The Science of CX podcast. Key Takeaways Into More Productive Customer Engagements with Richard Blank
The Science of CX is a groundbreaking new weekly podcast developed to
address the millions of businesses that need to learn techniques to compete better in today’s business landscape, by using CX as the cornerstone of a new strategy.
Getting to know Richard the man on this special episode #156. How did he end up with such a large collection of restored pinball machines and jukeboxes?
key ingredients to ensure an effective micro-expression conversation
How agents can positively handle and grow from negative calls and feedback from customers
https://youtu.be/RJnuK2lPYFc?si=yrsPGin8LM1sXy5F
https://youtu.be/AOPI8wCqX-0
Running a small business? Well tune in and find out what tips Richard has to help you leverage your everyday conversations into a goldmine
Time and numbers. Find out whether or not it's productive to measure your employee’s efforts based on the number of hours or sales made
Richard shares with us his unique and world-class system of training and mentoring new agents
An exercise you can easily pick up in helping you become a better micro expression reader
Join Steve Pappas in the lab as he puts his 25+ years to the test to make your
business (soar, grow and accelerate).
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
#RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Leadgeneration #Appointmentsetting #SacrificetoSuccess #Scienceofcx
Science of CX, The Forgotten Art Project, Richard Blank,Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing, BPO, Nearshore, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, Business,Podcast,Gamification,Leadership,Marketing, Radio, Guest, Money, education, trainer,
Key Takeaways Into More Productive Customer Engagements with Richard Blank. The Science of CX podcast.
https://youtu.be/RJnuK2lPYFc?si=yrsPGin8LM1sXy5F
https://youtu.be/AOPI8wCqX-0
The Science of CX podcast. Key Takeaways Into More Productive Customer Engagements with Richard Blank
The Science of CX is a groundbreaking new weekly podcast developed to
address the millions of businesses that need to learn techniques to compete better in today’s business landscape, by using CX as the cornerstone of a new strategy.
Getting to know Richard the man on this special episode #156. How did he end up with such a large collection of restored pinball machines and jukeboxes?
key ingredients to ensure an effective micro-expression conversation
How agents can positively handle and grow from negative calls and feedback from customers
https://youtu.be/RJnuK2lPYFc?si=yrsPGin8LM1sXy5F
https://youtu.be/AOPI8wCqX-0
Running a small business? Well tune in and find out what tips Richard has to help you leverage your everyday conversations into a goldmine
Time and numbers. Find out whether or not it's productive to measure your employee’s efforts based on the number of hours or sales made
Richard shares with us his unique and world-class system of training and mentoring new agents
An exercise you can easily pick up in helping you become a better micro expression reader
Join Steve Pappas in the lab as he puts his 25+ years to the test to make your
business (soar, grow and accelerate).
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
#RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Leadgeneration #Appointmentsetting #SacrificetoSuccess #Scienceofcx
Science of CX, The Forgotten Art Project, Richard Blank,Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing, BPO, Nearshore, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, Business,Podcast,Gamification,Leadership,Marketing, Radio, Guest, Money, education, trainer,
Key Takeaways Into More Productive Customer Engagements with Richard Blank. The Science of CX podcast.
https://youtu.be/RJnuK2lPYFc?si=yrsPGin8LM1sXy5F
https://youtu.be/AOPI8wCqX-0
The Science of CX podcast. Key Takeaways Into More Productive Customer Engagements with Richard Blank
The Science of CX is a groundbreaking new weekly podcast developed to
address the millions of businesses that need to learn techniques to compete better
in today’s business landscape, by using CX as the cornerstone of a new strategy.
Join Steve Pappas in the lab as he puts his 25+ years to the test to make your
business (soar, grow and accelerate).
Getting to know Richard the man. How did he end up with such a large collection of restored pinball machines and jukeboxes?key ingredients to ensure an effective micro-expression conversationHow agents can positively handle and grow from negative calls and feedback from customersRunning a small business? Well tune in and find out what tips Richard has to help you leverage your everyday conversations into a goldmineTime and numbers. Find out whether or not it's productive to measure your employee’s efforts based on the number of hours or sales made Richard shares with us his unique and world-class system of training and mentoring new agents An exercise you can easily pick up in helping you become a better micro expression reader
https://youtu.be/RJnuK2lPYFc?si=yrsPGin8LM1sXy5F
https://youtu.be/AOPI8wCqX-0
Key Takeaways
Learn how to turn new customers into the most loyal customers and be on the
mind of everyone in town. Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned expert, you will
learn something useful in each and every episode.
CXpert - interviews with CX Leaders and Influencers that have made it their
business to treat customers like a million. Steve, will use his years of CX-Centric
business knowledge to bring out cool ideas for every business owner to
learn new techniques and also avoid some
Steve has built a career transforming, growing, expanding and turning around businesses. He has created successful companies by delivering remarkable customer experiences. Steve makes sure each employee has the actionable knowledge necessary to make better decisions, build great culture and serve customers in a way that increases loyalty, referrals, sales and satisfaction.In his recent role with Panviva, the knowledge cloud company, Steve expanded the Australian software company successfully into the US to a market powerhouse position. Steve also advises many companies annually on their CX strategies. Industry associations, publications, and Fortune 500 companies invite him to speak and write about CX best practices in healthcare, finance, utilities, insurance, and telecommunications.A successful entrepreneur in his own right, Steve has built and sold six companies. He has spent many years cultivating his approach to CX and each company has held to the mantra of “the customer is at the center of the universe.
In fact, his first CX initiative was a college Honors project where Steve redesigned the student registration system to ease the process of registering for classes and enhance the student registration experience. He then went on to running an Technology Division with over 12,000 employee customers, while working for one of the largest global government contractors. All the while addressing internal customer expectations and increase customer satisfaction and productivity.Next, he perfected the concepts of personalization with marketing automation tools to better target and deliver one-on-one communication with customer messaging. Now, Steve is focused on helping business leaders build great strategies to deliver the ultimate in customer experiences and drive their business to new heights.When he is not driving CX strategy or launching companies, Steve plays the guitar and mentors startup business. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and sons.
you're listening to the science of C. X. A podcast that hopes to inspire business owners and leaders to learn new techniques and turn prospects into customers, enter customers into raving fans. My name is Steve Pappas. I'm known for my relentless pursuit of all thing’s customer across my career. And in my six startups, I've had to learn how to make decisions in business that customers really respond to. Let's spend some time together and help your business soar grow and accelerate. Well, welcome everybody to another episode of the science of C. X. I'm Steve Pappas, your host and as always, we look everywhere to find the experts that can help you in your business journey as well as your customer experience initiatives within your organization.
Today is No exception. Today we're going to be talking about some remarkably interesting areas. We're going to cover a lot of material. Please take notes if you want or you can come back and listen to it multiple times because that makes it seem like we have more listeners. Hey, yeah, do that. Instead listen to this episode 3, 4 or five times. That'll do it. Anyway, we're going to be talking about advanced telemarketing strategies. We're going to be talking about conflict management, interpersonal skills, customer support, rhetoric, Gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Have I piqued your interest yet? Well, we have a gentleman on today. His name is Richard blank, and he comes to us from Costa Rica, and he is the head of a great business process, outsourcing contact center, but he's also an expert in so many different areas that we want to talk about. So why don't we bring him in from the virtual green room? You know, there's no real green room of course by now, but let's pretend he's coming in from the green room and we'll welcome him to the show.
Richard, thanks for joining us today on the show. See, that's an amazing introduction. I'm so happy to be here, really enjoy your work and cannot wait to share amazing ideas with your audience today. That's great. Well, I'm going to give folks a little bit about your bio just so they understand where we're going to start from and maybe some interesting things about you too. So, Richard's journey in the car Contact center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in san Jose Costa Rica with a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric.
Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10,000 bilingual telemarketers. I think he learned a few things along the way. Richard blank has the largest collection of restored American pinball machines and antique rock ola jukeboxes in central America making Gamification a strong part of Costa Rica Contact center. Culture. Richard blank is the chief executive officer for Costa Rica’s Call center since 2008. Richard also holds a bachelor's degree in communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla Spain, a keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School, 68th National Honor Society induction ceremony.
Giving back to the high school is especially important to Richard as such. He endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level. So, I've got to start Richard with the first part here that just jumped right at me as the largest collection of restored American pinball machines and jukeboxes. Now if anybody knows me, they know that I love pinball aside from playing guitar for the last for years. I love pinball, I don't quite go into the Galaga and those things that my wife loves but I love playing pinball.
So, tell us what you have got, I'd love to know what kind of pinball machines you have Steve, I'm so glad that you started with dessert first and naturally our favorite class in school was recessed. So absolutely. I grew up in the seventies and eighties and the arcades were just some of the most amazing places to make friends and compete. It was so new and the artwork on the cabinets and the marquees, it really was an experience and always wanted that game room like Ricky Schroder and silver spoons.
I was jealous. So, I wanted one and down here since I own a call center and I have the space, I go treasure hunting and one man's trash is another man's treasure and they just really do not know what they have in their bodegas. And so, I will find a machine and bring it back here. And with specialist I restore them now regarding my pinball machines. The oldest one that I have is a 1976 Bally's freedom. And one of the newer ones would be like, let's say a last action hero where a doctor who I have an M. B. A fast break in a mouse.
And around I got Williams, space shuttle 1987 I got a judge Dredd Street fighter, two lethal weapon, three jokers, World cup hook and Jurassic Park. So, it turned out into a hobby became an obsession. And when you're a married man, you decide which hills to die on which swords to fall upon. And my wife and I have this agreement where pretty much everything is in her favor. But the one thing she knows that makes me happy of restoring these old classic jukeboxes and pinball machines because what an error and the craftsmanship and the fact that they've been preserved for decades shows that people really cared about these machines.
Now you and I was awfully expensive growing up. So, it seemed like a luxury. But the fact that we can afford it. It really is something that I take full advantage of when I have the moments with just not my agents but myself. There's always a pinball marathon going on down here. Well, it's great that you have the employee engagement to do that. But I'll tell you, we had bought one, we had a terminator pinball machine at one point that had the gun for the pinball release, but it took so much to get it into the basement of the home that we were living in when we sold the house.
We negotiated to sell the pinball machine, so I didn't have to get it out of there. It was so heavy to move, and I wasn't about to, but I have been in the market for another one right now. The prices are through the roof on all those two. I was looking for an Adam’s family or another terminator, but the Adams family was the one that kind of thrilled me and as well as jukeboxes, it's funny, we have a lot of similar interests in collection.
I don't have any jukeboxes. I wanted to cut my teeth on the first one and I have a buddy in the UK that restores German jukeboxes and he's one of the largest in the world that restores those early seventies and eighties jukeboxes that were built in Germany. I think it was like N C D M or something like that and that's an interesting market. But let's get on to some of the other areas that we're going to talk about. I gave folks at the beginning of the episode, a lot of terminology that we're going to be talking about today.
And one of the things that I really wanted to discuss, this idea of phonetic micro expressions, I don't know if our audience knows what that really is or maybe some do and of course they'll yell at me in the comments etcetera. But can we talk about these things because let's jump into some of these areas that we're going to get across and are these all used the things we're going to talk about? They all used in the contact center, and can you train people in all these areas?
They're used in my call center and just depends on the sort of profiled agent that you have there. Let me take it back a bit. Everybody studies micro expression reading. There was a tv show called Lie to Me that specialized in where you can judge people's postures, their eyes, their face, their hands. I mean there's books and seminars about it now when you're on the phone, three of your senses are removed, your taste, touch and smell. And the scientists claim that when you do have one that is removed, your others expand.
So, I expect you to do much more active listening and then people can also argue that you can't see people on the phone, but I beg to differ because there is image streaming, you have metaphysics when you read a book, it's better than the movie because of imagination. You can use more descriptions and more adjectives but let's just concentrate on the sound of speech. The average attention span is about 30 seconds to two minutes, conversations have introductions, bodies and conclusions. So, if you have a controlled environment, you can have a consistent variable and then you can see inconsistencies.
So now we have a base of how we're going to study speech and 32nd segments. Okay your tone is what represents your emotion, and it should be confident and empathetic because that should be consistent on your end. People will talk about a mirror imaging technique Steve, and I agree with that. But you also need to know how you're speaking for your adjustments. So, your mirror imaging isn't about you sitting across from someone and crossing your arms and tapping a finger. No, you don't have that over the phone.
So, eliminate any sort of mirror imaging face to face. I study the rate and the pitch. These are things that can be done in any language. I do not study semantics. The word choice. I'm studying the tone of your voice which is mine is consistent. I could care less what your tone is. That could be a flag or a mask, but you study someone's rate of speech and how loud they speak their pitch and every 30 seconds to two minutes. Think about the X. Y. Chart that you had in pre-algebra, you can see how fast or how loud they're going.
You consistently market every 30 seconds to two minutes. I would back it up with an answering speed because that is something that you cannot control. It's more subconscious, you can manipulate your tone rate and pitch. But the professional interrogators and police officers’ usual throw the question in the fourth or fifth time to really judge the answering speed. So, if you can do that xy chart with a horizontal line behind it and kind of gauge from 0 to 10 where you're going, you will see areas of spikes or dips and in my opinion that's the time to ask a tie down or pin down question or clarification question.
And these are certain times in which you're able to assist the conversation of moving forward for better clarification and it's not really giving away your power on that. You're really doing more of the Wuwei the less struggle the rudder of the ship. And so, this phonetic micro expression reading can be done just mind you this in your 1st 30 seconds. I don't know you and one is the loneliest number in your second minute. We could have a match off one and a one fast and high, low and slow by five at least.
You might have an odd man out in regard to your quadrants because after you've gone all four quadrants you have to repeat a quadrant, but most of the time people are in quadrant, on the top and the fast and so by your 10th 30 seconds to two minutes. Think about it like this, it's about 4. 5 to 5 minutes on something like that. And by your 11th you should know how somebody is speaking that's 5. 5 minutes in on a 10-minute conversation. And by then you will know how to close the deal.
And so, once you see it you can't unsee it. After three weeks it becomes habit and once you start paying attention to it it becomes very lucid and clearer. You are not lying and I'm not manipulating but these people are obviously giving away certain tell signs on how they speak on first time or even long term conversations and if you do catch somebody being facetious or not as clear, maybe ask them to repeat it using other senses or using another example to see if they're consistent. And so, I think it's an excellent way not to be offensive because passive aggressively you could once again use a me-too technique with somebody.
Let's just say you can't hear them. It's a bad connection on a cellphone or a dog is barking in the background. I try to fall on that small sword instead of placing blame on them, it's for my clarification Steve, did you say 123 or ABC because the worst thing you could ever do Is have somebody so upset and go down rabbit holes because now you need to restart your phonetic micro expression, reading the Tarot Card Reader said you could read two different reads in 10 minutes depending if it's sunny or raining, same person, same hour, but it could be a different read.
So, the greatest thing you could do is to ride that weight and keep it at that apex if you can. It's like when people said lucid dreaming, you really don't want to readjust your body to be able to keep that consistent breathing and body posture. With someone that you're speaking with, you try to keep them as consistent as possible. There's a little wiggle room there but don't go extreme and if you can handle something like that, fall on these swords, get clarification.
I think your audience would have some extremely effective conversations with people on the first time. This is a remarkably interesting area because we do have an awful lot of folks that either work in contact centers or are managing contact centers or even outsource to contact centers. And the training of agents tends to be remarkably similar in most organizations but they're not thinking about how they can better control they’re usually using the approach where gee I'm sorry you're having that problem. So, they're falling on the sword most of the time.
But if you think about the calls, right? If you think about the types of calls that come in, I mean they're not picking up the phone because they're just calling to say thank you or their colleagues to say gee what an excellent product this is. They're usually picking up the phone or they're making a contact with them because there's an issue, there's some type of an issue either they don't understand, they don't know how to fill out, they don't know how to do something or there's a more negative issue.
So, if you think about the incoming approach that happens, a lot of it tends to be negative. And unfortunately, the contact center agents these days are feeling increasingly of society's negativity coming out of the pandemic. You know, because people who are very understanding more, more understanding during the pandemic, but they’re taking it out on front line people. So, I don't know how you guys have seen things. But from the folks that I've spoken to in the last few months, it seems like most of the calls are key issues and they have to diffuse right away.
So can they use the phonetic micro expression method that you talk about to kind of even the playing field and get them to calm down so that they can explain what their issue is better rather than they're ready to blow up at any moment type of thing. Sure. And I'm glad that you brought that up, that's a subject that I can easily address and apply the phonetic micro expression read because mind you my friend you could start the call yelling and cursing and at the end thanking them.
So naturally your phonetic micro expression reading might be adjusted with raid and Fitch. But I would never say that I'm sorry unless you specifically spilled the drink or broke the window because then you might get offended because this individual speaking with you is so nice, they didn't do it but they're apologizing for someone else's broken window. So, my suggestion from my agents immediately is to thank you Steve for sharing that with me. I understand your position didn't mean that I agree with it, but I understand your position and allow me a moment to make it work and fix it for you.
And so now the audience, your client coming in, guns a blazing isn't really putting all that anger at the individual because that individual did not make that problem. They're taking the shrapnel; you say the incoming. That's a wonderful way to use it incoming Obama grenade. But I like to defuse. There's a technique that I use called the buffer boomerang technique. And so, if somebody comes at me with a negative tone, I will like sponge and buffer that negative tone. I will name drop you and say Steve.
That's an excellent question, repeat back your question what it was to show active listening. So, there's a connected key lock there and then boomerang it back as a plus three. So, I could potentially my friend readjust the tone and the pace of the call to then put it back into that phonetic micro expression reading that you need to really nail it. But I believe that people are frustrated and mind you this there's a lot more omnichannel non voiced support. So, prior to that phone call they might have filled out a couple forms, send a couple of emails that only elevates the stress.
So, when they're calling, they're almost letting off steam. And if you allow them to speak, you'd be surprised how it goes from attend to it to both in pitching the rate they cry it out and then everyone calms down. You've taken copious notes. Now, Steve, you mentioned A B. C. And D. What about the Richard? Thank you, Steve. And e there's nothing wrong with raking and reviewing and meeting minutes. It's I can't just solve it with you with a magic potion. These things, someone is coming to you emotional, they don't know you you might need to repeat your name multiple times in third person because now they're embarrassed.
Three men it's in to ask your name Steve. So, you could say okay at the end of this call, Richard, you're going to say Steve. You really helped me out in this section you know, oh thank you Steve. Great. I got them I anchored. And so, these are certain soft skills to just be polite, show your manners, Take that certain control of a conversation, more of a shepherd with its sheep. They zigzag but they still go back in the barn. So, I don't need so many jagged edges.
There are no straight lines in nature and and I love empathy with somebody because when I use your name, I will usually use it in a transitional sentence or confirmation. And then during the conversation I will use personal pronouns as you know the yours and ours just to make sure that I'm keeping your conversation going in your attention and then landing in the bomb when I dropped the name drop and you should take these calls every 30 seconds to two minutes because as you say, they could change. But this gives you an excellent chance, my friend, if you really want to look at it logically that if somebody is calling in, you have a chance to retain the client, you have the chance to up sell them.
If that's what you're doing, you could get a referral out of it. But look at it like this, let's say we drop the ball. Worst case scenario, this individual will take the time to do an exit interview and tell us areas in which we could have improved or what our competition had done to earn their business and as long as you're willing to keep an open mind and I don't like the word constructive criticism. I mean you fumbled the ball; you should have known what you were doing.
Then just call the balls and the strikes and let you know that you made this error and learn from it and don't do it again. And these are the sort of things call by call person by person instead of doing 100 calls a day Steve. Why don't you have your agents take 95? They're taking extra couple three minutes on the phone to let Mr. jones relax a little bit. That is the secret to the successor old school style. This is interesting because as you're explaining some of these tips and techniques, it occurs that it doesn't just apply in the contact center world.
I mean this could be if you're a brick-and-mortar store, it could be your pizza place. There could be people calling because hey, you got the wrong toppings on my pizza. The delivery was wrong or there could be all kinds of things, but it applies to all areas of business and people running small businesses could learn from these same techniques. Don't you agree? This could save a thanksgiving dinner. A marriage. These are just diplomatic soft skills of attentive listening and prioritizing, but I couldn't agree with you more and I never even shared with you.
My favorite technique. It's the positive escalation when I call a place and people always give the gatekeeper a bad rap. But these are the individuals that the CEO and the owners love the most and they're the first impression and the strongest warrior of the tribe. They're the first one there, representing them in the best light. And so, for me, I'd like to understand their protocol. I like to properly introduce myself and say the name of their company and ask how their company is doing sometimes better than they do just to at least give them a taste of how I speak instead of just immediately asking to speak to you Steve.
And then if this individual decides to transfer me the first thing, I'm going to let them know prior to the transfers that they did an excellent job. And I will be mentioning that verbally to the owner of the company and at the conclusion of the call with the owner of the company, I will also mention that in writing. So, if I happen to call your company back, the Richard Circle's complete because this individual remembers me, and I've heard dozens and dozens of times. I thank you and saying I've been here for a decade and you're the first person that wrote about me to Mr. jones.
And these are individuals that will tell you anniversaries and promotions or no Steve’s direct extensions. 1 25 calms on Thursdays at two. Thank you, Catherine. I appreciate it and I love them to death. Those are the greatest insiders. It's a plethora of information and the moment that you start bullying your way in there or pretending they're waiting for your call or your insistent. That's why they're there to hang up on you. But there's a certain way to be not clever, but you have 30 seconds to make a first impression.
Half of that is your speech her speech and give a couple of seconds of silence. So, you really got about 12 seconds to speak. That's not a lot. My suggestion is to say things that they're most familiar with which is the name of their company and their own name and then you got to do your own name as well because you can't be anonymous. The whole call that's shady. You can use a little bit of that in the beginning by just doing a name spike in a proper introduction and if you get the past to pitch, you have the momentum and then you do once again that sort of escalation.
