Track Title

Lessons on Leadership

Developing and Elevating Solid Leadership Expertise

Leadership

High Touch Solutions

High Tech Solutions

Advanced Technology & Insights into Industry Trends
 

Technology

Business Strategies

Best Practices in ITIL, Six Sigma, COBIT, Outsourcing, and Consolidation

Process

REGISTRATION & CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

Welcome & Introduction From Your Host, Ivy Meadors

Dr. Gunter has 20 years experience working as an educator and leadership development consultant. Her goal is to bring horses and people together to discover more effective ways of leading and creating healthy communities.

June holds a Doctor of Education degree in the field of Adult Learning from North Carolina State University. June attributes many of the lessons she learned about being a teacher and a leader to the horses she has loved from childhood through today. She is a Strozzi Ranch Certified Equine Guided Educator.

In 2003, June founded TeachingHorse LLC.  TeachingHorse provides leadership development workshops and individual coaching with horses.  We offer services at our home sites in both Rogue River, Oregon at Grace Mountain Ranch and in Apex, North Carolina at Centerline Farm.  Participants in our workshops experience a new model of leadership based on the skills and abilities that lead mares use to lead their herds.  Our clients include business, community and family leaders. We also work with people who want to improve their relationship with their horses. 

June is one of the co-founders of EGEA (Equine Guided Education Association). She is a professional educator committed to embodying the highest standards of adult learning. One of her lifelong goals is to contribute to the field of education by developing innovative ways to engage adults in continuous learning.

Visit our website at TeachingHorse.com.  For more information call June Gunter at 541-582-2715 or email junegunter@teachinghorse.com

10:00 - 11:00 &
11:15 - 12:00

Leadership Track

Advancing Your Leadership Skills Workshop (Extended Session)

Ivy Meadors, High Tech High Touch Solutions, Pete McGarahan, McGarahan and Associates, and Brad Worthley, Brad Worthley International

10:00 - 11:00

People Track

Eight Best Kept Secrets for Unlocking the Productivity of Your Workforce

Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School

It's not just about getting the right number of bodies in chairs anymore. In addition to matching the workforce to the call workload, it's also important that we make the most of those staff in terms of efficiency, service, and quality. This workshop will provide a variety of ideas for improving the workforce planning process in your center, but will go beyond the forecasting and scheduling basics. You’ll learn many related ideas and mistakes not to make in the area of workforce productivity. Just a few of the topics to be covered include: how to get the right people in place and the most common hiring mistake, setting reasonable performance goals, measuring individual and team productivity, increasing adherence, and motivating staff to perform at their peak.

Meet the Speaker:

Penny Reynolds is a Founding Partner of The Call Center School where she heads up curriculum development. She develops and teaches courses on a wide variety of call center topics, including workforce management, performance measurement, and call center technologies. Penny is a popular speaker at industry conferences and association meetings and a frequent contributor to industry trade publications. Her articles have appeared in print publications such as Operations and Fulfillment, Customer Interaction Solutions, Contact Professional, and Customer Support Management. She has recently published books entitled Call Center Staffing:

The Complete, Practical Guide to Workforce Management, Fundamentals of Call Center Supervision, and The Power of One, and has also co-authored the five textbooks for University of Phoenix’s call center certification program. An honors graduate of Vanderbilt University, Penny was one of the first recipients of Call Center Magazine’s prestigious Call Center Pioneer award.

10:00 - 11:00 &
11:15 - 12:00

Technology Track

ITIL Workshop - How to Turn Your Help Desk into a Service Desk Step by Step
(Extended Session)

Donna Holt, Help Desk Xlence

Is your organization adopting the ITIL Best Practices Framework? Wondering how you get on board the ITIL train? Join us for this look into the wonderful world of ITIL.

We will discuss the following points:

• Understanding the ITIL Best Practices Framework

• Why does it work?

• What part does the Service Desk play?

• How to justify the transition

• Where to start

  - Steps along the way

  - Technology

  - Staffing Issues

  - Training

  - Communication

  - Marketing

Take Away:  Tips for Success.

