CX RIOT RADIO

In the trades, your call center isn’t just “customer support.”  It’s the front line. . It’s the engine that books jobs, fills your board, and keeps technicians busy.  Screw it up, and you don’t just annoy people, you lose revenue, reputation, and repeat customers.  Outsource to the wrong partner, see your booking rate drop by 20%.  Use a janky AI, see people confused, irritated, and calling another company.  And even with that common knowledge, and lived experience, companies keep making the same mistakes. Here’s a stat that matters: 88% of people say they trust and prefer human agents. Only 60% are satisfied with AI-only service.  That’s not a small gap.  That’s the difference between a customer trusting you to fix their AC… or rolling the dice with the shop down the street. Not every customer wants the same thing.  A retired homeowner isn’t going to call your center the same way a 25-year-old renter does, or a millennial first time buyer. If you...

TL;DR: Offshore agents are asked to wear a mask… fake names, filtered accents, brutal metrics… then blamed when the mask slips. The fix isn’t another tool. It’s one standard, shared training, safer policies, better inputs, and respect on the line. Below: the story, the receipts to demand, and the pledge to run. Fluorescents hum. The city sleeps. A coach leans in and says, “Use your other voice.” Translation: hide who you are. Smooth the accent. Don’t spook the customer. An agent, let’s call her Mariel, answers, “Hi, this is Sarah.” Not her name. The screen runs a live accent filter. When it glitches, the mask slips. The customer sighs and asks for “someone in America.” Mariel knows the product. She can book the job. She still has to fight the bias before she solves the problem. We call the filter “productivity.” To the agent, it feels like a mask. The Triangle That Crushes Agents Three sides. One pressure point. Customers → Agents: Bias, impatience, “Can I get someone in America?”...

  Summary Discussion on the Keep Call Centers in America Act and its implications. - The act aims to prevent companies from moving call center jobs abroad, requiring a 120-day notice before any relocations. - The episode explores the potential benefits and drawbacks of the legislation for American workers and businesses. The act focuses on prioritizing US-based call center jobs over foreign options. - Companies must disclose their location when providing customer service, indicating if employees are US-based or not. - The act imposes penalties like exclusion from federal loans for companies that relocate call centers outside the US. The Keep Call Centers in America Act aims to protect jobs and communities. - Support from unions like the Communication Workers of America highlights the importance of preserving human jobs. - The focus on cost-cutting over customer service has led to negative impacts on communities and job quality. Government regulations on call centers could impact fr...

No one is too big to fail.  Not your company.  Not your department.  Not you. I've been studying the autopsies of fallen giants and household names, and it's never some mysterious outside force that took them down.  It was internal.  Psychological.  Preventable. This post is a manual for what not to do.  And it lines up almost perfectly with the five stages of decline from Jim Collins’ book, How the Mighty Fall.  It’s eerie how consistent the pattern is. Let’s look at some low-hanging fruit. Blockbuster Kodak Yahoo Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success At their peak, these companies were kings. Blockbuster had 9,000 stores and made $6 billion a year. Kodak controlled 90% of the film market. Yahoo was the front door of the internet. And they believed the hype. Blockbuster laughed Netflix out of the room when offered a $50M acquisition. Kodak literally invented the digital camera, and then buried it for more than 20 years. Yahoo thought search was benea...