Posers and Pretenders

I guess it's back to business as usual after the holidays.  I can tell it's business as usual by the volume of daily e-mails I get from all the industry "experts" out there who are hawking their latest white papers, motivational seminars, webinars, conference speeches, workshops, etc. etc.

Is it just me or does anyone else get a little suspicious about the number of people there are out there who can tell you how to improve customer satisfaction, increase first call resolution, reduce turnover, improve communications, increase efficiency and generally just make your professional life better?  I always wonder how many of these "experts" have actually worked in a call center.

As I've said before in this blog, and as I'll say again, I've never worked in a call center.  I came to the industry working in telecommunications before I became an analyst.  I look at markets and technologies, the trends and issues that I think might be important to you as a user of these products and a member of the call center industry community.  You'll never hear me tell you or anyone else how to run a customer contact center.  That doesn't mean somebody else won't, though.

Call me a cynic, but I get the feeling that l lot of the people posing as experts came by their expertise in ways other than on-the-job training.  Some of the credentials are, in my mind, questionable but the interesting thing is that these people persist -- they're still around year after year with their seminars, workshops and White Papers.  That means more than a few people out there believe them, or believe in them, enough to spend money on their offerings.

The longevity of many of the industry posers and pretenders continues to astonish me.  Am I missing something -- perhaps an opportunity to jump in and get my piece of the pie -- or do these people really have something of value to offer the industry even though it isn't based upon real world experience?

There's a link for your comments at the bottom of this page.  I'd appreciate hearing how you sort through the large number of offerings for seminars, workshops, conferences, speeches, webinars, etc. that must cross your desktop each day and decide what's worthwhile and what's not.  Perhaps I don't give enough credit to all these experts and they know more than I think they do.  What do you think?