It It seems to work for me because it separates you from hundreds if not thousands of people that are prospecting that business interesting back to the contact center for a second. You talked about have your agents take 95 calls instead of 100 but most of the contact centers that I've dealt with over the past 20 plus years. They're driven by their average handle time. They're driven by the numbers to some degree. They're even told when they're going to the bathroom. How do you resolve that to a contact center manager that is just driving everything by the numbers.
So, you're an intake coordinator for a law firm for lawsuits against firings or disabilities and somebody calls in and they happen to become emotional for a minute. What are you going to do Steve look at the clock and say Mrs. jones. Please hurry up. I only have two more minutes to talk to you. You know what would happen? It wouldn't be for the client or for me, the agent might resign on something like that. So as much as we want to stick to certain metrics, you're talking about an artist of speech.
Somebody that is in the moment that's in the now that wants to assist this individual the best way that they can and by limiting their ability to build that sort of rapport or to allow someone to get it out. Which could be the key to closing the deal or to Upsell for something or to get that referral. I don't do things like that. Now we're not doing extreme where someone's doing 50 calls a day instead of 100. But you can see there's an average but that's what it's called an average and if you say you just want to look at conversion ratios.
Look at that too. But everyone once again is an artist and they have their own special sauce and some people are graded intros, other bodies, other conclusions. But my goodness gracious is somebody is in the moment and they're connecting with someone and they're standing up instead of sitting down and you could tell they have the glaze where they're not staring at anyone. They're just thinking of the client, and everyone can see them doing this. You don't think that that energy spreads on the floor. You don't think that that's important as well.
That sort of synergy. So, these rigid centers that judge you on your bathroom breaks and your handling time you're going to break the agent. I mean you can do that and grind it out, but you might have an attrition rate. But if I give somebody the ability to expand on a call and to be themselves my friends. So, they're not just plastic and going through the motions then I can create an ace, I can create a leader. I can create someone that will come to me at the conclusion of the call and say you know, Mrs. jones started crying.
I go she alright, She goes, yeah, it took a couple more minutes but I connected her through to the counselor and I gave additional notes because we had to speak about her husband just passing away and the fact that she has to move and other things that would have never been qualifying the call because you're supposed to be asking her just certain questions but know this individual added additional things and then they say, thank you for listening. You're the different company than the ones before that. Just put me through the assembly line and you know that it's the mom and pop.
It's the bed and breakfast. You'd rather go to the small hardware store sometimes because you know the man, I'll drive an extra couple of miles from my favorite restaurant Steve. That's the sort of the science that you're talking about. It's amazingly simple. It's how you feel and how you were treated. What about the price? What about the price? Sometimes it's worth the money. It's not always about saving a dollar. It's about supporting your business or if I'm having a day with some blues, you come over to me and just let me know you're happy that I'm there and you sit with me for a second.
So, as we get older, my friend, those are the sort of relationships that we see at businesses and you, and I understand that the grind and we also understand when your favorite client walks through the door. So, I like to pay that forward the best that I can. Absolutely. So, I went down that path and I think your answer and your philosophy is brilliant. Unfortunately. I mean it's the way I believe too that the contact center folks in an organization should be revered because they are your front line.
They hold things together. They are the impetus for the referral the up sell the further sell the expansion all those things. Yet still in today's world, C E O s don't always think that way. They look at a contact center as a cost center rather than the proper way of looking at it as it's an expansion center. It's a focus group. It's the lifeblood of the company because those folks have the most contact with our customers post sale, they become the hub of the post-sale journey and unfortunately maybe it'll take another generation before enough sea level folks understand that.
So that brings me more to the conversation of culture. How do we develop a culture in our contact centers especially and I know this can spill out into the rest of the business, but how can we develop a culture that rewards and reveres the contact center agents as being the customer success vehicle, the people that help our customers become more successful using our products and our services. You must look at it Two ways. If you yourself are not centered in balance, it would be exceedingly difficult to expand and to think of others.
I can't hit the ball and drag johnny as much as my agents here have become bilingual, which shows structure and dedication over years outside the classroom. I expect them to do the same thing if they're thinking about being a telemarketer as a profession besides the eight hours that they put in here, they should be doing dedicated practice outside of the center, reading in English watching certain movies or speeches so they can take certain parts of rhetoric that inspired them. That they saw transitional sentences or effective. You could do case studies in history and find out certain speeches that moved people.
And then secondly, I mentioned the word synergy. These individuals were a very social environment. If you and I are working out at the gym Steve, we're going to be pumping each other up to put up three or four more on the bar and put more plates up. So, I expect the audience, the agents to feed off their energy and to share ideas and to pick someone up when they're feeling down. As I mentioned, I created a Gamification culture. So, I have a place where people can let off steam, recharge batteries hang out with me and meet people from other departments.
So that assists me in one way. But also, since once again English is their second language. The fact that they are getting a return on investment. I see that these agents are much more focused for intense periods of time because of the translation. So, it's less area for distraction. But here's the best part my man regarding my culture when I first came down here 27 years old, I didn't start sea level of my friends call center. I taught English decided to stay and then worked at the center and so I was with the proletariat for four years, I went through so many departments.
I saw the good and the bad and what it did for me was it enabled me to see areas to enhance it for the agent and for the client to give them their dignity, so they don't feel like robots are expendable. And when I had the opportunity to start this business, they couldn't fool me because I was on the phone, I've done this before and I hate to say it, I'm not bragging but I am the sin save my dojo in this industry where people burn out and they look down upon it, I thrived really excelled.
But I saw the art in it. Look at it like this, you're very selective of the campaigns that come in here, we're in a strict catholic country. They must go home and tell their parents what they do. If I brought in something gray area or shady, no one would take it. So I'd have no friends of my chuck e cheese birthday party and so you have to do an account to not only where the client feels okay offering it, but the Asian would feel comfortable making the calls because if it's a forced fit, if it's out of place and out of character, they're not going to last long, they're not going to sound natural and we're not giving anything real specific here.
But as I say, I must ensure that what I'm bringing into this call center something where I'm able to fulfill the needs. Now I can add scripts and suggestions, but initially it must be something that just does not compromise any sort of ethics interesting. Well, let's cover a little bit more because I'm fascinated by not only the culture, but the organization that you've built to help organizations that want to outsource their contact center. So, we could talk a little bit about your training, you're coaching your mentoring methods and then what does the knowledge base look like for your agents to always do a better job?
Because quite frankly, I mean you're going to do as good or better a job than the company you're representing because you're going to keep the account and you're going to keep them happy and keep them over the course of a lifetime. So how do you train differently? How do you coach and mentor folks and keep them so that you don't have the attrition level that a lot of places have today. That's a wonderful question real fast in regards to attrition, I have more of a natural attrition than a forced attrition because companies such as amazon hp intel and oracle and Sykes are here, so I'll lose somebody for a scheduling conflict for the university of boyfriend or girlfriend works there closer to their home, very rarely, if not never someone will say that I insulted them, yelled at them, gave them the walk of shame.
It's just maybe an ex-employee with some sour grapes. I treat everybody with dignity, and I look for ways to delegate and promote them, but initially it's really the psychology prior to any sort of skill set. So, fear is a morbid anticipation of things that haven't happened yet. The fact that they learned a second language is 10 times harder than any campaign. I'll put them on. I also believe in the right bus, right seat philosophy. And so, when they come into the call center besides starting their day playing pinball to make friends and relax a little bit.
We really do focus on quality assurance so we can grade their calls for certain metrics. But I try to do certain breakthroughs like when they're filling out their resumes with me and putting in all their credentials, I'll ask them to turn the page over Steve and give me a couple of paragraphs of a coming of age moment, let me know when you beat up a bully or save the kitten from a tree. And so, I could use this when they're having a rainy Wednesday to remind them of when they were a champion.
These are things they always have in them. It's just a matter of getting it out and keeping it consistent and so let's just say in the first day of class, it's especially important not just to lecture them when they just nodded you and walk out the door. You need to have checkpoints; you need to have interaction. You can go over a certain segment and then just maybe have somebody stand up in front of class and read the next paragraph. Why? Because you're triple gunning. They're reading out loud their public speaking, they're doing it in front of the boss.
Imagine those sorts of butterflies you would have, but if you could triple or quadruple your training daily where then you go upstairs, you record yourself reading the script, where you're practicing it. You're not just reading it, you're speaking into a recording device, then you're listening to it and then you're doing a self-analysis for self-adjustments over the things we spoke about. You'll know when you're pausing is off or when you're too loud or too best. Are you stuttered or mispronounced a word and I'm allowing you Steve to write it out phonetically, at least learn how to spell it.
But the vowels are sometimes tricky for Latinos, so it's okay to be able to switch things around so it's pronounced a certain way, and these are the sort of adjustments, minor adjustments that we make for somebody to feel more comfortable initially. So, they don't pick up unhealthy habits and kind of like bedside manner. I can't stress enough; the name drops and the act of listening and the confirmations because people feel much more comfortable when they're being listened to, and you are taking your meeting minutes and if we need to repeat something in the military alphabet.
A it shows that you're extremely involved and engaged in the conversation. A lot of the times people served in the military, so they think that's cool and you're not just making up words and going along. These people know that you are actively trying to spell their name, their email address correctly. And so, I've seen the tens of thousands of phone calls. That that's the most effective way of not to offend somebody when you can't hear them well or they have an exotic name or if it's something where you just say, yeah, okay, but the next thing, you know, your email bounces back.
It would have been better off to confirm if it's L for lima, you know, and just to make sure that you got it. And as I say, these are the sort of things like in school, you come to class, you do your homework and you do your quizzes, you can still not do so well on the final exam, but you're going to pass the class, you will be preparing yourself and marinating and softening up the call in the relationship in order to convert it. And sometimes my friends, it happens a second or third time don't expect a cold call close.
I tell my clients to put their checkbook away. A lot of the times, I just want to answer their questions and show credentials and reintroduce them to other people on the floor that they can meet and make a better decision. So don't feel rushed. People will see that, and they will be apprehensive to move forward with you. So let it happen at a natural pace. So, you said something about you QC. All the calls and I think I remember you were talking about your Hall of Fame, you know, the best and the worst calls.
I mean is that used as a training method for everyone to understand both the good and the bad types of calls. Absolutely. Remember you were mentioning earlier about people calling in the first round of calls coming where people are upset if they can ride that wave and they see the bark is, there's no bite. It's just barking and that we calmed mars jones down. We listened to Mrs. jones, we separated piles, we were able to move forward. The call didn't take that long because we didn't have to repeat things because we were confirming things.
We eliminated rabbit holes. We did the mirror imaging. We did the phonetics; we did the drops. It's beautiful. Now you have this toolbox. It's not a to Z. There are steps that can be skipped or moved back to how about we look at it like this? I loved romantic tragedy. So, I consider that a hang up call is a romantic death. Where am I going with this? Let's just say you're just hardcore carpet bombing, making outbound calls and no matter what you say, you're calling a place that she says, don't call again or not interested or we're good.
Thanks, and hang up. I always look at it like this. If you can do a company named spike and do a name, drop of the individual before they hang up on you. I think that's a beautiful death. I think at least poor lome knows you got something out of that call. But then they wouldn't be surprised that you could anchor yourself by just getting them out of that trance by saying their name in that 1st 30 seconds. I've had Times where we bought another minute, bought another three minutes and just by default, nothing on our own.
We couldn't move forward. I'll give you an example. People can call me, and we could be on the phone and 99% were ready to sign the contract. But then they ask if we do Chinese, I don't have Chinese agents, I don't do graveyard shift and I can't match offshore prices India and the Philippines. So just by that alone, I'm not able to move forward, but 99% fit. So how do I feel about that? A little disappointed. But then again, I was able to go 15 rounds lost on the decision, but I was still able to make my points listen to their points build rapport, have some labs introduce, fantasize good call.
So, another couple of questions, what type of companies or what type of industries do you guys mostly handle calls for inbound or apa? Well, I'll let you know five. We don't do, we don't do sports books, casino stocks, pharmacies or sweepstakes. I have nothing against it. Just don't want to do it. But I'm looking for small to medium sized companies in the United States, Canada Central America and Europe that would need individuals to make outbound lead generation, appointment setting or inbound customer support. And it's amazingly simple.
Our agents are college educated; they're dedicated. I don't have a blended or mixed center. They only work for your campaign, and they have some amazing skill sets here. Costa Rica really packs a punch regarding business process outsourcing. I have mentioned some of the big boys, but there are tons of call centers here and since we're the only democratic society in central America, they don't have a standing army. So, there's a 95% literacy rate Steve so as much as people might see telemarketing call centers as transitional sort of jobs or something in the United States, as you say, has a certain rap here.
It pays more than most vocation. So, I'm having some extremely educated bilingual people with degrees walking in this door and working with me. So, it's amazing the sort of people that you meet here. Very eclectic, all diverse types. That's great. So, if a company called and says, okay, we want to get started, what is that initial onboarding looks like time wise especially and system wise and how quickly can you be up and running to take their calls? Great. Well let's just say I accept the vertical and I'm comfortable with that.
There's a pre-launch checklist that my floor manager and chief technical officer sent to that company. It's exceedingly difficult for me to start moving forward without stations being set up connections, made scripts for bottles, reporting and contact because once the ads go out and people come in, it's really a seller's market. I got to be able to explain it to their candidates a, the campaign that they're doing the incentives that they have and the metrics that they're expecting. It just can't be fantasy time. It needs to be something that's concrete.
And so, once we bring the people in, it really all depends on the training time. I've had people go as low as a half a day just to teacher CRM and do a little bit of role play for fun and others do longer training sessions, even up to a month. That concerns me because we do follow all Costa Rican labor laws and there are certain call centers that are known for like for an example, sykes has the MetLife account and supposedly people will be there for an entire month training and then on their first day of coming back to work, they just don't show up.
And by Costa Rican labor law, they need to get paid for that month they go on a certain list as being a jumper and it's not fair, but that's the name of the game. So, the longer the training, the more I'm concerned because people sometimes can take advantage of that and just use that as a placeholder until they can find another job. So, if we have certain awfully specific checkpoints to ensure that this agent really has done their due diligence, really engage really up to speed.
That's a good risk compared to just doing five days’ worth of classroom, talking about merchant process outsourcing and stuff like that. It needs to be awfully specific, and I have to ensure that this client that I'm speaking with does have a track record. If it's a brand-new pilot project, then we need to invest in the process and there shouldn't be any surprises and I must let them know what to expect when building a campaign, there may be attrition. We may need to readjust the script, call certain area codes, or do certain things.
But I guess the most important thing about it is being forthright, when it comes to onboarding people, I can easily have somebody in five business days, depending if you need 10 people give me up to 10 business days, you know, and maybe we can hire people piecemeal, we can catch them when certain campaigns and other centers and as I mentioned, it's very competitive out there. The more that you put out the start date, the more that you're going to lose people because they need a job between those times and now since Covid came, it really adjusted to the work from home.
So there is an advantage of the brick and mortar because of internet redundancy, my generator and on site I. T. Support but Steve, I was exceptionally fortunate during Covid to be able to adjust my business model virtually because if I owned a brick and mortar only like a bike shop or a pizza parlor, I'm in big trouble as much as I lost a lot of the essence of the center and the camaraderie? I was able to survive. But you know, the labor pools changed. I must ensure if there is training, they should be on site to know the company culture and at least meet us before going home.
It's one of those things my friend where I really did see a huge shift that when I first started this back in 2000, that's great. Well, in the last few minutes that we've got, you know, I'd ask you whether we could give our listeners an exercise. We talked about the two-paragraph coming of age. Can you explain an exercise that folks can do as homework after they listen to this episode. And that might be interesting for them to learn more about the content that we gave them here today and then when we come back maybe you can give folks a way of getting in touch with you guys if that's something that they're looking for.
Thanks Steve, I appreciate it. Let people do the Triple watch. They should watch something without sound, they should watch something without sight. And if you want to study the visual body language, that's great. Just watch something without sound. You can assume what they're doing and then if you want to study the phonetics, to choose a channel that you don't understand the language. Like for me it would have to be Chinese or German or something like that. Italian French and Portuguese are too like Spanish for me.
But if I watch the Chinese channel, it's extremely easy for me to do that phonetic micro expression reading because I don't understand any semantic. So even I'm taking out the tone, I'm just studying their rate in their pit. Do not get study it that way while you're on the phone, once again these are things that you can do. You just draw your xy chart the horizontal line and every 30 seconds to two minutes point to how Mr. Jones's speaking just for practice, but it is about practice. It's about dedicated practice.
Record yourself, listen to yourself. I don't like how I sound. That's what everybody says. But guess what you that's what you got. So, you need to adjust it and as you and I have a mirror and our beards look great because we do look great. You could do the same thing with your voice as well. Record it, master it adjusted. And if you do that, you'll see that you'll get more positive reinforcement from people. There will be more I guess inclined to ask you for advice because you were sympathetic about it and the way you spoke about it and finally if you are in a certain situation where there's emotion and its tense, you should choose to speak last.
And if it's not something where you need to immediately give an answer then you should sleep on it so you can decompress and come back the next day a little more levelheaded and prioritize and that's an excellent way to grow and to crack some codes and to get to various levels. You don't always need to prove your point at that moment. There are other ways to do it. So, you don't overreact overextend and say something you regret. So, it's not like you're being weak. No, you're being considerate of it and you're being tactful about it.
If you're in the moment and its face to face with somebody if you must, even though it looks funny, you should close your eyes when speaking. So, there's less distraction and you're not energy being sucked from you. They might say why you close your eyes. I'm allowed. There's no rules to this. It's not tag you're asking me something emotional, so allow me my focus and my balance and if somebody is being aggressive with you, I think you should look in between their eyes, it looks like you're looking in their eyes.
So it's not like you're looking away or allowing them to suck the energy out of you, like Medusa, but it is a certain technique sir where instead of losing your direction and your energy and your breathing, you can regroup yourself and these are the sort of conflict management skills that have assisted me and having more productive conversations when they could have really gotten out of hand. That's great. I mean this has been filled, filled with great techniques, tips and insight as well. Thank you for being so generous with your expertise.
This has really been a wonderful episode, Richard. How can people get in touch with you if they're thinking about outsourcing if they're thinking about needing a contact center because I think by the end of this, they understand what you bring to the table. So how can they get in touch with you? I really appreciate having me on the show today with you, your audience and allowing me to share this information. The first thing they should do, my friend is by a first-class plane ticket. Come down here to Costa Rica so you can enjoy some eco-tourism, go to some beaches and waterfalls but your audience can give me a call at triple 82716750.
Or send me an email. CEO Costa Rica’s call center dot com. And finally have an exceptionally large Facebook fan page about 98,000 local Costa Rican Ticos. And they can't wait to meet you, Steve. You're going to have tens of thousands of new fans in central America. I can't wait. Well, Richard, thanks again for joining us today. I really love the thing that you said earlier and I'm going to add something to it. So, each agent is a voice artist, and this is a message to all the C E. O. S out there that have contact centers and folks that have agents working for them that each agent is a voice artist and I think you should let them create a great interaction.
So let them create, let them build those great interactions. So that's it for our episode of the Science of C. X. I'm Steve Pappas, your host. We've had Richard blank on today from Costa Rica call center and I want to thank you all for joining us. If you like the content that we bring to you, please feel free to drop us a review wherever you get your podcasts and until we meet again, please stay safe. Stay healthy and do take care everyone. Bye bye. You've been listening to the science of C. X. My name is Steve Pappas.
I really hope you've enjoyed this episode and if you have the highest compliment that you can give us is to subscribe rate and review the science of C. X. Thanks. And we'll see you in the next episode. Finding one place to see all customer experience related tools of technology has been difficult until now. We just built it. Get ready for a science of C. X. Original customer experience technology has been helping to drive businesses by giving them insights into better methods to engage and delight their customers for some time now.
But if you're looking for C. X. Tech you must search everywhere to understand the whole landscape. C. X stash is your simple why stop directory of all the Great Sea X related technology you need. It breaks down all C. X by collections like analytics, crm, journey mapping, voice of the customer, you ex customer support and more. It's free to create an account and use no advertising. Cluttering up your experience just one place to find all the great C. X. Tech. Sign up today at www.
Richard’s vision quest journey is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. In addition, inducted into the 2023 Hall of Fame for Business. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
#RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Leadgeneration #Appointmentsetting #SacrificetoSuccess #Scienceofcx
Science of CX, The Forgotten Art Project, Richard Blank,Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing, BPO, Nearshore, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, Business,Podcast,Gamification,Leadership,Marketing, Radio, Guest, Money, education, trainer,
https://youtu.be/RJnuK2lPYFc?si=yrsPGin8LM1sXy5F
https://youtu.be/AOPI8wCqX-0
The 1st episode aims to simplify the concept of Cyber सुरक्षा, covering the basics of Cyberspace, Cybersecurity, key definitions, and terminologies. Through this episode, our four Agents of Change talk about what cyberspace is. What are the challenges associated with it? And how does cyberspace impact everyone, particularly vulnerable groups?
Dive into this video to discover how our generative AI platform is revolutionizing the telecom industry, supporting customer service agents, and enhancing user experience. Witness the power of the SmartTel (fictitious telecom) Agent Assist Bot in providing real-time data, automating tasks, upselling guidance, and so much more. From streamlining ticket classification to offering real-time sentiment analysis, TelcoBot.ai ensures unparalleled support for telecom operators. Also, guaranteeing no query is too complex and no concern goes unaddressed.
Learn more about Alepo TelcoBot.ai at https://bit.ly/3EsugNy to explore how easy it is to craft the perfect AI assistant and elevate your telecom service game.
Alepo TelcoBot.ai - Where technology meets excellence in customer service.
Innovation in compliance brings you interviews with industry leading experts who are changing the way practitioners approach compliance. Host Tom Fox, the Compliance Evangelist and Voice of Compliance is driving the conversation about compliance into the 2020s and beyond with his focus on innovations for the compliance practitioner and the compliance profession. If you want to learn how to bring business solutions to compliance problems to more fully operationalize compliance, this is the podcast for you.
