Customer Support Leaders
Customer Support Leaders
269: Building Successful Call Centers from the Ground Up; with Joe DiNatale
Ever wondered what it takes to build a high-performing contact center from scratch? Join us as we uncover the secrets with Joe DiNatale. Joe is a contact center executive with extensive experience across operations, strategy, customer experience, and vendor management. Over his career he has held most leadership positions within the contact center space including building call centers from the ground floor. Spending the past 10 years working in the telecommunications industry for some of the largest cable operators where Joe has led transformational change in the contact center.
In this episode, learn the significance of location, university access, and mass transit for efficient hiring, as well as the benefits of leveraging local economic environments and tax incentives. Joe shares his firsthand experiences, challenges, and the immense satisfaction of creating sustainable contact centers that continue to thrive years later.
But the journey doesn’t stop at mere infrastructure. Discover the essential strategies for building a strong team culture and managing call center growth. We delve into the qualities that make up a stellar team, such as coachability and strong work ethic, and the importance of a phased approach to onboarding and training. Joe highlights the value of a comprehensive resource repository and recognition initiatives like "employee spotlight" to foster engagement and motivation. Tune in for practical insights that will guide you in setting up and nurturing a successful contact center.
Hello and welcome to episode 269 of the Customer Support Leaders podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward Today. Welcome Joe DiNatale , talking about the experiences of setting up a contact centre from scratch. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today, Joe DiNatale, thank you so much for joining me for the first time. It's not our first conversation. We chatted a couple of weeks ago to chew over some ideas and talk over your experience. But before we get into today's topic, would you like to introduce yourself?
Joe DiNatale:Yes, absolutely. First off, Charlotte, it's an absolute pleasure and honor to be a guest on your very popular Customer Experience Podcast. So thanks, thanks so much for having me You're welcome.
Charlotte Ward:Thank you for coming podcast.
Joe DiNatale:So thanks, Thanks so much for having me. You're welcome. Thank you for coming. Yeah, absolutely Wouldn't miss it. So a little bit about me. I'm a contact center executive. I have extensive experience across operations strategy, customer experience and vendor management, and over my career I've had the opportunity to hold leadership positions within the contact center space, which includes building call centers from the ground floor. I had some BPO experience, including partnering with outsourcers of all sizes, different regions and, most recently, I guess, over the last decade. I've spent the last 10 years or so in the telecommunications industry working for some of the largest cable operators, where I've led some pretty large transformational changes across the contact center channel.
Charlotte Ward:That's awesome. That's awesome. Thanks so much for the intro. So wow, building contact centers from scratch. I feel like that would be a whole podcast series in its own right. So maybe we'll have you back to deep dive into this a couple of times. But I know it's something I've never done and that opportunity to do and you know, knowing how many support leaders I've spoken to, not just on this podcast but at conferences, and like it's a rare opportunity to build a call center from scratch, isn't it? How do you feel about, like, going into that effort? Well, for a start, I mean, is this something you've had to do often, because I've certainly, as I said, never had to do it? And I guess, how do you feel about walking in on day one knowing that that's the job you've got ahead of you? It feels enormous to me.
Joe DiNatale:Charlotte. It's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying, but at the same time it's extremely exciting and exhilarating for me. From a professional sort of job satisfaction perspective, it was the most fun really work I've ever done.
Joe DiNatale:You know my professional career and I've had an opportunity. I had some really really good jobs over the years. So the one I'm thinking about I've had two opportunities, two separate opportunities, to build um a, a contact center from scratch. The most recent one was for a mortgage bank, you know, and it was a national uh company and really they could have placed their contact center anywhere. So not only, you know, were they looking for the right leader. At the time I wasn't part of their organization so I was outside, but they were also, you know it was important to them. The area had good opportunity for for business. So I not only had to sell myself but I had to really sell the benefits of of my area, which was local to me.
Charlotte Ward:Right. Okay, call center positions and volume, I guess right. I mean that that's the point as well, isn't it? These kind of contact centers, you're not hiring one or two people. You really need to make those connections because you're hiring at volume and presumably speed as well, not just quality you're spot on with that.
Joe DiNatale:So the importance of being located near university you know a number of universities, um, you know being being close to um mass transit, you know. So for the, for the younger professionals, I need to be able to take the bus or or what have you.
Joe DiNatale:So those are all the types of things that sort of went into my search and, um, you know what's in it for the company. So the company is going to invest in your area um, potential tax incentives and credits and things of that nature. So I had to come armed with all of this information, charlotte, you know, back to the powers that be for this company and really make a case, not just, hey, I'm the right leader to lead this, this new sort of entity. You know this call center for you, but having it here in this specific area is going to be really good for business too.
