Removing Barriers to Citizen Engagement, Delivering Superior Customer Service and Improving Operational Performance

Join North America’s largest and most comprehensive event designed entirely with the public sector contact center professional in mind.  

Hear from an exclusive practitioner-based speaker faculty present success stories in an all-inclusive array of interactive formats including:

• Pre-conference workshops
• Benchmarking discussions
• Scenario exercises
• Knowledge exchanges
• Unique networking opportunities.

This year’s event will cover:

• Workforce Management: Recruitment, retention and motivation strategies to bolster performance and productivity
• Quality and Performance Management: Develop standards for measuring customer satisfaction and service delivery performance
• Technology Planning: Assess the impact of emerging trends, self-service, analytics and Web 2.0 on operational functionality
• Process Improvement: Eliminate redundancies and streamline citizen access into a single point of service
• Change Management: Ensure success by bridging the gaps between strategic design and tactical execution

Who Should Attend

This program is intended for federal, state, municipal and 311/911 contact center directors, commissioners, managers, advisors and other support staff responsible for the following:

Contact Center Call Center Citizen Services Service/Support/Help Desk Customer Service Customer Satisfaction Customer Experience

Information Services IT Projects Employee Resources Quality Assurance Process Improvement Process Management Operations

Pre-Conference Workshops: Monday, December 6, 2010

8:30 – 11:300
Workshop A: Government Agency Performance: Are You Measuring the Right Things in Your Contact Center?

Most government managers know roughly what it is they have to achieve – in broad terms. As a contact center specialist, you are continually burdened with data calls and requests for contributions to measurement programs such as GPRA. Sadly, these requests rarely align with the detailed information available from a modern contact center. You have more sets of performance data than you can possibly absorb, but somehow these don’t give you the numbers you need to describe performance to your managers. Managers often design dashboards, performance measures and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) before they’ve thought through the underlying business rationale and its alignment with partners’ goals. This disconnect can be avoided by building a performance management framework, a coherent structure of measures and targets.

What you will learn:

• How to benchmark against commercial and public sector examples
• How to use the proven technique of strategy mapping, a visual representation of your organizational goals
• How to use the power of balanced scorecard techniques

How you will benefit:

Through hands-on exercises, you will discover how to create a business framework that insures you are measuring the right things before you start to select KPIs and develop detailed data collection processes. The technique will equip you with answers to questions such as:

• What do we want to achieve?
• Do we understand our partners’ needs and strategies?
• What should we be good at?
• How do we know when we get there?

Paul Durn, Senior Manager, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Program Support Center

11:15 – 1:45
Workshop B: The Government Executive's Guide to Contact Center Technology Planning

(Lunch boxes will be served)

Running a successful contact center involves planning on many levels, and technology is a significant part of that process. There are many options for today's contact center as technology is constantly changing to help the contact center adapt and stay competitive. At the same time, with budgets even tighter for the decision maker in the public sector and little risk for identifying and investing in the appropriate technology for the job, it is important you get it right the first time.

What you will learn:

• Emerging contact center technology trends and newer options like self-service technology, analytics and Web 2.0
• Top 10 must-have technologies for the contemporary contact center
• Selecting the best technology to meet your needs

How you will benefit:

• Understand what contact center technology is essential to build an effective contact center
• Understand how social media can affect your contact center and what to do about it
• Understand how to to develop your technologies as per your requirements, not the other way around

David G. Morad. Director, Contact Optimization, Driva Solutions

2:00 – 4:30
Workshop C: A Practical and Interactive Roadmap for Finding, Building and Retaining a Talented Staff

Recruiting, hiring, training and developing a successful and productive staff is undoubtedly the most costly element in any business, but it is especially so in contact centers where turnover rates are historically much higher. Finding the right kind of employees for your facility and ensuring those employees are motivated, productive and committed to remaining is a constant challenge. Smart organizations are finding innovative methods for selecting the right kind of employee and retaining the best talent. While having a bit of fun using tools, tests and interactive exercises, this workshop will provide information on building your team and discovering the impact of your personal management style on others.

