Advice from a Call Center Geek!

Send us Fan Mail Ever wondered how your contact center could save significant costs while keeping up with the QA process? Brace yourself for an enlightening discussion and AMA where we unravel the potential of AI in transforming Quality Assurance in your contact center.  We'll take you through our early journey of automating QA processes, sharing our experiments with chat GPT and how its poss...

Send us Fan Mail You are just a click away from transforming your contact center from a drab workspace to a vibrant one; come join me, Tom Laird, as we revolutionize your call center experience. I promise to share the secrets to creating a positive and effort-driven culture, where attitude and effort outweigh resumes. I'm excited to share insights from my own journey of managing a contact cen...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine having the power to reshape customer experience in your call center with artificial intelligence. What if you could emulate the behaviour of your most effective agents, optimize IVR, manage workforces, and even facilitate self-service with AI? Get ready to explore how AI is transforming the world of customer service, as we delve into these possibilities and much more. From...

Send us Fan Mail Ever wondered how the hustle and bustle of your favorite restaurant correlates with the operations of a call center? Picture yourself at a bustling eatery as we break down the ins and outs of call center metrics in relatable terms. We’ll be interpreting essential terms like incoming calls, cue calls, and abandoned calls in an easy-to-digest format, perfect for those just venturing...

Send us Fan Mail Are you struggling with coaching your call center agents effectively? Join us as we explore five popular coaching methods and share personal experiences on how to structure agent coaching sessions for maximum results. With insights on the GROW method, the Oscar method, and more, you'll learn how to help your agents take control of their calls and elevate their performance. Th...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of ACG was taken from the Linkedin Live Audio Even that we did with followers on June 13, 2023. Some of the topics brought up were: What is the internal lift to implement tools like speech analytics? Plusses and minuses of moving to the cloud? What ratios should contact center management be? What are some of the best practices for routing in the IVR? What are some of...

Send us Fan Mail Ready for a game-changing episode that will skyrocket your contact center's customer experience? Join us as we unveil 10 tips on maximizing your platform, from leveraging  analytics to engaging your employees in creative ways. Discover the power of using an effort multiplier to incentivize attendance and workforce intelligence to keep your service levels top-notch. We'll...

Send us Fan Mail Hubie Brown is a renowned basketball coach known for his impactful strategies and insight. When I attended one of his clinics, the title was "Cool Things I Want to Talk About to Help You With Your Teams." It featured 10 random, yet valuable, pieces of advice to improve a team's performance. As I prepare my live talks for this spring and summer, I've decided to...

Send us Fan Mail Join us in this episode as we reflect on our learnings from the Call and Contact Center Expo.  We delve into the realities of AI in the contact center industry, discussing key trends, innovations, and insights from my conversations with industry leaders and companies.  We explore what's genuinely feasible with AI, the challenges in adoption, and why we may still have a ways t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, we dive deep into the world of contact center quality assurance with QA expert, Chris Mounce from EvaluAgent. Together, we explore the crucial do's and don'ts of designing effective contact center scorecards, offering valuable insights on the development of comprehensive and meaningful metrics that accurately gauge agent...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, I share my insights and experiences on harnessing the power of TikTok and other social media platforms to boost B2B sales and personal branding within the call center and contact center industry.  Drawing from my personal journey and learnings, I discuss proven strategies, valuable tips, and real-life examples to help you create e...

Send us Fan Mail Unravel the mystery behind the "wow" factor in contact center customer service in our Advice from a Call Center Geek Episode, " Deconstructing the "Wow" Experience: Defining Excellence in Contact Centers."  We'll discuss the pitfalls of "false hustle" and the significance of authentic communication, empathy, and active listening in buil...

Send us Fan Mail  In this thought-provoking podcast episode, we venture beyond the traditional perception of AI and ChatGPT as mere chatbot tools, revealing their true potential to revolutionize the contact center industry in numerous ways.  Discover 10 unique applications of ChatGPT that go far beyond customer interactions, touching on advanced training and onboarding for agents, creative problem...

Send us Fan Mail Post covid, with many of our staff WFH, we have rethought how we train and prepare our contact center middle management and agent supervisors to excel in their roles.   In this episode, we talk about the new management trainee program that will be will be implementing to our staff later in 2023.  We hope this gives you some ideas to help your management staff as well. 1. Building...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of "Advice from a Call Center Geek" Podcast, we look at 9-10 ways that you can improve the coaching culture of your contact center to create better agents and improve the customer experience. We also answer some questions that came in on Linkedin and TikTok Live!  Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact center leaders on CCaaS platform select...

Send us Fan Mail We all want a better CX, and doing that means we need to improve the tone of how we are interacting with customers.   I have seen it many times when a customer calls a contact center and gets the desired outcome they needed, but because the tone was off on the call (indifference, bad word choice, talking over the customer...) the customer left the call with a negative feeling abou...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is for you if you are a BPO owner/operator.  In this episode of ACG, we talk about benchmarking the financial aspects of your BPO, setting up your books for maximum valuation, multiples in the market, maximizing your BPO for an exit, and so much more. Every day, contact center BPOs are focused on many operational metrics or KPIs that describe how the center is perform...

Send us Fan Mail OK, that was awesome. We did a Linkedin LIVE and a TikTok LIVE at the same time to record this podcast episode. The episode then turned into a crazy (in a good way) AMA with questions coming from both platforms. My 25-minute podcast ended up going about an hour. I love the questions, I think they provide much more value than just me yammering on about a topic. I wanted to give my...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, we bring together two of my passions, customer experience, and the blockchain.  Shelli Ryan, APR, Fellow PRSA the founder/principle of the CX Block Chain Institute which is the worldwide authority focused on fulfilling blockchain for the CX (customer experience) industry talks about implementing the blockchain into your contact ce...

Send us Fan Mail For a sports team looking to improve, they routinely will bring in other coaches to do an internal self-scout to try to show where the weaknesses are and how to improve on those. This same concept should happen in your contact center at least once a year.   Here are some of the questions that we would ask and start to work with your team on.  You don't need a consultant for t...

Send us Fan Mail This episode was taken from our first TikTok Live AMA that we did.  Followers sent us questions and we answered live on the spot! Some of the topics covered in the episode are hiring, games to play in the contact center, culture, sentiment, analytics, culture, and more. I really like these episodes as we get to cover a ton of different topics at once! Make sure you follow us on Ti...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, we look at all the tools that you need (and don't need) in setting up a high-end customer service contact center for the lowest amount of money possible while still not forgetting about quality. We talk about places you can save money by using or not using technology and look at all the things that you need to think about tha...

Send us Fan Mail ChatGPT has opened the eyes to what true AI may be capable of.   In this episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, we look beyond the "normal" uses cases of Ai uses in such tools as chatbots and analytics and think about some of the unique and "out there" uses cases for AI in the contact center and CX environment.  Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, we look at some unique ways to route calls in your contact center using data and CRM integrations. Integrating your data and your telephony is a very cost-effective way to improve your customer experience. Some of the topics discussed are: Customer Segmentation What Data Sets to Use Workforce Intelligence Virtual Callbacks  T...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, we take a hard look at what happened specifically with Southwest Airlines and the total customer service meltdown that occurred over Christmas '22. We also talk about infrastructure and tips and tactics to follow when your organization gets in an emergency heavy queue!  Through Expivia Digital, Tom works with contact cen...