9/14/10

8/3/10

Marketing Your Customer Contact Point from a Government Perspective

Presented by Daryl Covey (moderator), Pete McGarahan, Brenda Yates, and Keli Tarp

Customer awareness of our services and management awareness of our strategic value and impacts are pervasive concerns in today's government customer contact community. Managers of both internal service desks and external customer contact centers alike struggle daily with how to be fully visible to those we serve, as well as those we serve them for in the competition with other segments of our agencies for increasingly tight resources.

Our panel of experts in this area will share their key lessons learned and respond to your specific questions related to the internal and external marketing of your customer touch point:

• Pete McGarahan is a widely recognized industry expert on establishing and communicating the "value proposition" of the contact center.
• Keli Tarp is the public relations specialist for the joint federal/state National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
• Brenda Yates is the public relations specialist for the award-winning USGS service desk which serves both internal and external agency customers.

Daryl Covey, your moderator, is the manager of NOAA's award-winning NEXRAD Hotline and facilitator for the Cgov Community of Practice.

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7/6/10

Leader as Influencer: Impression Management in the Spotlight
Presented by Jan M. McLaughlin, CSP, Your Communication Connection

Promoting excellence and innovation requires the ability to influence a wide range of organization members. We’ll look beyond you as a manager of your team to what it takes to influence your boss and beyond. Participants will explore what is effective in multiple settings with multiple audiences and develop an action plan to prepare for and manage interactions with those who can impact their bid for success for themselves and their team.

 According to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, “People are promoted for technical/operational and intellectual reasons, but fail for emotional ones.”

At the conclusion of this workshop, you’ll be able to:

• Differentiate among the four essential factors in communication and employ them effectively
• Prepare for and manage interactions with others─executives, peers, direct reports and customers
• Examine the vital aspects of your visual, verbal and vocal image
• Isolate the traits that can sabotage your credibility and undermine your ability to lead effectively
• Prioritize your personal impression management goals and formulate a plan of action

Jan suggests you go to the Harvard Business Review website http://www.hbr.org/2004/01/what-makes-a-leader/ar/1 and download the pdf (for $6.50) of Daniel Goleman’s article, What Makes a Leader?

Meet the speaker:

Jan M. McLaughlin, CSP, a graduate of Washington State University, had been a teacher, retail manager and actress in television commercials when she founded the image consulting firm J’Ambry, in 1976. Referred to in The Seattle Times as a “pioneer in the image industry” and the “most frequently-quoted image professional in the Northwest,” she expanded her focus at the urging of clients. In 1992, she founded Your Communication Connection. Today she is recognized as an expert in communication—offering programs covering visual, spoken and written communication.

Jan earned the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation—the measure of speaking experience and skill. Fewer than 10 percent of the 5,200 speakers belonging to the International Federation for Professional Speakers hold this designation.

She counts among her clients Alaska Marine Lines, Clark Nuber, GE Healthcare, McKinstry, North Coast Electric Company, Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, Swedish, Seattle Children’s, and a number of associations, including The Washington Society of Association Executives. Jan’s programs are highly interactive, loaded with practical ideas and, yes, fun!

You can read more about this topic and others at Jan’s blog. Go to http://www.yourcommunicationConnection.com/preview.htm and click Blog on the menu to the left.

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6/8/10

"Reducing Support Costs Without Sacrificing Service Quality"

Presented by Pete McGarahan, McGarahan and Associates

Economic drivers continue to challenge budgets and organizations with a renewed sense of urgency to squeeze more value out of services. Support leaders are reevaluating budgets for cost reduction opportunities while evaluating services to determine the cost, benefit and business value.

Join Pete McGarahan as he shares creative ways to cost-effectively enhance service delivery and customer satisfaction. Pete will cover the "shift-left' strategy focused on identifying support costs in the organization and implementing call elimination, call deflection and cost per incident reduction tactics.

Meet the speaker:

Peter J. McGarahan is the founder and president of McGarahan & Associates.  Pete offers 25 years of IT and Business experience helping organizations optimize and align their customer service delivery strategy with their business objectives. His value to the customer service and support industry is his thought leadership.  As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, he has influenced the maturity of the customer 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.

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5/4/10

Writing Customer-Focused E-mails: Top 10 Tips for Customer Service Agents and their Managers

Presented by Leslie O'Flahavan, E-WRITE

In your contact center, you strive to handle e-mails from customers quickly and accurately. But with the volume of e-mail increasing, you're concerned about whether your agents have the writing skills they need to write e-mails that make your organization look good. In this session, you will learn the top 10 tips for writing customer-focused e-mail.

