Meet the 2019 ICMI Featured Contributors

Last year, we launched the ICMI Featured Contributor program. The inaugural roster featured experts from a variety of backgrounds, and throughout 2018 they shared their knowledge to help us educate, inspire, and shape the contact center industry.

We’re pleased to continue that program this year and excited to announce the 2019 lineup!

What will ICMI Featured Contributors do? They’ll be your voice throughout the year. They’ll answer your burning questions, push you to think about new ways of approaching contact center leadership, and hopefully inspire you with new confidence. Each of these writers will share quarterly articles on icmi.com and in our Contact Center Insider Newsletter. We hope you’ll follow along!

Without further ado, get to know our 2019 ICMI Featured Contributors.

Matt Beckwith, Contact Center Director, Clark Pest Control

Matt Beckwith is proud to be a Contact Center Geek. Since putting on the headset for the first time as a 411 operator, he has spent more than 20 years leading customer service and sales call centers in different industries. His passion for customer service and experience, technology, leadership, and professional development has led him to his current role leading customer contact operations for Clark Pest Control, one of the largest and most successful pest control companies in the US. He writes at ContactCenterGeek.com and tweets @mattbikewith. Matt also serves as a steering committee member for the Northern California Contact Center Association.

Dr. Debra Bentson, Contact Center WFM Expert, ICMI Advisory Board Member

Debra earned her doctorate degree in Business Administration. She has spent most of her career in Contact Centers, the past 20 years building and leading Workforce Management teams, and worked in a variety of industries. Her leadership style balances empowerment, accountability, results, and fun. When not at work, Debra occupies her free time as a member of the DNF (Did Not Finish) team at the Antioch, California dirt track – push starting Sprint cars and supporting raceway safety. She lives by these words: "Work and play, laugh loud and often, be safe and strong, and live on your own terms". Learn more about and connect with Debra on social media at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-debra-bentson/ and on Twitter @theccdoctor

Nate Brown, Co-Founder, CX Accelerator

Nate is the Co-founder of CX Accelerator. While Customer Service is his primary expertise, Nate is able to leverage experience in professional services, marketing, and sales to connect dots and solve the big problems. From authoring and leading a Customer Experience program, to journey mapping, to managing a complex contact center, Nate is always learning new things and sharing with the CX community. Follow him on Twitter using handle @CustomerIsFirst.

Kaye Chapman, Learning & Development Manager, Comm100

Kaye is Comm100’s Learning & Development Manager, an internationally-experienced writer and trainer, and an MA student at University College London, the world’s #1 center for Education and Social Science. Kaye has worked with Fortune 500, governmental and private firms across the world to advance customer service operations and embed leading learning and development strategy. As a specialist in Contact Centers, Kaye is passionate about using technology and training to improve experiences for customers and employees alike.

Jenny Dempsey, Social Media and Customer Experience Manager, Number Barn

Jenny Dempsey is the Social Media and Customer Experience Manager for NumberBarn.com. With over a decade of customer service experience under her belt, she's the co-founder of CustomerServiceLife.com. As a certified health coach and the founder of Jenny Dempsey Wellness, she also provides corporate wellness in the workplace workshops for teams. She is  the mother to a toothless rescue cat named Chompers and lives in sunny Carlsbad, California.

Matt Dixon, Chief Product & Research Officer, Tethr

Matt Dixon is Chief Product & Research Officer of the Austin-based AI and machine learning venture, Tethr. In this capacity, he has responsibility for product strategy, product management and product marketing.

Prior to joining Tethr, Matt was a Senior Partner and Global Head of Sales Force Effectiveness Solutions at Korn Ferry Hay Group and, before that, held numerous global leadership roles in research, product development and management for CEB, now Gartner.

Matt is a sought-after speaker and advisor to management teams around the world, having presented his findings at a wide range of industry conferences as well as to hundreds of senior executive teams around the world, including those of many Fortune 500 companies.

Chris Edmonds, CEO, The Purposeful Culture Group

Chris Edmonds is a sought-after speaker, author, and executive consultant who is the founder and CEO of The Purposeful Culture Group. After a 15-year executive career leading high performing teams, Chris began his consulting company in 1990. He has also served as a senior consultant with The Ken Blanchard Companies since 1995. Chris is one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Great Leadership Speakers and was a featured presenter at SXSW 2015.

Chris is the author of the Amazon best seller The Culture Engine, the best seller Leading At A Higher Level with Ken Blanchard, and five other books. Chris' blog, podcasts, research, and videos can be found at Driving ResultsThrough Culture. Thousands of followers enjoy his daily quotes on organizational culture, servant leadership, and workplace inspiration on Twitter at @scedmonds.

Andrew Gilliam, ITS Service Desk Consultant, Western Kentucky University

Andrew Gilliam is a passionate customer experience innovator and change agent. He's developed new employee portals, created effective surveys, and built silo-busting escalation systems. Andrew's background in Information Technology put him on the front-lines of customer service as an ITS Service Desk Consultant for Western Kentucky University. His vision: deliver Amazing Customer Service and Technical Support™. Follow Andrew on Twitter: @ndytg.