Meet the Speaker:

A much sought-after speaker, Donna Holt utilizes humor in her presentations as a method to stimulate the learning process. She has been in the customer support industry over thirty years, including more than twelve years in the Help Desk/Support Center arena. She is an active participant in the Support Center and IT best practices community, presenting HDI Authorized Certification Training, performing HDI Support Center Audits and is HDI’s Member Advisory Board’s Western Region Director. She is a trainer and consultant in the areas of call centers, support centers and ITIL Best Practices.

10:00 - 11:00

Business
Strategies Track

ITIL - What, Why, How

Brenda Iniguez, Pink Elephant

This session will give you the straight scoop on ITIL: what it is, who the players are in ITIL, why do it, and how to start or participate in an ITIL initiative. As ITIL was recently declared an international ISO 20000 standard (the worldwide standard for how companies should run IT), Service Desk and IT professionals worldwide are asking these very questions about ITIL: What, Why and How to do ITIL, and “WIIFY – what’s in this for You!” In straight and easy to understand examples and stories, Brenda will give you a very clear understanding of the What, Why, and How of ITIL, the key ITIL terms and processes, and the Service Desk role in ITIL, so you’ll be able to explain ITIL to all your colleagues when you return to your own organizations.

Brenda is a highly experienced IT practitioner who has first hand experience overseeing major IT projects. In her current role, she provides guidance to IT directors and managers who are seeking to start an ITIL implementation journey.

Benefits of Attending:

• Quick view of ITIL

  - What ITIL is

  • ITIL has also been declared part of ISO 20000, an international standard

  - Who the players are in ITIL

  - Why do ITIL … “WIIFY” What’s In It for YOU?

  - How should you start or participate in an ITIL initiative

• ITIL Leaders… doing the Tough Stuff

Take Aways:

• ITIL adoption rates worldwide, via geo graphic and number of actual certifications

• ITIL year-over-year increases, showing the substantial increased adoption of ITIL worldwide

• An introduction to industry term: CMM and the worldwide recognized CMM maturity scale

• Two valuable whitepapers

• And of course the beloved “pinkies” (our little pink elephants)

Meet the Speaker:

Brenda Iniguez is a seasoned IT Support Professional, with over 20 years proven experience in Fortune 100 companies, designing, building, consolidating, and managing their Enterprise Support Centers. In addition, she is ITIL Service Manager certified, and is well versed in the Service Management disciplines of Incident, Problem, Change, and Availability Management. Brenda is now Director with Pink Elephant, based in the SF Bay Area, leading Business Development for the Western US.

She is active in several professional groups, including founding member on the Board of Directors for HDP (Help Desk Professionals), active member of the itSMF National Conference Board, serving as Chairman Emeritus of the HDI Member Advisory Board for HDI-National, on the Board of Directors for the HDI Strategic Advisory Board, the Officers Board of the San Francisco HDI Chapter (Help Desk Institute), Conference Committee Boards for HDP, HDI, GCSC, ITSM, and itSMF. Brenda is an active speaker at national Support Conferences and has been quoted in leading industry trade journals (Computerworld, Technology World, Help Desk-Online, and IT Support News), and was selected by IT Support News as one of the Service 25 recipients; the leading 25 Support Professionals.

11:00 - 11:15

REFRESHMENTS

Leadership Track

Advancing Your Leadership Skills Workshop (Extended Session)

Ivy Meadors, High Tech High Touch Solutions, Pete McGarahan, McGarahan and Associates, and Brad Worthley, Brad Worthley International

People Track

Special Study: Building an RCA-Based Business Case

Pete McGarahan, McGarahan and Associates

This session is designed to teach you how to build and present a business case utilizing Root Cause Analysis. This business case using root cause analysis as a foundation for validating symptoms, assumptions and trends, bringing clarity and visibility to continuous improvement areas is an extremely powerful management tool. Pete will share his Taco Bell RCA/Business Case presented to senior executives using data from the case management system as a basis for identifying high impact problems and formulating recommendations. This methodology is a must for support managers who are looking to gain senior management attention, visibility and approval for taking proactive and corrective action on the issues impacting their customer’s productivity.