You'll get help in how to coach your agents to:

• Write e-mail that clearly answers customers' questions
• Read between the lines in the customer's e-mail to identify and solve the customer's problem
• Integrate "canned answers" into free-form e-mail
• Use a personal, professional tone to build rapport
• Use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation

You'll also learn how to discover whether agents' have adequate writing skills before you hire or promote them.

Meet the speaker:

Leslie O' Flahavan is a co-founder and partner in E-WRITE. She has helped thousands of people learn to write well for online readers. She helps contact center managers develop, measure, and reward agents' excellent e-mail writing skills.

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 coauthor of Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents. Leslie believes good writers are made, not born.

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4/6/10

How your Service Desk can Facilitate Sustained, Environmental Change in a Busy, Complex, IT Environment

Presented by Darlena Luppino Torres, UCSF Medical Center

The IT Healthcare field is booming:  its professionals are innovative, yet caring, as they implement eMedical Record systems, set the standards for technological devices used by clinicians, and work to improve service delivery across the board.  In the center of this system is the Healthcare Service Desk.  How can the Service Desk help bring about change, while acknowledging that  human beings, in fact, have difficulty with change.  And how can we help drive change into the fabric of our work environments?  As a result of this program you will be able to:

·       Understand the necessary skills required to be a top performing team

·       Use language that is positive, solution and results-oriented

·       Anticipate and manage new trends and emerging needs

Meet the speaker:

Darlena Luppino Torres has been managing the Service Desk for UCSF Medical Center for the past 10 years, and has spoken at SD conferences across the U.S. for the past 5 years.  UCSF is consistently rated by U.S. News & World as one of the top 10 academic medical centers in the U.S. and is staffed with world-renown, Nobel prize physicians.  Darlena’s team is a reflection of her passion to quality service delivery, and is recognized as high performing, problem-solving, and highly communicative.

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2/2/10

Building a Customer Focused Culture

Rob Siefker and Marlene Kanagusuku

Discover how Zappos.com grew their gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service. Rob Siefker the Sr. Manager of Zappos Customer Loyalty Team and Marlene Kanagusuku, Customer Loyalty Manager will discuss the Zappos commitment to WOWing their customers through service, how they retain repeat customers, what they do internally to inspire the Zappos culture and core values.

What Attendees will learn:

• How Zappos WOWs customers every day

• The power of repeat customers and word of mouth

• Why the Zappos culture = delivering happiness

• Seven steps for building a brand that matters

Meet the speakers:

Rob Siefker joined Zappos.com in January of 2004 and is currently one of the Senior Managers for the Customer Loyalty Team. He has spent his entire career with Zappos providing the very best service for both customers and employees. Starting his career with the company as a temporary call center employee he has helped the team grow from 30 to 350 employees.

Rob is a strong ambassador and promoter of the Zappos brand and is commitment to developing a world class culture. He has previously represented Zappos by speaking at conferences for High Tech High Touch Solutions, IQPC, Frost & Sullivan, and Marcus Evans. He's also been a guest speaker at Purdue University's Center for Customer Driven Quality.

Marlene Kanagusuku has been a member of the Customer Loyalty Team at Zappos.com since September, 2004. She is a member of the management team and in that role she is both mentor and promoter of culture. Marlene holds a BSBA in International Business from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2004. When not coaching members of Customer Loyalty Team, she can be found sharing best practices in various panel discussions and speaking engagements.

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1/5/10

Succeeding at change by putting people back into the equation – Managing the people side of change

Tim Creasey, Prosci

Organizations spend countless hours and millions of dollars developing technically correct solutions that never deliver value. The reason is this: the success of these change initiatives is ultimately tied to the people who must do their work differently. Organizations don’t change – individuals do. Said another way, the individual is the unit of successful change, whether that change is a new process, a new system, a new technology, a new organization structure or all of the above.

Change management, at its core, is an approach for mobilizing engagement, building support and managing resistance to change. It is a systematic process for supporting individuals through their own personal transitions – and by helping each individual impacted employee be successful, organizational changes will be more successful.

Join this tele-seminar to build your knowledge and foundation for managing the people side of change. Through several interactive exercises, you will see how to:

• Connect the people side of change to project objectives and results
• Address complex changes in terms of manageable individual transitions
• See change through “ADKAR glasses” with an introduction to Prosci’s individual change management model called ADKAR®

Meet the speaker:

Tim Creasey is the Director of Research and Development for Prosci Research and is based in Boise, Idaho. He is co-author of Change Management:  the people side of change and the editor and lead analyst on Prosci’s last four benchmarking studies (2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009).

