By Way of Introduction....

Welcome to the National Association of Call Centers' (NACC) first blog, and first blog posting.  For this first post I thought it would be appropriate to introduce myself and talk a little bit about what I hope to accomplish with this blog over the next year and beyond.

I am the Chief Analyst at Saddletree Research (www.saddletreeresearch.com) in Scottsdale, AZ and for the past year I have also been a member of the NACC's advisory board.  I began my career as an analyst in 1989 with Dataquest, now Gartner Dataquest, in San Jose, CA, and have been at it ever since.  My career in communications actually began with GTE California and GTE Telemessenger in the mid-1980s.  I joined Dataquest as the voice messaging analyst and established Dataquest's Interactive Voice Response (IVR) research practice in 1991.  That's when I found myself entering the mysterious world of call centers and I've been there ever since.

I have always been a bit of a maverick and often thought that I'd do things differently if I were running the company.  I decided to test that theory by going out on my own and founding Saddletree Research on November 1, 1999.  Over the past eight years my focus has been exclusively on the contact center, especially on market segments like workforce optimization, speech technologies and other market segments with high growth potential.

I first crossed paths with David Butler, executive director of the NACC, a couple of years ago via an introduction by a mutual colleague and I immediately got the sense that the NACC was different.  Over the years I've seen lots of so-called industry associations, forums or labs come and go so I don't usually pay much attention to them.  Most of them are not the benevolent industry entities they want you to believe they are.  Most of them are thinly veiled attempts to fool the industry while raking in the bucks for the principals until the motor runs out of gas or the industry catches on to them, whichever comes first.

As far as I'm concerned, the NACC ranks up there with organizations such as the American Teleservices Association (ATA) as being among the few truly legitimate industry associations.  These groups are true non-profits with no ulterior motives driving the organization's activities.  While there are other groups out there supposedly associated with universities or other educational institutions, the NACC is, as far as I know, the only one whose executive director is a legitimate, tenured university proffessor.  There is no profit motivation and improving the contact center industry is the association's true and only mission.  David Butler and the NACC reek of honesty.  That's why I'm am happy to be associated with them.

In the interest of honesty and full disclosure, I should also tell you that I've never worked in a call center.  I've always covered the industry from the vendor/technology/market perspectives.  I'll never presume to tell you how to manage your operation or your people as so many other people out there with similar qualifications as mine will.  When I need to learn about the operational or human resources aspects of the contact center I turn to my friend and colleague, Fred Stevens, who is the principal at Call Lab (www.call-lab.net).  Fred has a deep contact center pedigree and now consults as an independent.  Fred and I work together in the Contact Center Consortium (www.customercontactweb.com) to bring a 360 degree perspective of the contact center to our clients.  Fred covers operational and management aspects, I cover equipment, technologies and vendors.  Between the two of us we manage to cover just about anything the client needs to know or do.

When it comes to vendors and technologies in the contact center industry, I have some pretty strong opinions.  Like any industry, the contact center has it's share of honest, decent vendors with a true interest in the customer.  It also has more than its fair share of jerks -- industry gunslingers who are in it for the money and don't care what they have to do or say to get it.  I've seen 'em both and I'm sorry to say that the good guys don't always win.  If you're an NACC member and would like to talk with me about any vendors or technologies you're considering in 2008, feel free to give me a call or contact me through the NACC.  I may be able to provide you with some fun facts to help with your decision making.

In this blog I hope to cover industry trends, issues, opportunities, threats, etc. with you.  Granted this will not be of interest to everyone in the contact center industry but I think industry professionals will find useful tidbits of information here and there.  I also hope those who have read my monthly columns in trade magazines such as Call Center, CRM, Customer Interface, TeleProfessional, Voice Processing and Voice Plus (Europe) for the past 15 years will also join me here once again and will share your opinions as you have done so well for so many years!

Best wishes for a very Happy New Year and here's to many more to come.