Benefits of Attending

• Learn to apply practical Root Cause Analysis to an Issues / Recommendations presentation format

• Create a call to action business-focused presentation ready for senior executive approval

• Learn the methodology for writing and presenting a business case to senior executives

• How to sell, market and communicate this strategic value to senior officials

Meet the Speaker:

Peter McGarahan is the founder and president of McGarahan & Associates. Pete’s value to the service and support industry and business is his thought leadership. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, he has influenced the maturity of the service and support industry. His passions for customer service led the Taco Bell support organization to achieve the Help Desk Institute Team Excellence Award. IT Support News also named him one of the “Top 25 Professionals in the Service and Support Industry” in 1999. Support professionals voted McGarahan “The Legend of the Year” in 2002 and again in 2004 at the Help Desk Professionals conference for his endless energy, mentoring and coaching and his valuable contribution to the support industry and community.

ITIL Workshop - How to Turn Your Help Desk into a Service Desk Step by Step
(Extended Session)

Donna Holt, Help Desk Xlence

12:00 - 1:00

NETWORKING LUNCHEON

Featured Keynote: Brad Worthley - "Leaders vs. Managers"

When employees are good at their task, the natural progression is to promote them into a management role. We teach the employees how to manage inventory, manage payroll, manage money and manage other things. We end up with "managers" instead of great "leaders". Do you know any person who wants to be "managed?" This session will focus on creating great leaders: Leaders that have vision and can inspire and motivate their employees to greatness.

Benefits of Attending

• Rethink Your Role as a Manager

• Leading by example

• Proactive vs. Reactive Leadership

• People Don’t Fail as Much as Systems

• Problems vs. Symptoms

Meet the Speaker:

Brad Worthley is an accomplished business consultant with over 31 years of management experience. He is also an internationally acclaimed leadership and customer service expert who has trained hundreds of thousands of people in a wide range of industries throughout the world.

Brad teaches businesses how to consistently build and retain both customer and employee loyalty by changing their culture and not just their people. Brad is an author, consultant and trainer working with small and medium size companies, and some of the largest corporations in the world. In his spare time,

Brad has volunteered as a youth soccer, baseball, and basketball coach for the last 15 years, and he volunteers weekly at a domestic violence shelter where he works with children. He has a 19-year-old son in the Army who is currently in Iraq flying unmanned spy planes in an effort to protect our troops.

Leadership Track

Leading a Multicultural Workforce

Details coming

Process Track

Eliminating the Virtual Walls Between Support Levels (Starbucks Case Study)

Mary Lou Blakely, Starbucks Company

Successful IT support must include good communication with your customers. Whether your customers are internal or external to your business, maintaining relationships within your IT organization is a critical component to meeting your customer’s needs. So how do you eliminate the virtual walls between IT teams?

In this interactive session, Mary Lou’s delivery of practical experience within Starbucks Coffee Company will provide you with solutions as a means to empower the service and support teams to provide the best customer experience, leveraging ITIL best practices.

This interactive session will:

• Identify key success factors in improving communication between the IT Service Desk (help desk) and IT Support Teams

• Discuss how Knowledge Management plays a key role

• Provide templates on how to make communication Plans Simple, not Complex

• Identify how you can measure team success

• Review the importance of partnership, ownership, accountability with RCA (root cause analysis)

• Discuss how project lesson learn reviews are critical to IT Support success

Meet the Speaker:

Mary Lou Blakely currently works for Starbucks Coffee Company as the director for the IT Service Management. She has the responsibility for the 24x7 IT Service Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management, Transition Management and Change Management. The IT Service Desk serves as the IT single point of contact for over 8,200 stores and 6,500 end users across the globe. This includes IT support for partners (employees) in North America, United Kingdom, Amsterdam, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, China, Hong Kong and Germany.

