The Reality of Contact Centres
Welcome to The Reality of Contact Centres, the essential podcast for advisors, agents, team leaders, managers, and directors in the contact centre industry.
Hosted by Bob Morrell & Jeremy Blake, experienced sales trainers and executive coaches, this podcast draws on decades of training thousands of contact centre professionals worldwide. If you're looking for expert advice, fresh strategies, and real-world insights to help your contact centre excel, evolve, and exceed expectations, you’re in the right place.
What You’ll Learn:
📞 How to boost customer engagement & satisfaction
📊 Proven strategies to improve contact centre performance
💬 Leadership & coaching techniques to develop high-performing teams
🔄 The latest innovations shaping the future of customer interactions
🎯 How to drive results in traditional, digital & hybrid contact centres
We challenge industry norms, explore the realities of leadership, and share actionable takeaways to help you adapt, improve, and lead your team to success. Whether you run a call centre, web chat team, or virtual operation, we’ll help you stay ahead in today’s fast-moving customer service landscape.
🎵 Original music by Charlie Morrell.
🔗 Learn more about Reality Training & how we help contact centres thrive: www.realitytraining.com
📣 Enjoying the show? Leave a rating & review - we’d love to hear from you!
🚀 Listen now & transform your contact centre!
Episodes
44 episodes
Ageism Bias in Contact Centres
Have you ever caught yourself jumping to conclusions about someone based on their age or financial status? Our latest episode peels back the layers of ageism and bias within customer service, highlighting a conversation that will c...
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Season 3
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Episode 12
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8:46
Empowering Your Teams – Free Up Time & Focus on Valuable Work
Are you constantly the go-to problem solver in your contact centre? It's time to break free from the chains of reactive problem-solving, and our latest episode is your key to unlocking a more proactive team. We delve into the persistent cycle o...
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Season 3
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Episode 11
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6:32
Stop Using Manager Controlled Offers!
How often do you have to ask a manager for permission to use an offer? In your call centre how often does it happen? Well, strap in because we're dissecting that dance of discounts and it's quite the cha-cha of consumer psychology ...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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9:53
Checking With Your Manager – It’s Time to Stop!
Do you understand the frustration a customer feels when you say “I need to put you on hold and check with my manager"? This episode promises to unravel why this all-too-common practice is holding back the potential of call centres ...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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8:19
Voice Tips for Contact Centres Part 2: Five More Key Tips!
If you have heard part one of this series you will know all about active listening, and utilising the best tone for your customers. Already you will be ahead of people who haven’t learnt these key skills – and here are 5 more! This jam-...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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8:06
Voice Tips for Contact Centres Part 1: Five Key Tips to Improve
Why are some advisors effective and some less so? Let's unlock that mystery! In this episode Jeremy Blake and Bob Morrell show you how important and flexible the voice is – and how you should be using it. In the first part of our s...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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8:11
Top Tips for 2024: Contact Centre Customer Experiences and Engagement
Top Tips for 2024! What is going to make the biggest difference this year? Ready to take your customer service to a new level? Call centres all over the world need key areas of focus to have a great year. We're talking about...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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9:14
Team Leaders: Building Resilience in Your Contact Centre Teams
Team Leaders, is your contact centre team prepared for the challenges of peak seasons and ready to emerge stronger?Join us for a discussion on resilience – a crucial trait for thriving in the demanding environment of a contact centre. We...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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14:44
Top Tips for Contact Centre Interviews: Strategies to Impress
Interview Skills and Tips: Ready to be the stand-out candidate at your next call centre job interview? Join us, Bob and Jeremy of Reality Training, where we promise to equip you with the exact insights and strategies you need to im...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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7:42
Mastering Your Festive Contact Centre Party - Christmas Party Tips
Picture this: You're at your Contact Centre Christmas party, the music is playing, the drinks are flowing, and you're just about to photocopy your body parts as a fun party trick. Stop right there! We're here to guide you through t...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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12:56
Redefining Customer Service: The Upselling Advantage – Service is Sales.
