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Ashmeed Ali is Senior Manager of Strategic Insights and Research at Yahoo!,. He has over 10 years of media, entertainment, and technology marketing research experience. At Yahoo!, he focuses on connected experiences (mobile, tablet PC, Connected TV) and social insights where his research has appeared in both b2b and consumer press. In 2010, he released a ground-breaking study with The Nielsen Company on mobile shopping patterns across more than 12 advertising categories. He regularly holds mobile 101 sessions educating Yahoo! clients about the astronomical growth of the mobile platform where it has morphed from a utility device to a co-pilot in life. |
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Jared Anderson is the Senior Manager of Customer Experience Research for Best Buy. As the leader of the Customer Experience Research group, Jared is responsible for setting the strategy behind customer experience research methodology and its analytic application for the enterprise. Four years ago, Jared led a movement to internalize the majority of primary customer research resulting in the implementation of structured and unstructured data design, collection and analytics platforms that have created a self-sustaining research environment saving the company millions of dollars while increasing the research output and amount of consumer listening posts available to the enterprise. In addition to managing the enterprise customer experience research function, he is leading work to understand customer engagement / irrational connection to the brand and the impact of various channels of customer interaction (both branded and public) on the larger perception of the company by its customers. |
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Tom Asher is Director of Consumer Experience at SunRun, one of the largest and fastest growing residential solar companies in the U.S. Tom and his 11 person team are responsible for creating a stellar experience for SunRun customers, driving strong net promoter scores and ensuring that solar adoption continues to grow rapidly. Prior to SunRun, Tom headed up Consumer Relations North America for Levi Strauss & Co. Tom joined SOCAP in 1998 and has made many meaningful connections with industry colleagues as a result of his SOCAP affiliation. He served on the board of SOCAP International for 6 years and was Chairman of the board in 2007. |
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Ronna Caras is President of Caras Training and a sought after speaker and trainer with more than 20 years developing training that has had lasting positive impact on companies of all sizes. She is known for innovative, real world solutions to employee development challenges. |
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Sally Carlson has been with Roche Diagnostics for over 13 years with a concentrated focus in Customer Care. She has lead both Operational teams and Continuous Improvement teams, additionally participating in several FDA Inspections and the associated improvement worksets during her tenure. Sally current leads the Inbound Operations for Roche’s Diabetes Care Contact Center, which handles over 1 million contacts annually. The center provides support to both Consumers and Professionals for blood glucose, insulin delivery and coagulation. Sally is an active participant of the SOCAP Pharmaceutical and Medical Device community. |
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Matt Cohen is Industry Group Director, Retail, Hospitality, CPG and Pharmaceutical for Clarabridge. As the Industry Group Director, Matt is responsible for business development, marketing and sales for four major industries. Matt is an entrepreneurial sales executive who focuses on solution selling, partnering with clients and prospects to understand real world problems, their impacts, and identifies solutions that will create business value through ROI and organizational change. Prior to Clarabridge Matt worked with a $250M technical services company, Apex Systems, developing new business, managing existing clients and training his team of staffing professionals. Matt holds a BA in Psychology with a focus on Criminal Justice from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. |
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Jeanne Collins is an East Coast Regional Sales Director for Coupons.com. She has been in the CPG promotion business for over 15 years with the last 2 ½ years being at Coupons.com. Prior to joining Coupons.com she worked at Valassis servicing major CPG clients in the Northeast Region. She has worked with many major Northeast CPG clients such as Unilever, L’Oreal, Maybelline, Dannon, Colgate and Pfizer. She has an MBA from the University of Connecticut and resides in Connecticut. |
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Lisa Diehl has over 27 years experience in the Travel and Hospitality Industry and has held a variety of supervisory and managerial positions. For the past 9 years, she has been a member of the Chicago based, Global Customer Experience Team at Orbitz Worldwide. Lisa’s current role is managing the day- to-day operations of the Customer Relations Team. She has also been involved in building a successful team to engage customers in the Social Media arena. Lisa is currently Vice President of Programs for the Chicago Chapter of SOCAP.