Mary Lou has worked at Starbucks Coffee Company for 8 years within IT in various roles. Where Starbucks maintains an aggressive growth curve, the IT Service Management team plays a mission critical role in the communications process for IT issues.

Previously Mary Lou worked for 8 years with Charter Behavioral Health Systems, where she designed and managed two call centers in Texas and Georgia. In addition to supervising the infrastructure support including quality improvement, human resources, training and the IT help desks. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin and ITIL certification in IT Service Management.

Technology Track

Case Study: Help Desk Technology Selection and Design

Lloyd White, Michaels Stores

When its existing help desk system couldn’t provide the stability it needed, Michaels began searching for a new solution. At the time, Michaels faced two primary issues: product reliability and the ability to customize the application to Michaels’ unique needs and to provide end-user ease of use. They wanted an application with the customizability to meet their work flow process and with a price to fit their budget.

Business
Strategies Track

Best Practices - Putting ITIL and CobIT Theory to WORK-shop (Extended Session)

Greg Charles, CA

(This is NOT a vendor presentation. Greg was rated one of the top 3 best speakers in our last event and knows ITIL better than most do who do ITIL in the industry.  This is due to his extensive time working in the industry.)

This Best Practices Theory workshop is based upon both ITIL and CobIT education and participation in a simulated real-world scenario. During the workshop, students will see, discuss, and experience the benefits of applying ITIL and CobIT best practices while at the same time learning the basic principles of ITIL and CobIT, the relationships between processes, the different roles and the best way to implement these best practices into their organization. Attendees will follow the ITIL and CobIT best practice processes to react to a real-world scenario and design, implement, evaluate and improve their own best practice based processes.

Benefits of Attending

• Translate ITIL and CobIT theory into practice

• Recognize and understand the ITIL and CobIT processes

• Exploit the benefits of the relationships and dependencies between processes

• Apply, evaluate and improve ITIL and CobIT based processes within a simulated environment

• Recognize the role and responsibilities of a process manager

• Focus process improvement initiatives aimed at realizing a set of Key Performance Indicators

• Identify bottlenecks and improvement needs in your own organization

Meet the Speaker:

Greg Charles, Ph.D., is an Area-wide Principal Consultant at CA. Greg is in constant demand across the entire U.S. and Canada as a speaker and consultant on the topic of IT Service Management. Since joining CA in 1998, he has continually been focused on meeting clients' business challenges through CA's Management solutions on both distributed and mainframe platforms. Currently, Greg is the lead for CA's ITIL, Best Practices, and Compliance practices for the Western United States. Greg has been an IT professional since 1981, and holds a Ph.D. in Business Ethics, attained after completing his undergraduate studies in Information Technology.

2:45 - 3:00

REFRESHMENTS

3:00 - 4:00

Leadership Track

Stress Management

Brad Worthley, Brad Worthley International

Improving work performance and employee morale comes with finding balance in your personal and professional life. You cannot help others if you are not able to take care of yourself, so learn how to take better care of your emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual needs. You will get step by step instructions on how to create more time in your day and live a more stress free life.

Learn how to:

• Reduce chaos in your life

• Reduce stress

• Increased employee performance

• Increased employee retention

Take Aways:  Reducing Chaos, Motivation to Change, Prioritizing Yourself, 12 Categories to Balance, Why we get out of Balance, Seeing the Big Picture, Celebrate the Small Victories.

Meet the Speaker:

Brad Worthley is an accomplished business consultant with over 31 years of management experience. He is also an internationally acclaimed leadership and customer service expert who has trained hundreds of thousands of people in a wide range of industries throughout the world.

Brad teaches businesses how to consistently build and retain both customer and employee loyalty by changing their culture and not just their people. Brad is an author, consultant and trainer working with small and medium size companies, and some of the largest corporations in the world. In his spare time,

Brad has volunteered as a youth soccer, baseball, and basketball coach for the last 15 years, and he volunteers weekly at a domestic violence shelter where he works with children. He has a 19-year-old son in the Army who is currently in Iraq flying unmanned spy planes in an effort to protect our troops.