The Compliance Podcast Network is the only channel dedicated to all forms of anti-corruption, anti-money-laundering and export control compliance.
In this episode, I visit with Richard Blank, founder and CEO of Costa Roca Call Center on how he learned the business from the ground up, soft communication skills, effective, engaged training and the value of a VA.
Richard Blank is the founder, CEO, and head bilingual trainer at Costa Rica’s Call Center, a business process outsourcing (BPO) telemarketing company. They offer outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions of the highest quality. Tom Fox welcomes him to this week’s show to talk about Costa Rica’s Call Center, how they help their clients, why he opened a call center in Costa Rica, and how to lead a successful call center in a foreign country.
The Core of Costa Rica’s Call Center
Tom asks Richard why he decided to open a call center in Costa Rica and how the term “Learning through the Proletariat” influenced his business model. Richard explains that as a CEO who works among people, you learn the importance of training and keeping your employees and customers. “One thing that I heard most sitting amongst people that are in a call center industry is that they feel expendable,” he tells Tom. To counteract this, he invests in his employees' careers by promoting them and teaching them English so that they have pride and security in their job. Additionally, he has several retro arcade game machines that allow the employees to meet colleagues from other departments, and to relax, “or even hang out with el jefe”. He explains that this creates a safe, enjoyable workplace culture and an atmosphere of trust and institutional fairness.
BPO Telemarketing Outsource Company
Tom asks Richard to define a BPO telemarketing outsourcing company. BPO stands for business process outsourcing, and it is done in several parts of the world, including the Philippines where it is known as offshore. However, since Costa Rica is so close to the United States, it is considered a near-shore outsourcing company. “[That] could be either a blended or mixed center where they work on multiple accounts; usually it’s for overflowing and answering service,” he explains. Every one of Costa Rica’s Call Center’s agents is assigned to and works specifically for a client. He explains why having a brick-and-mortar call center is more beneficial for them versus being completely remote: problems like Internet redundancy and electricity failure plague remote workers, while at the in-person center, there are multiple tools and resources to hedge technical difficulties.
Nearshoring and Outsourcing
Tom asks why Richard chose Costa Rica for a BPO center and what’s the difference in having a company in essentially the same time zone as the US. Richard describes Costa Rica’s ideal location, and that it’s a democratic society with no standing army. In addition, the country’s literacy rate is 95%, and it has the best infrastructure in Central America. They also have highly skilled and experienced workers, some of whom have lived in the US and have dual citizenship. Furthermore, clients like the fact that agents are attuned to the North American market. It is also a safe place to visit for tourism.
The Innovation in Compliance Podcast Network Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica as an expat. Topics discussed with Richard: advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, pinball machines, employee motivation, phonetic micro expression reading.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture. Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. In addition, inducted into the 2023 Hall of Fame for Business. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
#RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Leadgeneration #Appointmentsetting #innovationincompliancepodcast
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What's one final tip you could give to a leader or a manager? Stand Out Get Noticed podcast (The C Method Episode 283) guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center.
Love it.
Christina Canters: Um, Richard, I, I know that we're, we are running out of time somewhat, which, and I know you said at the start of this conversation, we could talk all day, but we actually don't have all day. I know. , we don't have all night. I know it's nighttime where you are. Um, Couple fi. Final last question. Final two questions, Richard.
Sure. What's one final tip you could give to a leader or a manager? Someone who has a team who would like to, you know, do more of what you've just talked about, you know, have, have that, that great camaraderie and have the trust and respect of their team and have, have their team just love being at work.
What, what final tip would you have for.
Richard Blank: These amazing individuals that rose to those possession positions, they earned it, but they also can't forget where they came from. So people need me time. They need to walk away. I I, I'm not sure of your outside activities, but I myself, I, I like working out in the gym.
I wash my convertible on Sundays. We did speak about pinball marathons, and these are the sort of Richard Times where I put my phone away, I can decompress. I'm not really into Eastern meditation, but I have my other areas in which I can tap into my consciousness, and so it will allow me to, and we mentioned this earlier about luxury of time.
If people are running groups and they can think about things, they might have overextended themselves in one meeting, they might have not said enough. Or maybe what they should do, once again, is to allow every individual. To give every single opinion out there and collectively through synergy, you can bring that group together.
And so your ego is fine and you don't want people to fear you, and you'll get the job done and your employees have the leverage. They can always quit. So I don't think cursing, yelling, and screaming does any. But I, I do believe that these individuals that work with you have families and children, and as long as you take that into consideration and you give them the benefit of the doubt, and I've even told agents to log off, go to the bathroom, throw some water in your face, and get back on that phones where somebody might need the unofficial timeout because they're having a moment.
And so you, you have to do that. If you think people are robots, they will leave. You don't need to go out drinking with them. That's their private time. And some people don't even like to drink and don't think pizza parties solve things either. It's gotta be the time that they don't expect the flowers.
And sometimes they even claim that the greatest gifts are not store bought cards, but the ones that you personally write. And how, how about this? I'm not gonna say, Christina, you're doing a great job. You're my favorite. High five. You now, last Tuesday when you got on the phone with Mrs. Jones, I had listened to that 33 minute conversation.
Wow. I cannot believe you confirmed her email. Four. Dog was barking in the background. You put the dog away, you asked about the dog. Everyone's laughing. The client loved you, and then you're saying to yourself, my God, you actually listened to me for 33 minutes. And I'd say, Christina, of course I did, because if you were in my shoes, you would've done the same.
And so when you look at me, you go, you know, I'm not going anywhere. This guy's great. Forget the pizza party. This guy actually listened to me for 33 minutes and really picked apart my call. So your your amazing end Dear Supervisors and managers, show some authenticity. Just don't say good job champ and call 'em Chief and Ace.
Really let 'em know. Really let 'em know what they did and try to assist them in every way that you have to get them to different levels. And if you feel insecure that they're gonna take your job and your position, then you're not doing a good enough job. All is fair in love and. If you earned it, somebody else could too.
And so just be the best you can be and try to bring other people up because who's to say that you're not gonna get promoted? And then these people are gonna work with you. And so, um, don't be selfish. Everybody deserves their chance. And if you're number one, then you get that position. If that. And look how hard you and I work.
You make it look easy. This sea method. Look at this. They should only know what you're doing behind the scenes. . And so I, I think if people are willing to take that sort of responsibility and the golden ring could be theirs,
Christina Canters: love it. Love those final words. Richard. Um, look, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us on the show.
I'm, I'm, I'm gonna have to listen back to this conversation and take notes and unpack everything that you shared cuz there was a lot in there. If people want to reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about you, Richard, uh, where can they find you?
Richard Blank: Well, they can buy a first class plane ticket and come visit me here, which would be wonderful.
I'm all over the internet with my websites and, but I also have a Facebook fan page of about 103,000 people, and so when this goes live, you're gonna have a lot of new fans and it will also give your audience a chance to see the business process outsourcing. In Central America, just real quick. We're north of Panama, south of Nicaragua.
We're the only democratic society in Central America. There's no standing arm in Christina, so there's a 95% literacy rate. We have the best infrastructure. They claim that Costa Rica has the most neutral English accent. We're known for medical tourism and especially ecotourism. So if you like surfing, which I know Australia does, we have waterfalls and monkeys and iguanas and butterflies, and it's just a wonderful place to visit.
I'm here, your friend, I got a thousand suggestions for you and your audience. And uh, Christina, I really can't thank you enough. I thorough. Enjoyed our time this evening.
Christina Canters: Oh, Costa Rica sounds absolutely wonderful, Richard. It's gonna have to go on my list now of places to visit. Sounds wonderful. Um, thank you so much again.
It's been such a,
Influence People Over The Phone With These Powerful Communication Techniques – with Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center [The C Method podcast Episode 283]
The C Method podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Christina Canters discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation, phonetic micro expression reading and INXS.
The C Method provides public speaking and communication skills training for high performing professionals.As a manager and leader, your ability to speak up, present with confidence and communicate well is key to career success.You may be highly skilled, intelligent and work harder than anyone, but if you can’t articulate your ideas clearly, engage your team or influence others to take action, it will hold you back from getting the promotions, opportunities, and recognition you deserve. Listen to the 'Stand Out Get Noticed' podcast. Now at 2 million+ downloads! Discover how to develop a success mindset, speak with confidence, articulate yourself clearly and build strong relationships for more influence and impact in the workplace. Topics include: public speaking, mindset, social skills, overcoming fear, workplace communication, relationships and leadership.
Have you ever wanted to have more influence over the phone?
My guest this week is Richard Blank, CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Centre. He is a master of the cold call, and has trained over 10,000 telemarketers to improve their communication techniques over the phone.Richard is here to share his powerful techniques for improving your ability to lead and influence in conversation – and some of them are much simpler than you think!This will benefit you if you want to build better relationships and be more persuasive with your team, senior managers and clients.
“I love to allow people to feel more comfortable with me, to become more engaged in a conversation. This is not a lecture, and I’m not just checking off boxes and interrogating you. It’s a conversation. And it’s I mean, I don’t learn anything new when I speak. I love hearing what other people have to say to see what I have in common.”
This is Richard Blank’s story…
My name is Richard Blank and I’m the CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Center. I’m skilled in reading phonetic micro expressions and use this to my advantage when speaking with people, especially over the phone.
I’ve found that by using someone’s name, asking how their company is doing, and sharing interesting facts about myself, I’m able to build rapport and influence the person I’m speaking with. This has been beneficial in both my personal and professional life.
In this episode, you will discover:
Phonetics is the purest form of communication, the sound of speech, not the semantics or even the tone.
The tone of voice should always be positive and empathetic.
0 seconds to 2 minutes is the best time to gauge a person.
How to gauge someone. They discuss some of the techniques they use to do it.
Richard believes in open-ended questions and specific name drops.
He also believes in the art of speech and meeting minutes to avoid conflict.
Richard’s advice to people is to be authentic.
When he was in his 20s, he tried to change his personality for a job interview, but he realised it was not going to work for him. Now he allows people to grow naturally.
He believes that people that feel seen, they feel heard, and they feel like they matter through the way that they communicate with others.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://youtu.be/Wl_tS1ielGg
https://youtu.be/fE6Ufvn-1Nc
https://youtu.be/NWxjuBEkzMI
https://youtu.be/R2GTKLTPkiA
https://youtu.be/M-x7nAeWBxw
https://youtu.be/dQWPUr_rsII
https://youtu.be/XnFQgNqQ3iA
https://youtu.be/iPP49p8dagI
https://youtu.be/rOWVfIfV-U8
https://youtu.be/z1jowztV8EA
https://youtu.be/GXeM9dLxS6U
https://youtu.be/2ubPpIbOZdQ
https://youtu.be/aX85iiUrR88
https://thecmethod.com/podcast/standoutgetnoticed/influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-centre-episode-283/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0JaJIUI4BKQ7mhAmW4b8To?si=5cc254ba7af14830
https://player.fm/series/2694716/346501897
https://podtail.com/podcast/stand-out-get-noticed-by-the-c-method-business-com/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-pow/
https://www.stitcher.com/show/stand-out-get-noticed/episode/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank-208353649
https://podknife.com/episodes/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank
https://getpodcast.com/es/podcast/stand-out-get-noticed/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-_1ba52e93a1
https://podcasts.apple.com/pe/podcast/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these/id984946507?i=1000585579846
https://deezer.page.link/pPgVrtZwEi988y6H6
https://chartable.com/podcasts/stand-out-get-noticed-by-the-c-method-business-communication-skills-confidence-public-speaking/episodes/127787912-283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdWRpb2Jvb20uY29tL2NoYW5uZWxzLzQ0MjAzODAucnNz/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjbWV0aG9kLmNvbS8_cG9zdF90eXBlPXBvZGNhc3QmcD0yNTM5Mg?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjoi-a949v7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ
https://pdcstly.com/en/episod/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank/17826865
https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/984946507/stand-out-get-noticed/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank
A style that immediately anchors with the client 100%. Stand Out Get Noticed podcast (The C Method Episode 283) guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center.
Richard Blank: Because I'm letting you know that I'm vulnerable. I'm showing with you three or four things that I do it my call center by playing pinball with the agents by moving from Philadelphia to Costa Rica by once again talking about walkabouts and in excess and stuff. At least I'm showing some major interest.
And you're amazing country. Yeah. And so, um, these are the sort of soft skills that could be a me too technique that someone could. I, I chose three different things. Travel, music and games and business. And so one of 'em had to hit, I could talk about food if you want . You're not gonna do shrimps on the barbie.
Yeah, I could have done that one, but everyone does that one. But, um, yeah, and I, I, I try to be non-threatening. I don't do this on every call. I mean, once again, someone says, who are you? Well, that's when we used the buffer boomerang technique. Not saying Aaron's tone was negative. But sometimes they are. And so what I like to do is do the name draw, let 'em know it's an excellent question.
Repeat the question for active listening, and send it positive. And you know what my favorite part was before I was transferred to Christina? The fact that I was just about to get transferred. I stopped there and stop, stop, stop. And I'm getting transferred. I could have killed the call, but I said, stop. I gotta let you know.
That I'm gonna compliment you, . You
Christina Canters: gotta be feeling me. Oh, I love that. Yes, yes, of course you do. It's a positive
Richard Blank: escalation. Some people get paid on that at call centers and other companies, but it's really, so how about this one, Christina? Imagine if, if hypothetically, Aaron transferred me to the mail room.
And then I got transferred over into it, and then I got transferred over here and there. I write everybody's name down. So even though I spoke about Aaron, imagine if I mentioned two or three people. You'd be like, who are you? You got passed around. My company, no one speaks to Matt in the, in the mail room.
I go, he's like the nicest guy I ever met. Don't tell me that. That immediately anchors. With the client, hundred percent. It's yours. Hundred percent. It's yours to lose,
Christina Canters: and if the person doesn't say their name, I'm assuming you ask for their name.
Richard Blank: They don't need to. I just need to say my name. And I have to let them know and if I'm about to transfer them and they still don't wanna gimme the name, err.
Put out your nails. Well, good for you. Why don't you have a nice lunch? Relax a little bit. You should be a little sweeter on the phone. But let me put to you this way, you know perfectly wont. When I get transferred to you, I'm going to get their name cuz I'm gonna compliment Mr. Or Mrs. Bidder. And then when I call you company back, I'm be like, how you
Christina Canters: doing Buddy
And they're gonna be, how did you get my name? You know, I was gonna get your.
Richard Blank: You remember me, and then they love me to death. I, I, I get them. The shed is skin a little bit. Once someone gets complacent, especially is the first impression of a company that's terrible. They should be bells and whistles, trumpets, red carpets, guns a blazing.
And so maybe it's just to remind them that they need to sell that sizzle and to bring somebody in appropriate. So you can meet in the middle and start strong. That's, that's just my thought. Hm.
Influence People Over The Phone With These Powerful Communication Techniques – with Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center [The C Method podcast Episode 283]
The C Method podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center.
The C Method podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Christina Canters discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation, phonetic micro expression reading and INXS.
The C Method provides public speaking and communication skills training for high performing professionals.As a manager and leader, your ability to speak up, present with confidence and communicate well is key to career success.You may be highly skilled, intelligent and work harder than anyone, but if you can’t articulate your ideas clearly, engage your team or influence others to take action, it will hold you back from getting the promotions, opportunities, and recognition you deserve. Listen to the 'Stand Out Get Noticed' podcast. Now at 2 million+ downloads! Discover how to develop a success mindset, speak with confidence, articulate yourself clearly and build strong relationships for more influence and impact in the workplace. Topics include: public speaking, mindset, social skills, overcoming fear, workplace communication, relationships and leadership.
Have you ever wanted to have more influence over the phone?
My guest this week is Richard Blank, CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Centre. He is a master of the cold call, and has trained over 10,000 telemarketers to improve their communication techniques over the phone.Richard is here to share his powerful techniques for improving your ability to lead and influence in conversation – and some of them are much simpler than you think!This will benefit you if you want to build better relationships and be more persuasive with your team, senior managers and clients.
“I love to allow people to feel more comfortable with me, to become more engaged in a conversation. This is not a lecture, and I’m not just checking off boxes and interrogating you. It’s a conversation. And it’s I mean, I don’t learn anything new when I speak. I love hearing what other people have to say to see what I have in common.”
This is Richard Blank’s story…
My name is Richard Blank and I’m the CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Center. I’m skilled in reading phonetic micro expressions and use this to my advantage when speaking with people, especially over the phone.
I’ve found that by using someone’s name, asking how their company is doing, and sharing interesting facts about myself, I’m able to build rapport and influence the person I’m speaking with. This has been beneficial in both my personal and professional life.
In this episode, you will discover:
Phonetics is the purest form of communication, the sound of speech, not the semantics or even the tone.
The tone of voice should always be positive and empathetic.
0 seconds to 2 minutes is the best time to gauge a person.
How to gauge someone. They discuss some of the techniques they use to do it.
Richard believes in open-ended questions and specific name drops.
He also believes in the art of speech and meeting minutes to avoid conflict.
Richard’s advice to people is to be authentic.
When he was in his 20s, he tried to change his personality for a job interview, but he realised it was not going to work for him. Now he allows people to grow naturally.
He believes that people that feel seen, they feel heard, and they feel like they matter through the way that they communicate with others.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://youtu.be/Wl_tS1ielGg
https://youtu.be/fE6Ufvn-1Nc
https://youtu.be/NWxjuBEkzMI
https://youtu.be/R2GTKLTPkiA
https://youtu.be/M-x7nAeWBxw
https://youtu.be/dQWPUr_rsII
https://youtu.be/aX85iiUrR88
https://thecmethod.com/podcast/standoutgetnoticed/influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-centre-episode-283/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0JaJIUI4BKQ7mhAmW4b8To?si=5cc254ba7af14830
https://player.fm/series/2694716/346501897
https://podtail.com/podcast/stand-out-get-noticed-by-the-c-method-business-com/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-pow/
https://www.stitcher.com/show/stand-out-get-noticed/episode/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank-208353649
https://podknife.com/episodes/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank
https://getpodcast.com/es/podcast/stand-out-get-noticed/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-_1ba52e93a1
https://podcasts.apple.com/pe/podcast/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these/id984946507?i=1000585579846
https://deezer.page.link/pPgVrtZwEi988y6H6
https://chartable.com/podcasts/stand-out-get-noticed-by-the-c-method-business-communication-skills-confidence-public-speaking/episodes/127787912-283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdWRpb2Jvb20uY29tL2NoYW5uZWxzLzQ0MjAzODAucnNz/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjbWV0aG9kLmNvbS8_cG9zdF90eXBlPXBvZGNhc3QmcD0yNTM5Mg?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjoi-a949v7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ
https://pdcstly.com/en/episod/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank/17826865
https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/984946507/stand-out-get-noticed/283-influence-people-over-the-phone-with-these-powerful-communication-techniques-with-richard-blank
Davids & DeLaat are a real estate agents in St.Catharines. They offer a wide range of services to their clients, such as pre-approvals, mortgages, home inspections, and more. It is the oldest and largest real estate agency in the city. They have been operating for more than many years and have a team of experienced agents who are ready to help you find your dream home.
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My executive staff are not yes men. I don't need a Simpson's Show Smithers on my team. TrulyYourVA with Janis podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center.
Richard Blank: May be different from mine. And so as long as there's no surprises prior, and we can adjust that accordingly, it should flow exceptionally well.
Janis Melillo: Right. So the next question that I wanna ask you, obviously you know a lot about your business of course, but what sort of systems? For instance, like I love Trello.
Trello is my go-to organization thing. Devices or what type of applications do you use within your own business and why do you love them? Like why do you use them because you like them or because of their pro productivity or.
Richard Blank: Most of the time we're logging into the client CRM and their phone system.
But let, let me go back to something that's original pen and paper. I, my reliable system is if the lights go out and the internet goes down, my supervisors . I need to make sure that I have the right individuals that are with me, support me. They're not yes men. I don't need to Smithers. To say yes to everything I say.
I want someone that could be a devil's advocate or make suggestions. And so besides plugging and playing into my client's systems, what I have once again are individuals that rose the ranks, know my culture, earn their stripes, and are some of the best supervisors and directors in this country. And so these are the ones that are molding the newer agents and supporting the other agents to continue to perform.
Cause once again, your systems in place could be helpful, but if the agent is not competent, is not reliable, is not dedicated, your system's just gonna collect dust. And so once again, it's really about the individual that will be managing these systems that I have. But I always learn things that are seamless.
I like stuff that will reduce any sort of wrap up time. If somebody has dropdowns while we're on the phone or can do an easy transfer or there's information that can be, um, Shown to me prior to a call or during a call. That's helpful. A lot of my clients are creating lists, so we are sent to do some due diligence and research, which can slow us down, but then again, could also give us advantages if we find certain things on a LinkedIn or a company website.
So really, I, I kind of take it on a, on a vertical basis, but to me, if somebody is doing something manual, Compared to a predictive dialer, you can't expect me to do four times the amount of work. What can, I can have almost a hundred percent contact ratio on a predictive dialer, 1000 leads. So these are the sort of things, Janice, I almost have to, I have to explain from an educated point of view, the advantages and possibly disadvantages of the suggestions that they are making.
And it's nothing personal, but you can't expect me to do a certain amount of. When there's a certain amount of talk time and a wrap up time and you're using things manually. And so, um, once again, we have a lot of resources to offer, but most of the time the clients are buried at the ready.
Janis Melillo: Wow, that is amazing.