What you will learn:

• How to identify the right employees for your center needs
• How small changes can increase success in motivating and retaining employees
• How to identify your individual management style

How you will benefit:

• Discover how to effectively implement policies and programs that make a real impact in employee development and turnover rates
• Understand how your personal management style impacts interactions with employees and how to use it to your advantage
• Learn effective methods for leading, coaching, motivating, developing and retaining employees

Mary Paige Forrester, Consultant, Contact MP Consulting

Conference Day 1: Tuesday, December 7, 2010

7:45 Registration & Coffee

8:15 Chairperson’s Opening Remarks

8:30 Opening Address: State Of The Union: Addressing The Latest Trends In Government Contact Centers

Even as they continue to navigate the impact of a sagging economy, government contact centers have been asked to meet the demand for better service faster and at a lesser cost. But how? Many contact centers have responded by providing citizens with more ways to engage with government, accepting requests via e-mail, the web and social media, thereby relieving high call volumes and the time it takes to respond. This pursuit of better service doesn’t stop there, however. In transitioning from call center to “contact” center, several trends have emerged that have a tremendous impact on the future of customer service in the public sector.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Self-service Technology: Allow greater accessibility while reducing the time and manpower needed to complete tasks
• Consolidated Solutions: Provide a single access point to all departmental functions
• Advanced CRM: Track the status of impending work and provide real time status information to callers

Dona Cage, Executive Board Member, CRM Association

9:30 Change Management at the CDC: A Multichannel Response To The H1N1 Virus

When the flu H1N1 pandemic created an urgent demand for public health information, officials responded with a combination of alacrity and ingenuity, assembling the necessary partners to get work started on CDC-INFO. In just seven days, the center’s staff increased 100 percent to deal with the huge influx of calls and emails about the virus. For her efforts in ramping up the contact center quickly and effectively, Amy Burnett, Director of CDC-INFO, was recognized this year with a Federal 100 Award from Federal Computer Week magazine.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Improving program management by blending an evidence-based approach with constant data analysis
• Maximizing response capacity, including the ability to handle general and complex inquiries from multiple audiences by developing a comprehensive training and development structure
• Achieving cost savings through consolidation and intra- and inter-agency partnerships

Amy Burnett, Director of CDC-INFO, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

10:45 Mid-Morning Networking Break

This is the first of several breaks that allow you the opportunity to network with your peers and to continue the conversations started in the general session.

11:00 Achieving Excellence Through Well-Coordinated Inter- and Intra-Agency Collaboration

Too often today, agencies’ communications with citizens and each other exist in silos of operations that do not communicate with each other even though they are communicating with common customers. In order to meet their customers’ needs and timelines, leadership at the City of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management had to find a way to streamline decision making, maximize use of existing tools and personnel, achieve economies of scale in operations, identify common solutions for information sharing, minimize redundancies, reduce the need for contractors and deliver more accurate information. This laser-sharp focus on superior customer service resulted in certification two years in a row as a ‘Call Center of Excellence’ from Benchmark Portal at Purdue University.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Eliminating Silos: Coordination between the contact center and the field
• Organizing for Efficiency and Effectiveness: Having the right people in the right place at the right time
• Maintaining Excellence by Not Fearing Change: In Technology or Processes

Sheila Pierce, Deputy Commissioner, Bureau of Management, City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management

11:45 Delivering Unparalleled Service Using Broad-Based And Baseline Customer Satisfaction Surveys

As you know, the success of your program depends on a number of factors, one of which rests in the continuous assessment of customer satisfaction. In order to guarantee it adequately meets its customers’ unique needs, NASA has developed and incorporated a variety of surveys into its business planning cycle as a way of measuring how customers feel about their service and in turn, enabling their organization to boost performance each and every year.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Addressing survey results with corrective actions and providing necessary feedback to functional owners and customer groups
• Developing appropriate survey populations and avoiding survey “fatigue”
• Listening to the voice of the customer to enhance tier-0 support
• Meeting customer needs through improved responsiveness, quick reference guides and multimedia

Pat Tidmore, Customer Satisfaction & Communication Lead, NASA Shared Services Center

12:30 Networking Lunch

1:30 15-Minute Fastbreak: Finding The Perfect Call Center Representative

In this quick interactive encounter, we’ll explore the "Do’s" and "Don’ts"’ of interviewing for the ideal call center agent by first performing a mock interview and then determining as a group whether the interviewee would be a good or a bad hire.