Tim writes weekly tutorials on many facets of managing the people side of change and has facilitated more than 200 change management webinars on topics ranging from integrating change management and project management to managing resistance to addressing change saturation.

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12/1/09

10/6/09

9/1/09

A Lite Approach to ITIL v3

Malcolm Fry

Ever since its introduction into the market place the argument as to whether you can or cannot, should or should not , must or must not implement full ITIL V3.  Ironically very few, if any, organizations ever implemented full V2 so why should they be expected to implement full V3?  V3 has huge benefits even if it is implemented in a Lite format.  The question is where do I start and what should I include?  Even if the intend to implement full ITIL V3 you should still ask where should I start and how should I progress.  This presentation is designed to teach people to successfully implement an ITIL Lite version of ITIL V3 that could also be used as a phase one stage of a full ITIL V3 implementation.  The presentation follows a logical project oriented approach.

Meet the Speaker

Malcolm Fry, a recognized IT industry luminary with over 40 years experience in Information Technology, serves as an Independent. Malcolm is the author many publications on IT service and support, he has had many other articles and papers published, and he is regularly contacted as a source of information by technology journalists. In addition, he is the solo performer in a highly successful, best selling DVD series made for the Help Desk Institute.  He was on the ITIL Advisory Group helping to guide the development of ITIL v3 and was a mentor for one of the ITIL V3 books.  His latest publications include ‘A step-by-step Guide to Building a CMDB’ and ‘How to build and ITIL Service Management Department’ while his latest publication ‘ITIL Lite’ is due to be available late 2009.  He is sought after world wide as a dynamic and witty key note presenter.

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8/4/09

7/7/09

• How first impressions create the biggest impact (dress and grooming, body language, attitude)

• Improved communication by using assertive - responsive skills.

• A more polished and a more powerful communication style.

• How to tap other people’s resources to get the job done. Empowering both you and your staff.

• Tips on writing with confidence

• 7 ground rules for the best presentation

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Handout of Remote Agent Site Visit Checklist

6/2/09

30 Tiger Taming Tips: Leadership Lessons Learned While Training Tigers (and other killer beasts)!

Dan Stockdale, The Tiger Guy

Dan Stockdale is the president of The Leadership-Conservation Institute, Inc., (TLCII) a non-profit corporation dedicated to the development of leadership in organizations and to the preservation and replenishment of endangered species. While recognizing the importance of conservation of our environment, Dan is often called a "Green Keynote Speaker". In addition to environmental conservation, he believes in corporate conservation. Just as our earth must be conserved he believes that leaders within organizations must be nurtured to ensure their continued flourishing existence! Leadership and conservation are his hallmarks!

CONSERVATIONIST - Dan's work at The Leadership-Conservation Institute, Inc. is centered around the reintroduction of endangered species into the environment. He is currently working on a multi-year plan to breed and reintroduce cotton-top tamarins back into the jungles of northwest Columbia.

 Dan Stockdale is a highly successful leadership speaker with a reputation for effectively transforming companies of all sizes from inefficient, marginal performers to industry leaders known for the highest quality of service and performance.

 What makes Dan so effective is his ability to combine best-practice leadership principles with his expertise in human and animal behavior. With an educational background in psychology and decades of experience working with exotic animals, Dan has made remarkable discoveries that have led to the development of principles that are as revolutionary as they are practical and effective. Dan uses humor, real-world examples, and exciting demonstrations to drive home these success principles.

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5/12/09

Back to Basics: Telephone Customer Service for Tough Times

Jean Mitchell, Manager of the Call Centre of Excellence at BCIT

Whether the phones you answer ring in a call centre, at a contact centre, or at a help desk, you're used to responding to frustrated callers. These days, though, your callers are likely to be under more stress than usual. It takes all your customer service skills to meet their needs and enhance your company's reputation. In this interactive session, you'll focus on four pillars of basic customer service: acknowledging emotion, listening actively, responding professionally and empowering your customers. You'll apply your knowledge of these vital components to specific situations. You'll have opportunities for questions and discussion with a call centre professional whose track record for providing excellent customer service extends through good times and bad.

