The Top 6

Contact Center
Transformations
Keeping Leaders
Up At Night
Featuring the CCW Advisory Board
 JUNE
JUNE28
20--30
23,, 2020
2022
CAESARS FORUM, LAS VEGAS
www.customercontactweek.com

As Customer Contact Week continues its return to live events, we continue to tackle top challenges
facing the industry head-on. Representing six unique perspectives across industries, we are excited
to share some of the leading changes that are top of mind from our CCW Advisory Board. Join us at
CCW Las Vegas this June 20-23 to go deeper into these key topics and much more.

FEATURING INSIGHTS FROM:

Brad Nichols Cheryl China

Global Leader, Business Operations SVP, Director of Credit Card
and Customer Service Servicing
Dun & Bradstreet Citizens Bank

Mary Beth Jenkins Natalie Beckerman

Chief Operating Officer SVP, Operational Strategy
UPMC Health Plan Rocket Mortgage

Wes Dudley Lance Gruner

VP Customer Experience EVP, Global Customer Care
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Mastercard

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 JUNE 20 - 23, 2022
CAESARS FORUM, LAS VEGAS
www.customercontactweek.com

1) KEEP PACE WITH ACCELERATED DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

THROUGH A CONNECTED, END-TO-END EXPERIENCE
Keep digital transformation a top priority across your leadership team. As digital channels become
more important, you must closely and continually monitor vital digital metrics and use that
information to make strategic technology investments in modernizing the connected, end-to-end
experience.

“Our structure is such that we're having the most senior staff around the
table debating what our top priorities and investment areas should be.
We continue to wrestle with this. How do we connect digital channels
with the telephonic channel for an enhanced member/patient
experience? It’s a balancing act.

Our goal is to create a one-stop experience and connect those

traditionally disparate pieces across the healthcare continuum. A very
deeply connected provider-patient experience is at the top of our priority
list. There's only so much money to invest in new technology, so you
must continue to make this a conversation across all levels of your
leadership team on an ongoing basis.”
- Mary Beth Jenkins, Chief Operating Officer, UPMC Health Plan

2) COPE WITH THE RADICAL TRANSFORMATION OF RECRUITMENT,

ONBOARDING, TRAINING AND WORKPLACE CULTURE
Recruiting endured significant changes during the pandemic. The Great Resignation has further
complicated the workforce puzzle. While hiring in certain cases has become easier due to remote
flexibility, training your recruits and creating a workplace culture and atmosphere remains difficult
in virtual environments. You must build and implement strategies that are conducive to more
flexible workforce models.

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 JUNE 20 - 23, 2022
CAESARS FORUM, LAS VEGAS
www.customercontactweek.com

“We wholeheartedly accepted a much more liberal approach to remote

working in our function. That meant from a recruiting perspective, we
were able to cast a much wider net geographically as it relates to who
we're recruiting and from where, so many of those geographic
constraints went out the door.

That said, you used to have face-to-face settings for social interactions,
including bonding, water cooler conversations and coaching sessions.
Now, you have to find a way to translate all of that to a virtual setting,
which presents a huge challenge.

How do you give each employee the attention they expect when your
programs are designed for training by osmosis rather than electronic
learning? How do you stay connected in a technology-driven
environment, and then, how do you onboard and train new people
entirely remotely when you didn't do it before?”
- Brad Nichols, Global Leader, Business Operations and Customer Service,
Dun & Bradstreet

3) INFLUENCE CUSTOMER LOYALTY THROUGH EFFICIENT

CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS AND HIGH-QUALITY CALLS
Speed and efficiency in customer interactions are the leading indicators for customer satisfaction.
Influencing customer loyalty in particular has revolved around speeding up interactions with
customers. Maintaining high call quality through the support of a dynamic quality assurance team is
absolutely critical.

“You absolutely must have a team in place to specifically tackle

escalations. We elevated the role of our Facebook page as a form of
social customer care. Most of our de-escalations were due to supply
chain issues and the significant demand around the amount of product
that we've sold. Deliveries were delayed, some of them being quite
significant. You must have your finger on the pulse of the voice of the
customer.

