First Contact: Stories of the Call Center

A short Holiday message from the team at NobelBiz + some fun bloopers and collage featuring the best moments of the first season of First Contact - Stories of the Call Center! Happy Holidays!

For our season finale here at First Contact, we welcome customer service and support expert extraordinaire - Shep Hyken. A true magician of the contact center space, Shep's been at it for over 40 years and has accumulated a wealth of knowledge. He's got his own TV Show - Be Amazing or Go Home - and he's a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, with countless books already publi...

Last week, Steve had a talk with Christopher Brooks of the Customer Experience Superheroes podcast. The discussion covered a wide array of topics from technology adoption during the pandemic, to how businesses have adapted to service new modes of communication, to how the millennial group views communication, and to how Steve believes the world is built on a consumer-based approach to relations. A...

Nancy Munro is a true pioneer of the contact center world. She has revolutionized the space with simulation training solutions that kickstart agent productivity and help them get that deer-in-the-headlights moment that many of them simply need before they start taking real calls with real people. The virtual, remote call center is here, and Nancy's products are essential for adaptability in this n...

Recently, Steve sat down with Fernando Corona of the Sage Executive Podcast. Here's the result of that: an honest discussion about how Steve approaches management, how NobelBiz grew to where it is today, how we celebrate our successes, and many other topics in between. For more episodes from Fernando, be sure to check out his LinkedIn. For more about Steve, just go to NobelBiz.com and search for S...

With a career as diverse as his, it's a wonder how he ended up in the contact center space. But he did and we're all thankful for it! HDI's Lifetime Achievement Honoree and an overall incredible person we're honored to talk to: Roy Atkinson is our guest this episode. He's had some of the most interesting jobs ever, he's been in a band, he's an all-around tech guy, but if there's one thing he stand...

Possibly the single most interesting exception to the whole "working in a call center was my college job" thing, Thomas Laird is a business leader that started "working" in a call center at age 9, helping his parents. Many years later, Tom heads his own hundreds-of-agents-strong call center with refreshing wit and wisdom, presenting an innovative approach to problems that plagued the industry for...

Want to learn about how inbound/outbound volumes are doing during the pandemic? Just hit play. Recently, Steve sat down to talk with Doug Green of Telecom Reseller about the outlook of contact centers during and post-pandemic. His insights are unique because they come from an insider who not only knows what he's talking about, but also cares deeply about his company, the industry, and the business...

When you're in the industry famed for robocalls, it's difficult to advocate for legal actors that do robocalls. Rebekah Johnson is the no-bs voice that speaks truth to power when it comes to robocalls, contact centers, and keeping the space healthy and accessible for companies while rooting out the bad actors. Hear about her work and her solutions to today's problems right here! This is First Cont...

And now a break from our usual programming. Here's a short bit of Steve Bederman, CEO of NobelBiz, in conversation with Nancy Munro of Verbal Transactions on her podcast Contact Center Insights. Nancy Munro, CEO of Verbal Transactions has a long history of deploying enterprise learning solutions. Currently, she helps contact centers get their agents up to speed through the use of her immersive con...

Jim Rembach had a long journey in the contact center space, then he got out. He took a few years to realize he wanted back in. So he returned and went all in. Christian sat down with Jim and went back to the basics: how does an emotional intelligence certified specialist go about being a leader in a contact center. Amidst a global pandemic especially. This is First Contact, Stories of the Call Cen...

What does one of the top consultants in the contact center market do when the world is faced with a global pandemic? Rise above. Christa Heibel gives her advice on what contact centers need to do now. As a leader of the industry and president of CH Consulting, she's in a top position to give advice on this complicated issue and how we can better prepare for the future. This is First Contact, Stori...

Cathy Karabetsos really has it all: from being the top woman in the call center industry, to having her own podcast, being CEO of a giant BPO, and let's not forget her 7 miracles - her kids! Christian joined Cathy in Chicago to talk about everything that's going on in her life and how she manages to balance everything while keeping it together and also finding time to sleep! This is First Contact,...

This week, Christian is joined by Jake Bush, founder and CEO of INFOCU5. Jake has a wild road to success in the contact center space ever since he took a job at a call center just to earn a bit of extra money. His life took him from extreme sports to working as a line chef, to film studies, and now to being the CEO of one of the fastest-growing companies in the Contact Center World. This is First...

Christian Montes, Executive Director of Sales at NobelBiz, talks to Steve Bederman, CEO of NobelBiz, about how he went from recording artist to tech entrepreneur and how he turned his failures into successes. Learn from Steve's vast experience in running contact center operation, with a focus on how leaders can inspire and help their people get to new heights in their careers. This is First Contac...