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Patrice Fehl is the Sr. Manager of Consumer Relations for The Hershey Company. She is responsible for aligning The Hershey Company’s consumer affairs organizations worldwide. She joined The Hershey Company in February 2006 after consulting at Hershey as an SAP Training and Change Management Project Lead. Prior to Hershey, the majority of her career was spent managing training and development organizations. Patrice earned a Master of Education degree from Penn State University. Patrice has been a member of SOCAP for 5 years and is currently the SOCAP CPG Committee Chair. |
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Cindy Fritton, Manager for ConAgra Consumer Affairs joined ConAgra Foods in 2004. While at ConAgra Foods, Cindy has held various management positions in the Consumer Affairs Department. Cindy leads the Training and QA program for ConAgra Foods, At-Home Rep Program. Her team continues to find better ways for ConAgra Foods to connect with their consumers. The ConAgra Foods At-Home Rep Program just marked its third year anniversary recently in March 2010. Prior to ConAgra, she worked for the Gallup Organization for 18 years. Cindy holds a B.S. Degree from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, where she had dual majors in Advertising ,and Consumer Science. She spends her free time partnering with her husband Steve on the various sporting events for their two sons Zach 12, and Matthew 10. Their 4 Year old daughter Ashley helps Mom cheer for the boys on the sidelines. |
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Alex George has worked in Contact Center and CRM Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing for over 15 years. Alex has held senior positions with startups like Elix (acquired by Bell Canada) and ISM (acquired by IBM). At iGate Global Solutions was responsible for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) consulting and technology divisions. Alex led cconsulting engagements for companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Alcatel Lucent, US Bank, Nationwide Insurance, AT&T and Suntrust bank. Prior to Astute Solutions, Alex founded and was CEO of Gamma Engineers Inc. and Speechlabs Inc. Gamma Engineers built SRM, a SaaS solution that provides Social Media Monitoring, Social Relationship Management and Social Media Analytics. Gamma Engineers also developed a Smartphone Platform that won Gartner’s ‘Cool New Vendor for 2010’ in the mobile space. At Speechlabs, Alex helped design and build a Speech Recognition products for voicemail transcription, and realtime transcription for contact centers. Alex has spoken at many industry and analyst conferences. Alex has a BA in Computer Engineering and Political Science from University of Toronto. |
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John Goodman is Vice Chairman and co-founded TARP at Harvard in 1971. He has managed more than 1,000 separate customer service studies, including TARP's White House sponsored evaluation of customer service in government and business. He has also led studies of word of mouth and word of mouse (on the Web) and the bottom-line impact of consumer education. The American Management Association published his book, “Strategic Customer Service”, in May, 2009. |
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Jeff Hagen has been with General Mills for sixteen years as Director, Consumer Services where he is responsible for the oversight of global contact centers that respond to inquiries received from consumers and foodservice customers, for the technologies employed to support these centers, and for the reporting/analysis of consumer contact information gathered during these interactions with consumers. Prior to joining General Mills, Jeff was Vice President and General Manager of the Teleservices and Direct Response businesses of Gage Marketing Group, providing outsourced complex customer service and fulfillment services to many major companies. Before that, Jeff served in a variety of roles with Carlson Companies, the last position being Senior Director of Internal Operations for the Carlson Marketing Group. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing and an MBA in Management, both from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio and he attended the Minnesota Management Institute at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Business. Jeff serves as Chairman Elect of the Board of Directors for the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, International. |