I have so enjoyed this conversation. How can people, um, our, my viewers and listeners,
TrulyYourVA with Janis podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Janis Melillo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
In a now all consuming digital world, Virtual Assistant's are in such high demand. From choosing which social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Clubhouse and many others; knowing how to hire a VA is just as important as to which social media outlet you should use. Did you know that hiring a VA will actually save you money? Janis Melillo is a Virtual Assistant, Business Coach, Ghostwriter, Author, Publisher, Speaker, Podcast Co-Host.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://youtu.be/kJus0bLJBCI
https://youtu.be/CeaeZlgcA_Q
https://youtu.be/WyBcKPONXhw
https://youtu.be/SeXAlO8kQR0
https://youtu.be/x9uYZb_c4VI
https://youtu.be/tGyk9vWbgUc
https://youtu.be/JonGMOF7xB4
https://youtu.be/RmvKuK4N-q4
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/trulyyourva-with-janis-4667344/episodes/this-is-not-your-usual-call-ce-143296088
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyv7cqXIykc
https://rumble.com/v1als7a-this-is-not-your-usual-call-center-ceo-richard-blanks-approach-to-business-.html
https://www.bitchute.com/video/fhZZj4h2ALw7/
https://anchor.fm/janis-melillo/episodes/This-Is-Not-Your-Usual-Call-Center---CEO-Richard-Blanks-Approach-to-Business---06-30-22-e1klioj
https://www.trulyyourvawithjanis.com/this-is-not-your-usual-call-center-ceo-richard-blanks-approach-to-business-063022/
https://fb.watch/gSeXAmSk5J/
I was still on my vision quest when I came to Costa Rica.TrulyYourVA with Janis podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center.
Richard Blank: And so I really take it from a case by case old school basis when I'm dealing with the people that work with me.
Janis Melillo: Wow, that is amazing. So you, you've, like you said, you've been there for 22 years. You, you decided, you know, to build your own company. What was that moment? Because I think so many people out there today, for instance, who, um, you know, were in the era where we work virtually.
I'm a virtual assistant, but for somebody who wants to start their own brick and mortar business, can you share some of. Challenges, but also the excitement that came along with.
Richard Blank: Absolutely. I was still on my vision quest when I came to Costa Rica looking for my walkabout and to shed some skin, and I will be forthright with you.
It did take into my mid thirties for impulse control maturity and have enough capital to start a business. Mm-hmm. and a lot of people may overextend themselves by taking out loans or mortgages or just trying to, uh, create a certain image of bells and whistles where, you know, they're not acting their wage, they're just giving an impression.
And so for me, I, I wanted to do it slow and. And as grandma said, if you can't pay for it in cash, you just don't do it. And so when I started my call center, I was working out of my home, but I was also renting an individual turnkey station from a blended center. So I didn't have privacy. I was just on an open floor plan and just renting seats per month and paying the taxes and making a margin.
And after a couple years, I saved enough capital and really knew the business to then rent. And purchase enough to build out 150 stations in a server room, and then after about six years, I had enough to be able to build a 300 seat station that I currently own and I'm at right now. So as much as I want to give the glamour to it and the fast track, a lot of the time a business is building on foundation and doubling down on yourself and saving money so you can weather certain storms and just be very conservative.
And I like it that way. In fact, I'm very selective of the campaigns that come in here because A, it's my reputation. And B, it's also seller's market. If the agent doesn't wanna do it, I. Fill seeds. So it's an extremely delicate balance, and the fact that I am hands. I like to walk the rows and break bread with the agents and to listen to them and coach them.
I, I think I gain a couple gold medals there because a lot of, I might be able to even break some stereotypes and misconceptions of what a business owner, a telemarketer, or even what a call center is. It's not like what you see in the movies. Wolf of Wall Street's amazing. Glen Gary, Glen Ross, and Boiler Room, but not every call center sells stock.
And that might not be the appropriate profile for truly your VA or for individuals that work with you, Jan. So these are the sort of things that we take into consideration when offering, um, our services to potential clients.
TrulyYourVA with Janis podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center.
TrulyYourVA with Janis podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Janis Melillo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
In a now all consuming digital world, Virtual Assistant's are in such high demand. From choosing which social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Clubhouse and many others; knowing how to hire a VA is just as important as to which social media outlet you should use. Did you know that hiring a VA will actually save you money? Janis Melillo is a Virtual Assistant, Business Coach, Ghostwriter, Author, Publisher, Speaker, Podcast Co-Host.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://youtu.be/kJus0bLJBCI
https://youtu.be/CeaeZlgcA_Q
https://youtu.be/WyBcKPONXhw
https://youtu.be/SeXAlO8kQR0
https://youtu.be/x9uYZb_c4VI
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/trulyyourva-with-janis-4667344/episodes/this-is-not-your-usual-call-ce-143296088
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyv7cqXIykc
https://rumble.com/v1als7a-this-is-not-your-usual-call-center-ceo-richard-blanks-approach-to-business-.html
https://www.bitchute.com/video/fhZZj4h2ALw7/
https://anchor.fm/janis-melillo/episodes/This-Is-Not-Your-Usual-Call-Center---CEO-Richard-Blanks-Approach-to-Business---06-30-22-e1klioj
https://www.trulyyourvawithjanis.com/this-is-not-your-usual-call-center-ceo-richard-blanks-approach-to-business-063022/
https://fb.watch/gSeXAmSk5J/
I love the fact that we start with dessert first. TrulyYourVA with Janis podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center.
Janis Melillo: Good afternoon everyone. I am so excited to be here today. My name is Janice, and I am the host of Truly Your VA with Janice. For those of you don't know, VA of course stands for Virtual Assistant, and I am also a podcast manager. Go figure today. I am so excited to have on my podcast. Mr. Richard Blank, welcome to the truly year BA with
Richard Blank: Janice.
Janice, I'm so happy to be here with you today and to share ideas with you and your amazing audience. Well,
Janis Melillo: wonderful. Thank you so much. So I have so many questions to ask you, and before we hopped on, you know, I did make reference to your boxes. And before we get into the, the business discussion, I understand that, uh, you have the largest collect.
Of American pinball machines in, um, I'm gonna pronounce this, rock out, juke boxes in Central America. Is that, is that
Richard Blank: so? I love the fact that we start with dessert first. Absolutely. . I am an avid collector of retro pinball machines, juke boxes. Arcade machine. So I've created a gamification culture so the agents can meet people from other departments, let off steam and hang out with their hefy in the game room, old school style.
Janis Melillo: Oh my God. I absolutely love that. So that leads me to the next question. Of course. Um, you have a business that is, I think so, is underrated in my opinion, because, Why don't you start us off before I just go any further on what led you to be where you are today? You're in Costa Rica, correct?
Richard Blank: That is correct.
In Central America. Been here for the last 22 years.
Janis Melillo: Wow, and your business
Richard Blank: is Costa Rica's Call center. We're a bilingual dedicated. Nearshore call center that deals with appointment setting, lead generation, and inbound support. And so our agents here are brilliant college educated. They're coming to the table once again with structure and discipline by speaking a second language.
Mm-hmm. . And by creating a certain sort of work culture where they're synergy and I look to promote people and we invest in them. Our attrition is very low and our production is extremely high.
Janis Melillo: Wow. So, You, you were, you've been in Costa Rica for 22 years. What led you to start this type of business?
Richard Blank: There's really no blueprint for it, and so when I was in high school in Northeast Philadelphia, I doubled down on my favorite class, which was Spanish. So when I graduated Abington in 91. , I went to the University of Arizona, was a Spanish communication major. Mm-hmm. , because at 18, what are you gonna choose unless you have a predestined career and you follow certain opinions where people raise you compared to you raising yourself.
Mm-hmm. , I had to understand that I needed to be marketable. And versatile. And if there was a way that I could separate myself from friends, by being able to translate and to speak, I might be able to have a different career path. And so at 27 I was given a one and a million opportunity. It was only supposed to be for two months, and I came down to my friend's call center to train and teach English, and I just fell in love with it so much.
I decided to put my stuff in storage in the United States and. You know, throw my hat in the ring and try a life here. And when you learn a business from the inside and out and you're with the people, the proletariat, you can really understand ways to enhance the experience. And so in my mid thirties, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and start my own company.
That
Janis Melillo: is just so amazing to me. Now internal. Interpersonal communications conflict, Like in reference to like management strategy? Yes. Must of, especially with training, how many people that you've trained, of course those skills must have been like second nature to you.
Richard Blank: Well, I believe in manners and you and I have spoken off the air multiple times.
I believe that we were raised in, in. Fashion's from our grandparents and parents. So I'm coming to the table with agents in a very strict Catholic country. So it's very family oriented, even multi-generational family. So people do live with others that influence them. And secondly, I believe in empathy and dignity.
As long as I don't treat somebody like a robot or a number, I properly prepare them and support them. Why shouldn't I get that sort of positive reinforcement where people would wanna continue to walk with? And to grow with me. And also there are things that do happen outside the office that may affect their work performance here.
So as long as we take people's personal situations into consideration, I think there's a better chance to find sort of resolutions. And also solidifying even a better relationship cuz we were able to get through certain challenges together. Right. And so I really take it from a case by case old school basis when I'm dealing with the people that work with me.
Janis Melillo: Wow, that is amazing. So you.
TrulyYourVA with Janis podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Janis Melillo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
In a now all consuming digital world, Virtual Assistant's are in such high demand. From choosing which social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Clubhouse and many others; knowing how to hire a VA is just as important as to which social media outlet you should use. Did you know that hiring a VA will actually save you money? Janis Melillo is a Virtual Assistant, Business Coach, Ghostwriter, Author, Publisher, Speaker, Podcast Co-Host.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/CeaeZlgcA_Q
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://youtu.be/kJus0bLJBCI
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/trulyyourva-with-janis-4667344/episodes/this-is-not-your-usual-call-ce-143296088
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyv7cqXIykc
https://rumble.com/v1als7a-this-is-not-your-usual-call-center-ceo-richard-blanks-approach-to-business-.html
https://www.bitchute.com/video/fhZZj4h2ALw7/
https://anchor.fm/janis-melillo/episodes/This-Is-Not-Your-Usual-Call-Center---CEO-Richard-Blanks-Approach-to-Business---06-30-22-e1klioj
https://www.trulyyourvawithjanis.com/this-is-not-your-usual-call-center-ceo-richard-blanks-approach-to-business-063022/
https://fb.watch/gSeXAmSk5J/
Louisiana Country Boy: Can you please if it's okay, and again, just tell the people about the other side of Richard I, not the personal side, not the business side of Richard, the business side of Richard. I mean, I mean, you ain't got to now. You ain't got to you. You know, you tell me. I, Well,
Richard Blank: it's my pleasure. I, you know, I'm a CEO of a, of a bilingual call center in Costa Rica.
These agents here make outbound appointment setting and lead generation. They also take inbound customer support and non-voice support. We do not call you at dinner cuz if I do, you're never gonna, you're never gonna talk to me again. And we're very selective of the campaigns that come in here cuz this is a very strict Catholic country.
I wanna make sure that the agents can go home and tell their parents what they do for a living. I prefer to bring in people that sometimes do not have call center experience because they could be bringing in bad habits or be a. I prefer somebody that is bilingual and has these skills where I can mold them.
It's very easy to teach 'em a CRM and and phone system, but you know, if they're coachable, if as you say, they have the grit and desire, it's my pleasure to find ways to delegate in order to promote them. It's very important for me as well to give positive reinforcement to the. I do it through quality assurance.
We listen to their recordings and I can grade them on certain metrics and I just don't grade on the simple stuff. You and I talk about bedside manner and certain soft skills diplomacy, since English is their second language. Donnie, I really focus on the FSOs so I can expand their vocabulary with similes.
So instead of saying words like help, they'll use assist guide or lend a hand, Little things like that. And let's say we're even making outbound prospecting. A lot of people are concerned about gatekeepers and filters. To me, I think they're the greatest people. We like to do positive escalations. So where if I speak to somebody and then I get transferred to you, I will say verbally how amazing this individual was.
And also do certain things in writing. If you get that at a call center, you can get money and prizes for it. That's how they get bonuses out. Wow. But if you call certain businesses, churches, schools, organizations, or even friends and family, And you mention others, you give the gift of a positive escalation.
They're gonna be happy that you call back. They'll give you information on how to close a deal or a company culture, right? And so instead of just going in there and trying to sell Donnie a 1995 book, it's very important for us to build rapport, to do a little bit more due diligence on your LinkedIn profile, on your podcast episodes, or your website.
So if I have to leave you a voice, or an email, I can custom make it. Mm. And that's only going to separate us from thousands of people that are knocking on your door trying to get sales. Now, not every time we make a call, we get a sale, right? But I increase our percentages by being on the phone longer, by asking more questions and knowing more people in your organization that I can refer to, that added momentum in my sales.
So it's not like what you see in the movie. We're not the Wolf of Wall Street, Glen Gary, Glen Ross Boer, and there are a lot of call centers that do that. I could personally do that if I wanted to, but I once again have chosen a certain environment where the profiled agent is something that not only the client could be comfortable with, but the agent would feel comfortable making those calls.
And so owning a company, if I try to force a fit, someone may not come back. They might. And you're only as good as the foundation that you have. That's it. And so it's, it's extremely important just to have that sort of sweet spot and balance for the client and for the agent. So it meshes in that it works because as I say before, if nobody shows up at your Chucky cheese birthday party, You have no friends,
Yeah. I'm just not gonna break you. So as a business owner, I'm constantly looking for ways for you to master levels and to crack some codes and to get better. But I, I, I just can't, You let you become complacent and, and, um, Monotonous and, and board on the phone where you just go through the motions.
That's, that's, as I say, you become plastic. Yes. Yes. And there's nothing that's, uh, raw about you anymore. And, and that's a shame when people get into that sort of trap.
Louisiana Country Boy: Most definitely. You know, and what I, what I hear originally I'll say this, is that you're not building a, a company. You have built a culture.
Mm-hmm. . Um, and that's, that's, you know, and that's a lot of people. It's, it's, that's how you can call it. , that, that's how people can say CC is home. It it because you built a culture. You, you, you. They're not just employees. They're not just people that work here. This is like a family and these are people that you know sometimes and, and I, you know, just doing what I do and learning that and, and working for others.
Some places you can work and it's just a job. Some places you can be and it's, and it's a home because you feel. Not excluded. Not like, Oh, well this is just a person over there that just does this over here. But they are, you look at them and everything that you've said and just talking to you. These are, these are what we forget to call people, humans.
I
Richard Blank: take stuff further. You remember our favorite class in school was recess. I have a gamification culture here. I collect pinball machines and juke boxes and Oh wow. machines. I have a neutral environment, Donny, where people can go down and meet agents from other departments, let off steam recharge batteries.
Hang out with me. Because if you're having a cigarette outside or on your phone on Instagram, you're by yourself. Right. But this is a very social environment and these games are older than they are . It's so important that they, That they have fun. Yes. And that there is a work life balance that's essential.
Louisiana Country Boy: Yeah. And that's great. That's great. Cause you know, and, and I know, fortunately for me, that makes you want to get up and go because you're looking, you're excited to get there. Like, man, I can't wait to get there. Um, I hear so today and, and, you know, in so many different places how people just be like, uh, gotta go.
Because it's, for me, when they say that, it's because of the culture. There hasn't been a, a, a positive culture. There's no positive. Feedback there. There's nothing positive and, and they're not a part of it. They're just an employee. When, when you change that whole scope around, oh man, you have you, you have done it, you, you have, you have put your hands on the crystal ball again.
You have made people understand like, we are in this, this ain't just me. You know what you just said. There's not a lot of places that genuine. I can go with the CEO and, and you know, he's right there and we can have a conversation. And it's not like, Oh dad, you know, what is
Richard Blank: work? Right? And a lot of the times, my friends, something outside of the office could be affecting their performance here.
They're not robots, they're not expendable numbers as you were talking earlier where people aren't even known at an office. And so, um, I have to take that into consideration because sometimes people have moments. Yes, but my favorite is when they bring their family along, a wife or a husband or their mother or father.
And I'll go downstairs and they have to pull me away cuz I'm gonna be telling them for 10 minutes how amazing their son is. And that's just a gift that keeps on giving. And I'm not just saying he's great. I'll give five examples cuz I care. Right? I know about phone calls. He makes a two year anniversary, what he did last week.
I pay attention to these small things because they claim that I, that people don. , but you and I notice these little details
Louisiana Country Boy: Yes. That, that make a difference. And that's, I'm telling you that is if, if, if, if there's any business owners out there that might not hear what we are talking about mm-hmm. , if you want to retain and grow, if you, I'm gonna say it again.
If you want to retain and grow mm-hmm. , these are the things coming from O employee and coming from a ceo. Mm. These things right here. I'm telling you, you would have the happiest people there. They would break down the door just to come work for you what you know. And that, I think that that here is why so many people decided, you know, with, Oh, I'm not going back to work.
Or when the pandemic thing, they didn't want to go back. They gonna go out and do they own thing because they felt so mistreated or they felt so de. They don't, they don't value me. I'm just, But when you, again, that's just me, You know? That's just my old family when, when it's like this and, and we are, and we can have a conversation and what you just said, those things, Well, I know anniversaries, I know birthday, I know these things and, and I can sit and talk to 'em and I can talk to their family.
When you can do that, that means that, that you have said, this is. Well,
Richard Blank: these are people as well. They don't need to sell their soul for a dollar. They have options. They don't need to go to an environment like that. But let's address something for a second here. I, I might create the greatest office environment ever, but there is a natural attrition that happens here.
Amazon's in Costa Rica, hpn, Tele, Andor. There's a hundreds of call centers. Right. So I compete especially against the big boys. So Donnell will lose somebody from time to time for scheduling conflict. If they go to the university, their boyfriend or girlfriend may work there. It might be closer to their home, or sometimes it even pays more.
There's different types of vocations here, right? But the one thing that they will not do, and you'll definitely appreciate this, they're not gonna say, Richard defaced me, insulted me, made me do the walk of shame. Yelled at me. No, no, no. That just doesn't happen. And I, I'm okay with that. As long as somebody is here and we can walk together and grow together, that's great.
I, I sometimes get a two weeks notice. Sometimes they just piece out on me. The next thing you know, I gotta call my client with a solution, which is fine, because if you can work through minor. Issues with a client, they see how you act during tough times. Yes. And how it is during good times. And so that, that just solidifies the relationships with my clients.
But I get disappointed from time to time. People I expected a little more from just disappear or they become a fading flower because this industry does, does create burnout. And in the United States, people look a certain way towards telemarketers and call center work. And for me, I was a gladia that not only survived it, but I thrived in this industry, in my own.
So go figure, . I saw the art and the speech. Yes. I saw the vocabulary and the delivery and I thought it was incredible if people were able to have that sort of conversations and convert sales site on. , there is an art to it, and as long as you practice that craft, I mean the, the earnings are, are, your potential is just limitless.
You could do very
Louisiana Country Boy: well. Hey, that is, that, that is definitely, definitely amazing. You know, I I, and again, Richard, I, I applaud you. I, I keep applauding you for just your.
My Worthless 2cents Table Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Donnie Lewis-The Louisiana Country Boy- discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
A place to freely express our thoughts and feelings where your worthless 2cents is priceless sharing our journey with each other,and always remember “Your Approval Not Needed “
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/mKnzAfDDx7k
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://youtu.be/xdxLRZ0K440
https://youtu.be/1USx0n2RMoQ
https://youtu.be/_nEDb7cvu_A
https://youtu.be/O2jukpEruYQ
https://youtu.be/ZgI2PGn1EDQ
https://youtu.be/7gZ1e2vgLKg
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6g8yr6ltjMRm2HZlL5NoFf
https://www.spreaker.com/user/14867186/my-worthless-2cents-table-is-with-richar
Tony and Anna Velez, Real Estate Agents in Costa Rica work hard every day to make sure that our clients get the best service possible. We are the best realtors in Costa Rica. Our standard of excellence has been recognized with multiple awards. Our extensive and successful experience will get you the results you deserve!
Tony and Anna Velez, Real Estate Agents in Costa Rica
Las Palmas, Guanacaste, Playas del Coco 50503
(506) 8485–1469
My Official Website: https://www.costaricavelezrealty.com/
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Tony and Anna Velez, Real Estate Agents in Costa Rica has vast experience in construction and project management, both commercial and residential, and is a great resource for clients looking to build, renovate or enhance their property. Luxury villa nestled in the hillside of Playa Ocotal. Very private and quiet location with a private gated entry and long driveway to the villa. The rounded Architectural design adds to the aesthetic appeal of the villa. Nicely landscaped with a variety of tropical flowers, colorful bushes, palm trees and a lime tree. Call us at (506) 8485-1469 for more information about Luxury condos for sale Ocotal or visit our website.
Tony and Anna Velez, Real Estate Agents in Costa Rica
Las Palmas, Guanacaste, Playas del Coco 50503
(506) 8485–1469
My Official Website: https://www.costaricavelezrealty.com/
Google Plus Listing: https://www.google.com/maps?cid=7166527598569559817
Our Other Link
Luxury condos for sale ocotal: https://www.costaricavelezrealty.com/Ocotal/Guanacaste/Homes/Ocotal/Agent/Listing_446300297.html
playas del coco luxury real estate: https://www.costaricavelezrealty.com/Playas_Del_Coco_Properties/page_2670300.html
Other Services We Provide
Real Estate Consulting
foreclosure
condos for sale
Buyer’s Agent Services
Listing & Marketing Services
Follow Us On
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/velezcr/
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How to make a custom made email template when prospecting new business? INspired INsider Podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Will you, when you do the outbound uh, calls, will you also do emails and texts as well? Or is that, or the company handling those things and you're following up with the call?
Richard Blank: It really all depends. Um, a lot of the times we're logging into their system, so something is automated or if they're not doing it, I would make a suggestion to do it, just to make sure it's not too labor intensive.
Richard Blank: But then again, I just don't want them clicking an email template and just sending it to you, calling you, sir. I mean, that's, that's nothing special. You're probably not gonna look at it. It's like, almost like jump bail and you're gonna throw it away. And so if I could have some takeaways as I mentioned it, either on a phone call, a positive escalation, where if I didn't even speak with you, but I spoke with in your coworkers.
