---
title: "Maximizing the Human in the Call Center | Guest: Nicholas MacDonald"
description: "Bruce Belfiore as he interviews industry veteran Mark Brody about getting your center \"unstuck\" by supporting your front line agents - - and making them stars."
image: https://resources.benchmarkportal.com/hubfs/Jan%202023.jpg
---

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# Maximizing the Human in the Call Center | Guest: Nicholas MacDonald

Join Bruce Belfiore for the first CallTalk episode of 2023, with the theme "Maximizing the Human in the Call Center".  He will be interviewing Nicholas MacDonald, director of Customer Experience at C-Lect Consulting.  Nicholas will draw from a career in contact center leadership at Machias Savings Bank in Maine, where he put employee culture first, fostering employee engagement and teamwork that empowered his colleagues to provide excellent customer experiences.  He is a believer in the power of incremental changes, and will share his approach and results.

 

 

![Jan 2023](https://resources.benchmarkportal.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Jan%202023.jpg?width=365&height=365&name=Jan%202023.jpg)

---

Air Date: Wednesday, January 4, 2023  
Host: Bruce Belfiore | CEO & Senior Research Analyst | BenchmarkPortal  
Guest Speaker: Nicholas MacDonald  
Season: 14 | Episode Number: 1

---

 ***CallTalk Caramel*** Video version - partial show:

<iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/paJpABWQQZE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen title="CallTalk™ Caramel #16: Maximizing the Human in Call Center" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none;"></iframe>

 

 ***CallTalk*** audio podcast version - full show:

 

<iframe style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none;" title="Maximizing the Human in the Call Center" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" xml="lang" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tnzVRjjNDaU?feature=oembed" width="256" height="192" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen data-mce-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tnzVRjjNDaU?feature=oembed" data-mce-style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none;" data-mce-fragment="1"></iframe>

---

![IMG\_3803-1](https://resources.benchmarkportal.com/hs-fs/hubfs/IMG_3803-1.jpg?width=260&height=174&name=IMG_3803-1.jpg)Guest: Nicholas MacDonald

Director of CX at C-Lect consulting, Nicholas MacDonald transferred from a career in contact center leadership for Machias Savings Bank in Maine where he fostered a culture built on employee empowerment and growth, allowing agents to develop exceptional experiences for themselves and for customers. Nicholas will share insights from projects that brought significant efficiency gain and customer experience improvement, including implementing a unified contact center solution, Voice Authentication, and Workforce Management. He is a national public speaker in Customer Experience and coaches leaders to grow their teams  He also owns and operates a small goat dairy farm and spends his downtime training his young Quarter Horse. Nicholas holds his B.A. and MBA from Ashford University.

---

**![faculty-bruce-belfiore-4sm-1](https://resources.benchmarkportal.com/hs-fs/hubfs/faculty-bruce-belfiore-4sm-1.jpg?width=184&name=faculty-bruce-belfiore-4sm-1.jpg)CallTalk Host: Bruce Belfiore | BenchmarkPortal**  
Bruce Belfiore is a frequent speaker at industry events in the United States and abroad. Bruce is Chancellor of the College of Call Center Excellence, which provides certificated courses to call center professionals, and has taught the course “Call Center Management” at Purdue University. He is the author of the book *Benchmarking At Its Best for Contact Centers* and has written numerous research papers and best practices studies focused on contact center topics. He is a consultant to call centers in a wide variety of industries seeking to improve their results, and is noted for helping to calculate the financial impact of proposed changes. Bruce holds Bachelors, JD and MBA degrees from Harvard University.

---

*[![CallTalk copy](https://resources.benchmarkportal.com/hs-fs/hubfs/CallTalk%20copy.jpg?width=211&name=CallTalk%20copy.jpg)](https://www.benchmarkportal.com/calltalk-online-radio-show/)CallTalk is a monthly internet radio program for the customer service industry featuring the most innovative managers and thought leaders in the customer contact field, interviewed by BenchmarkPortal CEO, Bruce Belfiore. Broadcast monthly, directly over the Internet to your desktop, CallTalk covers hot topics that impact today's call center. CallTalk airs without the participation of vendors so that topics will be free from their influence and guided by the needs of its listeners. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, send it to [CallTalk@BenchmarkPortal.com.](mailto:calltalk@benchmarkportal.com?subject=CallTalk)*

 Topics: [CallTalk Radio Show](https://resources.benchmarkportal.com/calltalk/topic/calltalk-radio-show), [Customer Service](https://resources.benchmarkportal.com/calltalk/topic/customer-service), [CallTalk Season 14](https://resources.benchmarkportal.com/calltalk/topic/calltalk-season-14)

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