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Jeff Hargett has brought the culture of The Ritz-Carlton to over 10,000 people along with sharing his support and belief in this great company. In 1994, Mr. Hargett decided to leave the “lights of Broadway” to pursue a more stable vocation where his background and talents could be utilized. Because of his love of travel, Jeff pursued an internship at Marriott International’s Northeast Regional Reservation Center in Somerset, New Jersey. He became Lead Trainer at this facility, which employed 100 agents and averaged more than 10,000 calls per day. With the addition of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC to the Marriott family, Mr. Hargett became Reservations Supervisor at The Ritz-Carlton, New York in 1996. Since then, he has had the pleasure of working with the ladies and gentlemen of The Ritz-Carlton, Cancun and The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua as Reservations Manager; The Ritz-Carlton, Cleveland as Director of Training and Development; and The Ritz-Carlton Hotels of New York as Director of Training and Organizational effectiveness. In 2006, Jeff transitioned into his current position with The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center. |
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Scott Hirsch is Vice President of Business Development at Get Satisfaction, an online community platform that builds strong relationships between companies and their customers. Scott is responsible for strategic partnership development with a focus on CRM and social platform integrations, as well as distribution partnerships. Prior to joining Get Satisfaction, Scott was co-founder of a boutique strategy consultancy that brought design principles to exploration of greenfield products and business models for global 1000 clients. His clients included Rodale Publishing, Telefonica, Nokia, and British Telecom. |
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Chip Horner is Worldwide Director of Global Consumer Affairs at the Colgate-Palmolive Company. He joined Colgate in October 2006. Professionally, his early years were spent in Marketing, and he previously worked for the Warner-Lambert Company and Pfizer. In 2001, he was Chairman of SOCAP International - and has since addressed Association meetings on best practices in consumer care in Europe, Canada and Brazil. “I have two beautiful children – Winnie, age 9 and Chase, age 12. We enjoy quality time together – kayaking, traveling, swimming and going on nature hikes. I also enjoy biking, fishing and playing golf.” |
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Linnea Johnson is the Director of Consumer Services for Unilever, a Fortune 100 company. Linnea has worked for Unilever for over 29 years in various marketing positions including Brand Management and Consumer Promotions. For the past 16 years, she has developed and implemented strategies to transition Consumer Services from a cost center to a value-creation center for the Business. Additionally, she has consolidated 5 diverse centers for North America to reduce costs and increase quality of service and has leveraged consumer insight to enhance marketing programs. Linnea has been a speaker at a number of national conferences regarding her experience in the critical consumer care profession. She is the Vice Chairman for SOCAP International, an organization that drives business transformation through its global community of customer care experts. |
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Jeanne Jones serves as the Director, Consumer Affairs for ConAgra Foods. Reporting to the Chief Global Quality Officer, she has responsibility for the consumer experience, including driving actionable insights for the organization, ensuring early notification of trends impacting food safety and quality, implementing closed loop processes and directing cross functional continuous improvement initiatives. She has a diverse background that includes over twenty years in operations management, including senior management and director level positions with Fortune 500™ companies such as Ameritech Cellular and Sprint PCS. Jeanne holds national certifications through the American Society of Quality (Certified Manager of Quality and Organizational Excellence) and the American Production and Inventory Control Society (Certified in Production and Inventory Management), along with a Master of Arts in the field of Leadership Studies and a Masters Certificate in Project Management. |
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Rick Kingston is the President, Regulatory and Scientific Affairs at SafetyCall International P.L.L.C. His academic career spans more than 30 years at the University of Minnesota where he attained the rank of full Professor in the Department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and currently serves as Clinical Professor, in the College of Pharmacy. He was the co-founder of the Minnesota Poison Control System and its Regional Poison Control Center where he served for 18 years. He serves on numerous scientific panels, advisory boards and non-profit professional organization scientific committees advising on issues of product stewardship, science and safety. His professional expertise spans the areas of consumer product post-market surveillance and safety, clinical toxicology and pharmacology, injury prevention, poison control, and toxicology related regulatory policy. His practice focus in recent years has been helping companies, regulators and the science community, assess and make sense of product associated spontaneously reported adverse events and their role in defining product safety. |