Moving forward, it's more about the quality of the call. Remember that
average handle time and many other operational KPI’s need to be part of
the conversation, but coaching sessions need to focus on quality.”
- Wes Dudley, VP Customer Experience, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams

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 JUNE 20 - 23, 2022
CAESARS FORUM, LAS VEGAS
www.customercontactweek.com

4) INCREASE AGENT ENGAGEMENT AND OVERCOME BURNOUT

THROUGH TASK SPECIALIZATION
Due to the difficult working circumstances and lack of office connection because of the pandemic,
nbn
agents and managers alike have dealt with acute burnout related to ongoing, unprecedented call
volume. For the contact center specifically, focusing on a “master of one skill” strategy is more
beneficial than being a “jack-of-all-trades”. Task specialization results in better engagement and a
lower likelihood of burnout.

“Employees were burning out answering call after call with no relief in
between. Volume for us (and many companies) intensified during the
height of COVID. Between COVID-influenced turnover and higher
volumes, the burden was a lot to bear for many frontline colleagues.

We've granted people additional family time off, especially regarding

leave related to COVID or other special circumstances. I stressed to the
folks on my teams to take it one call at a time. You want to help your
frontline stay focused on the customer they are serving at any given
moment. There have been times when we had literally hundreds of calls
in the queue. We had to keep reminding everyone to take breaks and
take care of themselves first so they could effectively support our
customers.

I’m fortunate enough to oversee “specialized” teams, one of them being

Credit Card. There are enough nuances in the Credit Card product that
helps me build a case to keep my agents on one skill set, however we do
have other call center agents that handle multiple skills, such as deposit
products, loan, and online banking-related questions.

On my teams, I tend to have lower attrition and higher NPS scores. I

strongly believe one of the reasons is being a “master” of one skill set
and not having to continually jump between call types.”
- Cheryl China, SVP, Director Credit Card Servicing, Citizens Bank

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 JUNE 20 - 23, 2022
CAESARS FORUM, LAS VEGAS
www.customercontactweek.com

5) EVOLVE SCORECARDS AND PRODUCTIVITY MEASURES TO

ALIGN WITH A CHANGING WORKFORCE
It has proven more difficult to engage with employees virtually, especially when some did not
nbn
initially have all of the resources required to do so. Managers and supervisors must understand the
significant difference between managing employees virtually and in an in-person environment. To
manage this shift, you also must adapt how you measure productivity.

“It is so much easier to manage someone who is visually in front of you

than it is to do so virtually. What we've had to do is get smarter and
slicker with all of our productivity measurements. This resulted in a need
to adjust and evolve all of our scorecards. We've changed our model for
one-to-one coaching as well as action planning.”
- Natalie Beckerman, SVP, Operational Strategy, Rocket Mortgage

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 JUNE 20 - 23, 2022
CAESARS FORUM, LAS VEGAS
www.customercontactweek.com

6) SOCIAL CUSTOMER CARE TAKES CENTER STAGE AS COMPANIES

MEET CUSTOMERS IN THEIR CHANNEL OF CHOICE
Social media was originally leveraged as a marketing tool, but more recently (and often fueled by
significant wait times), customers have turned to social channels to get in contact with customer
service faster. Going forward, meeting your customer in their channel of choice goes beyond being
a competitive differentiator but is table stakes for customer engagement and longer-term loyalty
and lifetime value.

“At this stage of the pandemic, my team now manages 100% of our
social channels, and we're delivering support and reporting off of that.
We've seen over 300% growth in social channel engagement. Social
Media is exploding. I now have three centers around the world that are
completely dedicated to monitoring our socials.

I think we are experiencing a working trajectory where you have to have

a flexible and hybrid model, and that includes a flexible and hybrid
model for support.

You need to have your act together when you look at shifting people by
channel and being available on the customer’s channel of choice.
Forcing customers into a channel is going to be detrimental, because
they will happily find their way to your competition and align with
companies that have the same support mindset that they do.”
- Lance Gruner, EVP, Global Customer Care, Mastercard

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 JUNE
JUNE28
20--30
23,, 2020
2022
CAESARS FORUM, LAS VEGAS
www.customercontactweek.com

Join us in Las Vegas!

REGISTER NOW VIEW THE AGENDA

Customer Contact Week is heading back to Las Vegas this June 20-23, 2022! This year we
look forward to continuing to bring our community together and navigating the new
normals of our industry while tackling the biggest challenges.

For any questions or if you'd like the agenda to be sent to you directly, contact us at
info@customermanagementpractice.com.

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