Charlotte Ward:And presumably we are talking about onshore US here. So that feels, I mean nowadays that kind of feels a little unusual. And did that feel unusual when you went through the exercise? Were more companies. I mean, was this at a time when more companies were offshoring and working with partners overseas?
Joe DiNatale:yeah, you know, we weren't quite there yet. This was, this was probably a good 10, 12 years ago. So the emphasis was on, you know, having um brick and mortar, you know, standing up a contact center. This was technology that was on premise, it wasn't in the cloud, it was hiring local talent and getting them to sort of buy into the vision and the mission of the business and for me to be the caretaker kind of create something that you could be proud of, something that's sustainable and of, yeah, something that's sustainable. And I'm happy to say, fast forward 10, 12 years and it's the call center still in existence, still going strong. I stay in touch with a lot of the folks you know that I worked with actually going back a number of years, and it makes you feel good that it's still doing well a number of years and it makes you feel good that it's still doing well.
Charlotte Ward:That's awesome, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean you laid out some interesting things that I would never even have thought about. You know, as kind of the key components of the proposal that you put forward Location, the types of people you needed to employ, the local economic environment that sounds like a lot of research for one man. What sort of yes, you know I mean. I guess, how, I guess, how do you begin to tackle the kind of breadth of uh investigation that you'd have to cover? At the breadth that your proposal would have to cover, let's say, um, does this rely quite heavily on a good network, for instance?
Joe DiNatale:absolutely.
Joe DiNatale:And these are the days, charlotte, you know, before virtual assistance, you know, before the co-pilot, yeah, where you had help, um, yeah, so the network was huge for me and, um, I looked inward and tried to build relationships of folks that were in these positions, um, you know, in the municipalities um, that I needed to find information about, and they were so great in helping me, um, kind of opening up their doors and saying, hey, you know what, david, do you need?
Joe DiNatale:Because it was in their best interest, you know that, to bring business, new business, into the area. Obviously it was a benefit to everybody. So they were kind of welcoming me with open arms, with providing me insights and, you know, reams of data when it came time to kind of pulling together my presentation, you know some, some key charts, you know I was able to kind of sneak in to the slides to talk to um, so it was extremely helpful to have that sort of network, um, because otherwise, you know it'd just be a daunting task and you know you never want to be in a position where you're not giving, you know, reliable, accurate information to your future bosses yeah, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely so, even actually more, riding on this.
Charlotte Ward:this isn't just you in-house building a proposal, this is a proposal for yourself as much as what you're proposing to build. That's a significant task. A lot of pressure right as, as you say, to get things right. Um, so when, when you're making that kind of proposal and you're looking at all of these constituent parts, the, the premises, the local economic situation, the people and everything else is the biggest part of that proposal? Um, and and I get that, if you don't want to talk to that specific circumstance, that's totally fine but even just more generally, for organizations looking to set up a contact center or their first contact center, is the primary goal one of cost management? And if it's not, then what other things? Sort of a key factors in you know, the, the success or failure of that proposal becoming reality?
Joe DiNatale:yeah, great question. Certainly you. You will have an eye on costs, um, because usually you don't have a limited budget. You know, even even if you happen to be part of an existing organization, that is a successful organization. If it's a new sort of entity and it's a startup, if you will new call center, you'll have a budget. You know it won't be unlimited. So, being efficient and you know that's always going to be very important but I think, whether it was 12 years ago or you're out looking to build something today and start something new it's what you're building, it's who and what you want to attract to your business.
Joe DiNatale:In terms of location, it's very important, but you know we talked earlier at the top of our conversation about you know, your labor force. Where are you going to attract? Where are your sources of labor are going to come from? How are they going to get to you? And you know, once they're there, what sort of experience will they have? So I spent a lot of time working with a real estate company that my company had partnered with on the location. Is it a class A building? Is it class B, c in terms of quality? How old is it? Is it newer, older amenities, things of that nature. But then I spent a lot of time providing input around the design of the space. So if you're fortunate and you're starting a contact center for the ground floor and you have a blank canvas, being able to have a vision of you know, where do you want to have your, your foyer, when, when, when a candidate walks in or a client walks in, what's the first thing that they see? You?
Joe DiNatale:know, what's your bullpen look like. You know where's the first thing that they see. You know, um, what's your bullpen look like. You know where's your technology kept um, your uh, huddle rooms, your training rooms. You know where do you guys meet. Is there a kitchenette where the folks come together and you know, kind of congregate Um. So you, you want to be able to build a space that, in my opinion, um fosters collaboration and you feel good, you feel proud, coming into work every day.