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Peggy Lundquist has 14 years CPG consumer relations experience and is currently Director of Consumer Affairs for WhiteWave Foods Company, the makers of Silk®, Horizon Organic®, and International Delight®. Peggy and her team developed WhiteWave’s consumer program six years ago and currently focuses on providing strategy, leadership, insights, training, and crisis management for this growing organization. Peggy is an active SOCAP member, serving as a committee member on the CPG industry community and a SOCAP PING content captain. WhiteWave Foods is based in Broomfield, Colorado. |
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Leisa McDonald has been with Roche Diagnostics for sixteen years. She has over nine years of experience in Learning and Development functions across the organization and currently leads the Consumer Inbound Operations for Roche’s Diabetes Care Contact Center, which handles over 1 million contacts annually. Her passion for customer service and people development has led her to drive several initiatives around enhanced communication and engagement within the contact center including re-engineering their call monitoring tool sets and incorporating personality profiling within call handling. |
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Andrea McLean is the Executive Director of Global Consumer Servicing and Strategy with the Estee Lauder Companies. In this role she is a key member of the Global Consumer Communications senior leadership team working to define and set global consumer servicing, communication (in all mediums) and technology strategies to deliver high touch consumer care. She oversees ELC’s largest consumer care center. Andrea is also a member of the Global Consumer Insights team and collaborates with key partners in the organization to drive excellence in integrated consumer feedback reporting and insights. Prior to working at Estee Lauder, Andrea held senior consumer servicing positions with American Express and Nestle USA. She has been a member of SOCAP since 1990 and holds memberships with CEW (Cosmetic Executive Women) and PCPC (Personal Care Products Council). |
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Lisa Menck-Shock is an executive director at iostudio, a full-service marketing agency, where she is responsible for the National Guard account. A captain in the Army National Guard, Menck-Shock has helped facilitate the Guard’s move to online enlistment since starting at iostudio as a Hero on Call operator in 2006. In her current role, she oversees the National Guard’s recruiting website (www.NATIONALGUARD.com), the National Guard social media program, a customer support call center and all back-end application development. She coordinates efforts across all of these programs to ensure a fluid user experience of the online enlistment process. |
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Cliff Moore is Chairman and Co-Founder of the Customer Operations Performance Center, Inc. (COPC). Based on his extensive experience in performance management systems, Cliff led the research and working sessions that developed the COPC-2000® CSP Standard. He serves on the COPC® Standards Committee and has actively driven the adoption of the COPC-2000® CSP Standard both domestically and internationally. Cliff received his MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia and has a BS in Business Administration from Old Dominion University. |
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Jacob Morgan is the Principal and Co-Founder of Chess Media Group a management consulting and strategic advisory firm. Chess works with organizations interested in deploying emergent social and collaborative strategies and technologies to solve customer, partner, and employee facing business problems. Jacob is the author of an award winning blog called Social Business Advisor which is ranked as one of the 100 most influential blogs by AdAge. Jacob has also been featured by Zdnet, WSJ, USA Today, Inc Magazine, Read Write Web, and others. Currently Jacob is working on a book for McGraw Hill all around collaboration within the enterprise. When Jacob is not speaking or consulting he is traveling or playing racquetball. You can also connect with Jacob directly via Twitter @JacobM.
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Kim Musgrave joined McDonald’s Customer Satisfaction as part of U.S. Consumer & Business Insights department in June, 2009. She currently leads the social media strategy for customer engagement and reporting and manages utilizing the social “Voice of Customer” insights to compliment feedback in traditional channels and the impact on operational and marketing decisions. She currently participates on the WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) Sub-committee for Customer Service and will co-chair the committee for the second half of 2011.
Prior to joining McDonald’s, Kim has over 20 years experience developing and executing CRM and loyalty programs at Sears, Spiegel and ULTA Cosmetics. She has a Business Degree in Marketing from Illinois State University and balances her career with being a wife and mom to two girls age thirteen and ten.