1:45 Panel & Roundtable Discussions: Attracting, Motivating And Retaining The Next Generation Of Employees

TAs you know, your contact center is only as good as your human capital and the ability to strategically hire, train and monitor representatives remains critical to the success of your center. At the same time, you must also be aware of the attitudes and capabilities of each succeeding generation. Will the “next gen” employee substantially change the public sector contact center industry and how will they fit in with the rest of your workforce? How do you achieve your goals as a leader while keeping your diverse team motivated? First, you’ll hear how our panelists are addressing human capital in their contact centers, then you’ll break out into smaller groups to address your workforce-specific issues and practices.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Recruiting Staff: How do you find the right talent for your organizational needs in an applicant-heavy economy?
• Understanding Your Team: What drives their behavior and what is important to them?
• Bridging Generational Differences: How do the attitudes of the latest generation affect your contact center?
• Motivating Agents: How do you maintain high morale?
• Cultivating Talent: How do you identify individual skill sets and develop them accordingly?
• Rewarding and Retaining: How do you incentivize despite certain government restrictions and how do you ensure you don’t lose your best staff?

Panelists:

Chanel Bankston-Carter, Director, Client Service Center, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Pat Tidmore, Customer Satisfaction & Communication Lead, NASA Shared Service Center

Rosetta Carrington Lue, Deputy Managing Director, 311 Contact Center, City of Philadelphia

Yolunda Davis, Associate Director, Employee Resource Center, Internal Revenue Service

2:30 Afternoon Networking & Refreshment Break

3:00 Leveraging Partnerships With The Private Sector To Improve Operations

Since Philly311's launch on December 31, 2008, public reaction to the new information contact center has been positive. To continue to provide prompt, helpful service as the center's call volume grew, Philly311 invited area corporations to loan employees with customer service expertise. One of the few 311 call centers in the country with this kind of public-private sector arrangement, the partnership is a mutually beneficial development opportunity. Philly311 call agents can benefit from private sector best practices while their commercial counterparts benefit from learning more about how the city works, and there is even a mentoring opportunity for newer agents. Its pilot was so successful that Philly311 has extended the reach of its smart partnering with the private sector.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Building a business case for free resources with local private sector partners
• Discussing nationally recognized call center private sector partnership strategies
• Philly311 case study and the Private Sector Call Center Resources Loan Program

Rosetta Carrington Lue, Deputy Managing Director, 311 Contact Center, City of Philadelphia

3:45 Customer Service, Processes and Life and Death Calls: Benchmarking Your Center Against an E911

Like other inbound call centers, E911s struggle with the challenges associated with next generation technology and insufficient funding. But, because there is such little room for error and service delivery can be a matter of life and death, only about 3% of the population can meet the very high standards required of a typical 911 agent, leading to long hiring processes for management. This session will be like any you’ve heard before! Hear actual 911 calls featuring good and bad customer service models and the outcome.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Raising the bar of service excellence: Hiring, training, testing, skill sets and how to avoid costly mistakes even if a life isn’t on the line
• Identifying critical NextGen technology enablers and how to pay for that despite tight budgets
• Call Center Psychology: Meeting demanding responsibilities and training employees to handle stress and heavy call volume

Terri Thornberry, Director, 911 Communications Center, City of Atlanta E911 Center

4:30 Beyond the Call: Educating the Public on the Various Points of Customer Service Available to Them

Setting realistic service expectations and educating the public can happen before the call. This session explores how to reach out to the public through targeted messaging based on top needs of the caller, integrated voice response (IVR), social media and web based solutions as well as the channels available to the citizen in which they can engage. The great news is that these efforts also can help inform key decision makers about the value of your service!