Joe DiNatale:And if you wanted to talk to your family, say I wouldn't feel better in my family into where I work. You know I'm proud of what we do and how we do it, so I think that's very important. That goes into your vision.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense, and I'm also thinking about you touched on, then, a couple of times about the type of people that you're employing. I guess what occurs to me is, you know, particularly when you're hiring at volume, quite key is building or maintaining both a culture and what my friend Nick Zeisler would call your brand promise. So hiring for the right kind of people that are going to live up to everything your brand or your organization promises its customers, both in terms of how they communicate, how well informed they are, how, um, you know, if we want to like, how easy it is to onboard them into an existing organization, I imagine would be a key consideration as well, and that must have a bearing on the proposal.
Charlotte Ward:I mean, I'm sorry that wasn't really a question was it yeah, no it was a good.
Joe DiNatale:You're correct. What you said is accurate. It definitely goes into consideration. So for me, it's not just the quantity of folks you know, the, the having the ability to bring a high volume of people in, but it's a very specific type of personality looking for. So for me it was you know you got to be coachable, so you look for coachability in people, strong work ethic, you know. So I knew in the beginning it was just going to be me, charlotte, having to manage and be on top of operations, but eventually, yeah, you build out your leadership team.
Joe DiNatale:You know you have your supes and your managers and your organization got bigger, so you want to put them in a position for success by having team members that you know want to be there, you know, for the opportunity. Uh, they, they kind of see the vision along with your vision and what your mission is. They're coachable, um, and because if they don't want to be led and to come to there just to kind of collect a paycheck, uh they're not going to be happy, right, and that's going to translate um, it's a very um, subpar sort of customer conversation, the customer interactions. So those are the types of things I look at, building the culture. As you mentioned a moment ago, it starts with the type of people, the caliber of your. You know your labor resources that come in are going to be a reflection of your culture and they're going to carry out your culture that you said yeah, yeah, I mean, never a truer word was spoken of any part of any business, whether big or small, actually I I would say.
Charlotte Ward:But it just seems to me it's a bigger risk when you're hiring in huge numbers quite quickly, and so something has to be carefully managed, I guess yeah, and I think I was fortunate too.
Joe DiNatale:In my specific case it was a um crawl, walk run, so it was done in phases because, again, I mean, I um all kidding aside it really wasn't one, one person to show, so that that um kind of forced me to do things in a very thoughtful, purposeful way. So I couldn't. My training classes, my first training class was 12 people and you know, you know, you interview your candidates, right. You make your offer, you schedule your start dates and you have your first training class and I have to build a training curriculum. You know what am I going to say? What am I going to teach these folks, right?
Joe DiNatale:You build a training curriculum and you're in your training room with your very first training class for X amount of weeks until they come onto the production floor, and when they come on the production floor it's you that's with them. So now I'm with them and I'm in that nesting phase and I'm there to answer their questions. I'm there to lead by example, get on the phone, have them listen to me kind of role play, provide the support, the leadership, the motivation, the things that you would expect. And it wasn't until I was able to get those first 12 on a path where they were comfortable and consistent that I could think about my next training class, come up before and do those types of things. So it really was a methodical sort of process. You know, come up before and do those types of things. So it really was a methodical sort of process. And I was fortunate where I, you know, I didn't have to hire a hundred people and where people were fending for themselves, the company alive. It'd go slow, you know, before we ran fast.
Charlotte Ward:Right, right, right. I mean that sounds, that sounds sensible and I guess I guess you know not every leader stepping into a position such as you were stepping into has that luxury. A carefully staged rollout of training as much as everything else right, as much as operations, a staged onboarding that you can manage if you're the only person in there, rather than throw everyone in a room and expect them to get on with it because that seems destined for failure. That's right. What are the other early considerations? I mean, you know, short of the obvious, you said some of the things before. You know you talked about technology and you know getting the phone system up and running are kind of the obvious things, things like that. But what are the other early considerations? After you've thought about what the job is, what you're hiring for, what that hiring and onboarding looks like, and you've talked about the premises and everything else, what comes next? What's the next big hurdle to cross?
Joe DiNatale:Yeah, you know there's a lot of pieces, but I think if you're fortunate to be able to start, you know, from scratch, you can do things the right way out of the gate.
