Category

podcsting

No Shirt No Shoes — No Coding Skills No Problem1

By | bots, podcsting, simulations

I began my college career as a computer science major. Keep in mind this was a looong time ago when the code consisted of zeros and ones. After one semester of this, I knew my brain wasn’t cut out for this type of schooling.

Flash forward 30 years, and now a run a successful software company. We are following a trend I see more and more companies following — providing “no-code” software solutions. In a recent article by Ventur Beat, they state that 8-% of software in 2024 will be built with similar no-code tools.

Let me list some of my favorite no-code software tools that I’m using to either support our customers or build other software solutions from.

  1. WordPress – website
  2. Amazon Alexa Skills –
  3. Google Dialogue Flow
  4. Hipcast for creating RSS feed for podcasting
  5. Zoho for building dynamic BI reports

Our no-code solution, ACES (Accelerated Cognitive Engagement System), allows our customers to build immersive and highly interactive simulations used primarily for customer service, sales, coaching, and onboarding to reduce the amount of time it takes to learn a new skill.

To see an example of our simulations you can visit this page on our website.

Top 3 Strategies for Win Win Vendor Relationships

By | contact Center, empathy, podcsting

It’s not about driving down costs — at all costs.

Procurement Cloud states that 47% of vendor relationships will hit a wall. Why is that?

There isn’t one single answer but many times it comes down to building win-win relationships vs. trying to drill down the price to shave percentage points off your supplier fees. Even in the middle of a Pandemic and economic downturn, there are ways to build strong relationships. Here are three top strategies:

  1. Good communication and setting ground rules
    1. Christa Heibel of CH Consulting Group, a well-known Contact Center Consulting firm, states in order to create a Win-Win relationship, begin with ensuring your contract flushes out all of the details of the relationship including how each party will contribute creatively. Listen to her Words of Wisdom an excerpt from our Contact Center Insights Podcast

2. Be transparent – I’m not saying give away trade secrets but the better the vendor understands how decisions are made, what other priorities are demanding resources the more valuable input they can provide. My first experience with this was 20 years ago when I worked for a company win win situationthat had an onsite contract with Sears headquarters. At that time it was rare that a vendor would be invited to sit in on staff meetings and participate in the planning process but it gave us greater insight as to how we could provide our services in a more valuable way. We were able to become more pro-active in recommendations and felt truly part of the team.

3. Create channels of trust

When you’re making a buying decision, trust is a large part of the equation. Will the vendor deliver what they promised, will support be at the level you expected it to be. The same can be true for your role. Giving timely responses, clearly outline what your expectations are, and stick to them, not delaying payments or changing the terms of the deal allow the vendor to have faith in the relationship and align their resources accordingly.

For example, a BPO set terms with their client to abide by specific KPIs for managing a campaign. Mid-way through the campaign, the client’s business had a major re-organization and put pressure on the BPO to stick to the original terms and fees, even though their employees were putting in more time and effort to manage a new set of metrics and requirements. Even though the vendor may fear losing this client, in a solid win-win relationship, it would be fair to expect the vendor to ask for a revision of their contract.

Four Free Ways to Record Audio for Your Podcast

By | podcsting

Podcasting has quickly become one of the most popular content types in the last couple of years. Earlier this month I gave a presentation at the Chicago eLearning Showcase on podcasting and gave me audience tips on 4 ways to record your audio content with FREE tools. Here they are:

  1. Audacity -probably the most common (other than Garage Band) it’s a free open source audio recording and editing platform. Just be sure to also download the LAMP software to ensure you can export MP3 files for formatting your the proper RSS feeds for your podcast
  2. Free Conference Call.com – Yes it is free and will record you or a group of people dialed into the conference line. They will allow you to download the MP3 file of the recorded call so you can edit and add to your RSS feeds.
  3. BlogTalk Radio – This is used primarily as a web radio tool but I use do record my podcast show so I can add other sound effects — like an audience applauding or a canned introduction to the show. You can have callers dial in as you record the show live and then BlogTalk will allow you to download the show. This service is free for shows under 30 minutes in length.
  4. Amazon Polly in WordPress – This was my latest find, if you have a WordPress blog or site you can embed Amazon’s Polly text to speech voices to “read” your blog post and it will automatically create the RSS feed for you to connect it directly into iTunes as well. You first need to go to AWS (Amazon cloud services) to set up an account to use Polly and there is a minimal cost for using Polly but you can also produce the audio file once inside AWS and then download the MP3 file to add to your post as well.

Please let me know if you know of other free tools for podcasting and I will be happy to share!

Employee Reward Systems

By | call center, contact Center, Employee Rewards, podcsting

In our last show, I interview Thomas McCoy, who is a best-selling author, consultant, and President of the Employee Engagement Institute.

He has over 35 years experience developing high-involvement, high-performance cultures. He developed the Applied Employee Engagement System™ that has been used by over 200 companies in the U.S., Europe and South America. He has written 2 books on the topic and sold over 25,000 copies.

 

He developed and taught a two-day seminar on How To Develop a High Performance Culture at George Washington University.

He has been quoted in Newsweek, featured in the Wall Street Journal, and nominated for the Michael J. Losey award for his work in the field of Human Resources.

In 1996 he developed ESP, “Expanding Sales on the Phone,” one of the first training programs for agents that incorporated dynamic branching. He holds a Lean/Six Sigma certification from Villanova University, a coaching certification from the Johnston Institute and is a graduate of the University of Minnesota.

He is a Marine Corps veteran and a board member for Support KC, a non-profit organization that helps other non-profits to achieve their mission.

He and his wife Cathy are the parents of two young men.

You can reach Tom at [email protected] or visit www.EmpEng.com

 

Auto-create Podcast with Amazon Polly

By | podcsting, simulations

As I am getting ready to create a presentation I am giving on Podcasting imagine my delight when I ran across this article on how to add Amazon’s Polly text to speech software into a WordPress blog post. This is exactly what I have been trying to communicate to my clients, how to creatively use speech to text and speech recognition tools for extended uses in business.

Voice-enabled technology continues to get better and better. If you are not familiar with Polly, it’s an online tool that allows you to type text onto a page and then it will create a voice file which you can download and embed an MP3 file into another program. Originally I was using this to create voices of characters in some of our training simulations, but now with the WordPress plugin – you can embed this functionality to read your blog posts — very cool!

Here is a step by step guide on how to add Polly to your WP site

 

One final bonus, the settings for this plugin allow you to automatically push your audio podcast to iTunes.

 

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