I’m so proud of today’s leading lady, Nathalie Baron, Founder of Uniquepathways! She is a fellow Swiss with a wonderful Coaching Practice for Female Executives. Nathalie brings to the table over 15 years of traveling, working and consulting in the world of business and talent management. As a professional certified Coach, Strategist and Trainer in the fields of Career Management, Leadership and Personal Branding, what really motivates her is to inspire, reveal and mobilize the potential and tale...
Apr 06, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 51
This episode couldn’t come any more timely…. Just recently two major UK banks have announced that their working from home solution is here to stay! But…. Mark Walton boldly says….. Not everyone is cut out for Home Working…. And Home Working is not for everyone. So - how do you ensure you have got the right people and the right environment? Mark has been CEO of Sensée since Feb 2019, leading the growth of the business. Sensée is the UK's leading, if not only, ethically-driven true Home Working sp...
Mar 31, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 58
It’s not everyday that I get to sit down with an accomplished author in the Customer Service and Customer Experience Space! Mark Hillary is a British/Irish writer and analyst based in São Paulo. He is a former technology director turned communication adviser via his experience writing books and blogs on technology, work, and globalisation. He continues to write books on the future of technology and CX, contribute to media debate, advise corporate leaders, and ghost-write content for several lead...
Mar 24, 2021•43 min•Season 1Ep. 57
Alex Mead was probably every contact centre manager's nightmare agent! He would not get off the phones until he was able to help the customer. He would promise a callback and do it - long before the industry realised that this might be a good process to offer. And Alex clearly knew from the very start of his career - we are in the business of helping to solve problems. In his career, Alex has designed customer service departments for many well known firms, including IAG where British Airways bel...
Mar 17, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Over the past couple of weeks, we heard from Amazing Women, who’s bold statements included: Amal Hassan: You have the Power within you! All you need is to activate that power Celine Chan: Keep the faith - always do the right thing! Natallie Baron: In a world of constant change and uncertainty, where we can find certainty is within Paula Kennedy Garcia: Ambition is not a dirty word! Be unapologetically ambitious Shannon Burch: There is a reason every human is unique - so you should bring that uni...
Mar 03, 2021•14 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Today’s Leading Lady is…. Yes you guessed - it’s myself! I am interviewed by Teresa Robertson, Associate Director of HR and L&D at Rutz Consulting. I’m honoured to be in this line-up. My career started in Travel & Tourism - and I fell into the Customer Service / Contact Centre World by accident, as so many of us do. Having climbed the corporate ladder, thoroughly enjoying my career, I was pulled out of it quite rudely. In this episode you learn how despite the big C - in fact today I wou...
Feb 24, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Today’s Leading Lady is Tugreofia Smith, lovingly called Tugs, Vice President of A&T Ascension Consulting Inc! ATAC is a Canadian based virtual service BPO. The jewel of their organization is their people. Remote work from home is the new frontier for many. However, Since 2011 A&T Ascension Consulting Inc. (ATAC) have been the trail blazers in the Canadian Marketplace. Tugs and her team strive to constantly evolve while staying focused on client-satisfaction and results. Today Tugs share...
Feb 17, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Today’s Leading Lady is Celine Chan, Managing Director of Webhelp Asia (formerly Sellbytel). Celine joins us from Kuala Lumpur, talking us on her professional journey; starting as, what her father perceived to be a sales girl, to becoming MD of the Asian Business for Webhelp, a global Outsourcing Firm. Celine was appointed as the Managing Director of Asia Pacific for Webhelp since 2018. She is a graduate from RMIT Melbourne, Australia with a Bachelor of Business (Accounting). She started her wor...
Feb 03, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Today’s Leading Lady is Paula Kennedy Garica, Vice President of Concentrix, an award winning global outsourcing solutions provider. Paula started her career in the contact centre world as Sales Manager in BTNI before moving into the outsourcing space and serving well known service providers such as Teleperformance, HCL, TeleTech, Sitel and now for the last 5.5 years with Concentrix. Today we chat about what is needed to make it to the top in an international firm… and it might not be what you th...
Jan 27, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Shannon Burch, Director of Western Financial Group and Co-Founder of Brilliantly Forward This week's Leading Lady is Shannon Burch, a banker through and through! Shannon can look back on a long standing career in Banking and Customer Service! She served CIBC as Vice President, as Director of Business Solutions and Operational Projects with Scotia Bank in Toronto. She led a multi-layered team of 67 leaders and 300 staff across 31 branches as Vice President Everyday Financial Services with ATB Fin...
