The Call Centre Conference kicked off to a great start with Chair Nicola Collister, managing director of Custerian beginning the day with some words on recent industry trends. Our attendees then sat in on some brilliant sessions led by established keynote speakers and industry experts. Our main seminars from the morning were headed up by William Montgomery, CEO of TEN; Ian Williams, director of Jericho; Carolyn Blunt, director of Real Results Training; Simon Norie, Custerian co-founder; while Anthony Stears of The Telephone Assassin hosted a Q&A session.

William Montgomery, director of TEN; a cutting-edge training, mentoring, facilitation and consultancy provider, taught our attendees all about “What it takes to be a great leader,” giving them the skills and confidence they need to take up a leadership role in any organisation. He covered core skills, personal attributes, gaining staff trust, practical techniques and how to handle real-life situations to become a first class leader.

Meanwhile, business transformation specialist and Jericho director Ian Williams hosted a session on “Customer experience – the bottom line,” taking a unique look at the relationship between customer experience and profitability to help businesses optimise their customer experience without compromising on shareholder returns.

Attendees learnt ‘Why average handling time is not the bad guy’ with Carolyn Blunt, renowned trainer, author and business owner. Carolyn discussed the hotly debated topic by covering a case study on the principles designed to achieve an effective balance between average handling time and customer experience; leaving delegates with lots of tips and tricks to implement an effective average handling time strategy to achieve fast results.

In Simon Norie’s session, delegates got an introduction to the latest technology in the contact centre industry to discuss whether these tools can really enable a seamless channel experience. Simon presented a pragmatic view on what the capabilities, barriers and opportunities are to shift ‘service’ from being seen as a cost centre, becoming the experience glue that binds customers to a brand; to build ongoing loyalty and value.

Furthermore, Anthony Stears, also known as the Telephone Assassin hosted a Q&A session giving delegates the opportunity to share the issues, frustrations and concerns they are currently facing. Anthony also provided practical solutions, tips and techniques to help delegates overcome these and unlock the secrets to telephone success, and covered issues such as measuring the effectiveness of people on the phone and pacifying unhappy or frustrated clients.

During networking coffee breaks and a buffet lunch served by the Tower Grill restaurant within the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel, attendees had the opportunity to speak to a selection of hand-picked suppliers including the likes of 8X8, Ctalk, Maximum, Premier CX and Quickscripts before another round of seminars and sessions commenced.

The afternoon sessions were headed up by industry specialists; Nick Fleming, market development manager at the BSI; Dougie Cameron, director of Addzest Consulting Ltd; Neil Clough, managing director of This is Prime; and Simon Beeching, director of Syntec. The day was topped off with an interactive panel discussion with Neil Clough, Anthony Stears and Carolyn Blunt hosted by Chair Nicola Collister.

Nick Fleming joined us to discuss ‘How the BSI’s standard BS 8543 can help take the pain out of complaints’. BS 8543 specifies how to design and implement an efficient complaint-handling process, and Nick gave delegates a breakdown of how to implement a truly effective complaints management system.

In addition, attendees received a breakdown on respecting customers’ time with experienced consulting director, Dougie Cameron. He discussed problems with contact centres, real life experiences, the psychology of queuing, big strategic options and practical solutions to queues.

Neil Clough, motivational speaker and former The Apprentice finalist, hosted a sales and motivation session. Neil shared top tips picked up from his own experience to help attendees use motivation to achieve their career goals, learn from failures to come back stronger, stand out from the crowd and build rapport.

Simon Beeching, strategic development specialist, led a session on PCI DSS in contact centres, improving customer trust and de-scoping from the regulations. News about data breaches make consumers wary of reading out payment card details over the phone. Simon joined us to present Syntec’s research on what consumers think and how they want new technology to resolve this problem.

The last session of the day was a panel discussion led by Nicola Collister, featuring Neil Clough, Anthony Stears and Carolyn Blunt. They went through the solutions to key concerns for many attendees for managing contact centres step by step; giving attendees top tips and handy hints for improving their contact centres and the services they provide.

Feedback from delegates, speakers and suppliers has been very positive already, with many attendees saying they’ve learned valuable skills throughout the day and are walking away with tools and techniques they can put into practice straight away. Our speakers have left with a feeling of confidence – and even a few requests for proposals to do training at some of the attendees’ companies.

We’d like to thank all of our speakers for putting in a huge amount of effort to make the Call Centre Conference so successful, as well as our suppliers and media partners: 8X8, Call Centre Helper, Ctalk, Institute of Customer Service, Maximum, Premier CX, Quickscripts.

We’ll be releasing a full webinar to show you what they discussed, so watch this space.

To watch an interview with Anthony Stears at the Call Centre Conference, click here

For more information on the next Call Centre Conference, please click here or contact:

David Boore
Conference Sales Executive
T: 01992 374097
E: d.boore@forumevents.co.uk

For more information on exhibiting at the next Call Centre Conference, please contact:

Gayle Buckland
Portfolio Sales Manager
T: 01992 374063
E: g.buckland@forumevents.co.uk

 

Words by Shreena Chandarana, Marketing Communications Executive