Joe DiNatale:And I think we were smart in that, as we went along, we documented everything, everything from the job descriptions to the recruiting process, to the training curriculum, to the comp plans, to how we reward and recognize. Everything was documented so that, as the as your, as you built out your team and your team expanded, now you had multiple layers of leadership that had teams. Um, as you're bringing new people into your organization, there's a knowledge base already versus there's tribal knowledge, right, a lot, of, a lot of the companies, unfortunately, you know you talk to people like um, you have to rely on veterans because they know, but there's no, there's no resource repository to go to for information right.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah, you haven't got. You haven't got a senior layer in. Yeah, you haven't got the, the people with tenure who can just say, oh, that problem, that's been hanging around for three years, I know how you get around that. Yeah it's, it's just that whole layer doesn't exist, does it Well I?
Joe DiNatale:hadn't even thought that. So, as you know, as the person in charge, and you know, you're, you're, you're, you're expanding your front line, um, you don't. You don't want your frontline agents working with each other and giving each other wrong information. So that's why it's very important that, yeah, they have all of the right information, they're solid before you bring in new people. But as you're creating processes, um, and policies, you document them and then, as you grow, you're able to share and refine and update those policies and processes right To make sure that they're up to date and accurate for your current um current stage.
Joe DiNatale:Yeah, so I think that was very smart Um, but you know, the biggest recommendation um I would have for folks that are kind of in a similar situation is just, you know, make sure you hire right, because hiring wrong, especially in the beginning, can really derail and slow you down. That could delay things Um, cause when you make mistakes in hiring, it's a process um to be able to move on from those hiring mistakes. A lot of thought needs to go into what are you looking to hire, what is the role you're hiring for, what's his contribution?
Joe DiNatale:Um, and then then you know make sure that you do your due diligence and and trying to find really good people um that have um you know, that are passionate, enthusiastic, um willing to learn, that are coachable and want to be led. You know. And then you mold them and you mentor them. You support them as they, as they move on.
Charlotte Ward:You know in their tenure yeah, yeah, that makes sense, absolutely crucial, particularly in early stages. I think. I think there comes a point in any organization where you can be less fearful of hiring the wrong people. Um, you know, I'm not saying that people like I, I think it just becomes less risky because you've run that rodeo a few times. I think is actually what it is, and so I think hiring becomes less scary and we put less emphasis, I think or we should anyway the more mature an operation gets, unless you're hiring for, like, senior roles. I think it we should be comfortable getting to a point where hiring is both less effort and less risky.
Charlotte Ward:You know, you make a bad hire. It's kind of should be. You should get to aim to get to a point where it's easier to back out of a bad hiring situation. You know, um, but that's, that's the aim for me. I think Um, obviously always aiming to hire the right people. But if you wait for perfection, I'm sure you, uh, you would agree. But, um, please tell me, if you don't, that if you wait too long for perfection, you'll just end up waiting forever, you know.
Charlotte Ward:So I think, there's an element of like de-risking the hiring process as well isn't there over time?
Joe DiNatale:Yeah, you're absolutely. You know. And I think maybe a second um strong recommendation would be you know your higher rate, um, develop, you know and then make sure you bring in, make sure your folks have a voice. You know you're, you're starting something, you're creating something. Um, you're in the weeds. You know, for the most part for a while.
Joe DiNatale:Yeah, you build an organization, so it's the perfect opportunity to get feedback and input from your team and see what's working.
Joe DiNatale:You know what's not, what could be improved, and I can give you a great example, like when you're kind of running in many different directions. You know, starting a new business and you have a lot of operational duties and responsibilities, cause you don't have help yet. That's very easy to to not to let that slide. But you know I made it a point to carve out time periodically to meet with groups of agents. You know, as we're building up our call center and you know I was able to validate some of the things that we're doing as if we're on the right path, but one of the misses was around just recognition. You know, at any call center it's a hard job, you know, depending on what you're doing, especially if you're doing new business acquisition, you're cold calling, you're getting a lot of rejection, a lot of diversity. The cost of our work is very difficult, so engagement is very important and I think that was lacking a little bit in the beginning.
Joe DiNatale:And those conversations, charlotte, led to what we called the employee spotlight and it was an opportunity for us to work with the customers, the clients, right, the agents were working with on a regular basis and when there were really good customer experiences, we would get those testimonials and frame them you know beautiful frames, customer testimonials and they'd be put, they'd be added to the employee spotlight spotlight wall.
