This year was the first-ever virtual ICMI (International Customer Management Institute) Contact Center Expo, with tons of speakers to grace the virtual stage. Speaking on leadership-currency, change, and creating a ‘powerful’ presence was Carla Harris, Vice-Chair, Global Wealth Management, and Senior Client Advisor, Morgan Stanley, and Duncan Wardle, Former Head of Innovation and Creativity, The Walt Disney Company, speaking on Customer Experience ‘Magic.’
There were a lot more online sessions, and the learning atmosphere was one of collaboration, mostly in the form of online chats, discussion groups, roundtable discussions, and a unique feature of this conference, letting artificial intelligence-powered matchmaking link you with like-minded professionals who want to share best practices and experiences. There was even a virtual awards ceremony, emceed by Nate Brown, CX Accelerator’s Chief Experience Officer.
Winners in this year’s individual category:
- Best Contact Center Agent – Alexa Pratt, WebMD Health Services
- Best Contact Center Manager – Futoun Koudsi, DHL Express UAE
- Best Contact Center Trainer – Brandon Edwards, Sitel Group
- Best Workforce Manager – Daniel Smitley, World Travel Holdings
Winners in this year’s team category:
- Best Contact Center Culture – UPMC Health Plan
- Best Digital Customer Experience – Clio
- Best Learning and Development Program – Ameriprise Financial
- Best New Technology Solution – (tie) NICE InContact and Cogito
- Best Outsourcing Provider – Transparent BPO
- Best Strategic Value to the Organization – Valvoline Support Center
- Best Small Contact Center – StarTech.com
- Best Medium Contact Center – Showdown Displays
- Best Large Contact Center – New York Life
G. Todd Gladden received the 2020 lifetime achievement award presented by ICMI Co-Founder Brad Cleveland, with Cleveland adding: “We at ICMI would like to congratulate each winner and to invite everyone to take part in the 2021 ICMI Global Contact Center Awards.” Gladden is a senior leader in the contact center space with over 40 years of experience in linking corporate strategies with operational processes as well as learning interventions. His areas of expertise, relationship building, customer service, process improvement, team development/management, along with learning/development ROI.
There are a ton of valuable sessions to choose from, including how to boost your company’s culture, driving customer experiences, evaluating your strategy and leadership, as well as maximizing productivity and operations still available on-demand free of charge until the end of 2020. RingCentral Five9, Vonage, Nice In Contact, Genesys, and Twilio all sponsored the event.
Blue Prism premiered ‘Service Assist,’ a new offering that delivers intelligent automation to customer contact centers to free up agents. EasyVista was also there, showing off its Autumn 2020 release that delivers enhanced reporting capabilities and more flexible omnichannel communication options, along with native integration with Salesforce Service Cloud. UJET unveiled its latest advancements in intelligence and automation with onsite demos the company displayed its CCaaS 3.0 solution.
Overall there seems to have been a focus on the future of the contact center, which has been largely impacted by the novel Coronavirus. In many ways, the virus has shifted the way companies as well as customers will do business together in the future. This shift is toward a more omnichannel-based approach to the contact center.
