• Determine what to outsource, and which applications and customer support programs make more sense offshore versus onshore as well as inhouse versus outsourced
  
• Figure out where in the world to consider your sourcing site(s) and partners, including right here at home
  
• Lay in place proven practices to create lasting partnerships with your outsourcing partner (or, your client), and make it all work for our customers, our most precious challenge of all

• Create an organization that not only embraces, but thrives on change
  
• Learn with every decision how you can succeed in this new world order

• Cover use of data for business intelligence and broadening customer base as well as self-service and innovative cost reduction options
  
• Amortize ROI over multiple environments
  
• Calculate actual over and underachievement of project metrics
  
• Identify reasons for performance, collect feedback on qualitative measures to gauge success
  
• Identify success factors worth repeating and practices or actions to be abandoned

• An overview of the new law
  
• The food-allergic consumer's perspective
  
• What this means for your customer care department

1) Globalization Panel
This is an interactive opportunity for you to listen, share and learn how to tackle the monumental assignment of taking the consumer contact function global. Explore the key elements, issues and risks of designing and installing successful consumer response and retention programs, as well as systems and technologies for your company's expanding international markets. Do you know which current call center technologies offer truly global adaptation? How about privacy legislation affecting consumer communications and data collection across multiple European borders? Where is the best place to situate your new international contact center? Should you consolidate, decentralize, converge or diverge? Discuss the development of global models and their criteria for measurement, budgeting, staffing requirements, data collection and applicable technologies. Panel speakers who have experience implementing global customer care will address the following topics:

• Setting up international call centers
  
• Local versus regional data collection
  
• Varying technologies available and applicable
  
• Building a global database
  
• Privacy issues/what you must know
  
• How to satisfy the global consumer
  
• How to adapt to local cultures in international markets
  
• Budgeting: planning for financing to make it all happen
  
• Staffing requirements: training, job markets, HR issues
  
• Crisis communications: intra-market and between headquarters and international offices

2) Doing More with Less
Even in a relatively strong economy, where many companies are making their revenue goals, cost containment has become "this year's mantra" as top executives attempt to maximize profits and earnings per share in their highly competitive, price-sensitive markets. The contact center is always an easy target for cost reduction demands by management simply because the center's operating budget always shows up as "red ink." For this reason, today's contact center managers are being asked to do more for less. With an ever-increasing volume of calls, emails, and now Web-chat sessions, the logical question is "how on earth can I respond in a timely fashion to all these important contacts, and do this on a reduced budget?" This session will deal squarely, and realistically, with the budgeting problem and discuss proven "doing more with less" alternatives. If cost reduction is a challenge at your contact center, you will learn the answers to the following questions:

• How to determine just how efficiently you are currently operating your center?
  
• How can you trade off some call handling "quality goals" to achieve better call handling "quantity goals" without dropping below market damaging levels of service?
  
• What level of customer self-service exists now at your center, and how can this be increased to save operating budget? (In today's cost-sensitive business atmosphere, the best customer service strategy might be letting the customer help themselves wherever and whenever possible.
  
• By far your largest operating cost is people-related, and therefore, how can call handling processes and enabling technology be streamlined to ensure that agents do more with less?

3) Call and Email Monitoring Panel
Never easy. always a challenge! Learn how leading companies monitor their CSRs calls and emails.

• Gain ideas on what systems are used for monitoring agent calls and reviewing emails
  
• Approach employees about problem behavior in such a way that minimizes hostility and defensiveness and maintains esteem
  
• Coach to redirect performance and set crystal clear expectations
  
• Give constructive feedback with much more ease
  
• Get employees to be accountable for their own performance management
  
• Document disciplinary action so you are prepared if dismissal becomes necessary

4) Effective Communications for Diplomatic Success
Customer care and consumer affairs require diplomacy. Diplomacy has been defined as the art of telling people to go to hell in a way that they'll actually look forward to the trip. We don't advocate telling your people, your internal and external customers or your bosses to go hell, but this workshop will show you how to diplomatically, tactfully get what you want: and to get people to look forward to whatever trip you'd like them to take. You'll even learn how to say "No" to your boss. You'll also learn:
The single most successful strategy for building and improving
relationships
How to contradict someone without creating conflict
How to deliver fool-proof instructions
Speaker: Barry Maher, Author

5) Dealing With Online Consumer Feedback: Blogs, Forums and Online Discussions
If you type your company's name or brand into any major search engine, what do you think you'll find? Chances are some of the top results will be unsolicited, off-the-cuff information posted by consumers (customers or not) who've had experience with your company, product, employees or service and are sharing their information in online discussion boards, forums, and blogs. (With any luck, your corporate website will rank somewhere in the top-10 search results). The Internet is now teeming with "consumer-generated media," defined as "high-impact media generated by consumers, typically informed by relevant product or service experience." Some of the same consumers who tend to contact you directly also tend to be highly involved, active and opinionated on the Internet - making it even more important that today's companies analyze and understand both their solicited, organized, internal data AND the rapidly growing universe of unsolicited, unorganized, unstructured data that exists in myriad locations on the World Wide Web. New technologies that can mine and analyze raw text make it possible, but only if companies understand the importance of paying attention and the risks of NOT paying attention.
Speaker: Pete Blackshaw, Intelliseek

CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS:

1) Brand Aligned Service
Much as been written on the importance of having a strong brand and its impact on increased customer loyalty. Research has shown that service can have a much greater impact on the brand image than more traditional communications, provided it is strongly aligned to reinforce the brand image. Based on research with organizations that have been identified as having a strong brand-image, this presentation will outline the nine building blocks for brand-aligned service in your customer contact department:

• Company heritage, illustrating brand promise
  
• Clear accountability for the brand
  
• Focused values
  
• Measurement and feedback
  
• Formal process
  
• Ongoing communication to everyone
  
• Emotional connection with the customer
  
• Hiring to deliver the brand
  
• Brand customized to market segments
  The presentation will include results of the research, with many company-specific examples
  Speaker: Cindy Grimm, TARP

  2) Real-World Tactics and Reality-Based Motivation for Increasing Productivity and Job Satisfaction
  Nowadays, customer care professionals might be wondering not whether the glass is
  half full or half empty but whether it's leaking on their shoes. Author of one of "The Seven Essential Popular Business Books" Maher is often funny, occasionally blunt, always honest. He will help you fill your own glass through a skillful mix of case studies, tips, tactics and hard headed, reality-based inspiration. You've read about him in USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Business Week. Now he brings his real world tactics for increasing productivity AND job satisfaction to SOCAP members. This session won't reduce your contact volume. It won't reverse downsizing. It won't make the competition disappear or create an economic boom. But it just may help you:
  

  • Achieve peak performance -- without sacrificing integrity
    
  • Take control of your job and your life
    
  • Motivate yourself and those around you
    
  • Change the scale for your improved work and life balance
  
  Speaker: Barry Maher, Author

  3) Training for Non-Trainers
  How do you transfer nearly a decade's worth of knowledge, skills, experience and culture to a new outsourced customer care program in just a matter of a few short weeks? Levi Strauss & Co. recently faced such a challenge, and successfully implemented a new training program by developing five simple steps to guide them through their transition. This fun and interactive presentation will include details on how to plan and execute each of the five steps, insights gained from personal experience, discussions on topics such as "what works and doesn't work in training?", as well as several valuable take away tools that can be used in most any type of new or continued training program.
  

  • Have everything set to go - the right people, the right tools, and the right information
    
  • Make a great first impression - ceate excitement, shape understanding and start to build a culture
    
  • Set clear expectations - Mission Statement, ground rules, and training objectives
    
  • Teach what they want to learn - tell me what to do, show me what to do, let me do it
    
  • Mix it up and start over again - keep them guessing, review and react, then start all over again
  
  Additional tools and samples will include program hiring profile, training agenda and certification, training checklist, and activities and exercises.
  Speaker: Paul Osborne, Levi Strauss & Co.

  4) ConsumerRevenge.com: The Litigation Savvy Customer Care Professional
  Everyone has a lawyer these days. You know this because every caller tells you that they have already called or will call "their lawyer". We have always known about this threat, but who are those "other lawyers" making the work of the customer care professional more challenging? Do you know who the real enemy is? The increased use of the Internet by customers is adding to the dynamic of the contact. The Internet provides customers with powerful tools and resources to use against your company every day.
  

  • Learn about those websites utilized by customers which offer assistance (some by lawyers acting out of the "goodness of their own hearts") by way of offering advice, form letters and revenge
    
  • Learn about what is offered free and what comes with a price to these customers
    
  • Take away defense strategies regarding email communications, verbal communications and correspondence - from a lawyer on your side - to spot the fakers, forms followers and the real deal
  
  Speaker: Rachelle Wassel, Attorney
  
  
  5) Vendor Management Panel: Getting the Most From Your New Partnership
  Learn from panel speakers who've learned the hard way to identify some of the common (and not so common) pitfalls and misconceptions around finding a vendor. Discover what to do and what not to do when:
  
  • Planning your program
    
  • Setting up your program
    
  • Training and motivating your new reps (and getting them on board with your corporate and executive objectives)
    
  • Contract negotiation do's and don'ts
    
  • What you were looking to gain by making a move
    
  • What you might do differently next time (heaven forbid)
    
  • RFP hints (generic samples will be provided)
    
  • How to really evaluate vendors (and see through the sales fluff)
  
  Moderator: Rita Wood, Network Direct, Inc.
  Speakers: Valerie Anderson, Clorox; Tom Asher, Levi Stauss & Co.; Gail Stehlik, Chef America; Sarah Romine, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company; Alice Ryan, BD Medical - Diabetes Care
  
  6) How the New Bioterrorism Act Will Affect Consumer Affairs
  The Bioterroism Act has four key rules:
  
  • Facility registration
    
  • Prior notice of food imports
    
  • Administrative detention of food and establishment
    
  • Maintenance of records
  
  These will be reviewed along with the requirements placed on businesses by these four rules. The potential impact on customer contact departments will also be discussed. Panel members will present real life examples of the application of these rules and procedures.
  Speakers: Cathy Dial, Frito-Lay, Inc.; Beth Thomas-Kim, Nestle US; and John Hoffman, RQA, Inc.