Jan 20, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Amal Hassan, Founder and CEO of Outsource Global, Nigeria. The very first guest in this exciting Leading Ladies Series is Amal Hassan. Amal Hassan is a leading Nigerian technopreneur with diverse interests across different technology verticals. In 2003, Amal set up the first organized ICT training institute in Kano that provides IT training to young Nigerians, especially women. Her passion to unlock Nigeria’s developmental potentials through technology-driven innovation and value-addition led he...
Jan 13, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 47
On 01 January 2021 the UK leaves the EU and we are facing new ways of doing business in our contact centres. We have had 4.5 years to prepare for this moment! In this episode I’m looking at what you need to do for your people, your processes and how to safeguard your profit in the post EU world! Although, at the time of recording there wasn’t a final decision on whether we leave with or without a deal - but things change regardless. Marianne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne-rutz...
Jan 06, 2021•14 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Gratitude is the key to happiness! Even in difficult times like 2020 - where so many people have suffered the loss of a loved one, lost their job maybe, struggled with loneliness or depression - Practising gratitude can change your day! Step 1: Thank Step 2: You Then Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for each step… Marianne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne-rutz-351b0a5/ My Podcast is produced by: https://www.unavoided.com...
Dec 04, 2020•17 min•Season 1Ep. 45
There is ONE hack I want you to do every single day! In this episode I tell you why it’s important to stick with this one hack! You will also learn... How knowing your leadership Style and your Kolbe support your teams performance How you can have ONE hack conversations with all your team members How to address the strengths or the lack of performance with your team members in 15min every day How to schedule a Power Hour LeapAcademyInternational: https://leapacademyinternational.com/product/team...
Nov 27, 2020•17 min•Season 1Ep. 44
In today’s episode I’m taking you behind the scenes of Rutz Consulting - and in fact of any operation that I have led in the past! You all know by now, that my contact centre career has taken me to BIG names such as Hertz, PayPal, Sitel, Ralph Lauren, Santander… the list goes on. I hear very often - there is no entrepreneurial spirit in the corporate world. And this might be true for a lot of firms. But not for all of them! It’s down to you as the boss of your contact centre unit to create the b...
Nov 13, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 43
My Guest today is Louise Brogan - the founder and owner of Social Bee Northern Ireland (NI). Louise started off as a Social Media expert, providing training on Facebook set up, usage, LinkedIn and other Social sites. Over the last year however she very much niched down into LinkedIn and has become one of THE most recognised experts for LI in the UK. She has written articles for the Social Media Examiner - an esteemed and well thought of online magazine, she has been published in the Huffington P...
Nov 06, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 42
For so many of us 2020 will be the most remarkable and memorable year in business - yet maybe for all the wrong reasons…. Less customer contacts leading to loss of revenue Overwhelmed contact centres with too many employees falling ill with stress Huge efforts made to enable the workforce to work from home - yet the inital enthusiasm has worn off - so what now? Furloughed employees as long as possible - but then having to make them redundant, as funds are running out Quality of work deterioratin...
Oct 30, 2020•20 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Peter is THE go-to expert for data relating to the BPO industry. He has been at the forefront of contact centre services market advisory for over a decade! He began his career in London at Datamonitor in 2003 and quickly established himself as one of the foremost experts in the burgeoning Customer Experience (CX) sector. Over the course of his career, Peter has advised contact centre outsourcers, their clients, industry associations and governments, on matters ranging from vertical market penetr...
Oct 23, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Artificial Intelligence - a buzz word in the contact centre world - and one that can eat up a lot of resources, money and, frankly, often does not produce the desired result. My guests today are David Naylor from Humanotics and Paul Carter from Customer Management Resources. Two experts in their fields - working together helping contact centres to get their Artificial Intelligence gathering right, employing people with unique skill-sets to drive the results and subsequently the savings that firm...
Oct 16, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 39
My guest and his team just recently won the European Customer Centricity Award 2020 in “Digital Transformation” and “Best Measurement in Customer Experience” - recognizing Signify’s digital transformation of their Customer NPS programme. Signify’s Head of customer satisfaction Bart Hendrik Huisman says “this journey has brought customers closer to us. It has empowered our people to define and implement improvements. Creating better experiences for our customers - that’s the impact we are most pr...