Richard Blank: I could almost once again separate myself, and instead of doing half court, not even three point, now you and I are looking at foul shot percentages. I'll never give you a hundred percent slam dunk. I mean, nothing is a hundred percent. There's not even straight lines in nature. But what we can also do is just increase our percentages by doing things that are not too aggressive or misleading.
Richard Blank: We're just, once again, trying to separate ourselves from others that are trying to earn your.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: From an inbound perspective, So that was the outbound from inbound perspective. Talk about some of the things that you do in the, in the movie and music space.
Richard Blank: Well, this is a wonderful demographic. It's a 55 plus female, so they get like almost a, a, uh, phone book sides book of movies and music that they get to go through every year.
Richard Blank: And this company's actually outta Chicago. They're an incredible company. We've had them for over a decade, and what's beautiful about this account is that these are existing clients and they already know. So we call, we, you know, once again, their contact information so we can get into their account. But when they're explaining the sort of movies that they like and the music, most of the agents here are so young that they've never seen a Humphrey Bogar movie before.
Richard Blank: Or they don't know who John Wayne is, or even Elvis Presley's a loha special. And so the agents, little by little, when they'll go home at night, they'll YouTube some of this stuff and get to know it. So the agents that have been on this campaign for a long time will know these genres and the most beautiful thing.
Richard Blank: And I will say this is how excited. The client gets when we can find their movie because then they, for a moment tell us on how that was the first date they went to with the drive-in with their husband X amount of years ago, where this is the music that they danced to at their wedding back in 1960, or this is what reminds them of Sunday afternoons with their grandmother watching that movie.
Richard Blank: And I love. I find it fascinating because you're learning so much about these people and when we do have their information and what they're looking for in stock, you should really hear the reactions of them. Are the talk times longer? Of course they are because besides double checking prices and shipping information and, and what they ordered, I want them to explain the passion for each thing that they're purchas.
Richard Blank: And do you remember Columbia House? It was like when you were ordering those CDs for a penny? As I say before, most people can order things online with Amazon and they could just click a button, but, but not these clients, they love to go through the book. They love to call us. They usually ask for the same individual that assisted them a couple months ago cuz they have that sort of relationship.
Richard Blank: And the reason I believe that I grew so much was the ups. When we were on the phone with them, you might hear, as I mentioned in this, I have a funny story. They, they, they were ordering Elvis Pres. And we heard dogs barking in the background. So the agent mentioned the dog, and then this client loves dogs.
Richard Blank: So we had this Beethoven special of like six movies that you could just include without the shipping. And we just told them about it and this, and this individual loved her grandchildren, loved dogs, and the Beethoven, you know, movie pack was perfect for her. And so how did Elvis Presley go to Beeth? Just as easy as anything else.
Richard Blank: There's a thousand topics to talk about in regards to movies of music, and if somebody lived a life, we can make a suggestion. But the reason I was able to grow so much was because of that upsell that was done flawlessly and just without resistance and just making a mention. And the client realized that we had not only the active listening skills, but the assertiveness to make that sort of suggestion and to be able to convert that sort of sale.
Richard Blank: They love this account and the attrition on this account is next to nothing. And some of my oldest supervisors that have been with me over a decade are managing this account. And so for me it it, it was really a gift to be able to work with this company for so long out of your amazing Chicago.
Inspired Insider Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dr. Jeremy Weisz discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
INspiredINsider.com Show features interviews with successful and inspirational entrepreneurs, authors, and visionary leaders.The interviews reveal deeply personal stories and explore the tough journey of Big Challenges or Big Mistakes that the inspirational leaders overcame to achieve success. Have You Ever Hit a Wall in Business or Life?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Founder of InspiredInsider.com & CEO of Rise25.com He has been featuring top entrepreneurs with video interviews since 2010 that include founders/CEO’s of P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, Rx Bars and many more on InspiredInsider. He was senior producer for 6 years at one of the early top business podcasts helping to put systems in place and to run some of the behind the scenes operations.He continues to run his own chiropractic & massage facility in downtown Chicago and is founder of a nutritional supplement business.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/Ypd-Ochx_Vc
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://www.inspiredinsider.com/richard-blank-interview/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-inspired-insider-wi-29650573/episode/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-99381742/
https://player.fm/series/inspired-insider-podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank-of-costa-ricas-call-center
https://www.deezer.com/en/show/38477
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/2939630
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank/id729464589?i=1000569868046
How to score a pass to pitch on a telemarketing call? INspired INsider Podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Richard, you mentioned from an outbound perspective, so there's different kind of parts to the call. So I'd love for you to break that down, especially the opening part. Cause if you, you know, you've mentioned before, if you don't get past that, it doesn't matter what you have planned
Richard Blank: for the rest of the call.
Richard Blank: That's a great point. Well, every conversation has an introduction of body and a conclusion. You can't land that intro. There is nobody in conclusion. Doctor. I also believe that every conversation and attention span is 30 seconds to two minutes. Okay? And so when we're touching base with somebody, there is a give and a take initially before that positive escalation for the assistant that's answering calls for your company.
Richard Blank: What I love to do is a company name Spike. I'm not anonymous for the entire phone call, but the first thing that comes outta my mouth is the name of your company, how your company is doing. You know, before I even introduce myself, so I'll say better than somebody that answers the phone at your company.
Richard Blank: And then from there, a lot of the times they'll be asking me questions. And what I have here is a certain technique, it's called the buffer boomerang technique. Hypothetically, Germany, if somebody is answering with a negative tone, there's a way to be able to buffer that negative tone. Do a name drop, let them know that's an Exxon question.
Richard Blank: Repeat the question to show active. Listen. Then boomerang it back as a plus two. And so initially somebody could ask what my name is, and now I'd say, Jeremy, that's an Exxon question. My name is Richard Blank, as an example. And so what happens is you're able to show the active listening, readjust the tone of a call, but then in the middle of a call there is something that I like to consider.
Richard Blank: Micro phonetic, micro expression reading, and what I have here, As an actual chart, it's very simple. You're focusing on phonetics, which is your tone, rate, pitch, and duration. Your tone should be the consistent variable of empathy and confidence. There's a mirror imaging technique, but I believe that should be done every 30 seconds to two minutes with your rate of speech and your pitch.
Richard Blank: You're speaking level. Now. I need to match you with this. Because if you do a spike or a dip, that's usually when I ask a tie down or a pin down question if it makes sense or sounds good. And then also when people are on the phone and they're explaining their services. A lot of times they'll do desert pitching, Jeremy.
Richard Blank: Well, they'll just talk without any sort of oasis for drinking and resting. And so what I like to do is to give my list pause in between each one, like a dessert tray to see if there's a reaction at the end. Say in a brazen way. I'm sure you'll like at least one, so I can break the sort of questions that I have.
Richard Blank: And then sort of positive or negative reinforcement in these conversations. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. After three weeks, it becomes practice. I believe in a five to one name drop to pronoun, where in every sentence you're either saying R or your, and then usually use a name drop for the tie down question.
Richard Blank: And then at the end you can also rake one last tongue by saying, Listen, since you have me on the phone today, Jeremy, are there any other additional questions that you have? Usually you might mention something else after I repeat the. I repeat information in military alphabet because instead of concluding the call, there's a very good chance we could be talking about how proud we are of the military and those that have served.
Richard Blank: And then as I mentioned before, giving you a positive written escalation regards to those that are working with you. And so these are things that I believe won't compromise ethics, values and morals naturally. I'm skimming over this quickly, but there are certain things as expression reading. And since we're losing three of our senses over the phone, our taste, touch, and smell, the doctors and scientists say that your other senses should be expanded.
Richard Blank: Besides your active listening. I believe in image streaming where they say that books are better than movies and there's no reason why your imagination, your adjectives and your descriptions could be incredible. It could be illuminating. It could really put some insight in where you're going on some of these phone calls.
Richard Blank: And so as I mentioned before, as long as you become animated, engaged, and you are this individual's biggest fan, and you really take in the information and energy that they're giving with you, you'll find your job very fulfilling. It's because most people today see a telemarketing job as transitional or they look down upon it, but there is a ton of people that make and receive phone calls for every type of business.
Richard Blank: And some of the greatest people that you could speak with in the world do show this empathy because I, I'll share an example with you. I have a law firm account here, and we have intake coordinators for, it's a disability and wrongful termination. And so what happens is, and you being a doctor as well, you might be meeting people when they're most vulnerable in having the worst day of their life.
Richard Blank: And so if you are capable. Of having somebody calm down, find their focus and move forward with you. You could be one of the greatest individuals there when they needed you the most. And so a lot of my agents, instead of they can earn a living so many different ways, but if they can get this sort of fulfillment by knowing that success is built on a million thank yous and that they get all these positive written escalations to our company about how great they're doing.
Richard Blank: They know that they are on the right path and that once again their karma's gonna kick it, and that if they do leave this company and I am the last boss that they ever have, they will be prepared to build an incredible organization.
Inspired Insider Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dr. Jeremy Weisz discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
INspiredINsider.com Show features interviews with successful and inspirational entrepreneurs, authors, and visionary leaders.The interviews reveal deeply personal stories and explore the tough journey of Big Challenges or Big Mistakes that the inspirational leaders overcame to achieve success. Have You Ever Hit a Wall in Business or Life?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Founder of InspiredInsider.com & CEO of Rise25.com He has been featuring top entrepreneurs with video interviews since 2010 that include founders/CEO’s of P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, Rx Bars and many more on InspiredInsider. He was senior producer for 6 years at one of the early top business podcasts helping to put systems in place and to run some of the behind the scenes operations.He continues to run his own chiropractic & massage facility in downtown Chicago and is founder of a nutritional supplement business.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/xMQ-mlL9ohA
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://www.inspiredinsider.com/richard-blank-interview/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-inspired-insider-wi-29650573/episode/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-99381742/
https://player.fm/series/inspired-insider-podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank-of-costa-ricas-call-center
https://www.deezer.com/en/show/38477
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/2939630
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank/id729464589?i=1000569868046
6 Tips on how to avoid bad telemarketing habits! INspired INsider Podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
Richard Blank: Marketability should be limitless.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What are some examples of bad habits people come in
Richard Blank: with? I, I think that what happens is they'll give up to easily, I think if a phone call, if someone hangs up on you, that's fine, but if somebody is there, and even if they are, let's say their tone may be aggressive, you can adjust that compared to matching that we spoke about more diplomatic vocabulary.
Richard Blank: But then again, if somebody, uh, can use deductive reasoning and do listening twice speaking, one, I can almost know what you know and then focusing my attention on that for you. And, and a lot of the times people will leave a door open. They will just be rushing so much to get an appointment or to get a yes out of somebody that they overlooked an area where they could have done a follow up question or gotten some more information out of.
Richard Blank: But I will tell you what's a terrible habit that certain companies do. They only communicate with their clients via chat or email. And, and that's okay in certain circumstances if you have to fill out a form first to be able to get assistance. But in my opinion, what what can happen is it can elevate stress.
Richard Blank: If you're not speaking with a client, you're eliminating any chance for retention, a referral, and upsell. And how about this in a mature way, Jeremy? In exit interview, worst case scenario, we lose the business. But somebody is willing to walk me through areas of improvement or what our competition had done in order to earn their business.
Richard Blank: So even though people think that today it should be just texting, texting can be very much misinterpreted and you're also not getting the sort of mileage out of a relationship that you could if you would build a certain rapport through speech. And so some of the bad habits we have today, Or that a lot of the agents are coming in preferring that sort of inbound support that's nonverbal.
Richard Blank: And so for me, I believe that they're almost limiting their potential. At least give it a shot and just to see if you have the sort of skill set to be able to have a specific conversation with somebody to be able to get a positive.
Inspired Insider Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dr. Jeremy Weisz discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
INspiredINsider.com Show features interviews with successful and inspirational entrepreneurs, authors, and visionary leaders.The interviews reveal deeply personal stories and explore the tough journey of Big Challenges or Big Mistakes that the inspirational leaders overcame to achieve success. Have You Ever Hit a Wall in Business or Life?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Founder of InspiredInsider.com & CEO of Rise25.com He has been featuring top entrepreneurs with video interviews since 2010 that include founders/CEO’s of P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, Rx Bars and many more on InspiredInsider. He was senior producer for 6 years at one of the early top business podcasts helping to put systems in place and to run some of the behind the scenes operations.He continues to run his own chiropractic & massage facility in downtown Chicago and is founder of a nutritional supplement business.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/-5H16cRri4s
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://www.inspiredinsider.com/richard-blank-interview/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-inspired-insider-wi-29650573/episode/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-99381742/
https://player.fm/series/inspired-insider-podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank-of-costa-ricas-call-center
https://www.deezer.com/en/show/38477
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/2939630
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank/id729464589?i=1000569868046
5 Diplomatic phrases on telemarketing phone calls.INspired INsider Podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Talk about different things on educating people with diplomatic phrases. I'd love to hear some examples because I think we could all, at least I could speak for ourselves, can always improve on customer support, whether it's spoken or written. And you had several, I heard you say several different versions, not just like, Can I help you?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: But there's other things that you tell people they could say that comes off really well, you know, really good as far as customer support in, in diplomatic.
Richard Blank: Well, not trying to correct a doctor, but I would initially say, How may I assist you , You know, so these are certain things I would replace the can to the May.
Richard Blank: I'd replace the help with guide, assist or lend a hand instead of asking you to repeat something. I would say, Jeremy, for my clarification, was it C or 1, 2, 3? I would make sure to do a five to one name drop to pronoun. I would constantly saying, Your, your, your are. Does that make sense, Jeremy, at the end?
Richard Blank: So there's certain checkpoints and also if you're making outbound phone calls and imagine if I was pawing inspired insider and you had somebody answering the phone for you, I would definitely try to do a positive escalation. So once I got transferred to you, I would let you know how amazing these individuals are that are working with you.
Richard Blank: I would do it verbally and then at the end of our conversation, I would also have mentioned to that in writing. Why? So when the Richard Circle comes back and I call the inspired insider, and this individual answers the phone, a, they're gonna remember me. They're gonna thank me very much for that compliment, and we're gonna separate ourselves from the other people trying to angle their way into meeting you.
Richard Blank: And also these individuals working with you could be giving you additional company information in regards to anniversaries, promotions, or company culture. So instead of trying to squeeze a fit, just do some due diligence on a website, a LinkedIn profile, Take a little bit of extra time to show some more active listening.
Richard Blank: So when I'm repeating questions to you, it shows that I'm up to speed with you and there are certain checkpoints. And so a lot of the times with my agents, they might come into the center with bad habits. And that's okay. I mean, they've worked at other places and they have the experience, but what I like to do is not to have them so well rehearsed.
Richard Blank: They should always be more, uh, raw and have that sort of essence where they can once again, be more of a painting and make almost every call unique. And there are certain areas of a call where since people are working from home, you could hear something in the background like a dog. And instead of just asking about the dog, ask the dog's name and find out certain things to.
Richard Blank: Topics in common, a me too technique, and so besides just grading your performance on the questions to qualify the client, I'm more focused on the soft skills of when you used rebuttals of positive escalation or certain areas for clarification in order to be able to prolong the conversation for first call resolution.
Richard Blank: And so as long as somebody is increasing those sort of active listening and participation skills, They should become phenomenal on the phone and their earnings potential and their marketability should be limitless. What.
Inspired Insider Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dr. Jeremy Weisz discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
INspiredINsider.com Show features interviews with successful and inspirational entrepreneurs, authors, and visionary leaders.The interviews reveal deeply personal stories and explore the tough journey of Big Challenges or Big Mistakes that the inspirational leaders overcame to achieve success. Have You Ever Hit a Wall in Business or Life?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Founder of InspiredInsider.com & CEO of Rise25.com He has been featuring top entrepreneurs with video interviews since 2010 that include founders/CEO’s of P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, Rx Bars and many more on InspiredInsider. He was senior producer for 6 years at one of the early top business podcasts helping to put systems in place and to run some of the behind the scenes operations.He continues to run his own chiropractic & massage facility in downtown Chicago and is founder of a nutritional supplement business.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/4uaBRk1WXL0
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://www.inspiredinsider.com/richard-blank-interview/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-inspired-insider-wi-29650573/episode/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-99381742/
https://player.fm/series/inspired-insider-podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank-of-costa-ricas-call-center
https://www.deezer.com/en/show/38477
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/2939630
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank/id729464589?i=1000569868046
How gamification pinball cultures reduce a call center attrition? INspired INsider Podcast guest Richard Blank.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So when you talk about gamification culture that you have there, tell me more about
Richard Blank: that. Whew. My job is my, my second half. I mean, the first thing of this company is buying more machines and finding places to put them. I grew up in the seventies and eighties and unless you were a really, really good game where your $5 really had to last you an entire Saturday, and so once I started my business and making some money, I got to choose my own pastimes.
Richard Blank: And one of them, once again, was this gamification. And so one man's trash is another man's treasure journey. So I am constantly looking for retro pinball machines, arcade machines, jute boxes, and I've created such a wonderful neutral environment so agents can meet people from other departments that can let off steam recharge batteries.
Richard Blank: And one of the greatest things is to spend time with the hefe down in the game room. And so prior to any sort. First day training class, the dozen agents will spend time in the arcade to get to know one another and relax. So when they do enter the training room in the class for the first time, instead of just absorbing information, they're so comfortable and having a great time, they start contributing.
Richard Blank: So I really start with a very strong momentum and can reduce any sort of fear that people can have without knowing individuals. So strangers or friends you haven't met. Once you have a recess and play with somebody, now that's your best friend, , and chances are your attrition rate will be reduced because you'll be working with people that you enjoy big with.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. I wanna talk about the training process, since I know you've trained over 10.
Inspired Insider Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dr. Jeremy Weisz discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
INspiredINsider.com Show features interviews with successful and inspirational entrepreneurs, authors, and visionary leaders.The interviews reveal deeply personal stories and explore the tough journey of Big Challenges or Big Mistakes that the inspirational leaders overcame to achieve success. Have You Ever Hit a Wall in Business or Life?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Founder of InspiredInsider.com & CEO of Rise25.com He has been featuring top entrepreneurs with video interviews since 2010 that include founders/CEO’s of P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, Rx Bars and many more on InspiredInsider. He was senior producer for 6 years at one of the early top business podcasts helping to put systems in place and to run some of the behind the scenes operations.He continues to run his own chiropractic & massage facility in downtown Chicago and is founder of a nutritional supplement business.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/IsdNa9uueuw
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://www.inspiredinsider.com/richard-blank-interview/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-inspired-insider-wi-29650573/episode/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-99381742/
https://player.fm/series/inspired-insider-podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank-of-costa-ricas-call-center
https://www.deezer.com/en/show/38477
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/2939630
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank/id729464589?i=1000569868046
How to scale a one man show with telemarketers. INspired INsider Podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Um, what about from a service perspective? People calling, maybe, maybe they're a fit from a company perspective, uh, the type of company you serve, but they're looking for a different type of service. What are the, the service type of services that maybe people are expecting that you're, you tell them, we don't, we don't really do that here.
Richard Blank: Well, a lot of it has to depend on their workforce. I mean, if somebody in their office is starting out as just a one man show, I can scale for them. A lot of the times people need to offset certain work or to be able to, uh, once again give a certain sort of a company a chance to be able to compare apples to their metrics at home office.
Richard Blank: But we offer all different types of services. As I mentioned before, inbound and outbound support. My difference is the infrastructure. I do have redundancy in regards to our internet. We do have backup electricity with generators. And also have immediate IT support. And so a lot of the people, if they're just starting out or if they have a limited budget, would be able to use us in regards to making their company grow.
Richard Blank: Now, the only difference is, and it's really not a difference now because most people working from home that these agents can fulfill these needs virtually. What I try to do is to extend all of my resources, my experience in regards to script writing rebuttal. A quality assurance department. I, I'd like to see if we could find some consistency with the client to be able to find areas of improvement.
Richard Blank: And so a lot of it, my friend, is just an investment in a process and sometimes the client just gives me a plug in play operation where they already have things in place, which makes it very easy for me. And then on the flip side, it is my pleasure to be able to build a custom made campaign for my clients.
Inspired Insider Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dr. Jeremy Weisz discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
INspiredINsider.com Show features interviews with successful and inspirational entrepreneurs, authors, and visionary leaders.The interviews reveal deeply personal stories and explore the tough journey of Big Challenges or Big Mistakes that the inspirational leaders overcame to achieve success. Have You Ever Hit a Wall in Business or Life?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Founder of InspiredInsider.com & CEO of Rise25.com He has been featuring top entrepreneurs with video interviews since 2010 that include founders/CEO’s of P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, Rx Bars and many more on InspiredInsider. He was senior producer for 6 years at one of the early top business podcasts helping to put systems in place and to run some of the behind the scenes operations.He continues to run his own chiropractic & massage facility in downtown Chicago and is founder of a nutritional supplement business.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/TuHpCsyZ84Y
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://www.inspiredinsider.com/richard-blank-interview/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-inspired-insider-wi-29650573/episode/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-99381742/
https://player.fm/series/inspired-insider-podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank-of-costa-ricas-call-center
https://www.deezer.com/en/show/38477
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/2939630
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/improving-your-customer-support-with-richard-blank/id729464589?i=1000569868046
Richard Blank: Enhanced communication.
Joe Killinger: Yeah. I You get it. Um, who is your, What does your typical client look like?
Richard Blank: Well, there's two types. Okay. It could be someone like yourself in the United States that needs to scale, and sometimes it's difficult to find qualified individuals that will meet your requirements in the states.
Richard Blank: Yep. Otherwise, individuals might not have the resources. We do, like I was mentioning earlier, manual dialing to predictive dial. Quality assurance department, human resources department supervisors, in my experience. So a lot of the times my consulting could enhance their, uh, I guess plug in place system.