Technology Track

Trouble-Shooting 101: Effective Information Gathering (Case Study)

Martha Lundgren, Texas Association of School Boards

Help desk analysts are constantly challenged with unique and complex problems to solve with and on behalf of their customers. Successful analysts use troubleshooting methodologies that insure they arrive at the best solution quickly and efficiently. This interactive session teaches simple, proven, powerful information gathering techniques that reduce trial and error and yield solutions more quickly and easily in any support environment.

Benefits of Attending

• Apply the 5 Key Questions to solve challenging problems more efficiently and confidently

• Recognize the customer’s real issue rather than just hearing the stated problem

• Accurately narrow the set of possible problem sources

• Resolve more complex incidents and problems quickly and efficiently

• Improve communications with Tier 2 and 3 support

Take Away:  Managers, trainers, team leads and technicians themselves will take home a turnkey method for teaching and institutionalizing an effective troubleshooting technique.

Meet the Speaker:

Martha Lundgren is Department Director of the Information Center of the Texas Association of School Boards. She and her team are responsible for all hardware and software purchasing, installation, support and training for 450 staff members.

Mrs. Lundgren has more than 20 years of direct customer service and training experience in the hotel, airline, consumer electronics and technical support industries and has won several awards for customer service excellence.

Business Strategies Track

Best Practices - Putting ITIL and CobIT Theory to WORK-shop (Extended Session)

Greg Charles, CA 

4:00 - 6:00

WINE AND CHEESE RECEPTION, VISIT EVENT PARTNERS, AND WIN PRIZES TOO!

Track Title

Lessons on Leadership

Developing and Elevating Solid Leadership Expertise

Leadership

High Touch Solutions

High Tech Solutions

Advanced Technology & Insights into Industry Trends
 

Technology

Business Strategies

Best Practices in ITIL, Six Sigma, COBIT, Outsourcing, and Consolidation

Process

MASTERMIND SESSIONS WITH CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

Mastermind Sessions & Continental Breakfast
(sessions may vary depending on attendee interests)

Workforce Management, Customer Service, VoIP, Self-service, Strategies for Calming Difficult People, Stress Management, ITIL, Inspiring on a Shoestring Budget, Customer Satisfaction Surveys

10:00 - 10:45

Leadership and People Track

Change Management

Pending details coming from speaker

10:00 - 10:45

Technology Track

Knowledge Management (Case Study)

Jerry Rice, Washington Mutual

Pending details from speaker

10:00 - 10:45

Business Strategies Track

ITIL in Use at REI (Case Study)

Dave Stockwell, REI

ITIL the process, ITIL the theory, ITIL the policy. But what about ITIL the actual implementation? While the Europeans have been doing this for years, it is all very new here in the states and actual examples are still hard to find. Join Dave Stockwell from Recreational Equipment Inc. as he walks you through the last 3 years their ITIL implementation. Holding nothing sacred, Dave will tell you what worked, what didn't, what they'd repeat and what they'd change as he discusses, training, consultants, vendors and adoption. This will be one very full hour you don't want to miss.

Meet the Speaker:

Dave Stockwell is the Service Desk Manager for Recreational Equipment Inc (REI) where he and his team are responsible for supporting all 9000 employees across 100+ stores, 5 different operating systems, AS400's, iSeries, Linux, Mac and a little thing called Windows. Living the REI life he is also a mountain biker, hiker, kayaker as well as a musician with a penchant for over-reaching his talent in a search of the ultimate bass riff.

Dave's eight years in the support industry combined with an exuberant style, unending energy and enthusiasm along with his exemplary leadership skills, motivates his staff to do extraordinary work with a limited budget. As an experienced speaker, Dave is known for his engaging, thought provoking, style. With an eye to the future, Dave presents proven ideas that you can use right now in your own Help Desk with little to no budget.