Joe DiNatale:If you go to the call center for everyone to see when you walk through the door, and at the start of every shift because there's multiple shifts throughout the day you would take a stand up, which, for me, you take five, 10 minutes and you talk to the team before they start speaking with customers. It gives you a great opportunity to give public recognition and talk about and that individual can maybe speak to. You know that customer interaction and it gets things started off on the right foot. It inspires others to want to have the same sort of recognition. So that would be another piece of advice for folks kind of in this situation right now starting a new center, um, stay connected, you know, ask um. Small focus groups aren't a bad thing, you know. Get input, get feedback, um, because I think that's going to help long-term on on creating a really good environment.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, engagement again is a is a big one to one to crack, I think. So it sounds like everything went right. Did it everything go right? Or I mean, it seems like this was just you know, build it and they will come territory in many ways. Is it? Was it that smooth is?
Joe DiNatale:it. No, no, um, it's never smooth. It's like I said, it's immensely gratifying what Saul said and done, but never smooth. A lot of ebbs and flows. So I think holistically it is a success. It was a success, it continues to be a success, yeah, but you always have operational challenges, you know, all the time, and I think most folks that are in operations can relate to that.
Joe DiNatale:We, we were able to scale, so first we were able to put the necessary infrastructure in, so we got, we got the right technology and the right dialer, um, you know, phone system, um you, you name it right so all the infrastructure, other things. Then they could go. You did a good job, that in place, okay, and then from there, um, we, we took care to make sure we had the right people in the seats, paid them well, um, you know, and had, uh, eventually put in a career progression plan, which was awesome, right, you start something, uh, for the first time, and then, before you know, you're talking about career progression and career patting like holy cow. Where do they go next? You know what's the next opportunity I have within the call center?
Joe DiNatale:So, then you work on. You know how do you keep people engaged, like I said, to keep your churn. You're down, right, because you want to be able to keep the folks. It's very expensive to replace. And I think for us we got to the point where, you know, we almost outgrew the call center. You know I had to work with our senior leadership team to say, hey, you know what's, what can we do um next to continue the growth? You know, does that mean that we can maybe build out where we are today? Does that mean we maybe go find a second location and we continue um? So really that was kind of the.
Joe DiNatale:The turning point was we need a larger location. You know what we have today. I think it housed 75 um agents. You know it was basically the size of the bullpen, right? So if you're fully staffed, 75 people, that was your max um. And we eventually grew to about, you know, double that 150. So we needed a new new location. So that's kind of that kind of started the um the wheels again of you know, let's go partner with. So we needed a new new location. So that's kind of that kind of started the um the wheels again of you know, let's go partner with real estate, let's go figure out where we're going to go and do the build out again, and so it's just. It's just almost a rinse repeat, you know do it again Um.
Joe DiNatale:I think overall very proud and very pleased with how things turned out.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah.
Joe DiNatale:Yeah, that's awesome and it stood the test of time Knock on wood, absolutely. And it's a testament to, I think, what you started. You know the foundation you built, and then you have the right people to kind of carry it forward. And I think the good news is there's always going to be a need for a contact center agents, associates, whatever title you want to call it. So, even with the technology that's evolving, there's always going to be a need, or customers need to speak with a human that's knowledgeable, that can handle the complexities and the different nuances of whatever product or service that they have with your company.
Joe DiNatale:It's up to us, as leadership, to be able to um approach it. And how do you have both? How do they work together? How do they intertwine? Yeah, because it's not like the agents have to be fearful that their jobs are going to be replaced. It's how do I develop you and optimize you know your knowledge base so that you can handle more complex interactions? You know, let the technology, the artificial intelligence maybe handle the more mundane and routine you know customer interactions, yeah, yeah, that's at the point we're at today yeah I couldn't agree more yeah, yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.
Charlotte Ward:And I think you know the, the story of support the world over and, and you know, in that included, uh, you know, is contact centers of of this, you know, much more traditional variety. That you're talking about is is how we, how we meet that and make use of it, but still provide fulfilling jobs for people too. And uh, that's that's the, the next stage of, uh, of this kind of role, isn't it? It's utilizing it without um, without damaging the, the people in the business yeah, yeah, agreed, and we'll do it yeah, we will.
Charlotte Ward:We will. Maybe we'll come back and talk about that next time. I'd love to have you back, joe, will you come on the show again?
Joe DiNatale:It would be my pleasure.
Charlotte Ward:Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you, and I'll catch you another time to talk. Maybe we'll deep dive into the AI side of contact centers, and I know I know that you've got some other stories to tell, so come back soon. Thank you so much.
Joe DiNatale:Yes, thank you, charlotte.
Charlotte Ward:That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaderscom. Forward. Slash 269 for the show notes and I'll see you next time.