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Leslie O'Flahavan is principal of E-WRITE. She has helped thousands of people learn to write well for online readers. She has developed and delivered customized writing courses for customer service agents, help desk staff, web content contributors, marketers, demographers, activists, federal employees, and teachers. Leslie is a problem-solver for all the writing-related challenges faced by contact centers. She helps contact centers train agents to write excellent e-mail, measure the quality of their e-mails to customers, and rewrite and maintain their entire library of canned answers. Leslie is the co-author of Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents. |
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Patrick O’Shea has operated service and sales organizations for some of the largest financial institutions in America. O'Shea authored the booklet Crisis Leadership in 2009 and is a frequent speaker on the topics of sales and contact center culture around the United States. O'Shea earned his Bachelors degree from the University of Arizona his Masters Degree from Amberton University in Dallas and also holds post graduate certifications from Cornell and Villanova Universities.
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Robert Phifer is the www.NATIONALGUARD.com program manager for the National Guard Bureau (NGB). A captain in the Army National Guard and former Marine, Phifer manages the day-to-day operations of the website, including content and functionality. He communicates the needs and policies of the National Guard to the vendor,iostudio, to develop solutions for the architecture of the website and for Path to Honor, the online enlistment process. Phifer applies his visual communications and marketing background in collaborations with NGB marketing to ensure all campaigns can adapt to changing enlistment and mission requirements. He is also involved in the training of National Guard recruiters, ensuring effective use of the website as a sales tool for recruiting and retention. |
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Lynn Reilly is the Director of Consumer Relations with Pinnacle Foods Group LLC. With over 15 years of consumer engagement experience, Lynn and her team are an integral part of Pinnacle’s consumer strategy, ensuring that recognition of consumer loyalty coupled with extraction of consumer insights are at the forefront of every interaction. Lynn is an active Socap member and serves on the Consumer Packaged Goods committee. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Towson State and a Masters in Corporate Communications. Prior to joining Pinnacle in 2007, Lynn was with Bayer Healthcare for 10 years. |
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Patrick Roney has been with McDonald’s for 12 years and currently is leading the Customer Satisfaction department for McDonald’s USA. Patrick has also worked within Global Research, U.S. Consumer and Business Insights and was the Director of Strategy and Insights for the New York Metro Region. His experience at McDonald’s includes leading the research function for many key initiatives, including the launch of McCafe Espresso Beverages, Smoothies as well as zero gram trans fat French Fries. As Senior Director for Customer Satisfaction, Patrick oversees the functions responsible for customer engagement and retention including the Call Center/800 Number, CRM Systems, Social Media, and VOC Customer Insights. Prior to joining McDonald’s, Patrick spent five years working at Millward Brown, a global market research firm, on the McDonald’s account; followed by a year with DDB, McDonald’s National ad agency, as Senior Strategic Planner. Patrick holds an MBA from DePaul University. He enjoys spending time with his three boys, running marathons, playing golf and listening to and playing music. |
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Stephen Sedlak is the Director of Customer Relations for Orbitz Worldwide, based in Chicago, IL. He has been with Orbitz since November 2000, and leads an elite team that responds to customer feedback and complaints at the corporate level, as well as through social media commentary. He also manages the development of the complaint tracking systems which provide feedback to all other enterprise teams for Orbitz.com, CheapTickets.com, NEAT Packaging, and other affiliated businesses. Steve oversees the customer satisfaction survey processes for Orbitz Worldwide, managing online and offline survey processes across all contact center touch points. Steve has been a panelist at 2 recent SOCAP meetings – the 2008 SOCAP Symposium in Boston (Impact of the Customer Bill of Rights) and the 2009 Symposium in Chicago (Does a Good Call Always Mean a Satisfied Customer?). Prior to Orbitz, Steve was with American Airlines for over 20 years, and held a variety of supervisory and managerial positions in Reservations, Planning, Marketing, and Ramp Services Operations. Steve holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Transportation and Physical Distribution Management from Syracuse University, and a Masters in Business Administration from The University of Texas at Arlington. He currently resides in Schaumburg, IL, and is married. |