10:45 - 11:00

REFRESHMENTS

11:00 - 12:00

Leadership  and People Track

Twenty-Six Nuggets You Must Know About Hiring, Firing, and Inspiring Your Agents

Michael Callahan, Microsoft

Perhaps no other management challenge is more  vexing than the magical mix of intuition, pragmatism, science and emotion that go into hiring and retaining great talent, and identifying and separating individuals who aren’t providing valuable contributions to your team and its goals.

As befits such a left-brain, right-brain experience, this session will mix analysis of recent call center hiring and retentions strategies, compelling leadership anecdotes about the value of intuition, and thoughtful guidance to help you identify potential, empower the valuable, celebrate the extraordinary and quickly but humanely let go of those whose strengths or inspirations lay elsewhere.

This highly interactive session will

• Enlighten you to the five most important questions you should ask every agent candidate

• Enumerate the six hidden messages you can find in every resume

• Inspire you with the four most amazing ways to celebrate individual success in a way that engenders excitement, not envy

• Illuminate the eight early behaviors you can identify in new hires and what they mean for the short- and long-term and

• Humor you with three inspiring lessons about “lost causes” that will teach you to always look three times at an HR situation: once with intellect, once with intuition and once with a gambler’s mentality

Take Away:  In addition to the 26 Nuggets, each attendee will receive a cheat-sheet analysis of several recent national call center hiring surveys, a booklist of valuable resources for you and your managers, and a copy of the three inspiring “lost cause” lessons to keep you and your managers inspired.

Meet the Speaker:

An award-winning playwright, performer and published author, Michael Callahan is the Senior Support Program Manager for Hotmail, the world’s most popular web mail service with 260 million customers. His twenty-one year career in Help Desk and Customer Service Management has included the stratosphere (as the customer liaison for the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) with IBM), the city (as the designer of the most popular municipal publishing software program in history) and the mainframe (as support and customer service manager for the Attachmate Corporation).  In 2006, Microsoft awarded Michael with one of 20 annual “Great People, Great Performances Awards” for his outstanding contribution, which resulted in historic Customer Satisfaction scores and cost savings of $1 million dollars for 2006.

11:00 - 12:00

Process Track

Remote Monitoring and Call Recording

Ronnie Mize

Pending details from speaker

11:00 - 12:00

Business Strategies Track

Today's Winning Practices and Tomorrow's Directions in Government Customer Support

Daryl Covey, NEXRAD

This interactive session will premiere the new white paper on "winning practices" from this year's Government Customer Support Award nominations and share the insights of the new strategic Cgov model for 21st Century Government's customer support. You can review the basics of the Cgov model in advance of the session at www.fedhelpdesk.osf.noaa.gov.

Join us to learn more about Government's newest directions in supporting customers, and bring your experiences to share!

Benefits of Attending

• The most effective new ways in which Federal, state, and local agencies are supporting their customers

• Creative approaches to ensuring a high performance customer support staff in a knowledge-centered culture of service

• A global framework for supporting Government's customers in today's evolving public sector service paradigm

Meet the Speaker:

Daryl Covey manages the NEXRAD Hotline which supports a global network of advanced Doppler weather radar systems for the U. S. Departments of Commerce, Defense, and Transportation. During his tenure, the Hotline staff has been recognized with the U. S. Department of Commerce Customer Service Excellence and Silver Medal Awards, the Vice President's Hammer Award, and the Federal Agency Excellence Award from Government Computer News.

As a longstanding advocate for progressive customer support in the public sector, Daryl facilitates the Government Customer Support Community of Practice and it's annual Government Customer Support Excellence Awards, edits the Government Customer Support News monthly eletter, chairs the annual Government Customer Support Conference, serves periodically as an invited advisor to government agencies on contact center initiatives, and is regularly interviewed by Government Computer News, Federal Computer Week, Federal Technology, Government Executive Magazine, and other publications for articles on public sector customer support. Recently he served as co-chair and primary facilitator for the Citizen Service Level Interagency Committee convened by the General Services Administration to create uniform customer service level guidance for all Federal agencies. Daryl is a graduate of the Universities of Oklahoma and Wisconsin as well as the Federal Executive.

