CX RIOT RADIO

1. Ditch the Bullshit. You’re Not a Scheduler. You’re a Profit Generator. Your dispatching game is the engine of your plumbing empire. When done right, it maximizes each truck’s day and lines your pockets. You’re not just filling slots—you’re hunting for gold: high-ticket jobs, add-ons, memberships—that’s margin. 2. Don’t Book Blind. Live Data = Lean Profits Use intelligent software like ServiceTitan, Jobber, or Zuper (they’ve got real-time drag‑drop boards, GPS routing, autopilot rescheduling). This isn’t optional. It’s survival. The faster you see gaps, the quicker you fill them, minimizing dead time and travel costs. 3. Route Smarter, Not Harder Every mile counts. Route your techs by proximity and job type—so a minor leak doesn’t end up two cities away. Optimized routing slashes fuel costs and packs more jobs into per day. 4. Triage Like a Motherfucker You don’t let every car crash trigger a red alert. Same for plumbing calls. Teach Dispatchers triage: burst pipe = top priority, slo...

(Unrelated Picture, Don't Worry About it) Tf is a DSR?  “DSR” is corporate cosplay. You’re not a “Dispatch Service Representative.” You’re a Dispatcher. You run the trucks. You pull the strings. Own the title, cut the bullshit. CSRs: Pack the schedule until it cries for mercy. Ring after ring, job after job, no mercy. Dispatchers: Take that overstuffed chaos and turn it into pure profit. Pick the best calls, match them to the right tech, and shuffle the rest like a Vegas card shark. If everyone just did that, 80% of your headaches would disappear overnight. Where It Goes to Shit Dispatchers get soft. They see a packed day and panic. Next thing you know, they’re telling your CSRs to “slow down” or “book for tomorrow.” Fuck. That. Noise. If your Dispatcher can’t handle a full bucket, they’re in the wrong seat.  A real Dispatcher loves a jammed schedule; it means options, upgrades, spiffs, and big tickets. When a CSR books a call and there’s no open slot? Dispatcher calls that ...

Summary  AI's rapid evolution demands careful implementation to avoid ethical pitfalls. - Replacing employees with AI can lead to unethical practices and may harm workplace trust. - Careless AI adoption could destabilize economies and reveal significant leadership issues. AI should augment employees, not replace them. - The integration of AI can empower workers by enhancing their capabilities rather than eliminating their roles. - Historically, technological advancements have disrupted jobs, but society must learn to evolve beyond fear of job loss through compassionate capitalism. AI use can undermine human roles and create inequality. - Heavy reliance on AI can strip employees of decision-making power, making their roles demoralizing and unfulfilling. - Job displacement and wage suppression from AI advancements demand urgent policy action and workforce training to mitigate economic disruption. AI benefits firms, but threatens entry-level jobs and community opportunities. - AI auto...

You can throw all the fancy scripts, dashboards, and AI at your call center you want — but if your people hate their jobs, you’re screwed. Period. I’ve spent enough time in the trenches to know this: the second you start treating agents like disposable parts, you’re inviting your customers to feel disposable too. And when they feel that, they bail. Your Team is the Frontline. Act Like It Stop acting like your employees come second. They don’t. They are the business. Every call, every booking, every saved customer — that’s them, not your logo. If you treat them like warm bodies to fill seats, you’ll get exactly that: warm bodies. No heart, no loyalty, no ownership. And then you wonder why your online reviews suck and your turnover is sky-high. Bots Don’t Build Trust. People Do Everybody wants to automate everything these days. You know what happens? Your company sounds like a robot army with a dial tone. Want a customer for life? Be human when it matters. When someone’s heat cuts out in...

Let’s stop pretending: dating apps aren’t here to help you fall in love.  They’re here to keep you swiping, spending, ghosting, raging, and coming back for more punishment, like a bad habit you can’t kick. These companies don’t care if you find The One.  In fact, if you did, you’d cancel your subscription and log off.  And that’s bad for business. Retention Over Connection It costs companies way less to milk you than to find fresh meat. Retention is king.  That’s Marketing 101.  Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, all of them run the same racket: keep you hooked just enough to think this might work next week. They brag about 26 million matches a day, but guess how many lead to something real?  Around 2.5% make it to a long-term relationship.  That’s not a love story, that’s a bait-and-switch. Built Like a Slot Machine Ever wonder why you can’t stop swiping?  It’s not your lack of discipline, it’s by design.  Same brain science casinos use: random rewards,...

  They keep parroting, “Everything’s fine. The economy’s strong. Unemployment’s low. Keep scrolling, citizen.” Look outside your window and tell me if that’s true.  Main Streets are tombstones for dead dreams.  Malls are mausoleums with broken fountains and half-lit signs, the only stores left: JC Penny and a neon-lit Vape shop.  Whole neighborhoods rot while billionaires laugh from their tax havens. This isn’t just a recession of dollars, it’s a recession of soul.  A black hole sucking the connection, meaning, and spark out of everything we once called life. Lonely. Pissed. Empty. We’re lonelier than ever, but we’ve never been more “connected.”  Every swipe, every like, every doom-scroll is a hit of dopamine to keep us docile while they squeeze us dry. Dating apps chew people up and spit them out more cynical than they started. They're built for retention, not connection, after all.  Friendships fade into group chats nobody replies to.  Families ...