Richard Blank: Mm-hmm. . Cause I can log into your crm. I could even log into your phone system. Yeah. But once again, by using my dialer and other sort of resources we have, we can almost just enhance what you have. And then other companies use us for overflow. Like if they have a dedicated workforce and their queue gets filled, then calls will come into our department too.
Richard Blank: But I always believe if we're on a level playing field and we're given all the resources as corporate, I have on multiple occasions be able to match and exceed expectations. Yeah. And that's why I'm able to earn these seats. But my ideal client would be someone that would first ask me about the labor laws.
Richard Blank: Just to make sure that everything is followed perfectly. Yeah. And the second thing is to judge me on merit, not on price. Because offshore centers in the Philippine and India obviously have much more. Competitive pricing. Sure. And then finally, metrics. I would like realistic expectations. And you asked me earlier about how many calls somebody could do.
Richard Blank: I was mentioning the dialer. I understand reverse psychology, but if you could only make 10 calls an hour, six minute calls, you can't expect me to do 15 or 20. I can't expand time. But you are mentioning manual dialing, I'm talking predictive dialing, and my backend structure. There may be a chance, Joe, that I could do 50% more an hour and recuperate those costs and earn those seeds, but it's really more for somebody to have an open mind.
Richard Blank: A lot of the times they have made phone calls before, but there are things they haven't experienced yet, and so just by me, as you say, listening first and one by one reviewing with them. They don't have enough numbers to call. I need some more rebuttals. You don't have an email template. No one's answering when I try to do a hotly transfer.
Richard Blank: Mm-hmm. , these are certain ways to see if they qualify for me. Gotcha. I just wanna make sure I fulfill the agents' needs, right?
Joe Killinger: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So are you focused mostly on mid, uh, single agents or midlevel companies or large companies for all of the above?
Richard Blank: Oh, pretty much all of the above. All the above. And so we're half and half.
Richard Blank: We do 50% inbound, non-voice and customer support, and then the other half does appointment setting lead generation in some. Okay,
Joe Killinger: well, I'm gonna make sure we have your website in the bottom of this video so people can reach out to you. Talk about pricing. I don't, we don't wanna get into it now, I don't think, but they'll definitely be able to reach out to you and, um, you know, this, this was amazing.
Joe Killinger: I appreciate all the information. Thanks. I'm gonna have to go write some of this down. Actually. I'm gonna, I'm gonna utilize that and so thank you for coming on today.
Richard Blank: The pleasure is mine. Thank you for spending the time with me today.
Real Estate Jam Session Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Joe Killinger discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Joe Killinger has been an active member in the real estate industry for many years, wearing different hats, and at times multiple hats! Over the years he has been an Agent, Investor, Syndicator, Founder and Operator of companies as well as properties he invests in. His expertise has been developed over the past 30 years. During that time he has been personally responsible for the sale of and/or directly involved in the marketing of over 5,900 assets, resulting in closed transactions totaling over 900 million dollars throughout the United States.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/n3QEVAlvv6o
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
Joe Killinger: you gotta create the connection past the pitch, you know, from there. Yeah. Well, um, so tell us a little bit about what you do. You've got a call center down in Costa Rica, so I'm a little jealous about, I gotta come down there and scuba dive. I swear to God it's on my bucket list. I made it to Belize.
Joe Killinger: That was great. But Costa Rica's gotta be next. But tell us about your call.
Richard Blank: Well, I've been in business for 14 years in the industry for 22. I have bilingual agents here. They're college educated and they're dedicated, so they only work on specific campaigns, and so I have a gamification culture here. Okay, So I believe in restoring old pinball machines, jute boxes.
Richard Blank: I have an air hockey table, so I've created a neutral environment for agents from other departments to meet one another. They can let off steam and recharge batteries and, and it's an environment where I, as the el jefe can spend time with my people. Sure. And, and so this sort of gamification environment has enabled me to reduce any sort of attrition.
Richard Blank: and to have some sort of bridge with the agents here. And so let's say it's a first day of training. Training class doesn't start till seven 30 cuz seven to seven to 30 we start with recess. So everybody can have a great time together. Yeah. And when they enter the first training class, they're loops.
Richard Blank: They have friends. Yep. They're just absorbing now Joe. They start contributing so, So I believe with your training sessions with the agents, there's nothing better than Interac. Role playing and suggestions and pausing it and showing different techniques. It's a dojo. They all, Does everybody work in the same office or are they virtual agents,
Joe Killinger: Joe?
Joe Killinger: Well, uh, about half and half the newer agents are in the office. The guys have been with us for 10 plus years, or at home. Most of you
Richard Blank: know the synergy in your office, you know, the new agents, they feed off of that energy with one another. Oh. And if somebody gets one, the high fives are
Joe Killinger: plenty. Yeah. One of 'em gets a good call and you know, they got a listing employment or something.
Joe Killinger: It's just the energy it just through the roof. Rock on.
Richard Blank: Yeah. I missed that. With Covid that got taken away from me. The essence of my call center was to walk the rose and to break the bread and the high five. Yeah. And so I missed that, but um, I'm glad to hear you have that sort of culture there. I'm sure it's amazing.
Richard Blank: What, do you guys ring a bell? What do you do
Joe Killinger: when someone gets to leave? We don't ring a bell, but it's, it's, it's just fun. And you know what, it motivates the other agents, you know? So I find that if we really support that and, you know, make that a focus, the other agents are like, So what did you do? What did you.
Joe Killinger: How did it happen? And then they kind of grow from that as a team. Can you
Richard Blank: pull the call? What? Pull the call. Pull the call for the agents. Oh yeah. Listen to it. Go right into the training room right after you cut it and then cut it up and everyone gets a slice. Let 'em see. Cause it's still fresh off the griddle, what that call was like.
Richard Blank: It's,
Joe Killinger: I just love the inter, I love this business. First of all, I love the real estate business. I've done auctions and real estate auctions here in the US when it was a startup that worked, went very well and residential. And now I've been focused on commercial the last. 20 some years. So, uh, I love the business and the people, and I love watching new people, you know, build a business and bring it in.
Joe Killinger: And I think, you know, e everybody's afraid that the economy's gonna slow down here. And, you know, being in Southern California we're a little bit spoiled and that we don't, and we are usually the last one in, if we go into recessions. I'm not saying we are, but if we. We're always one of the last ones in one of the first ones out.
Joe Killinger: I think our biggest dip has been in under, even under 10%. So we don't take a big hit, large population in the small geography. Right. But um, yeah, so it works pretty well. Now you get into Inland Empire, that's different deal, but LA proper. But yeah, I love the business. I love the love the energy. So I could imagine being in your call center, you know, it's gotta be.
Joe Killinger: That would be fun. That'd be a fun environment. And you even make it more fun with all this stuff, all that. Box and
Richard Blank: a candy I five at an eating lunch every day. If you were here, it's best time.
Joe Killinger: Yeah. You know, as we get older we re appreciate that even more, I guess, you know, so it's, it's just fun to be around youthful energy that makes me want to go back in and do more work.
Joe Killinger: So I probably,
Richard Blank: These agents here are bilingual. Yeah. So once again, in regards to their intensive. Listening. Yeah. It could be exhausting. Yeah. And so the respect to them using what they've studied as I have with my Spanish Yeah. To recuperate that education costs and, and to earn a very, very good living.
Richard Blank: So once again, people are chatting and texting. I prefer the artist speech and if they can write and cursive, I think that's nice as well. So I'm always encouraging enhanced communication. Yeah.
Joe Killinger: I You get it. Um,
Real Estate Jam Session Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Joe Killinger discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Joe Killinger has been an active member in the real estate industry for many years, wearing different hats, and at times multiple hats! Over the years he has been an Agent, Investor, Syndicator, Founder and Operator of companies as well as properties he invests in. His expertise has been developed over the past 30 years. During that time he has been personally responsible for the sale of and/or directly involved in the marketing of over 5,900 assets, resulting in closed transactions totaling over 900 million dollars throughout the United States.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/swjtRP1X1vg
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
Joe Killinger: Yeah, finding those people and making sure they have, We have a bad habit as real estate agents. We are, you know, we're a type personalities are entrepreneurs, most of them, and that I run into, and so they just go, go, go, go, go. But if they've got a great individual like you're talking about, you really want to give them the opportunity to really enhance the experience that they're trying to create for you.
Joe Killinger: Really give 'em the proper training. And I think we, we tend to not do that. And so having the proper training, I think is.
Richard Blank: Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. It reduces fear. Yeah, it prepares them. And, um, let me share something with you. Since I'm a CEO of a company like yourself, we have leverage. We can hire and fire, make or break somebody.
Richard Blank: And I choose with this sort of position to encourage and to move people forward. And so these individuals, and I break the stereotype because a lot of people say, Wow, you are so hands on and you know people's names and you break bread with them. And I say, Well, As you and I do, Joe. Yeah. We break bread with our people.
Richard Blank: And I heard how you spoke about this individual prior, so I don't need to remind you. Uh, but the greatest thing is with these individuals is it's about maturity. And when they realize that each individual is a unique experience, they might be making their hundredth call, but it's the first call for them.
Richard Blank: And so you really have to take that sort of delicate situation and not, and not be bored with your pitch. Yeah. Because as I mentioned before, you're, you're becoming plastic. Yeah. You'll burn out on something like
Joe Killinger: that. Yeah. If they don't, we we, what we do is we make sure our agents know the market very, very well.
Joe Killinger: So let's say if you're gonna be a multi-family agent in, in Hollywood, and you better know every property that's on the market. Average days on market, average price per square foot, average size of units, everything. That makes the conversation a lot easier because you've got all this data in your head that you can give to these people cuz you're bringing value.
Joe Killinger: And that's another thing, you know, we get so many people that hey, they'll, they'll call like caught one a couple weeks ago, his calling was, Hey, are you somebody to answer? And he goes, Are you thinking about selling your building? Oh you're not. Okay, thank. I'm like, No, no, no, no, no. . That's not
gonna
Richard Blank: work.
Richard Blank: What's, what's his nickname? Fonzi.
Joe Killinger: Yeah. I was like, Oh dude. Um, but yeah, it just doesn't work. There's gotta be a connection and I really think, you know, being in real estate the last 10 years has been, it's been really, really good. Right. You know, the economy's been booming. Uh, real estate's been. That's changing.
Joe Killinger: You know, we're gonna, The fundamentals kind of got pitched out the windows when times were great. And so we're going back to fundamentals. So cold calling's gonna be a big part of it for a lot of people, so you gotta get back to it. I
Richard Blank: listen to their calls, self analysis, self improvement. If they can take a step back.
Richard Blank: And I know you were mentioning that you have scripts. Mm-hmm. , I make a huge suggestion not putting the script on an Excel sheet, but you have qualifying. At least put them in there. Two or three soft skills, Joe, that has made you successful, like positive escalation, pronouns, Name drops, military alphabet.
Richard Blank: Since you have me on the phone, I'm sure you like at least one. Those sort of soft skills just to ensure active listening because they are name dropping and they're putting back on the straight line grade them. Hall of Fame call them. When you bring everybody together, not just for cake, but for training, and when the training session comes, you bring out the call and you watch the tapes like an athletic team does.
Richard Blank: And since this is an individual effort like wrestling and boxing, your team knows the plays, they know the moves. Mm-hmm. , but they're watching an individual, so there's no way to spin it. Yeah, that's new. And if your tone is negative, if you're interrupting. We spoke about desert pitching with no oasis, just to take a breath and a drink.
Richard Blank: If they're not name dropping or having their name dropped, then we need to pause it for a second and say, What do you think you could? Why didn't you ask a follow up question? When someone's father passes away and gives the house to the daughter and the daughter is in a certain state, and I've, I've seen people show, Oh, I'm sorry to hear that and continue with their next question, their closers, but I would've stopped immediately.
Richard Blank: Yeah. And
Joe Killinger: you gotta create the connection, have the pitch,
Richard Blank: you know, from there.
Joe Killinger: Yeah.
Real Estate Jam Session Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Joe Killinger discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Joe Killinger has been an active member in the real estate industry for many years, wearing different hats, and at times multiple hats! Over the years he has been an Agent, Investor, Syndicator, Founder and Operator of companies as well as properties he invests in. His expertise has been developed over the past 30 years. During that time he has been personally responsible for the sale of and/or directly involved in the marketing of over 5,900 assets, resulting in closed transactions totaling over 900 million dollars throughout the United States.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/ImjaWfrYQr0
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
Why you should listen more than you talk on the phone? Real Estate Jam Session Podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
Joe Killinger: Richard is the, um, not listening. They're so busy. They've got somebody on the phone, they're trying to get everything out so fast and, but they're not listening to what the person on the other end is saying. And I just think that if you, you, you know, my, my father, it's amazing how the older I get, the smarter he gets it, just, you know, he goes, Joe, you've got two ears and one mouth.
Joe Killinger: He goes, Listen more than you talk. And he's right. He was right on, and I just am like in sales. That is something that you really have to take into consideration.
Richard Blank: So I have a follow up question to your statement there. Do your agents know your script by? A to Z, one to three. Do they know everything? No.
Joe Killinger: No, they don't.
Joe Killinger: They, you know, and depending on the personality, you know, we have so many different scripts, so most of them don't even really follow a script. They go by. What we try and teach is, you know, when somebody picks up the phone, you need to be listening to them and you know, kind of, I don't wanna say mirror, but understand how they're coming out of there.
Joe Killinger: You can tell right in the first few seconds how somebody is that day if they feel like they're bothered. But I mean, they do have scripts, don't get me wrong. And they have like three of 'em that they all play off of, but nobody has one of them memorized, I don't think. But it's, But that's fine.
Richard Blank: As you say that, they're well versed.
Richard Blank: They know they're subject well, yeah. And, and what I've seen happen multiple times is that they become plastic. Plastic to commercialize. They're not a painting, they're not raw. They're a character, not in character. That's why when your dog was barking, Joe, I asked what the dog's name was. Yeah. As a follow up question, or how many years have you been in this position, this promotion at your company?
Richard Blank: Now, congratulations on being ceo. How many years has it been, Joe? You know what? You know, where are you at right now? Yeah. And so when you say active listening to me, it's really more of an engagement. Because you're saying also as well that you might be upsetting somebody, but I'm telling you this, these are people you're meeting for the first time.
Richard Blank: I can't gauge the first round of the fight as I can on the 12th because things do change, like tug of war. It goes back and forth. There's a push in a bull. Yeah. But if I can. Match just your speed and how loud you go. Then there's no crosstalk or interruption cuz I'm really moving with you at your speed.
Richard Blank: But then I know when to interject to do the follow up. That's the active listening they need checkpoints. They need pauses. Do you remember the show gets smart when he was walking down the hallway and the doors were closing behind him? They're gonna leave. Yes, I do. Yo, my main man, you know, they're gonna leave a door open.
Richard Blank: So after 15 minutes they wonder why they didn't get the appointment. And all the client says is, Hey Joe, send me information. Yeah, no, because that's why when you gauge these people, you ask a follow up question to see if it makes sense or if it sounds good, I'd rather take a three second insurance policy.
Richard Blank: To ask you a tie down question, then to assume, which as you know, it makes an ass out of you and me and just keep moving forward for the fear of being hung up upon. And yeah, I believe in selling sizzle. So somebody has a beautiful building. I would love to take a look at it because when I was doing residential real estate, the MLS was a gold mine for me because you talk about the, the bedrooms, the kitchen, the sport court, the pool, the, the, the, the crown molding or even the curve appeal.
Richard Blank: And obviously it was the biggest glaring tell sign of what the people were most proud of. Oh yeah. And what they loved the most. And so I allowed through least resistance. It's called Woo Way. To, as you say, two on one. Listen, twice I know what I know. I need to know what Joe knows. Yeah. And so by me allowing you to ask these questions and, and me bringing you back in the conversation, don't be surprised if you not only can get everything out of it, but once again, they're probably gonna call you and tell you how great I was by setting the appointment.
Richard Blank: Mm-hmm. , that should be the goal of your staff. is to get that positive escalation when you call back Mrs. Jones to represent her property. Mm-hmm. and I always gave the most points on the call, Joe, when the client says your name. Yeah, I know you want a conversion and, and the scripts and, and I'm so proud of what you built.
Richard Blank: But to me, if they are not capable of having that sort of balanced, grounded in the moment. Sort of conversation where they are selling or buying one of the most expensive investments of their entire life. You have to put, it's almost like a vulnerable state for somebody. You really have to take that into consideration, and so instead of being a prospector, you're almost more of a consultant.
Richard Blank: Yeah, but you're not, Joe, The closer. That's not a problem at all. What I'm here to do today is to clarify for our edification additional things above and beyond your specs that Joe would need to know in order to be in the moment with you to move forward emotionally and to either purchase or let.
Richard Blank: Property go. So you're are such a good man in regards to the psychology, like someone's best friend or older brother, making sure I don't get in a fist fight and stay out of trouble. And Joe, that's why you get these accounts. I don't know if they could price shop around or give it to a family member, but you've closed a lot of deals of people you've met for the first time and these people once again are entrusting this in you.
Richard Blank: And so as much as I'm telling you before, there's no real secret sauce to this. If you show empathy, if you take an extra five minutes to speak with somebody when you're online with them, just start looking at the website and making compliments and asking how Eddie in the, in the mail rooms doing. Don't be surprised if Joe's gonna be way too busy and is gonna have to eat two lunches to get his energy back.
Joe Killinger: Yeah. It's, you know, as far as you know, sales people we're always taught, get the league, get the deal, you know, get the appointment, you know, and I'm like, you, it's just kind of like, you know, it's a process, you know, you gotta have the process in place.
Richard Blank: You gotta do clean business. Yeah. You gotta properly represent yourself in the best light and, And there's no surprises with you, Joe, like as much as you'd like to give somebody a price or sell it with certain terms.
Richard Blank: Mm-hmm. , you're also realistic. And if you're able to have that sort of conversation with your clients, I think once again, they respect you that much more. Yeah.
Joe Killinger: I would bet that when you were doing.
Real Estate Jam Session Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Joe Killinger discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Joe Killinger has been an active member in the real estate industry for many years, wearing different hats, and at times multiple hats! Over the years he has been an Agent, Investor, Syndicator, Founder and Operator of companies as well as properties he invests in. His expertise has been developed over the past 30 years. During that time he has been personally responsible for the sale of and/or directly involved in the marketing of over 5,900 assets, resulting in closed transactions totaling over 900 million dollars throughout the United States.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/sdL9DJOHz6o
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
The sweet spot for making callbacks to potential clients? Real Estate Jam Session Podcast guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
Richard Blank: You're probably gonna get to the front of the line and you will be given your true chance to state your case and to earn this business.
Joe Killinger: Yeah. How often do you, if you, you can't get through two or three or four times, how often do you call them back? Every two weeks. Three weeks?
Richard Blank: That's a great question.
Richard Blank: Depends on the sense of urgency, the size of the list and what vertical you're calling about. Yeah. You could be. Over killing it. And then how many times can you be creative on a voicemail? I mean, after you're, you're just cussing '
Joe Killinger: em off, right? You know, Now they're just angry at
Richard Blank: you. It depends. You could be clever and you could talk about, unlike other people that are doing one thing, you're doing another.
Richard Blank: Or if this person is celebrating an anniversary, you could be calling on those days and saying congratulations on your 14th year. You could really time it perfectly for certain things that you know, they're celebrating if you want to do that. Um, You know, persistence is fine. Yeah. And as I mentioned before, sometimes people only prefer to do non-voice.
Richard Blank: Yeah. And I have to respect that. But if they're gonna be doing non-voice, then I'm gonna be expanding 50 times the descriptions of the emails that I'm gonna be sending to you. Mm-hmm. , or I might just, you roll the dice and go to page seven on your website and describe some sort of machinery or some sort of photograph you took with your crew.
Richard Blank: And mention how awesome that was. Why, Right? Why not ? We might as well try. And so, no, that's
Joe Killinger: it, right? You've gotta try and. Well,
Richard Blank: you're gonna catch my attention. Yeah. I mean, if you really take the time to Google me and to go to my website, it's obvious I've given you three things that will get you to, for me to take your call, write you back and say, Thank you, my man, for taking the time.
Richard Blank: Mm-hmm. , you know, it has to do with the beautiful art building, the pinball machines I have. Yep. And also the writings that I do with the empathy and the relationship I have with my agents. Those are the keys to unlock my door, to pitch me on buying or selling my building. Yeah, so I'll at least give you five minutes no more, and you have to earn more time after that.
Richard Blank: No one's giving you 20. It might just give you a minute. What I believe is that, Joe, you're buying time. I have a huge suggestion for you and it's a soft skill suggestion. Okay? A lot of people say you have to name drop 'em. Well, yeah, you do. But I would suggest doing a five to one name drop pronoun, where you're gonna say your, your, are your.
Richard Blank: Right, Joe , you know, so I think you set 'em up, set 'em up, set 'em up, power bomb. And so if you practice that sort of speaking structure to keep their attention, then there's a good chance you don't have to repeat something, ruin the tone of the call. Next thing you know, the information has to be done.
Richard Blank: Again, you don't want to walk home to get your homework. And so you should really slice and dice these calls very, very carefully. And I've even seen calls that had to go halfway in. And then you pick up where you're left off and as long as you take meeting minutes, as long as you're up to speed and can recap, maybe it is a 50% call.
Richard Blank: And then Joe and I go over next Thursday, next week to finish the call. And as don't be surprised when I call you back on Thursday on time and I am ready to go pen it. The ready the odds. Once again, Joe, are in our favor. Mm-hmm. ?
Joe Killinger: Yeah.