Topics to be discussed include:

• Identifying top needs through data collection and surveys
• Developing messaging strategies by leveraging in-house technologies
• Applying practical uses of Twitter and Facebook with little staff resources

Laura Zink Marx, Executive Director, NJ 211 Partnership

5:00 Conference Day 1 Concludes

Conference Day 2: Wednesday, December 8, 2010

7:45 Registration & Coffee

8:15 Chairperson’s Recap of Yesterday

9:30 Contact Center Leadership In A Political Environment: Reflecting On The Last Decade And Preparing For The Next

In 2008, GSA’s Office of Citizen Services established a group for contact center directors and managers from across the federal government. The Government Contact Center Council (G3C) is now a thriving community of practice where members learn from each other about best practices and support each other with solutions to problems. They have written papers for the White House and report on research, trends and important contact center issues.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Have today’s contact centers become the ugly redheaded stepchild of citizen engagement?
• Why customers’ needs follow agencies’ needs and what agencies are saying they need
• What do citizens expect when they reach out to the government? And what do they get?
• Striving for excellence and developing the next generation of leaders committed to doing even better

Robert Smudde, Chairman, Government Contact Center Council (G3C), Office of Citizens Services, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)

9:15 15-Minute Fastbreak: Quick Motivation Equals Instant Energy

As a government executive, you may not have personally experienced the tedium and frustration that can characterize an agent’s day. Probably, you have no regrets about that, and we are not trying to duplicate that experience for you. The goal of this interactive mini-workshop is to have you experience the difference that a quick morale booster can make to attitude and performance in your agents. Come join the fun and let us put an extra zip in your step!

9:30 Employee-Driven Solutions for the Contact Center: Cultivating Your Greatest Asset Into a Vehicle For Change

Failure to effectively manage change results in confusion and employee dissatisfaction. In its first eight years of operation, the Employee Resource Center (ERC) has been in a constant state of flux. To address the needs of the organization, management utilized its greatest asset, its employees, to help develop solutions that moved the organization forward, helping it morph from a call center to a robust customer-centric service site.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Utilizing employee driven-solutions that led to increased productivity
• Discussing a negotiation strategy to gain union support
• Quantifying the impact of culture on taxpayer dollars

Yolunda Davis, Associate Director, Employee Resource Center, Internal Revenue Service

11:00 From Strategic Planning to Tactical Execution: Evolution of a Contact Center Quality Assurance Program

Does your contact center grapple with effectively measuring quality outcomes and performance in your Contact Center? What do your results tell you and how do you strategically adjust your QA processes and tools to leverage results and impact customer satisfaction?

Topics to be discussed include:

• Learning essential steps in building and sustaining a successful contact center quality assurance program
• Incorporating results back into your quality assurance program, tools, standards and training
• Making process improvements to ensure your contact center adds value
• Understanding how to leverage customer satisfaction results to drive a successful quality assurance program

MaryAnn Monroe, Director of the Cancer Information Service, National Cancer Institute

Dawn Sittauer, Contact Center Manager, National Cancer Institute

11:45 Using Customer Service Interactions To Improve Census Bureau Data Products And Survey Operations

During the 2010 (Decennial) Census surge in customer interactions, the Customer Service Center at the U.S. Census Bureau was faced with the challenge of quickly identifying and training non-contact center staff to handle increased activity levels and extended hours of operation. During this surge, the contact center staff assumed an additional role of categorizing customer service concerns by type. Based on the experience gained in areas of categorizing, analyzing and disseminating feedback, the U.S. Census Bureau developed a methodology which uses their customer relationship management system to assess satisfaction and potential improvements to Census Bureau products and operations.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Assessing the value of products and the impact of contact center operations through a single data source
• Enhancing existing support infrastructure to facilitate rapid updates to items of interest
• Improving products and operations with consumer analytic methodology

Debra Spinazzola, Chief, Customer Services Branch, U.S. Census Bureau

Michael Berning, Assistant Chief, Customer Services Branch, U.S. Census Bureau

12:30 Networking Lunch

1:30 15-Minute Fastbreak: Soapbox Session: Sounding Off on the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Contact Center Technology Implementations

As we approach the homestretch of the conference, it’s your turn to sound off on the success (and horror) stories with contact center technologies before breaking off into roundtables to discuss next-step solutions and strategies. Share lessons learned and keys to success with your peers.