Chris Hanna, Manager, Technical Advisory, Star Tech

At Star Tech, Chris leads a team of 40+ product and technology specialists that provide technical support to a wide range of global customers, including IT professionals and value-added resellers, using a number of mediums including phone, email, live chat, remote support, and online reviews.

He also manages the "Workforce Management & Analytics Program, " tasked with coordinating all scheduling, forecasting, and analytics for the department.

Karin Hurt, CEO Lets Grow Leaders

Karin Hurt is CEO of Let's Grow Leaders and a former Verizon Wireless executive. Karin was named on Inc.'s list 100 Great Leadership Speakers for 2018 and the American Management Association List of 50 Leaders to Watch. She's the award-winning author of two books, Winning Well: A Manager's Guide to Getting Results- Without Losing Your Soul, and Overcoming an Imperfect Boss. She's regularly featured in business publications including Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and Inc.

Amber Krueger, Operations Manager, AVP, U.S. Bancorp Fund Services, LLC

Amber Krueger has worked in the contact center industry since 2007. She earned her MBA from Lakeland College in 2010 and has been managing since 2011. She enjoys looking at numbers and finding ways to foster improvement in all areas of the department.

Robert Lamb, Sr. Customer Contact Consultant, CDW

Robert is a thought leader in omnichannel contact center strategy and performance. As an architect with a business management background, Robert's specialty is maximizing his client's bottom line by optimizing both productivity and the customer experience.

Robert has 30+ years of contact center experience, having advised 1,800+ companies and formally consulted to nearly 500 clients. He has been technically certified for design, implementation, integration and application development for Cisco, Nuance, Avaya and Genesys contact center technologies. He has designed contact centers that have been implemented for +150 clients.

Erica Mancuso, Director of Client Care, Straightaway Health Careers

Erica Mancuso builds teams that deliver exceptional customer experiences. After 15 years of leading customer-facing teams for entrepreneurial technology companies, Erica knows these experiences are the result of not only a solid product but also great employees armed with the right tools and processes to get the job done well. Erica is Director of Client Care at Straightaway Health Careers. Connect with Erica on Twitter.

Leslie O’Flahavan, Principal, E-WRITE

Leslie O'Flahavan, E-WRITE Principal, has helped thousands of people learn to write well for online readers. She is a problem-solver for all the writing-related challenges faced by contact centers: e-mail, chat, and social media. She helps contact centers train agents to write excellent e-mail, measure the quality of their e-mails to customers, and rewrite and maintain their entire library of canned answers. Recently, she completed a complete overhaul of customer service writing for a global airline’s domestic and international contact centers. Leslie is the co-author of Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents. Reach Leslie at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @LeslieO.

Scott Ontiveroz, Social Media and Digital Marketing Expert

Scott Ontiveroz is a social media and digital marketing expert. He helps people and businesses to expand their digital footprint and reach and engage with their target audiences on Social Media.

Follow him on Twitter.

Michael Pace, Principal and Owner, The Pace of Service

Incredibly fortunate, by his own admission, Michael wakes up each day envisioning how he can inspire companies to create environments, journeys, and actions that help make their customers more successful. He believes wildly successful companies start with successful customers and associates. In 2012, he started and built a consultancy through strong values, discipline, and sharp customer focus. Since then, he has built awe-inspiring experiences resulting in worldwide leading customer experience scoring for a variety of industries and organizations.

As he puts it: “I engineer monumental and awe-inspiring customer experiences; I build cathedrals of customer experience. Starting with a solid foundation of Culture, the Best Talent, Process Management, the Right Technology, and Data Insights, I construct the pillars of a customer experience strategy for your contact center or customer care teams, and deliver awe-inspiring experiences.”

Jeff Rumburg, Managing Partner, MetricNet, LLC

Jeff Rumburg is co-founder and Managing Partner of MetricNet, LLC. He was awarded the 2014 Ron Muns Lifetime Achievement Award by HDI for his contributions to the IT Service and Support industry. He has authored a best-selling book on Benchmarking and has published more than 100 whitepapers on Contact Center Best Practices. He has also been retained as a contact center expert by more than half of the FORTUNE 1000, including such well-known companies as HP, Intel, General Motors, IBM, and American Express. Equally broad is his industry experience, which includes contact center project management and benchmarking for virtually every major industry.

Prior to co-founding MetricNet, Mr. Rumburg was president and founder of The Verity Group, an international management consulting firm specializing in benchmarking and competitive analysis. As president of The Verity Group, Mr. Rumburg launched a syndicated benchmarking service that provided contact center benchmarks to more than 1,000 corporations worldwide.

Jeremy Watkin, Director of Customer Experience, FCR

Jeremy Watkin is the Director of Customer Experience at FCR, the premier provider of outsourced call center and business process solutions. He has more than 17 years of experience as a customer service, customer experience, and contact center professional. He is also the co-founder and regular contributor on Customer Service Life. Jeremy has been recognized many times for his thought leadership. Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn for more awesome customer service and experience insights.