2021 Customer Strategy & Planning Speakers

Originally Broadcast Thursday 16th October, 12:30

Join Route 101 for a dynamic session exploring how Zendesk can revolutionise back-office operations through intelligent omnichannel routing and email management.Discover how unstructured inboxes can be transformed into structured workflows, enabling smarter task planning, queue categorisation, and actionable analytics. With insights from Route 101’s systems integration experts, this showcase will highlight real-world examples and integrations - bridging the gap between back-office tasks, CCaaS, WFM and QM to unlock new efficiencies. 

Originally Broadcast Wednesday 15th October, 12:30

Compassion fatigue and how to help your teams to care without burning out. Every day, our colleagues are expected to show up with empathy for customers in vulnerable circumstances. But what happens when empathy itself becomes exhausting? That’s compassion fatigue. It’s not burnout - yet - but if ignored, it can take us there. Join Helen from the National Support Network in an interactive session. 

Originally Broadcast Tuesday 14th October, 12:30

What if supervisors and agents could chat to your WFM solution? What if resolving staffing issues took just one click? Workforce management (WFM) is entering a new era. Artificial intelligence is transforming the process of forecasting, scheduling, and employee engagement. In this session, Scott Budding from Calabrio unveils new Gen-AI capabilities with their award winning WFM including Agent and Supervisor Assist and Predictive Actions. The future of WFM is Workforce Intelligence. 

Originally Broadcast Monday 13th October, 12:30

Smarter. Faster. Stronger: How Verint Co-pilot Bots Supercharge Contact Centres. In today’s fast-paced customer experience landscape, efficiency and personalisation are no longer optional- they’re essential. Join us for an exclusive session as we reveal how Verint’s Co-pilot Bots are reshaping contact centres by automating micro-workflows, reducing average handling times, and significantly increasing agent capacity.

Originally Broadcast Monday 13th October, 10:30

Reset, Redefine & Raise Standards
This keynote launches the week by challenging us to turn intent into action. Explore how learning, reflection and ownership drive personal growth and organisational progress. Discover how tools like the Learning Tracker, Reflective Method, and the Learning Pyramid support continuous improvement. We'll explore how to break out of firefighting, align strategy with daily action, and shift from “being busy” to “making a difference”. It's time to reset habits, redefine success, and commit to doing things differently. Because done will always beat intended.

Messaging is popping up all over customer service teams. WhatsApp, in-app chat, SMS – you name it, someone’s testing it. But here’s the truth: just launching a messaging channel isn’t enough. Doing it well takes some serious thought.

The picture above, many will recognise, is the Severn Bridge. It is also the view from my friend’s back garden. It’s a magnificent view and connects England with Wales across a huge and extraordinary expanse of water. Bridges connect places: some are huge, others exceedingly small. Some are incredible feats of engineering, others a plank across a muddy gap. We use the word ‘bridge’ as a verb. Something we do. We ‘bridge the gap,’ and it is the gap that interests me more than the bridge. We ‘abridge’ books, shorten them into easier to access chunks, and it is the parts we choose to include, and exclude, that draws my attention.

Speech analytics has revolutionised how organisations manage customer interactions, progressing from its origins in large contact centres to becoming a critical enabler of real-time customer engagement. Historically, it was a resource-intensive tool housed on on-premise servers, primarily adopted by enterprises to optimise quality assurance (QA) processes, extract insights from customer interactions, and, in some cases, improve sales performance. Today, advancements in real-time analytics and large language models (LLMs) have vastly expanded its capabilities, introducing automation, efficiency, and real-time problem-solving into operational workflows.

Whether you love it or hate it, AI is here. AI has had a bigger impact on Contact Centres than Analytics, WFM, Quality Management, Insight Dashboards, and other technologies we’ve used over the years. It’s as significant in our lives as mobile phones, broadband at home, smart devices and IoT have been.

We all get fixed on forecasts, but none of us can see into the future. A forecast is basically a guess – an educated guess. What we can do is study what has happened in the past. By analysing past data for patterns and trends, we can make an educated guess about future outcomes. Unless we get lucky, it will probably be wrong.

Outsourcing is a tricky balancing act. Get it right, and it can transform your business. Get it wrong, and it can turn into a never-ending headache. Companies outsource for many reasons, like saving money, gaining expertise, or increasing scale. But success largely depends on managing the relationship well. To make outsourcing successful, follow these tips and avoid common mistakes. Also, learn why some businesses choose multiple outsourcers to spread their risk.

In recent years, more and more companies have started to recognise the importance of mental health and stress management in the workplace. As businesses realise how stress impacts not just employees but also the overall success of their organisation and customer satisfaction, many have rolled out initiatives like flexible working hours, wellness programs, and policies promoting work-life balance. These all sound great in theory, right?

