• Get recognized and win the respect of the CEO
  
• Hire and retain the best talent
  
• Ensure world-class customer care
  
• Maintain good relationships and job security
  
• Use likeability to conquer the workplace instead of intimidation
  

• Reconstruct market boundaries
  
• Focus on the big picture
  
• Create and capture -- reach beyond existing demand
  
• Get the strategic sequence right
  
• Overcome organizational hurdles

ROI Part I: MEASURING AND MAXIMIZING THE ROI ON CUSTOMER CARE

Gain tools, techniques and innovation for data collection, analysis and reporting. Learn how others measure ROI, the key components of ROI process model, how to convert data to dollars, apply predictive attrition/churn models, quantify service level and the cost of bad service, and discover root cause analysis. Panel speakers will provide key points on:

• Developing critical company metrics (product quality scores, retention/repurchase scores, productivity improvement, scrap reduction)
  
• Quantitative versus qualitative measures, identifying/valuing intangibles and hidden value of customer care
  
• Quantifying revenue versus lost revenue.
  Learn how to define customer behavioral objectives, be proactive in the pursuit of customer complaints, and develop and maintain micro-segmentation variables (sales, lifetime value, demographics, psychographics, geography, profit). Panel speakers will share where customer care fits within their organizational culture through use of:
  
• Activity-based costing, and understanding the cost chain (labor, IT, telecom, facilities, direct versus indirect costs)
  
• Discover the financial basics of calculating ROI on customer care, operation costs relative to customer loyalty and repurchase intention, overview of current ROI models, cost and reduction of attrition, average call length and number of contacts.
  
• Calculating lifetime value, life cycle and recovery, and identifying hidden profits in customer care (e.g. word of mouth)
  
• Calculating ROI for investments and growth improvements, understanding dollar impact on customer acquisition and retention
  Gain insight on how you can present and prove the business case to your CEO, by helping them compare the value of investment in customer care relative to other sales or marketing initiatives
  Moderator: Cindy Grimm, TARP
  Panel Speakers: Cheryl Duwve, Roche Diagnostics; Beth Thomas-Kim, Nestle US; Maureen Meier, Tropicana and Richard Widdows, Purdue University
  

CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS:

1) Internal Customer Panel: What Your Internal Partners Need From You
Customer contact is a veritable cornucopia of valuable information inflow that can be used to the company's advantage. Yet, many departments within companies don't communicate and learn from customers' concerns and comments. How can you best relate and partner with your internal customers? Hear first-hand from:

• Marketing
  
• Market Research
  
• Quality Assurance
  
• Legal
  
• Advertising

2) Online Dispute Resolution: An eBay/Net Neutrals Case Study
Managing customer relationships can be a tough job. Take a recent eBay dilemma: a group of highly valued customers comes to you with a problem they want solved - fast. What do you do? If you're Colin Rule, the eBay Director of Online Dispute Resolution, who literally wrote the book (see Online Dispute Resolution for Business, John Wiley & Sons, 2002) you do your research and analysis, meet with the stakeholders, identify the service providers, design a process, persuade people to "buy-in" and launch a program. Gain information on getting past internal and external road blocks by:

• Articulating goals and objectives
  
• Managing diverse needs and expectations
  
• Redefining existing policies to accommodate innovative systems
  
• Design by committee

3) Hiring the Best CSRs and Keeping Them
Hiring the right people is the key to results (and the secret to sleeping well at night). The best-selling book Good to Great validates this idea from research with wildly successful companies. These well-known, profitable companys' leaders did not start with "where" - they started with "who." They got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. This hiring system is used by more than 1000 organizations of all sizes and types. You'll receive the key elements on a reminder sheet so you can put them to work immediately. You'll learn how to:

• Avoid the worst mistakes
  
• Establish the right selection criteria
  
• Attract more and better candidates
  
• Separate the best candidates from those who will quit or fail

4) Customer Care 101
Is this your first assignment in a customer contact department? Are you a new contact center manager or supervisor? If you answered yes, then this workshop is for you. This session will review the basics of leading an effective customer contact department that meets the needs of your company. Learn about staffing options, recruiting, compensation, training and development, rewards and recognition, and performance measures. Gain insights and ideas for achieving first call resolution, effective reporting and the elements of operational support. Master the basics and reap the benefits.
Speaker: Marie Shubin, E&J Gallo Winery

5) Small Call Center Clinic Panel
Through smart practice examples and interactive discussion, several key call/contact operational areas will be reviewed specifically in terms of small center management. Topics will include:
Purchasing new software
Coping with volume peaks

• Motivation, compensation and incentives
  
• Quality and call monitoring (frequency, techniques, measurement)
  
• Staff utilization and optimization
  
• Training innovations
  
• Recruitment and retention

6) The Customer Respect Index
Customer Respect is an organization's treatment of the individuals with whom it interacts. In the instance of Online Customer Respect, it is solely the company's online performance that is being measured. Customer Respect is a blend of the practice of customer-focused policies, a company's openness in terms of personal data treatment, responsiveness to inquiries, and the general attitude experienced by a customer when interacting with a company on its website. When computing a company's Customer Respect Index (CRI), multiple elements of Customer Respect are being evaluated. Those are:

• Simplicity
  
• Responsiveness
  
• Transparency
  
• Principles
  
• Attitude
  
• Privacy

CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS:

1) Risk Management and Crisis Management Panel
Take this opportunity to learn about the risk management process: planning, identification, qualification, quantification, response development and response control. Monitoring contacts received from consumers to assess and manage risk can be a difficult and time consuming process. There are several steps that a contact center can complete to help make managing risk easier and more efficient:

• Define what your company considers serious
  
• Use the proactive approach to solving problems for settlement reduction
• Develop a subject hierarchy
  
• Map/design the data to build automatic system alerts
  
• Manager serious complaints faster due to earlier notification
  Panel speakers will also describe how their crisis management plan works:
  
• Preparation, preparation, preparation...train and re-train your people.
  
• Document the plan and core work processes (and proactively update/refine them on a periodic basis).
  
• Leverage technologies and vendor partners to enable the plan

2) Call Center Innovations/Self-Service Panel
Have you hugged your IT people today? Work with them to leverage emerging technologies and create the next wave of customer care. From bar code scanning to connected diagnostics to Web services that will allow customers to create their own customized and automated ordering and servicing programs, the age of customer service is about to become one of the most important cost saving aspects of customer care. Panel speakers will address how they are using new technologies and self-service in their companies and for brand alignment.

• Use of web analytics to measure self-service success
  
• How mobile and wireless technology are re-writing customer care
  
• VOIP, voice and hand writing recognition, click-to-talk applications
  
• The role of CRM software and how to evaluate
  
• Workforce scheduling/forecasting and call monitoring technology
  
• Enterprise application integration, business process management
  
• People, processes and technology in the end, it's all about the people!

3) Writing Customer-Focused Scripts
When most people hear the word "script", they resist based on their experience hearing some poorly-trained individual read an uninspired, self-serving message. Ironically, we award "Oscars" annually to the actors who have delivered the most believable scripts. When a planned message is delivered with conviction and feeling in the proper sequence, the customer doesn't perceive it as scripted. In fact, when you're well-scripted, you'll sound more like you than ever before. The key to all scripts is to involve customers in a conversation - a two way communication that serves them and us equally. In this fast-paced session, you'll learn how to:

• Engage listeners immediately
  
• Create trust, credibility and rapport
  
• Obtain facts, feelings and opinions
  
• Integrate a proven sequence for any situation
  
• Control the direction, timing and conditions of conversations without pressuring or controlling people

4) Can Offshore Be Off-the-Hook Without Going Off-Your-Rocker?
The lure of inexpensive offshore labor is strong, but can your company leverage it to save actual dollars? The factors are many, and the path is anything but easy. Nonetheless, for the properly positioned company with the proper partners, the savings do exist. But that's a lot of caveats. Join in for the candid retelling of one company's journey to offshore contact centers, and one man's struggle to remain objective in a very emotionally charged process. The session will discuss initial motivators, business cases, RFP development, supplier selection, operational transitions, and internal change management.

• Hear what works, and what doesn't
  
• Learn what's hype and what's reality
  
• Explore effective process and technology enablers and stumbling blocks
  
• See your corporate and national culture from a new perspective

5) Staff Ambassadors: Linking Employee Behavior to Customer Behavior
There is a direct link between employee loyalty and emotional kinship with the employer, plus employees' championing of the employers' products and services, and customer behavior. This is especially true for key customer-facing staff, such as CSRs, where so much of the 'touch' experiences they create have specific influence on customer loyalty and advocacy levels. Companies are learning that employee ambassadors are both more loyal and more productive. This insightful session will present a new model, which quantifies the effect of employee behavior on customer relationship with their suppliers. The presentation will also feature recent research which demonstrates how employee 'champions', in touch point functions are also more loyal to, and more positive about, their employers.
Speaker: Michael Lowenstein, Author, NOP World

6) Negotiating With Customers: External and Internal
Designed specifically for customer care professionals who find themselves in difficult situations with demanding or unreasonable customers, this seminar takes the sting out of negotiation by delivering field-tested and proven strategies and tactics for responding to negotiation ploys, making customers justify their demands, and explains some of the psychological aspects of negotiating. Additionally, participants will gain insights and strategies for creating better agreements and solving tough problems with bosses, vendors, co-workers, and employees. Here's what will be discussed:

• Five barriers to effective negotiation
  
• Learn to form a settlement state of mind
  
• Discover the importance of first establishing rapport and creating trust
  
• Find out why you must diffuse anger before negotiating
  
• Basic negotiation strategies
  
• How to handle a negotiation ploy
  
• Three questions to ask before making any concession
  
• How not to let customers back you into a corner

Exhibit Happy Hour!

Celebrate the end of your first day with a little fun! Mingle with your peers while enjoying cocktails and snacks in the exhibit area. Take this time to explore the show floor and discover what the exhibitors can offer you!