Real Estate Jam Session Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Joe Killinger discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Joe Killinger has been an active member in the real estate industry for many years, wearing different hats, and at times multiple hats! Over the years he has been an Agent, Investor, Syndicator, Founder and Operator of companies as well as properties he invests in. His expertise has been developed over the past 30 years. During that time he has been personally responsible for the sale of and/or directly involved in the marketing of over 5,900 assets, resulting in closed transactions totaling over 900 million dollars throughout the United States.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/k1VMUwh1oaQ
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
The company game room pinball machines are older than the young telemarketing agents. Positive Talk Radio guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
I, I couldn't agree more. I am just thoroughly enjoying this conversation. Me too. Uh, good time. you? You're you're, you're an amazing guy and you're also a fun loving guy, uh, because you've got one of the largest, uh, if not the largest, um, jukebox and, um, pinball collections in all of central. Forget my business.
That's what I'm proud of. People say you could go back and talk to your 14 year old self and tell 'em what you do. I'd be you got pinball machines. , you'd be the first question I'd ask myself. Yes, yes, yes I do. And it's, it's an obsession of mine and people have no idea. The treasures that they have that are in their bodegas.
And so all the time I will be driving a couple hours. To kick a tire or two on an old jukebox or an old retro arcade machine, or especially a pinball machine. And for a couple hundred hours, I'm driving back in 1961, Racola Regis that's in mint condition. And so one man's trash is another man's treasure.
And if that's the way it is, call me Oscar, the grouch I'll take as much charge as you got. And as long as I have the space for it and my wife doesn't get angry, I'll be grabbing as many machines as I can. I, I currently have 13 pinballs. Six jukeboxes, five retro machines and an air hockey table. And as I mentioned before, these machines are older than the agents.
I have an area coming where people can, it's a neutral environment where people can meet others from other campaigns. They can let off steam, they can recharge their batteries. I haven't seen people fall in love by the Backman machine and it, and it gives somebody the chance to hang out with the Hefe in a neutral environment where we're just having.
Fun. And so when people are best friends and you mentioned this earlier, attrition goes down, people want to come to work. And I really believe that a gamification company culture is imperative. Not Xbox, not, not placing. You can do that at home. Do like you, did you, before this podcast, you told me that you bought the thing.
You always wanted an old retro machine with the main ator and 3000 games. And we're talking about how much fun we're having you deserve. I think that if an environment creates a game environment where people can play, they will become that much closer. And so I, I really, really stand behind that and play with each other.
And, and there one is shooting, uh, the pinball or the others are watching and, and everybody's laughing and you're having a Coke or whatever it is. I got enough games where everyone can play. No, one's waiting. unless they want to and put their quarter on the Marqui. Oh, no, no, no. Everyone's. And, and so how much space now the games are actually at the facility, is that right?
Yes. I got some in my own home where I have a private man cave, but the majority of my machines are here on the first floor. It's kind of funny. I got my air hockey table. That's in my training room. It's so loud that I had to take the plastic pucks and they got these now more of like a rubber sort of puck.
And with the Wildcat 1 25, you can create these really smooth surfaces. And so literally I had to put the air Hawk in there, cuz it is so loud. People are screaming. So when there's not classes, doors are shut. You see people sitting in the chairs, watching that, that that's really where our tournaments happen.
And it's, uh, it's amazing because the littlest, smallest Asian we have has got the greatest skills until we stop those shots. And so, um, I love it. It's fun and people stay later after their shift or they'll come a little bit earlier to just hang out. And, um, obviously we're doing something right.
Positive Talk Radio has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Kevin McDonald discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Positive Talk Radio with Kevin McDonald
"Evolving Ideas One Conversation At A Time"
Positive Talk Radio podcast was originally started in 2003 by Kevin McDonald and friends on KKNW 1150 AM in Seattle with great guests, dynamic stories and interviews, plus new thoughts on a wide range of topics. The concept is to provide positive informative content designed to educate, entertain, empower and inspire all who listen Our content includes positive thoughts and idea's and is truly unique in the podcast industry and now again on KKNW 1150 AM on Monday's at 9 and Wednesdays at 4 pm pacific.
Kevin McDonald - Creator and Host. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington. This jovial fun loving man experienced life in a big way from star athlete, to actor, Voice Actor, Restaurateur, Sales and Sales Management, Transit Operator, Audio Producer, Talk Show Host, Creative Consultant, Motivational Leader and current podcast creator. (My Independence Report) Who’s mission is to Declare Our Freedom From Hate, Division and Fear, featuring positive motivational guest, music interviews and fun episodes. KM Media.pro is the parent site for, Positive Talk Radio. We are a live podcast/ Video cast that focuses on todays life challenges. In addition we are able to produce audio/ video products for other companies and people looking to find a voice in the crowded world of podcast journalism
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaah6tQaqnc&t=50s
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://positivetalkradio.podbean.com/e/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1736657096686275
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/guests/richard-blank/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/208-richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/160-richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/positive-talk-radio-3982674/episodes/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingl-141119081
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-positive-talk-radio-87062639/episode/richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-100280727/
Telemarketers are literally able to have almost a full hour's worth of talk time. Positive Talk Radio guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
and that will buy you success at the same time. That's true because, because the more that you build a relationship with somebody and, and, and treat them like a, a real person, the, the one I always hate is when I get a, um, um, telemarketing call. And the first thing that happens is I pick up the. There's a delay.
Now I realize that that delay is because it's an automated, uh, dialing, right? That's correct. Predictive dialer. Mm-hmm yes. And so they wait until you pick up and say hello before it actually connects to a human being. Am I correct? In that? It can be, there could be some latency. I'd have to really look into that through the it department, but sometimes it's seamless where you can't tell.
And it's an immediate, but, um, no, and, and really that predicted dialer is amazing because it really gives you all of the information about the person with whom you're calling. And at the end, you get to do a disposition report so quickly, you can just do a drop down and explain what happened on the call.
And so what happens there is that these agents are literally able to have almost a full hour's worth of talk time, minus any sort of wrap up or CRM time. But, um, you know, that's something regarding the center. I don't know. A lot of the times they'd like to do these voicemail drops and then you would have to opt in that you're interested to speak with somebody legally to talk to them.
That could be a pain as well. And you know, I, I have somewhat empathy towards these agents making these calls. It depends, you know, a lot of times they'll tell me that. Car warranty is expiring, but guess what? Champ? I haven't lived in the United States for 22 years. So obviously I don't have a car warranty expiring.
So that upsets me a little bit. But if I get somebody on the phone and it's something I may qualify for, like telecom, for an example, and I compare rates, I'll listen to them pitch and with their permission. I'm gonna ask to do a QC on them. A quality control. We do 22 KPIs, which are key performance indicators, and we can gauge a call through the questioning and the answering.
But I usually look more for soft skills when they do name draws, positive, escalations, military, alphabet, rebuttals, and things like that. And so when I'll speak with somebody, I'll, you know, let them qualify me, send me info and maybe set up an appointment, but I'll ask them if they have a couple. I'd like to give them some professional feedback, and I'm not saying your tone was this or tone was that I will literally restructure their arguments and explain to them open ended to close ended questions and certain sort of vocabulary that I think will be more diplomatic and change the tone a little bit.
And I know that they're listening because they will repeat back to me or even ask me, follow up questions on some of these skills. And thank me for that. And even send me a personal email to thank me for that. Now, what am I doing this for? I'm paying it forward because there are a lot of times I was having weird days and someone would just take my call to warm me up and say, go Richard, go.
Even though I'm not gonna buy from you, but I like you, but I think you're great. And hang in there and I know what that's like. And I will sometimes reset them and ask them to re, could you please repeat that sentence for me again? You went too fast. I couldn't hear you. Was it 1, 2, 3, or ABC? And so I'm telling them to relax and calm down because you sound great.
I just can't understand you. And once they do, and once they give a perfect pitch, then I'm proud of them. And that's just, as I mentioned before, just paying it forward.
Positive Talk Radio has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Kevin McDonald discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Positive Talk Radio with Kevin McDonald
"Evolving Ideas One Conversation At A Time"
Positive Talk Radio podcast was originally started in 2003 by Kevin McDonald and friends on KKNW 1150 AM in Seattle with great guests, dynamic stories and interviews, plus new thoughts on a wide range of topics. The concept is to provide positive informative content designed to educate, entertain, empower and inspire all who listen Our content includes positive thoughts and idea's and is truly unique in the podcast industry and now again on KKNW 1150 AM on Monday's at 9 and Wednesdays at 4 pm pacific.
Kevin McDonald - Creator and Host. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington. This jovial fun loving man experienced life in a big way from star athlete, to actor, Voice Actor, Restaurateur, Sales and Sales Management, Transit Operator, Audio Producer, Talk Show Host, Creative Consultant, Motivational Leader and current podcast creator. (My Independence Report) Who’s mission is to Declare Our Freedom From Hate, Division and Fear, featuring positive motivational guest, music interviews and fun episodes. KM Media.pro is the parent site for, Positive Talk Radio. We are a live podcast/ Video cast that focuses on todays life challenges. In addition we are able to produce audio/ video products for other companies and people looking to find a voice in the crowded world of podcast journalism
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/KCeuxYCFUOI
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://positivetalkradio.podbean.com/e/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1736657096686275
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/guests/richard-blank/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/208-richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/160-richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/positive-talk-radio-3982674/episodes/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingl-141119081
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-positive-talk-radio-87062639/episode/richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-100280727/
How difficult is it to use English as a second language? Positive Talk Radio guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
How difficult is it to get the lingo of, um, American English from Spanish? The, the words are said differently and stuff. How difficult is it to, to use English as a second language? Well, most of these individuals, once again, have been speaking English since they were very young, but I, I have a trick for that.
There there's a couple different things. If they don't know certain slang, instead of saying the beach, you might call it the. You know, I need to teach them that, but I would like for them to write out specific words, phonetically, because they might have issues in regards to their vowels, just in regards to the phonetics.
I want them to learn how to spell it, but if they want to, you know, give themselves a little cheat sheet on how to pronounce certain words correctly, or my clients will offer us, um, you know, glossary of terms and certain sort of definitions, or even a training manual. To, I guess, onboard them a lot quicker in regards to industries, because we, we're not really the experts.
Sometimes we're just doing more of lead generation, like real estate. For an example, these agents might not be real estate brokers, but they can still call people and prospect them without a license legally and be able to transfer the call. So they don't need to walk through escrow in contracts, but there's no reason why they can't ask somebody how many bedrooms they have and what sort of sport court they have in the backyard.
And so, as I say before with my client, There needs to be some extreme, realistic expectations on what the agent's capable of doing. And so I just wanna make sure that there's a good fit.
Positive Talk Radio has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Kevin McDonald discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Positive Talk Radio with Kevin McDonald
"Evolving Ideas One Conversation At A Time"
Positive Talk Radio podcast was originally started in 2003 by Kevin McDonald and friends on KKNW 1150 AM in Seattle with great guests, dynamic stories and interviews, plus new thoughts on a wide range of topics. The concept is to provide positive informative content designed to educate, entertain, empower and inspire all who listen Our content includes positive thoughts and idea's and is truly unique in the podcast industry and now again on KKNW 1150 AM on Monday's at 9 and Wednesdays at 4 pm pacific.
Kevin McDonald - Creator and Host. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington. This jovial fun loving man experienced life in a big way from star athlete, to actor, Voice Actor, Restaurateur, Sales and Sales Management, Transit Operator, Audio Producer, Talk Show Host, Creative Consultant, Motivational Leader and current podcast creator. (My Independence Report) Who’s mission is to Declare Our Freedom From Hate, Division and Fear, featuring positive motivational guest, music interviews and fun episodes. KM Media.pro is the parent site for, Positive Talk Radio. We are a live podcast/ Video cast that focuses on todays life challenges. In addition we are able to produce audio/ video products for other companies and people looking to find a voice in the crowded world of podcast journalism
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/n6ZLdR0lwD4
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://positivetalkradio.podbean.com/e/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1736657096686275
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/guests/richard-blank/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/208-richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/160-richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/positive-talk-radio-3982674/episodes/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingl-141119081
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-positive-talk-radio-87062639/episode/richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-100280727/
A certain circle to handle call center stress. Positive Talk Radio guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center.
It it's a it's remarkable, isn't it? Um, it is. I had, um, when I was a general manager of a restaurant in Seattle, mm-hmm we had what we called the Mexican pipeline. Okay. And one of the, one of the guys that was working as a bus boy for me at, for 40 hours a week, and then he had another job working 40 hours a week.
And he was a, he had been a principal in Mexico of, of a high school, but he found that to support his. Which is, this goes back to the eighties, but to support his family, he needed to, uh, work a 40 hour job to pay for his living expenses. And then he worked the other job and sent that paycheck home. Okay.
So he was actually supporting his mom, his dad, his little sister and stuff, because he could make that here. And, uh, um, and so he worked, they work incredibly hard and, and they're used to working hard and I think that's. that's true. And, and burnout is big in call centers and rotation and attrition. And so once again, I, I make sure that when people are here, they have their job stability and they can recharge their battery.
So when they leave the office, they can confront any sort of challenges that they have. So it's a certain circle. So when they come back to work again, they're ready to go. And. Once again, if, if somebody's having a tough day, I will pull them aside off, off the floor. Um, put a little water on their face and get 'em to relax a little bit and to refocus and reset themselves because you and I have been in those shoes.
I never walked in as a sea level executive. I worked in my friend's center for four years, so I got to see the gripes, the good and the bad times, and, and really learn this business from the inside. And. And I got to see what I could do to enhance the experience for the agents and for the clients. And I could grow a lot faster, Kevin, but I'm very selective of the campaigns that come in.
I I'd rather fulfill the needs of the agent before the client, because if they're not comfortable with the account, they're just not gonna wanna do it. Hey, if.
Positive Talk Radio has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Kevin McDonald discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Positive Talk Radio with Kevin McDonald
"Evolving Ideas One Conversation At A Time"
Positive Talk Radio podcast was originally started in 2003 by Kevin McDonald and friends on KKNW 1150 AM in Seattle with great guests, dynamic stories and interviews, plus new thoughts on a wide range of topics. The concept is to provide positive informative content designed to educate, entertain, empower and inspire all who listen Our content includes positive thoughts and idea's and is truly unique in the podcast industry and now again on KKNW 1150 AM on Monday's at 9 and Wednesdays at 4 pm pacific.
Kevin McDonald - Creator and Host. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington. This jovial fun loving man experienced life in a big way from star athlete, to actor, Voice Actor, Restaurateur, Sales and Sales Management, Transit Operator, Audio Producer, Talk Show Host, Creative Consultant, Motivational Leader and current podcast creator. (My Independence Report) Who’s mission is to Declare Our Freedom From Hate, Division and Fear, featuring positive motivational guest, music interviews and fun episodes. KM Media.pro is the parent site for, Positive Talk Radio. We are a live podcast/ Video cast that focuses on todays life challenges. In addition we are able to produce audio/ video products for other companies and people looking to find a voice in the crowded world of podcast journalism
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/1zg_XgAvrp0
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://positivetalkradio.podbean.com/e/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1736657096686275
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/guests/richard-blank/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/208-richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/160-richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/positive-talk-radio-3982674/episodes/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingl-141119081
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-positive-talk-radio-87062639/episode/richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-100280727/
I saved enough money to purchase and build a 300 seat center. Positive Talk Radio guest Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center
Should that have lost their way. We have, we have those encampments here now. And, uh, and it's, it's a, it is a big problem here. And it's because we, as a people, don't take care of each other as, as well as we should. Um, and, and there is some drug abuse and there is some, you know, uh, stuff like that, but.
it's interesting that if that people will, you know, give you a banana, if you're, if you're down there or whatever, and I, I think, I think it's great. And I, and I really applaud you for doing, for working the way you're working and doing what you're doing. It is really outstanding. I would say, by the way, we're talking with.
Richard blank. He is the CEO of Costa Rica's Call Center. They do everything under the sun, from web design to everything else. You can go to, uh, costaricascallcenter.com and you can get all the information about Richard, his team, the folks that are there, because I'll, I'll tell you I I'm. I am as a human and, and by the way, you're one of the most human people.
And by the way, that's a, that's a huge compliment. Uh, you're one of the most human people that I've ever met. Thank you be, I really appreciate you. And would you, would you come back so that we can have more of a conversation about other stuff and, and more about this? Anytime I'd love to be a guest that comes back a reoccurring guest on a TV show.
So it's like Larry from three's company. You gotta have me on, on a couple scenes. I definitely love to come back. Absolutely. Because the. The way that you word things, the way that you respect people and stuff is it can be really helpful and energizing to other people who may want to do the same thing, but just don't know how well let's break those stereotypes.
A CEO can be one that's empathetic. Someone can take the chance and move abroad, but I make it look easy. My good friend, I started my business at 35. I wish I was a teenager. That was a whiz kid or a genius in my twenties. But I'll be forthright with you after working at my friend's call center for four years, I learned the business, but I wasn't matured enough.
It took me to my mid thirties to have impulse control maturity and enough money saved where I was responsible. For those contracts and job stability. And also, I didn't take a loan now. I don't have a partner. I don't pay interest. I did slow and steady. I first started renting a seat at a opened air blended call center.
Then after a couple years, I rented space and built out 150 seats and bought the equipment. After six years, I saved enough money to purchase and build my 300 seat center. So it's more of the tortoise, not the. It's grandma telling me if you can't pay for it in cash, don't do it. And it's also me saving enough acorns for the winter.
So I could weather storms. I wish it was bells and whistles and shortcuts and exciting, but it's not, it's being very responsible and taking your time and just making sure that you are fulfilling the needs of these agents by giving them their job stability. And in this industry, that's so competitive, especially against.
The best thing that I can do once again, is as you say, just have these sort of ethics and put my best foot forward and you don't owe anybody any money. And which means that your business is growing slower, but it. In order, you know, sometimes in, as you know, sometimes in order to get really RevD up and to really take out a big loan and then grow it and stuff you may have to, at one point in time, compromise your ethics and to do things that you don't otherwise wouldn't otherwise do because of you're chasing the almighty dollar.
At that point, you don't have to do that. So it makes it, it must be really freeing to be able to be an employer of 300 plus people. And their families and by, uh, jute boxes and, and, and, uh, and things, and, and to have a, a happy, a happy life, even if you're not a multimillionaire or a billionaire, well, it made the most sense.
I wanted to sleep at night and imagine if I lost an account, I don't want to be pissed off on the floor and then, you know, stressing about it. And it was very simple. As long as I was making my margins, renting this seat made. Then after you got to four dozen agents, it doesn't make sense to spend five grand a month to some guy when I could have my own place and buy the equipment and build it out.
And instead of buying brand new, you know, computers can be excellent secondhand. And a lot of the call centers were going out of business. So they bought it new. I pretty much got it with the wrapping on it, even though it's second a it's not out of the store, but it's pretty much brand new with the furniture.
Also, since I am a guest here and you look at me in my suit, there's a very good chance. It might charge 20% more. So I'd have local representatives for me with connections that would go and get me the best prices and bring me things. So you gotta build a team around you. You can't do it all on your own, and you gotta trust people to represent you and to speak for you.
And have I been disappointed a few times, but I've also been amazed. By some people that have been with me over a decade and have grown with my company. I have two people with me that have been with me over 10 years. One is my chief technical officer, another one's my floor manager. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
I could bring someone in with 10 times the amount of experience, no way these people wore my stripes. They walked with me, they know my culture. I will allow them to learn, facilitate their on the job training. As long as it takes, I'll bringing specialists for the it depart. But there's no way I'm gonna bring in a, a, a general manager or supervisor from another call center, no way they need to earn their stripes.
They need to work with me for a little while and have the respect of the agents. If not, it's just definitely not gonna work out. And have I said, we experienced that never. I never brought in an outside supervisor. Everything is always promoted from within that is that, and it's the only way to go, because especially if you've got a unique.
Because you're gonna have somebody that comes in that is, comes from a different style of culture, and they're going to try and change that culture that has been so successful. And that would you you'd probably have a, like twenty two hundred and eighty nine people at your house the day after you hired that guy.
saying, get rid of that guy. We can do, you know, it, it it's, it's just amazing. So. I Richard, I really appreciate your time today and it's, it's been awesome. And I gotta, I gotta tell you I'm my team is growing as well. Mm-hmm and I I've got a, uh, a young lady that we just, that we just hired. She's a, an assistant she's just dynamite and you're right.
You have to have the right people and slow and steady. So, um, what is her name? Your new assistant. Her name is de. Well, Demi's getting a positive escalation, cuz I'm sure she's doing an excellent job. Oh, she's fabulous. As a matter of fact, the ending that you're about to, uh, um, watch she did yesterday and Demi.
All right. She's she's. She's awesome. So, and we, we appreciate having her and I, I subscribe to your philosophy of management and management style and company culture and philosophy. I, I, I tell you, I wish I would be sitting at, if we were in the same room, I'd be sitting at your feet. We'd be high fiving, each other, and telling each other how great we are.
But my good friend water seeks its own level. That's why, when I first started watching your podcast, it inspired me enough to write. Here we are. And mind you, this, there were a couple times back and forth because of scheduling conflicts and stuff. It was a mutual goal of ours was to get on a show together and to share ideas.
And we fulfilled that today. And so I am very humble and I'm very thankful for your time and your audience is time as well. We will do this again. Oh yeah, because we, we got more to say and I sounds more, I really, I really appreciate. You you coming here and again, Richard blank has been our guest go to Costa Rica, call center.com.
If you need remote services, he can provide you with all kinds of stuff. So it's just, I so much that, that I can't, I can't describe it all. So it's just really good. And by the way, thank you. You, you watched some of my, some of my other podcasts. You're good. You're addicting. And I can't wait to put this episode on my Facebook page with 98,000 Ticos that are gonna love to meet you.
I've I'm humbled. Thank you so much. I, I, I really appreciate the time that you've spent with me and the, and thank God. There are people out there like you, that's all. I gotta say you too. Powell. That's why we're together. And we're gonna keep on grow. Absolutely. And thank you, Richard, and stay right where you are.