How can we combine data and human intuition to drive continuous improvement? Today, there is huge excitement about the potential of data, machine learning, and AI. With these tools, we’re capturing more data than ever. We’re pushing our analysis to new heights.

Why haven’t we covered this topic on its own before? Probably because it isn’t the most exciting topic ever. However, we can change our mindset. If we view compliance and risk management differently, we can make data governance an engaging and valuable initiative. This will excite teams and align with broader business goals.

This is a new term that is starting to be used in our industry. So I thought I would look into this in detail. Is this a leap forward for our industry? Or, is it another tech advance that promises much but won’t change much? I have found one thing. When people consider the implications, they don’t grasp the real world Team Leaders and their teams inhabit.

Customers are key to the success of our operation. Understanding their needs, wants and frustrations allows us to set the right strategies. In recent networking groups we have been discussing customer insight. What data do we have? How can we use this? What are the challenges. In this article I will be sharing some of my learning from these groups.

With rising customer complaints, organisations must focus on complaints management. It’s now critical in all sectors. Businesses from banking to telecoms and retail, face rising customer dissatisfaction. This article looks at rising complaints and the challenges for organisations. It discusses how data-driven strategies and empowered staff can help manage them.

Step up to the challenge for intra-day leadership and a bright future for real-time readiness and effectiveness.

Allocating work patterns and striking the right balance between customer and colleague needs and expectations is an enduring task that occupies many of us. We spend much time on admin tasks such as monitoring and tweaking metrics on lates and weekends. Over time, this becomes a heavy administrative burden. In reality, scheduling decisions often come down to personal preferences. Not everyone fits neatly into these established patterns.

Is there a new view for the future of efficiency and productivity, or do we just have another name to play bingo!

The one common trend across leading organisations is that their flexibility offering and people strategy is always evolving. The other significant factor is that this focusses on fluidity and not control. Whereas the old way was to create “fairness” for everyone, with everyone sharing the good and bad shifts, the new way is built upon a foundation of personal choice, which provides the opportunity to adapt and be shaped by the individual.

Annual leave is more than a right. It’s a tool for balancing employee well-being, efficiency, and a productive culture. Innovative approaches to holiday planning and leave policies are helping improve both morale and productivity. These approaches redefine traditional concepts of time off. They offer unique perspectives on managing, planning, and optimising employee leave.

As the world of AI and analytics reshapes our industries, forward-looking organizations strive to adopt and harness these new technologies, embedding them in their strategies to benefit customers, employees, and shareholders. Using my academic and research background in mathematics and statistics, I’ve focused on using AI to solve real problems, improve customer experiences, and gain a competitive edge. I will share my insights on AI’s potential, suggest ways to maximize advanced analytics, and offer ideas to harness AI meaningfully. Through new learnings, collaboration, and education, we can be empowered to transform our future.

Scenario modelling is a valuable planning tool. It explores and prepares for possible futures by developing and analysing a range of scenarios. But its potential is far more than that. It enables us to make the right decisions with confidence. This is key to great planning, but is also essential for quality management and continuous improvement. Wherever we use insight to shape decisions, scenario analysis can support us.

Accurate forecasting is vital to an effective contact centre operation, driving decisions that balance service levels, customer experience, operational costs and employee satisfaction. Whether managing inbound calls, emails or chats, a reliable forecast helps ensure resources are allocated to meet demands without overburdening staff. Yet, how can you evaluate the effectiveness of your forecasting process? Not all forecasting challenges are equal — some work types are inherently more volatile and difficult to predict than others, making a universal error target impractical.

As organisations become more data-driven, machine learning (ML) is changing how we understand and use information. I’ve seen, in my work, the immense potential of ML. I’m excited about the opportunities it brings to all kinds of organisations. But, with these opportunities comes the duty to use ML wisely. I’ll share insights on ML’s key opportunities. I’ll discuss how to deepen our understanding. I’ll explain why tools like SHAP are vital for trust and transparency.

Forecasting and capacity planning are essential for aligning staffing levels with demand. This ensures businesses avoid over- or under-resourcing. Good planning turns strategy into action. It supports budgets. It also builds a base for flexible work and development. Without it, people strategies cannot succeed.

Workforce management has evolved far beyond simple schedule creation.

Modern WFM strategies must balance complex variables including customer expectations, agent wellbeing, operational costs, and regulatory compliance whilst adapting to increasingly volatile demand patterns. Yet despite significant investments in sophisticated forecasting tools and analytics platforms, many contact centres continue to struggle with fundamental execution.

The UK Contact Centre Decision Makers Guide provides a deep dive into the latest trends shaping the industry. It highlights key challenges and opportunities. These include AI’s impact, workforce management and customer expectations. So, what can we learn from this year’s findings?

Siloed working is one of the biggest challenges organisations face today. We’ve all felt the frustration when teams work alone. It leads to miscommunication, duplication of effort, and missed chances. But how do we move from a fragmented way of working to one where collaboration drives success?