and Babson College. In addition to being active in the Boston Club, Commonwealth Institute, the CEO Club, Who’s Who in America, and Women in World Trade, Durkin is a champion golf player and is fluent in French and Polish.

Many describe Dianne as a visionary thinker – with a rare combination of creativity and a strong business sense – who takes abstract ideas and turns them into reality. Durkin quickly gets to the core issues within a company and outlines their impact on the organization and its profits, productivity and people. She presently holds two board positions, the NH Lung Association and Ms NH Senior America. In past years she was on the Advisory Board of Rivier College.

Pre-8: Driving Business Value from Technology

Monday, June 14, 2010 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Level: All

One outcome of the economic rollercoaster we’ve experienced in the last few years is that we know that technology investment will never be the same (at least not in our working lifetimes.) Each investment has to be well-justified and deliver promised business value. Alas, most centers have plenty of technology that is underutilized, over-invested, or just plain not delivering business value. The market offers so many enticing options, it’s easy to get enamored and dive in to buy without knowing what you’re going to get out of that investment. Join this lively, interactive session to learn how to get more out of what you have, and ensure that the next thing you buy will deliver on expectations. You’ll be the hero in this new era of high-powered, high value, technology results.

Lori Bocklund

Strategic Contact, Inc.
President

Lori Bocklund is President of Strategic Contact, an independent consulting firm focused on helping companies optimize the strategic value of their customer contact technology and operations. Strategic Contact helps companies succeed through projects that develop and execute plans tied to business goals, such as VoIP migration planning, outsourcing evaluations, technology requirements and selection, technology strategies, and project management and implementation. Lori Bocklund is a recognized industry leader in contact center strategy, technology, and operations. During her 20 years in the call center industry, 15 of them as a consultant, she has acquired an understanding of a broad spectrum of systems, applications, and operational environments. She shares her knowledge and experience through speaking engagements, articles, a two-day call center technology course delivered through ICMI, and the book she co-authored, Call Center Technology Demystified (Call Center Press). Attendees of Lori's seminars and courses appreciate her enthusiasm, energy, and humor. She has a great ability to use her technical and industry knowledge, along with her excellent communication skills, to make today's complex technology environment more readily understood. Lori has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from South Dakota State University and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University.