Are your customer service people salespeople? Brand Ambassadors? Efficient Administrators? This episode takes a deep dive into the fascinating world of customer service at 'Bob's Insurance', a company whose customer-centric approac...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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13:30
Cost, Price, Offers, Discounts & Fixed Price Issues!
Do you work with special offers? Are your prices negotiable? Or do you sell a hybrid option? Some organisations are fixed price. This means the advisor has to sell what they’re selling purely on the value. Do you expect your adviso...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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7:59
Support SELF-WORTH: How Do These DRIVES Improve Your Sense of Self-Worth?
What exactly is Self-worth, and when was the last time you truly assessed it? Join us for the culmination of our DRIVES principles series in Episode 6, where we focus on increasing self-worth in your contact centre.If you...
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Season 2
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Episode 15
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8:23
Create the best ENVIRONMENT: Nurture a Flourishing Workplace for Everyone
What defines a thriving working environment within a contact centre? How do you transform spaces into hubs that motivate your teams, encourage collaboration, and drive exceptional customer experiences?In Episode 5 of our DRIVES m...
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Season 2
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Episode 14
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8:56
Define Your VISION: How to Create, Deliver & Inspire a Vision of Success!
What lies at the core of your business vision?In Episode 4 of our DRIVES model, we unravel the mysteries of motivational visions.Have you ever wondered if your leadership’s visions are crafted with imaginatio...
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Season 2
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Episode 13
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10:22
Reward INTEGRITY: How Does Integrity Strengthen Your Offering?
How does integrity work in your contact centre? How does it help us to collaborate? If it is at the heart of what you do, then consistency is easy. If it isn’t, then collaboration becomes almost impossible. A lack of integrity t...
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Season 2
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Episode 12
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9:00
Understand ROLES: How Does Status Damage Your Contact Centre?
In the second of our 6-part DRIVES series, Bob & Jeremy explain the vital function of Roles and its impact on team dynamics within contact centres.Are you using your power and authority as a manager in the right wa...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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9:55
Enable DISCRETION: Speed Up Your Service by Empowering Your Advisors to Decide
In the first of our 6-part DRIVES series, Bob and Jeremy explain the key drivers that increase staff engagement and collaboration, and improves your contact centre. How empowered are your people? How can they decide on what’s...
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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9:53
IVR (Interactive Voice Response): The Switch From Bot to Adviser and The Hurdles to Overcome
The frustrations customers face when interacting with automated systems can leave them with an incredibly negative customer journey experience. The challenges you, the advisor, then encounter to provide a seamless transition and make it so much...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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9:19
Homeworker Contact Centres
Hybrid working may be here to stay, but working from home permanently is increasing. As the pandemic hit there were organisations that issued homeworkers with all the right kit and others that bought cheap and bought twice. We explo...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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12:09
Huddles: Do's & Don'ts
Do you huddle every morning? What is the purpose? Are they motivational? Do you prepare for them? Do you pledge? In this short podcast Bob and Jeremy give you a series of Do’s and Don'ts about running worthwhile and effective huddl...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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11:04
Outbound Calls: Hints & Tricks
How can you improve your outbound calls? Most outbound calls are unexpected, so are they cold calls, or something else? What are the best openings to use? In this podcast, we give you key tips for opening B2C or B2B calls and expla...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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16:21
Retention or Reselling?
Many CCF listeners will work in Retention or ‘Save’ departments where the task is to keep customers and stop them from cancelling. Another word for retention is ‘reselling’ - essentially you are reminding the customer of the value ...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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13:35
Re-Contracting for Leaders - A Short Guide
Re-contracting. The vital underused approach for leaders to learn to change team or individual performance.When a new set of behaviours or approaches is required, re-contracting is an effective way to make change happen. This can ...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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9:51