12:00 - 1:30

NETWORKING LUNCHEON and VISIT EVENT PARTNERS

Keynote Panel Discussion: Developing Young Leaders

Ivy Meadors moderates an interactive discussion with Millennial panelists (Gen Y)

Do you have employees or teenagers ranging in age from twelve to twenty-five who are aspiring leaders? The Millennials, commonly known as "Generation Y", are the next most likely leaders of our corporations and government agencies. It is important to know how to effectively help prepare and develop these young minds for their future potential.

This is a rare opportunity to hear what is in the minds of young adults in an open forum to explore what it takes to develop young leaders from the Millennial Generation. The panelists, ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-four, will explore mentoring, behavioral styles of the different generations, communication considerations, and leadership techniques that are the most effective for the Millennials.

You will hear specifics and statistics about the different Generations and receive many resources. We will encourage audience participation for a highly interactive, thought-provoking and stimulating discussion.

Benefits of Attending

• Understand what is in the minds and how the Millennials think

• Learn what motivates the younger generation and get ideas you can use now

• Hear ways you can increase the productivity of your team

• Experience a rare opportunity to hear how Millennials view leadership and understand their career aspirations

Take Away:  Handout of resources for developing young leaders.  Also Eric Chester's book, "Getting the Frontline to Give a Damn" will be available to purchase at a reduced discount.

Leadership and People Tracks

Outsourcing from A to Z – Using 3rd-parties to Handle Help Desks and Consumer Support

Bill Price, Driva Solutions

There are more and more options for help desk and consumer support from 3rd-party specialists, both onshore and offshore from the US, some using agents at home and others on Indian reservations, traditional call centers, or even prisons. In this session, former Amazon.com Global VP Customer Service, Chair of the Global Operations Council, and contact center consultant Bill Price will describe how outsourcing works “from A to Z” including determining what to outsource, where to go, and how to make it work.

Benefits of Attending

• Outsourcing cost savings and operational advantages

• Finding the right outsourcing partner

• Integrating 3rd-parties into home company processes

Meet the Speaker:

President, Driva Solutions, and first Global VP of Customer Service, Amazon.com Bill Price was named one of the first wave of “Call Center Pioneers” in 1997 and has continued to innovate since then. Bill has over 26 years in the services business starting with strategic consulting with McKinsey & Company, CFO for a start-up IVR service bureau, VP & General Manager for four business units at MCI, and then almost 3 years as Amazon’s first Global VP of Customer Service. Since leaving Amazon in late 2001 to form Driva Solutions, Bill and his team have served more than 50 clients in the US, UK, Thailand, Japan, and Australia.

Technology Track

State of the Industry

Patrick Bultema

At exactly the point where your cost are the highest, and the risks and opportunity costs peak, your staff go completely disconnected from the quality processes and systems that have made you successful. They’re dealing with a critical problem at a remote retail site, or fixing a piece of critical medical equipment, or at the desk side of a senior executive across your corporate campus. And how can you possibly fulfill your service level commitments when your staff in the field go “un-tethered” at these critical moments. The truth is, this mobile gap is one of the ugly secrets of our industry. Join us for this eye-opening session that will both detail the mobile dilemma in most service operations, provide insights for addressing the mobile gap with examples for several different companies, as well as help you understand how you can leverage the mobile devices your staff already have in their hands. 

Meet the Speaker:

Patrick Bultema is Executive Chairman of Aeroprise. He is also a Partner with vSpring Capital, a venture capital firm with special expertise and focus on the IT Service and Infrastructure Management industries. Patrick was previously CEO of FrontRange, and Chairman of the Help Desk Institute. He is widely recognize as one of the premier experts on the business of support.

Business Strategies Track

Are you Chatting and /or Using Instant Messaging Yet? Case Study

Judy Hogan, Federal Aviation Administration