  Subscribe to Titans of the Trades!   Summary Employee care directly impacts customer satisfaction and retention. - Neglecting employee well-being leads to transactional interactions with customers, which diminishes service quality. - Employee burnout results from poor treatment, causing disengagement and a negative effect on customer experience. David Powers emphasizes the importance of customer experience in call centers. - He has extensive experience in call centers, highlighting both customer and employee satisfaction. - David critiques automation practices that degrade service quality, using Xfinity as an example. Human connection in call centers enhances customer experience during emergencies. - Clients prefer speaking to a live person rather than using automated systems, especially in high-stress situations. - Emergency calls require immediate human interaction to ensure timely assistance and build trust. Timely responses to digital leads are critical for business succ...

  Summary Dirty data in CRMs can hinder customer experience and operational efficiency. - Effective customer experience relies on accurate data; incorrect data can lead to poor service delivery and customer dissatisfaction. - Companies using CRMs like Service Titan must prioritize data cleanliness to avoid the consequences of 'garbage in, garbage out'. Dirty data can severely disrupt an electrical business's operations and profitability. - Inaccurate data in CRM leads to miscommunication, resulting in delays and customer dissatisfaction. - Mistakes in data entry can cause financial losses due to increased labor and operational inefficiencies. Garbage data arises from human error and lack of accountability. - Human mistakes occur due to fast typing and skipping fields, leading to unresolved issues. - Relying on new systems to fix existing bad data habits only spreads the problem further. Dirty data leads to significant business inefficiencies and distrust in operations. - In...

Let’s cut the shit.  There’s this unspoken (and sometimes very spoken) rule that by 26 or 27, you should have your life locked in.  Good job, nice place, healthy relationship, stacked savings account, maybe even a wedding on the calendar.  And if you don’t have all that?  Well, something must be wrong with you, right? Wrong. That’s not real life. That’s Instagram life. That’s Netflix sitcom life. But in real life, most of us are just figuring it out as we go. Even the ones who look like they’ve got it all together are usually barely holding on. The Grindset Lie You know what makes this worse? Hustle culture. This idea that if you're not tired, burned out, and juggling six side projects, you're lazy. “Hustle harder.” “Sleep when you're dead.” “Grind now, shine later.” Look, I’m all for working hard. But there’s a difference between discipline and masochism.  This obsession with always doing more is wrecking people.  Especially younger folks trying to prove...

If you're still running a call center like it’s 2005, with flat pay, no incentives, and relying on pizza parties to drive performance, you're setting yourself up to bleed talent and tank your customer experience. Performance pay isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's the difference between building a high-performing sales-and-service machine or becoming a revolving door for underpaid agents doing the bare minimum. Base Pay Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling Most contact centers start agents on base pay that barely moves. Maybe there’s a raise once a year if they’re lucky. That’s fine for a bare-minimum shop. But if you’re aiming to build a culture of excellence, your comp model has to reward results, not just tenure. Performance pay shifts the dynamic. It tells your agents: You’re in the driver’s seat. How much you make is directly tied to how well you perform. That’s empowering. It's also the standard in most other performance-driven industries. Why should contact centers ...

 

The Twitch Challenger with a Twist When Kick entered the streaming arena, it made waves with massive non-exclusive deals, generous revenue splits, and a relaxed content policy. But now, as the platform matures, it’s evolving its approach. No longer just throwing cash at the biggest names, Kick is shifting focus to sustainable, performance-driven incentives. And there’s a lesson here for every CX and operations leader: short-term hype might win attention, but long-term engagement wins loyalty. The Shift: From Signing Deals to Sustainable Incentives Kick once made headlines with massive streamer contracts (think xQc's $70M deal). But those days are fading. Instead of bloated upfront payments, Kick is leaning into steady, performance-aligned incentives: hourly payouts based on engagement and a 95/5 revenue split for creators. This shift mirrors smart CX practices. Bonuses and one-off recognition have their place, but ongoing incentives tied to real performance create consistency and m...

 

You’ve probably heard the old benchmark: “One CSR for every $1.5 million in revenue.” It’s thrown around like gospel in the trades—plumbing, HVAC, electrical—and on paper, it sounds clean. Simple. Easy to plan for. But let’s run that through the real-world blender: If your company’s doing $120 million in annual revenue, that would mean you need 80 CSRs. Eighty. Eighty full-time, inbound-only customer service reps… just to “match” revenue? Come on. That’s not scalable. That’s not lean. That’s not even realistic. It's just plain stupid. The Myth of Revenue-Based Staffing That $1.5M/CSR benchmark works okay for companies doing under $10M—especially if they’re light on tech and the CSRs are booking everything manually. But once you scale? You need to think about: Actual call volume Call type mix (booking vs support vs fluff) Automation tools Channel options (text, chat, self-scheduling) Shift coverage and downtime Inbound vs outbound specialization Trying to use revenue alone to determ...

  If you’ve listened to CX Riot Radio for any amount of time, you know I say the phrase “it is what it is” a lot. And I always worry that people will take it as a defeatist slogan, one rooted in apathy and a shrug of the shoulders. It’s not. Let me explain what I mean by that phrase, and what more perfect of a time than in the annual Summer Stoicism Unwind episode (that I’ve never done on THIS podcast, it was done on HeroTalk. Rest in Peace.) (Part 1: HERE Part 2: HERE ) “It is what it is” is not a white flag. It’s not some lazy, passive, throw-your-hands-in-the-air phrase. It’s not a cop-out. It’s not saying “I quit.” In real leadership, it’s a call to action. Stoicism isn’t about bottling up your emotions or pretending things don’t bother you. It’s about owning your response to what’s happening around you. Life throws chaos. Projects fall apart. Customers explode. Tech fails. People ghost meetings. Calls drop. Budgets get slashed. The weak panic. The strong pivot. And the stoic? ...