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Marie Shubin is the Director of Global Consumer Relations at E&J Gallo Winery. The Gallo Consumer Information Center is the Voice of the Consumer at Gallo, and provides service to consumers around the world regarding over 100 wine, spirits and wine beverage brands. The Consumer Information Center is central to the execution of many CRM and Quality initiatives. Marie has been an active member of SOCAP since 1993. From 1995-2000 Marie served on the Board of Directors as Chairman of the Membership Committee developing the new member orientation and buddy programs. She was instrumental in founding the Food & Beverage Community and Data Reporting Workshop. Now serving another term on the Board of Directors, Marie is a conference presenter and CRM contributor. Marie has a Bachelor's degree in Education from Arizona State University and an MBA from Western International University. |
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Dawn Stevenson is a results-driven visionary leader with over 16 years of highly successful management experience in Retention, Customer Service, Inside Sales, Training, QA, Technical Support and Collections/Fraud Prevention. Dawn is a creative, resourceful, and committed professional with a proven record of success in assuming increasing levels of responsibility. Dawn has worked in various industries including the Service Contract/Insurance, Online Media, and Postage supporting both B2B and B2C environments. Dawn is currently the Director of Customer Care at Stamps.com (STMP) where she is responsible for ensuring that the 400,000 small business, Enterprise, and High Volume shipping customers receive stellar customer support. Dawn is an Officer on the Board for the Southwest Regional Chapter of SOCAP International as the VP of Locations and Events. Dawn received her Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Eastern Illinois University and her Master’s in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. In her free time, Dawn enjoys downhill skiing and exploring all of the natural beauty of California. |
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Jack Sullivan possesses over 17 years of consumer affairs experience within the consumer packaged goods industry. He currently manages operations functions for Unilever with staff in the US and Canada. Prior to this, he held several positions managing teams focused on leveraging the consumer insights and building brand relationships. He has been a member of SOCAP for over ten years and holds a masters degree in human resources education. |
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Debbie Tsusaki is a senior director, operations planning and delivery for worldwide lodging franchisor Choice Hotels International (NYSE: CHH). In this role, she is responsible for overseeing the tools, technology, and applications for Choice’s global distribution teams, including worldwide reservations and operations contact centers. In addition, she is responsible for creating and driving business cases for new technologies and opportunities to improve efficiencies and increase self-service for Choice guests. She also works with franchisees and internal stakeholders on rates strategies and franchisee tools. Ms. Tsusaki has extensive customer service experience, including a variety of operations, planning, and project management functions with Sylantro, Aspect, and her own consulting company. Prior to joining Choice in March 2007, she acquired international experience through living five years in Germany. Before that, she served as Sr. Project Manager for Sylantro, establishing repeatable processes for the installation and configuration of software used to deliver hosted VoIP applications and services world-wide. She was a founding member of e-Bridges, LLC, a consulting firm based in San Francisco, CA. In that role, she was responsible for the analysis of companies’ customer care functions, recommending efficiency improvements in technology and processes and providing strategic planning for business development. Ms. Tsusaki received her bachelor’s degree in math and economics from the College of Mount St. Vincent and holds a master’s of science in operations research from Stanford University. She is married and has two sons. |
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Alyssa Waxenberg is Senior Director, Mobile and Social Media with Starwood Hotels & Resorts. In this role, Ms. Waxenberg is responsible for Starwood’s global strategy across its 9 hotel brands and SPG loyalty program. Her focus is on establishing Starwood’s presence on mobile and social platforms, and leveraging them to enhance the guest experience and facilitate meaningful relationships with guests. Prior to joining Starwood, Alyssa’s career included positions at advertising agencies, internet and media companies focusing on both traditional and online marketing working with Fortune 500 brands. |
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Joseph Wong has more than a decade of experience in customer relationship management across Asia and leads the sales and business development initiatives. Prior to PCCW, Joseph was the Chief Operations Officer of a major customer relationship management company. Joseph has been a leader within the industry, serving as the first vice chairman of the Hong Kong Call Center Association and also as a lecturer for the Hong Kong Management Association. Joseph earned a BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Texas and a Master’s degree in Logistics Management from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Joseph was the first Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Call Center Association and the Founding Member of Hong Kong Customer Consortium. |