Jean Mitchell is a certified corporate trainer, call centre consultant, and Manager of the Call Centre of Excellence at BCIT. She designs, delivers and manages training for agents, managers and customizes training for industry. Jean is a Board Director with Contact Centre Canada and President of BC Contact Centre Association.

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4/7/09

Call Center Math: A Practical Workshop for Managing by the Numbers

Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School

There are many truths told in the vast array of statistics available today in the call center--and the successful manager or supervisor will be the one who understands how to manage by the numbers. This tele-seminar provides a useful set of formulas and calculations for understanding call center math. You’ll learn about the most common measures of performance and how to calculate and analyze them. The session presents the most important calculations associated with determining staffing numbers and evaluating cost and service tradeoffs. You'll also see various methods for analyzing the numbers and presenting them to senior management.

 You Will Learn to:

• Identify the most critical measures of call center and agent performance and how to calculate them.

• Review basic math concepts and how to apply them in common call center scenarios.

• Define the formulas and rationale behind the most common staffing models.

• Identify the most common math mistakes made in call centers today.

Meet the Speaker:

As a Founding Partner of The Call Center School, Penny Reynolds heads up curriculum development. She develops and teaches courses on a wide variety of call center topics and speaks at many industry conferences and association meetings. Penny has spent over twenty years in the call center and telecommunications industry, and is known as an industry expert on topics such as workforce management, application of call center technologies, and general call center operations and people management.

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Handout on Top Twenty Performance Measures from Penny Reynolds

3/11/09

Leading During Uncertain Times

Mary Kay Wegner, Renton Technical College

When the path is unclear, and the budgets frozen or cut, how do you continue to lead your teams to greatness? Let's talk about the reality of managing teams during these challenging times, particularly in the help desk and call center environment.

We'll cover a lot of ground in this one-hour discussion including where you can turn to draw on the energy and the resources you need to not only weather the storm, but survive intact with your own sanity and a clear direction for your team and your business.

Meet the Speaker:

Mary Kay Wegner is an experienced IT executive with over 18 years in the technical support and training industry. After working as a Regional Training Manager in the Pacific Northwest, she turned to the formal IT environment where user support management brought these experiential skills together in a powerful way. In addition to managing technical support organizations, she has contributed at the local and national levels, as VP of the Help Desk Northwest chapter; Board Member and Speaker for the Government Customer Support Conference; and as speaker and co-chair of the Help Desk Professionals Conference. Mary Kay is currently the IT Director for Renton Technical College, one of 34 technical and community colleges in Washington state.

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2/3/09

How to Successfully Leverage Your Resources in Tough Economic Times

Shana Webster-Trotman, US Patent and Trademark Office

Current economic realities in private and federal sectors present new challenges for managers and executives to accomplish more with less financial and human capital resources.  In the new era of scant resources, the extent to which target objectives are achieved, greatly hinges upon the ability of managers to engage, motivate, and sustain employee needs.  This is because an energized and motivated workforce is a key factor to doing more with less.  The current organizational climate predicates the drive for multiple techniques and strategies to motivate employees and build networks of collaborative communities within organizations.  

Join Shana on this tele-seminar to understand the basics of human psychological and physiological drivers which influence perceptions and behavioral outcomes.  And, to also learn how to “take the pulse” or assess the needs of your employees and colleagues.

Meet the Speaker:

Shana Webster-Trotman is the management and program analyst for the Deputy Commissioner of Trademarks at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  In this capacity, she conducts program evaluations and interdepartmental studies; provides senior executives with recommendations for improvements in work processes and organizational policies; and directs, designs, and implements projects and initiatives to accomplish organizational goals and objectives. Mrs. Webster-Trotman is a Ph. D candidate in Applied Management and Decision Sciences specializing in Leadership and Organizational change; her dissertation topic is “Effects of Tele-work on Dimensions of Employee Psychological Needs and Organizational Culture.”  She holds an M.S. in Management and an M.A. in English.

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1/6/09

Have you ever had a desire to be more creative in your approach to subjects like change management and managing multiple priorities? Have you desired to move employees past the vision statement toward actual work performance? If your answer is yes, this session is for you! We will explore how a simple concept like "leaves" was used to energize employees through the change process. In addition, we will also look at how a simple contest was used to move employees from the conceptual stage to become stakeholders in a new process.

Join Yolunda Davis on this tele-seminar to learn how you can be more creative in your work group to reinvent or reenergize old ideas and bring about positive results for the customers and the employees. You will never look at a leaf quite the same.