Oct 09, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 38
What we thought would pass and was initially called the “new normal” for a period of time…. Is most definitely here to stay. Contact Centres all over the place have moved their frontline delivery workers into home offices - and it would appear that this will be the trend for the foreseeable future. In this episode Karen Abass, Operational Lead of Sainsbury’s & Argos Customer Service Team of the TU Clothing brand, shares very candidly the challenges her team has faced, how service delivery ha...
Oct 02, 2020•35 min•Season 1Ep. 37
I recently read an article in Forbes by Micah Solomon, a customer service and customer experience consultant. He had interviewed Yael Ron, the General Manager of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in San Francisco! And boy - I loved the points Micah brought across - hence I’m sharing them here with you - looking at it through the lens of a contact centre leader! What does it take for my centre to become the Ritz-Carlton of Contact Centers? Let me start with a quote from Yael Ron: “To create an exceptional c...
Sep 25, 2020•15 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Holistic complaints handling has nothing to do with hugging trees - yet the complaint handling process is changing post-Covid-19. My guest Sarah Lawrence worked for the financial services ombudsman for over 16 years - and therefore couldn’t be better positioned to talk us through what 'good' looks like in complaint handling. She explains candidly why the current Dispute Resolution Rules are hopelessly out-dated (they are over 20 years old) and why we need to consider all communication channels t...
Sep 18, 2020•43 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Every day I see and hear it from front line managers in contact centres and customer service centres - Everyday leaders worry about peak season! Every day I hear team members being stressed out about peak! Their concerns and worries are very real. Stress levels are going up! High level of abandoned calls, growing backlogs, dipping quality, high absence rates, missed KPI’s - hence potential penalties. It is simply awful. And instead of making money in peak season, you are losing money for your fi...
Sep 15, 2020•25 min•Season 1Ep. 1
I really struggled with this episode…. Firstly - ever since George Floyd’s murder in June 2020 I thought by myself - what have I missed? What is it that I have never really spoken about? Have I no understanding or awareness of racial differences, sexual orientation, religion, gender or age in our industry or more broadly around the world? Well - it wasn’t that - it was more about: What have I got to say to this topic? I went and learned, read, spoke to people in order to educate myself. Eventual...
Sep 11, 2020•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 34
Hands up who has ever thought of starting their own contact centre? Bringing tailor-made solutions to businesses and well and truly caring about clients and employees? We all know how much hard work goes into starting a business. It’s no different in the contact centre world. With his entrepreneurial spirit and approach my guest John Deviln of Ascensos not only built one successful contact centre, no - he did it again! John and I discuss his secret sauce (and boy - there must be one, Contact Cen...
Sep 04, 2020•38 min•Season 1Ep. 33
The connection between contact centre operations and a family-run Scottish Whisky Business is certainly not that obvious. However - My guest Karen Somerville shares how she had to change and pivot in her business pretty fast, as the world market place changed with Covid-19. She explains candidly how difficult it was at times, but she also shares her 3 key points in crisis management which she always ensures are followed through; Listen to your staff Do your research Don’t get disheartened by fee...
Aug 28, 2020•39 min•Season 1Ep. 32
My guest this week is Andi Lonnen, Founder of the Finance Training Academy, Speaker and Author - all things Finances. Andi founded her business after a sabbatical cycling the Swiss Alps! I just had to get to know this lady and find out what made her leave her Chief Financial Officer role and start a training business in Finances! In the contact centre world, very sadly, many managers see the finance department as a stand alone financial department, not very personable. Also, many managers do not...
Aug 21, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 31
My guest today is a lady I absolutely admire! She founded a boutique operations management firm 15 years ago and to date serves CEO’s of Small Businesses but also C-Suite Executives as a consultant to instil operational excellence in their businesses! Alicia reviews her clients’ business infrastructure by using her very own Kasennu Framework for Business Infrastructure. Wow - She will tell us a story two! Alicia is the host of the weekly Business Infrastructure: Curing Back Office Blues podcast....
Aug 14, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Last week’s podcast was all about the Ops Manual – so that your operations run like clockwork - even when you are not there. Or – so that in a crisis – as COVID 19 – you have it all in one place and won’t have to frantically search for documents or processes! It did make me think though. What is Excellence? What does it actually mean? Let’s have a look at the origins of the word: “Excellence” The word originates in Latin – “Excellere” & Excellentia” meaning surpass. According to the Oxford D...
Aug 07, 2020•17 min•Season 1Ep. 29
