Wednesday, September 19, 2018

"Follow The Leader", Featuring Janet Poklemba

How do you create actionable goals from the knowledge acquired at a conference? 

I’ve always considered conferences to be valuable experiences that allow me to learn more about our industry, and to stay on top of trends, technology and innovation. Connecting with peers is one of my favorite aspects of conference attendance, as we share wins and struggles of often relatable challenges. After a conference, I consider it very important to share the experience to help demonstrate how the investment pays off for our team.

Below are three tips to keep in mind to ensure your conference attendance results in action that helps to inspire, inform and move your business forward.
  1. Aspiration! Many sessions I attend are aspirational. They help cultivate a vision of where our team could be in the future. I carry these ideas back to work to contribute to long term strategy sessions. I’m always interested in how other organizations are creating better insight, navigating new technology or providing proactive and predictive service. This helps to build the path to the contact center our team needs to be to help our customers.
  2. Inspiration! Taking time to focus on my field is always inspiring to me. Customer Service people are awesome! There is so much information provided during a great conference that it can be difficult to remember so I’ve used Twitter to help me capture my moments of inspiration. Along with note taking during sessions, I tweet the key ideas that resonated with me. At the end of the conference, I review the tweets, pop them in a PowerPoint, and use them to help remember and share that inspiration with my team.
  3. Collaboration! Connecting with peers in other industries is valuable in building your network ,and they are generous with their insight and experience. This network of peers is critical when you are looking at innovation in your own contact center. Having a trusted colleague to reach out to, and ask about technology choices or services you want to pilot in your call center, helps you to make better choices more quickly. It also lends credibility to your decisions by leveraging industry leaders that have been successful with similar initiatives.
I’ve met amazing people, who do great work for companies all around the world. If you have a chance to go to a conference, take that opportunity to learn, grow and share the inspiration and ideas with your team. Better yet, bring a few team members with you, and take advantage of more sessions, connections and collaboration!


Janet Poklemba has been in the business of customer service for over 20 years in a variety of call center leadership roles working both sides of the BPO model and managing in-sourced teams. She is passionate about the Customer Experience and all things digital to help reduce customer effort and bring the voice of the customer to the decision making table. Janet is experienced in multiple industries including telecommunications, satellite TV, home warranty, HVAC and consumer products.

Connect: LinkedIn | Twitter

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