Meet the Speaker

Yolunda Davis began her IRS career more than twenty seven years ago as a co-op student. She has transversed through a variety of administrative support positions in Facilities Management, Personnel, Training and Quality.

She has over seventeen years of experience as a Management Analyst and has extensive experience in management. She has been a part of the IRS Employee Resource Center from it’s inception in October 2001 where she served as a Senior Program Analyst for seven years.

In September 2008, she was selected as the Associate Director of the Employee Resource. Yolunda holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Alabama and is an accomplished motivational speaker. She is a respected member of the Customer Service community, currently serving on the Board of the National Government Customer Support Conference organization.

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12/2/08

There is a never ending challenge for call centers and service desks to handle more calls, questions and problems with the same or less resources.  The key question to ask is, “Are we effectively leveraging the entire team to maximize their knowledge, ideas and problem solving capabilities?”  Today, there are low cost effective means to harness the “The Wisdom of Crowds” and this is achieved through social networking and collaboration tools. 

In this session, we will examine the phenomenon of social networking and collaboration:

= What is it really?  Is it Facebook and LinkedIn for the enterprise?   

= How can it help you and your teams? 

= Should you move from Friending to Insight?

= Hear real-life examples for the service and support area.

Meet the Speaker:

Tony Baggio is a 25 year veteran of the application software industry with the last 10 years focused on helping call centers and service desks improve their operations via technology, best practices, improved training and knowledge transfer. He has consulted and implemented call center technologies across many industries including financial, automotive, health care, consumer products and high tech. 

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11/6/08

9/4/08

8/12/08

7/8/08

The Truth About Communication: How to Speak with Strength and Sensitivity to Get the Respect, Rewards and Results you Deserve

Presented by Colette Carlson, Speaker and Author

6/11/08

5/13/08

Blueprint for Success: Charting a Course for Personnel Development

Presented by Penny Reynolds, Co-founder, The Call Center School

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4/1/08

Workforce Management for Non-Workforce Managers

Presented by Michelle Borboa, President, Contact Center Resources

Is there something you’ve always wondered about forecasting or scheduling? Are you curious about why your WFM department does what they do? Even if you are a Workforce Management professional, this session may give you ideas on how to communicate with your colleagues back at your center, or even anticipate their questions.

3/4/08

2/13/08

7/10/07

"Surefire Steps to Building Teamwork Between the Frontline and the Beyond!"

Presented by Kate Nasser, President, CAS, Inc.

This one-hour teleseminar will address one of the most persistent challenges in Help Desk -- building ownership and follow-through beyond the frontline. If you are managing the front-line or leading the entire support effort, information packed seminar will address both the philosophy/culture you need to build as well as tangible steps to that end.

Meet the Speaker:

Kate is wise, funny, down-to-earth, and just wild and different enough to inspire growth and improvement in individuals and teams. Her varied background as a business owner, certified teacher, technology professional and organizational psychologist, makes her credible to many. Before founding CAS, Inc. Kate Nasser worked for American Home Products and Johnson & Johnson in Computer Systems Development and Client Services/Training. She has a B.S. Mathematics, M.A. in Organizational Psychology and is a member of the American Consultants League and the American Society of Training & Development. Kate's customers include IBM, Time Inc., Pfizer Inc, Discover Card, The Gap, GTE, The National Institutes of Health, NIST, and US Veterans Administration, to name just a few.

4/4/07

3/22/07

Putting ITIL, Six-Sigma and CobIT to WORK-shop

Presented by Greg Charles, PH.D, Computer Associates

Greg will be covering key components in this ITIL Theory seminar, a compressed version of the mini-workshop he is presenting at GCSC 2007.  It is based upon ITIL education and discussions of real-world scenarios. Attendees will learn and discuss the benefits of applying ITIL best practices while at the same time learning the basic principles of ITIL.  Attendees will also learn the relationships between ITIL processes, the different ITIL roles and discuss the best way to implement this framework in their organizations. At the conference, attendees will follow the ITIL best-practice processes to react to a real-world scenario and design, implement, evaluate and improve their own ITIL based processes.  On the tele-seminar Greg will share very some useful insights that you will be able to apply in your own environment and also answer questions.

This is not a vendor sponsored session and no sales pitch will be made at any level.  Greg is an expert in delivering educational material and is a favored speaker in our program.

2/1/07

voip survival guide
Can you really save $, improve operations, AND achieve greater security and availability?

Presented by Peggy Gritt, President and founder VoIP Institute and President of ZelphaMedia