Industry conferences are powerful when they allow you to make personal connections, hear compelling new concepts and send you home with your head full of ideas on how to improve your center.

crowd-of-people.jpgI will be attending numerous events this year, but two I am really looking forward to are the PACE Annual Convention Expo (ACX for short) being held this year at the Chateau Elan Resort near Atalanta, Georgia, and BenchmarkPortal’s own Call Center Campus conference, which will be held at the Kimpton Hotel in Phoenix Arizona in October.

The ACX is being held April 15th to 18th and promises to be a tour de force of contact center issues and opportunities.  PACE (formerly known at ATA) has grown well beyond it’s roots and now encompasses both inbound and outbound contact centers.  In addition to its preeminent position in compliance matters, it has stepped up its game on Customer Experience and operational excellence issues.  I now host a monthly PACE Webinar on contact center operational issues, such as managing multi-generational employees and leveraging benchmarking to achieve contact center excellence.  I also serve on the conference committee and look forward to presenting on Customer Experience along with ….

I encourage you to attend.  The agenda topics will be announced shortly and will include artificial intelligence,  contact center technology, and many others.  I have been authorized to offer you a $200 registration discount if you use the promo code 18PACEBP. 

We will be hosting our annual Call Center Campus conference Phoenix, AZ on October 8-12.  We will be changing up the schedule this year. The Symposium will be on Monday and Tuesday, while the courses will be held Wednesday through Friday.  The Symposium will have a new mix of presentations and interactive sessions, in response to feedback we received from last year’s highly successful event.  Attendees will note a significant increase in interactive content that will bring out the best in our community members, while still bringing to bear the best thought leadership of the BenchmarkPortal research team.

When the community comes together, good things happen.  These are two events that will leave you bursting with ideas and revitalized to improve your center in measurable ways.

I hope to see you at both!

Bruce Belfiore, CEO, BenchmarkPortal


faculty-bruce-belfiore-3.jpgBruce Belfiore is Senior Research Executive and CEO of BenchmarkPortal, custodian of the world’s largest database of contact center metrics.  He hosts the monthly online radio show "CallTalk" and is chancellor of The College of Call Center Excellence, which provides courses for call center professionals.  He has consulted for many Fortune 1000 companies, helping them to improve the strategic value, efficiency and effectiveness of their customer contact operations. He is the author of the book Benchmarking At Its Best for Contact Centers and holds bachelor’s, MBA and JD degrees from Harvard University.