1:45 Roundtable Discussions: Harnessing The Right Technologies For Your Government Contact Center

Though many of the challenges facing today’s government contact centers are deceptively simplistic and surprisingly non-technical, it would be a painstaking exercise to tear down the barriers to engagement without the help of new and emerging technologies. Attend this session to find out what’s new in contact center technology and how when’s the right time to upgrade vs. overhaul.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Evaluating and selecting commercially viable technologies (Wireless, VoIP, Speech Analytics, IVR, Web Chats, Next Generation)
• Ensuring the success of newly acquired technology with staff buy-in, training and engagement strategies
• Integrating traditional and new tools to optimize the performance of technology
• Measuring performance with the proper tools: Metrics and other KPIs to test the effectiveness of your tech solutions
• Upgrade or overhaul?: Determining the right time to replace rather than renew your technology

Facilitators:

Laura Zink Marx, Executive Director, NJ 211 Partnership

Mary Tucker, Office of the CTO, District of Columbia

Abraham Marinez, Sr. Advisor, Federal Student Aid Information Center, U.S. Department of Education

2:30 Consolidating Multiple Communications Across City, County and Utility Into a Single Citizen Access Point

The City of Albany, Dougherty County, Georgia and the local Water, Gas and Light utility company are run independently, making effective communications with citizens an enormous issue. The call center concept was enacted to transform 49 individual silos of service into one central point of contact so that its citizens could get the information they needed when they needed it and from the proper source.

Topics to be addressed include:

• Supporting citizens on one side and separate government entities on the other
• Streamlining administrative services by eliminating duplicative services as well as identifying “who’s responsible for what”
• Understanding the politics behind change
• Increasing citizens’ positive awareness of all department services provided and marketing to a full demographic spectrum

Cindy Tiernan, IT Project & Call Center Manager, City of Albany/Dougherty County, GA

3:15 Afternoon Networking & Refreshment Break

3:45 Contact Center Crossfire: Improving Citizen Relationship Management (CRM) in a More Open and Transparent Government

In this era of promised government transparency and openness, it has never been more important for citizens to get the correct information on their first try. And the primary vehicle for the delivery of information and other services, the public sector contact center, can make or break their relationship with the government.

With only two minutes per topic and time ticking away as our experts debate a variety of today’s most pressing CRM topics, this exchange will deliver a fast-paced and quick-witted session packed with candid insight on government contact centers today! Our panel will then take questions from you, the audience, but will ultimately get the last word in “The Big Finish”.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Inter- and intra-agency coordination and collaboration
• Creating public awareness of various government points of service
• Developing government-wide standards for measuring customer satisfaction and service delivery performance
• Impact of the Paperwork Reduction Act on agency approval for customer-facing surveys

MaryAnn Monroe, Director of the Cancer Information Service, National Cancer Institute

Robert Smudde, Chairman, Government Contact Center Council (G3C), Office of Citizen Services, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)

4:30 Chairperson’s Closing Remarks & End of Conference

Pricing and Discounts

Package	Register & Pay by October 15, 2010	Register & Pay by November 12, 2010	Standard Industry Price	Government & Public Sector Price
Conference Only	$1,599 (Save $600)	$1,999 (Save $200)	$2,199	$999
All Access Pass**	$2,149 (Save $1,697)	$2,349 (Save $1,497)	$2,549 (Save $1,297)	$1,599 (Save $900)
Workshops	$549 ea.
Register Now! Use Registration Code "RCCSP20" to save an additional 20% (will be deducted at the time IQPC processes the payment)

**All Access Pass grants access to workshops and main conference days. Must confirm workshops participation at time of registration.

Please note that IQPC's registration rules and policies apply, and not those of RCCSP.

• Multiple discounts cannot be combined.
• A $99 processing fee will be charged to all registrations not accompanied by credit card at end of registration
• Discounts are taken off the standard conference price only and do not apply to workshop only registrations. IQPC reserves the right to qualify your registration before applying your discount.

Registration Policy

Please view IQPC's registration policy for full information about payment, cancellation, postponement, substitution and discounts.