Want to Know the Secrets to Award-Winning Customer Service?

Preparations are well underway for Contact Center Demo and Conference, and the team here at ICMI is so excited to spend three days in Las Vegas with the contact center community. The lineup of workshops, site tours, networking events, and speakers is incredible, and if you work in a contact center you don’t want to miss it!

We have sessions planned that will cover a variety of topics including workforce management , technology implementation, the customer experience and motivating millennials (just to name a few). I’m particularly excited to lead a panel discussion with three of our previous Global Contact Center Awards winners.  Brock Faucette, Cecelia Mastin, and Murray Warring will be joining me on Tuesday, October 20th to share their secrets to success. Register now and join us to learn how to build an award-winning customer service team.

In the meantime, get to know Brock Faucette. Brock is a manager for AICPA Member Services and he was selected as our Global Contact Center Awards Best Supervisor in 2014. His contact center also took home the 2015 award for Best Use of Technology. Read the interview below to find out what he hopes to learn at Contact Center Demo and Conference and what he sees as the biggest challenge for contact center leaders today.

What advice do you have for first time ICMI conference attendees?

Brock: Download (and use…duh!) ICMI’s event app! ICMI does a fantastic job organizing its conferences, and using the app will only ensure you capitalize on all the learning and networking experiences.

Which session at Contact Center Demo and Conference are you most excited to attend?

Brock: Clearly, I’m most excited to attend "Secrets to Developing an Award-Winning Customer Service Team" because I’ll be participating on the panel. My department has had so many successes over the past few years, and the surprising thing is that many of our successes came with minimal effort from the leadership. I can’t wait to share some of those ‘ah-ha’ moments with attendees. All that having been said, if that session is excluded as a viable answer, I will state that I’m always excited to attend sessions delivered by Jeff Toister or Tim Montgomery. These guys know their stuff, and I often leave their sessions not only with great ideas but also with confirmation that my team and I are doing many things right—and that’s never a bad thing.

What is one question you’d love to have answered at Contact Center Demo and Conference?

Brock: If I ever have to diffuse a bomb, must I cut the red wire or the blue wire? But seriously, as advanced as my team is, we’re behind the times in terms of social media customer service. I’ve encouraged my leadership to let me dabble in this arena, so I’m interested in hearing about best practices in general. If I had to commit to one question: What is the biggest mistake one can make when getting a social media customer service team off the ground?

In your opinion, what’s the biggest challenge contact center leaders face today?

Brock: I assure you that this is not a fluff answer: the biggest challenge contact center leaders face today is themselves. We impress upon our staff that, when providing quality customer service, one must never state, “I’m sorry. That’s the policy,” or “That’s just the way it is.” We encourage staff to be creative problem solvers—innovators! My argument is that we as leaders must practice what we preach. We must question our practices and allow ourselves to be questioned. If you do so, you’ll probably find that about 99.9% of the things you assumed as being contact center ‘law’ are in fact arbitrary rules put in place by some unknown entity at some unknown point in time—usually only to reinforce lazy leadership. To be effective leaders, we must repudiate the notion that we’re some sort of oracle or guru or gatekeeper to knowledge. Instead, we must learn to get out of the way and let our staff come to the table with solutions.

The good news is if you’re a leader attending an ICMI conference, you’re probably not the stuffy leader I described. You’re most likely engaged and engaging and eager to get you and your team to the next level. Okay, okay. I’ll hop off this soapbox now. It’s creaking under the weight of my big ol’ head.

Who is your customer service hero and why?

Brock: My customer service hero is my local independent bookstore, Flyleaf Books. The store and its booksellers are both so inviting. They go out of their way to provide me an excellent customer service experience every time I walk through the door. If I know what I want, they’ll grab it for me. If I don’t know what I want, they’re knowledgeable enough to make a quality recommendation. At this point, they already know my taste. Therefore, often when I visit, they’ll already have something in mind for me. If they don’t have something in stock, they assure me they can have it typically within 2-3 business days. I can even have them ship books to friends and family so I don’t have to step into a post office. It’s feels like a boutique experience. Support your local bookstores, ladies and gentlemen—especially if they’re providing such excellent services.

Register now to join Brock & the ICMI team at Contact Center Demo and Conference.