I've gotta do this and I'll be right back. Hey, thanks for enjoying this episode all the way to the end. Please give us a like, and subscribe to this channel. This has been a production of positive talk radio.net. Please visit our website, oddly name positive talk, radio.net for more details about us and our mission, which is to provide great positive programming designed to inspire us.
I'm Kevin McDonald's and I'm proud of these shows. And I truly hope that you'll like them and share them with friends and family. So on behalf of our entire team, remember be kind to one another because each other's always.
Positive Talk Radio has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Kevin McDonald discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Positive Talk Radio with Kevin McDonald
"Evolving Ideas One Conversation At A Time"
Positive Talk Radio podcast was originally started in 2003 by Kevin McDonald and friends on KKNW 1150 AM in Seattle with great guests, dynamic stories and interviews, plus new thoughts on a wide range of topics. The concept is to provide positive informative content designed to educate, entertain, empower and inspire all who listen Our content includes positive thoughts and idea's and is truly unique in the podcast industry and now again on KKNW 1150 AM on Monday's at 9 and Wednesdays at 4 pm pacific.
Kevin McDonald - Creator and Host. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington. This jovial fun loving man experienced life in a big way from star athlete, to actor, Voice Actor, Restaurateur, Sales and Sales Management, Transit Operator, Audio Producer, Talk Show Host, Creative Consultant, Motivational Leader and current podcast creator. (My Independence Report) Who’s mission is to Declare Our Freedom From Hate, Division and Fear, featuring positive motivational guest, music interviews and fun episodes. KM Media.pro is the parent site for, Positive Talk Radio. We are a live podcast/ Video cast that focuses on todays life challenges. In addition we are able to produce audio/ video products for other companies and people looking to find a voice in the crowded world of podcast journalism
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XO0R1aN1WU
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://positivetalkradio.podbean.com/e/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/191-richard-blank-chief-executive-officer/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1736657096686275
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/guests/richard-blank/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/208-richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center/
https://www.positivetalkradio.net/160-richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingly-gifted-business-man/
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/positive-talk-radio-3982674/episodes/richard-blank-ceo-and-amazingl-141119081
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-positive-talk-radio-87062639/episode/richard-blank-ceo-of-costa-ricas-100280727/
Tony and Anna Velez, Real Estate Agents in Costa Rica is devoted to providing a superior level of real estate service and expertise to our clients to help them become enlightened real estate investors and create financial freedom. Our job as real estate agent in Costa Rica is to make your life easier, whether you are searching for your dream house or condo in Pura Vida land, or whether you are trying to sell your property.
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Michael Neuendorff: Uh, when we talk about that, the, uh, the last question is when should a business consider using a call center like yours? What's the thought process that one would go through to make that decision?
Richard Blank: That's a very good question. And if I may, I have to, I guess, say something for my, my own piece. I would prefer Michael, that people choose me for merit over price. I can name 10 call centers that can do it for half my cost in the Philippines in India or anywhere in town. So if that's your first question for me, I'll answer you by saying a thousand dollars an hour.
They go, no, you're not. And I go, of course, I'm not, what's your second question. at least just to see what they have to say. And then a lot of the times on those calls, because people shop around which they. People do know certain telemarketing, they have done it in house, but they've never, uh, outsourced. So maybe they're not familiar with some of our infrastructure, our reporting, our supervision, onboarding training, quality assurance.
They've just done it with a half a dozen guys in their office. And a lot of the times they have unrealistic expectations. Sometimes people have to go through a certain process with me. So they qualify. I reject more campaigns than I accept because I'm very selective. I use the smart theory specific measurable, agreed upon realistic.
And timeframe oriented. But to answer your, your question in a certain way, anybody that would like to scale their company, maybe compare apples to what they're doing to my structure here. We're very price comparable to the United States, including full benefits here. I don't force hands. I don't twist arms.
And from an educated point of view, potential clients make a decision about working with. Most of the time and I will be candid about this it's price and how can I compete when we're the most expensive in central America, but we also have the best infrastructure. If that's important to you. We also have Spanish language capacity.
We're very close to the United States. We're on certain time zones and we have a democratic society here. We don't have an army, so there's a 95% literacy. So one of the questions that I would ask as let's say a salesman is since I have these skills and you're asking me because I'm 50% more, am I capable of doing 1.5 an hour compared to just one an hour?
If I put it on a predictive dialer, if I speak in Spanish, if I use Richard's coaching, if we do rebuttals, if I do voicemails, am I capable of doing 0.5? Because you're saying you pay half. Well, then that's fine. Put me on a level playing field. Maybe my agents are capable with the skills that they possess and the coaching and the environment that they have.
And I've seen it to do 0.5 more, which means that we even out and I'm worth my cost. And then we get seats. But my goodness gracious is I can't do 20 calls an hour. you know, if the average one is 10, you can't, you can't make up time, but those are the sort of questions that I would ask to see if it would be a good fit or not.
But, um, but I do appreciate anybody that calls me where they must have found me on the internet through search engine optimization or read an article, or at least took the time to reach out. And so I almost tell them to put their checkbooks away. No one sends me money on a first phone call. It's my pleasure to share information.
And I hope that I shared plenty with your audience today because there's so much more I could share, but there's only so much time, but I believe that I shared with you my best. Where it would give somebody such great foundation training where Michael, all they do is just dedicated practice. If they just do things when the cameras are off and no one's around and they just practice their kicks, punches and painting their guitar, they're gonna be amazing artists of speech.
But the one thing is when they're too well rehearsed and they're too commercialized, they they're not raw anymore. They lose that sort of sparking character that they first started off this journey with. And that's pretty much my final thoughts on that.
Yeah, no, that that's excellent. Uh, that, that was, that was a, a, a nice little nugget right there at the end, too, Richard.
So thank you very much for sharing with us today. Grateful for the time that you spent with us because you're, you're running a busy and successful business down there in Costa Rica. So I'm grateful.
Thank you, Michael.
Build and Balance Show has accepted Richard's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Michael Neuendorff discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Build and Balance is dedicated to serving salespeople with 0 - 5 years of experience; and anyone who wants to improve their public speaking skills. Michael Neuendorff been in sales and marketing for more than 20 years and know what it's like to start out in sales. Michael has 25+ years of sales and marketing experience; extensive team building and leadership experience; teaching, training and mentoring experience and a proven ability to think creatively and listen deeply. Michael was a marketing director at Oracle Corporation, and an assistant manager of direct marketing at Softbank Forums. Michael has also been a top inside sales manager and a private English instructor in Tokyo.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/MVX44qrEXP0
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://www.buildandbalance.com/an-interview-with-the-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center-richard-blank-best-practices-in-outbound-sales-conversations/#
https://www.buildandbalance.com/an-interview-with-the-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center-richard-blank-best-practices-in-outbound-sales-conversations/richard-blank-and-michael-neuendorff/#
Michael Neuendorff: How, how do you, how do you develop sales? People who are relatively green to become someone that is effective at following your methods and processes? That, what, what, what do you look for in salespeople to know that I'm working with someone who could be great?
Michael? Those are my favorite agents to.
I can mold them. They're not coming in with bad habits. They're coming in bilingual, which shows such education for them. I get to be their first coach, if it's their first call center, telemarketing job, but let's go through it in three stages. If we may, the first one is the psychological stage. I have to let them know that fear is a morbid anticipation of something that hasn't happened yet.
Just in my own instance, just by these agents being bilingual and myself, once again, it shows dedication and structure. So they've done something very difficult. If I can properly prepare them and put them on a level playing field with all of the resources, such as a proper script. Rebuttals training in the CRM, in the system, how to use their phone system, doing quality assurance, which is QA support, where we go through, we call them KPIs, which are key performance indicators.
So we can just see their consistency. Trust me, everybody. It's a test. You can easily pass. The points that I give are for the soft skills. We just judge you to ask their email address and mention your information. I don't do that. I, I concentrate on the ACEs. I, I expect you to do that. That's what I'm paying you to do.
Richard Blank: What I want you to do when you're in class is to once again, relax and realize that this could be something that could pay more than most vocations. And the fact that you have a Thor. And you should expand your vocabulary. So instead of using words like help, my suggestion would be to use in this specific order would be assist guide or lend a hand, same message, different delivery.
You're being more strategic on this. You're being a little more clever. You don't once again, need to say, I'm sorry. It's for my clarification. So once I expand their vocabulary, just with work words, and then they go home and learn additional words cuz they're just so into it. And so what happens then, then you start connecting people together.
So you have a certain sort of buddy system or unlike myself, who's the owner of the company telemarketer. When you have somebody that shine. Let them work with the local Costa Ricans in their own language, knowing their culture. It's very important for me that people get promoted here from within, and I'm able to delegate certain responsibilities.
Now you're talking about a new guy. But if the kid shows up on time, front row center takes notes, role plays participates, just a great all around kid. You don't think I'm gonna want him to stand up on Wednesday and do a little bit of the class just for fun to build his confidence, love kids like that, have to do things like that.
And they will make sure that the people that work with them break bread with them, know each other's names. And you just don't say, good job. What do you saying? Good job. Let them specifically know you listen to a call or let them know, thank you for your one year anniversary with us. I must be doing something right, because Amazon, Oracle, Intel, and HP they're here.
I compete against the big boys, but guess what? They don't play pinball with their people. They don't train their people personally, like I do. They're not selective of sometimes the campaigns that they choose, just to make sure that people feel comfortable with the sort of training that they have and the preparation.
And so that's why I believe that this smaller sort of company that I have is why certain people gravitate towards this. It may not be for everybody. Some people just wanna lose themselves in thousands of people. But those that work for smaller call centers can make a very, very good name for themselves.
Very fast. Yeah.
Michael Neuendorff: Excellent.
Build and Balance Show has accepted Richard's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Michael Neuendorff discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Build and Balance is dedicated to serving salespeople with 0 - 5 years of experience; and anyone who wants to improve their public speaking skills. Michael Neuendorff been in sales and marketing for more than 20 years and know what it's like to start out in sales. Michael has 25+ years of sales and marketing experience; extensive team building and leadership experience; teaching, training and mentoring experience and a proven ability to think creatively and listen deeply. Michael was a marketing director at Oracle Corporation, and an assistant manager of direct marketing at Softbank Forums. Michael has also been a top inside sales manager and a private English instructor in Tokyo.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/bcX13KGnqYI
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/
https://www.buildandbalance.com/an-interview-with-the-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center-richard-blank-best-practices-in-outbound-sales-conversations/#
https://www.buildandbalance.com/an-interview-with-the-ceo-of-costa-ricas-call-center-richard-blank-best-practices-in-outbound-sales-conversations/richard-blank-and-michael-neuendorff/#
Dave Lorenzo: Now welcome to another edition of the inside BS show. Today we go down to Costa Rica, a beautiful nation, just south of the United States, where the weather is always good. The people are always friendly and the work is really efficient. In fact, today, we're gonna talk about. Setting up a call center in Costa Rica and why you don't need to do that, cuz there's already one waiting there for you.
Dave Lorenzo: My guest today is Richard blank. He's the CEO of Costa Rica's call center. And he's gonna share with us. How easy it is for you to offshore the tedious stuff that you can't hire people to do here in the United States. This is gonna be a great show. I can't wait to bring you Richard blank. So without further ado, please welcome Richard too.
Dave Lorenzo: There we go. Inside BS show Richard. Welcome. It's so great to have you.
Richard Blank: It's good morning to you. Good morning to your audience. And as we say in Costa Rica, P Avita, I'm very happy to be here today.
Dave Lorenzo: Oh, it's so great to have you. So, Richard first, we let's start by having you explain to people, uh, some of the, um, some of the unique qualities of Costa Rica.
Richard Blank: But I, I visited Costa Rica. I shared with you probably 21 or 22 years ago. And before I visited, I didn't know very much about Costa Rica explained to folks some of the really unique characteristics of that country.
Richard Blank: Well, not only we a powerhouse in the, uh, call center industry, but we have an incredible labor force.
Richard Blank: We have a 95% literacy rate. So there's no standing army. All that money was put back into education. We have the best infrastructure in central America. We are below Nicaragua, north of Panama. A lot of people think we're an island, but no we're right there smack out right in central America. We're very close to the United States or our Proximic on a direct flight is just a couple hours.
Richard Blank: We're very attuned to the north American market. So a lot of people have lived in the United. Have family in the United States, or there's a lot of expatriates that live here, including myself, who is an expatriate for the last 21 years. And their skill set here is incredible. Besides them being bilingual.
Richard Blank: They also have very high skills in regards to it customer support, lead generation appointment setting, and even non-voice omnichannel support. So companies such as HP, Intel, Oracle, and. Have a very, very large presence here in Costa Rica for, for many reasons. But you know, personally from being here and me being here for 21 years, it's, it's a beautiful life.
Richard Blank: And the people here are very cultured and educated and kind, and it reflects over our phone calls. So I believe that's why a lot of our agents show very high levels of success.
Dave Lorenzo: Yeah.
Inside BS Show has accepted my invitation to join your audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dave Lorenzo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/nybGZd8p2wI
https://getinsidebs.com/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/
https://player.fm/series/inside-bs-with-dave-lorenzo/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/inside-bs-with/how-to-build-a-world-class-y0jPVSM64FX/
https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/id1506769228?i=1000567719961
https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Build-a-World-Class-Call-Center-Richard-Blank-Show-95-Podcast/B0B54HPXGK?ref=a_pd_Inside_c1_lAsin_1_7
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lGBT4kd7026zRzP3C8mlu
https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Inside-BS-with-Dave-Lorenzo-p1258770/?topicId=173106229
https://www.ivoox.com/en/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-audios-mp3_rf_88970286_1.html
Dave Lorenzo: Great. It used to be a novelty. Now it is essential. And this is the conversation that we have with our kids. This is the conversation I have with anybody who's willing to listen because it's the you're you're in the next 10 years, 65, 70% of, uh, of our country is going to. Uh, folks who speak in other language and the majority of those folks will probably be Spanish speaking.
So, you know, I think that you are providing a great service because it's gonna be a competitive advantage, cuz you can probably do it better and less expensive than we could do it here in the United States. And I think that your agents who are, who are taking calls from the United States will probably be taking an equal number of calls in English and Spanish in 15 years from customer.
I, I just, I see it happening very interesting.
Richard Blank: You, you bring that up because the certain key performance indicator that KPI is talk time and also conversion ratios. There's two metrics that are increased by at least 20%. When you're on a phone, speaking in Spanish with a client, the call goes longer. They make less calls that day, but their conversion ratio is higher.
Obviously it's their native tongue. Or as you were mentioning about certain de details and certain mannerisms that people use. They might be able to connect better with somebody on the phone, speaking Spanish. I, I almost see it as like Popeye with spinach. Once they switch over to Spanish, all of a sudden they're calling you Don Davi they're though.
And these are the sort of things where I can tell in regards to their tone and their rate and their pitch, they're pausing and they're pregnant pausing and their follow up tie down questions that they're extremely comfortable, not only with the conversation, but with. Client that they've only met just five minutes ago.
They've already figured out 12 different things in common. So their me too technique is off the roof.
Inside BS Show has accepted my invitation to join your audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dave Lorenzo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/czmeQIZ8asQ
https://getinsidebs.com/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/
https://player.fm/series/inside-bs-with-dave-lorenzo/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/inside-bs-with/how-to-build-a-world-class-y0jPVSM64FX/
https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/id1506769228?i=1000567719961
https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Build-a-World-Class-Call-Center-Richard-Blank-Show-95-Podcast/B0B54HPXGK?ref=a_pd_Inside_c1_lAsin_1_7
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lGBT4kd7026zRzP3C8mlu
https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Inside-BS-with-Dave-Lorenzo-p1258770/?topicId=173106229
https://www.ivoox.com/en/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-audios-mp3_rf_88970286_1.html
Dave Lorenzo: Where I live in Miami is I, I live, uh, probably 15, not even maybe 10 miles. The Western border of Miami-Dade county, uh, you know, heading toward the Western part of Florida. And this particular area is, uh, was settled by, uh, a lot of Cubans. So when we go to the supermarket, where in my neighborhood, we, more than likely we speak Spanish.
Dave Lorenzo: Um, when we go to get our car washed, we speak Spanish. When we, uh, go to the doctor's office and the, and the, the receptionist greets us, she'll greet us in Spanish. She speaks English in Spanish, but it's just the, it's the dominant language here in, in my neighborhood. Now, when you get toward the toward Miami beach, It's a tourist area.
Dave Lorenzo: So people there will, you know, the default there will be English, but the, the specific reason that my family and I moved to this part of Florida is because we wanted a, a culturally diverse experience for our kids. My kids go to a bilingual school. They speak English half the day. They speak Spanish half the day.
Dave Lorenzo: They speak Spanish with, um, their grandmother on my wife's side, they speak English with my parents and they have tested out. My son is in seventh grade. He's tested out of high school Spanish. My daughter is two years behind him. She's tested out of high school, Spanish. So they're taking other languages now in school.
Dave Lorenzo: My, my point about that. We were kind of forward thinking and we, we understand the global nature of the workforce today. And I think 20 years ago, when I visited Costa Rica, it was like a novelty to offshore your call center. Now, I think nobody, nobody would even think twice. And in fact, you may have people in Texas who have a heavier, uh, you know, who have a heavier accent than people in Costa Rica.
Dave Lorenzo: So I don't think it makes any difference today. I don't think people would be put off in any way, as long as they can get the level of service that they're accustomed to Richard. But before we get into the details of all the types of services you provide and. Do that? Tell us your story. How did you come to you now?
Dave Lorenzo: You've been in Costa Rica for 20 plus years. How did you come to be in Costa Rica in the first place?
Richard Blank: Well, my story began in Northeast Philadelphia. When I graduated Abington high school, you were very fortunate. Uh, Dave, because in my family, my grandparents were speaking Romanian, Russian, Polish, and German.
Richard Blank: And so I'm the first person in my family that decided that Spanish should be my major. all of my friends were going to Ivy league and they were studying law in medicine and architecture engineering, or going into their family's business. I chose to double down on languages and go to the university of Arizona.
Richard Blank: I chose a communication major, which made it a lot of fun for those five years, but I also realized that I could pick up public speaking skills, rhetoric skills, and nonverbal communication, micro expression, reading. I was able to get an internship at Telemundo. Jake home was kind enough to give me in 1995 and 96, my senior and super senior year, I worked for promotions and public relations at Telemundo and Tucson there.
Richard Blank: I was able to meet, and this is dating myself gentleman by the name of Pedro SEK and Miguel Kitana. One was in charge of the news out of Los Angeles. And the other had the main talk show in Miami, across from Christina, from uni. . And so imagine a 22 year old boy that is doing public speaking events with these players, these professional men that have made it and have taken the time to mold my confidence and to give me the self-assurance to stand in front of 5,000 people at a Tucson Toro's baseball game and do a Halina Cantina Chile in contest.
Richard Blank: And so given these opportunities that a young man, it molded my confidence that I could do. and I knew that I could do it in two languages. And so postgrad, I landed a job that was for the importers of Corona beer. So I worked that in the Southwest of the United States and that was incredible. And when I was 27, I had the opportunity to move to Costa Rica for a couple months to do some training at a friend of mine, from college, his call center.
Richard Blank: And as you know, when you fly here and you're here, you fall in love with Costa Rica. So everything of mine got put in storage. If you can get past your parents, guilt, Dave, you can live anywhere in the world. And I decided to take a chance. I worked at my friend's call center for four years, and this was back in the day when we were making calls with Cisco phones and printouts of Excel sheets with highlighter pens.
Richard Blank: And it was a young environment. It was a fun environment, a bilingual environment of, of artists, of speech. And I got to see the highs and the lows and the gripes and the successes of it. But. Between me and you. I also saw areas of improvement and the areas of improvement that I saw the most was how people are treated.
Richard Blank: Not saying my friend didn't do a good job, an amazing job, but a lot of people felt like numbers, where they felt like robots. And my other friends and supervisors from other call centers tell me that sometimes agents are not properly onboarded or they're not prepared, or the S scripts are shody. With spelling in grammar mistakes, and maybe some over aggressive language that you would see in a Glen Gary boiler room Wolf of wall street movie, that might be completely out of character for somebody here because we're, we're in a very strict Catholic country, Dave and these young men and women have to go home and tell their parents what they do for a living.
Richard Blank: So we are extremely selective of the campaigns that come in. Not, not only can I fulfill your needs, but I gotta make sure I don't have an attrition. And I gotta make sure that the, that the agents that come in, that we invest in that are able to stay here and build upon that. So we just don't waste that.
Richard Blank: And so my thoughts about how I got here, you don't say you're gonna be a call center CEO for a major in college, or when you're seven years old, you tell that to your mother, but I definitely knew this. I was the only one out of my group of friends that could speak Spanish. And not only that, but every job I had, I was the one that could go out to the Southwest Phoenix when I was selling telecommunications and sell a T1 to somebody and translate it for my supervisor.
Richard Blank: And I knew I had something that was different and it was wonderful for me cuz I enjoyed it and that I was embraced. I might had a grammar mistake in my subjunctive tense, but people would invite me in correct me and feed me and then recommend me to 10 of their. So why do you think that every environment that I was in when I was able to make these calls in Spanish, that I ran the board, I could do it in English and I did, but I also did it in Spanish.
Richard Blank: I could double gun it. I did two boards, English and Spanish. My point being is that you can show this sort of the first impression, respect Dave, when not only are you bilingual, but so am I, and we're doing this without even knowing each other. It. And so it really assisted me in having these sort of engagements and finding a lot of these things in common and really reduced any sort of defense or anger or setting a tone of aggression that that was eliminated immediately when I knew exactly what to say.
Richard Blank: And, and these are gonna be some of the additional selling techniques we'll talk about later and stuff. But my friend, I just wanted to discuss with you the ethics.. Of how I am and how I was raised. I'm when someone calls me a salesman and I take that as a compliment, I might look and sound like one, but Dave, I'm an educator.
Richard Blank: I don't ever force a hand from an educated point of view. My clients, my agents, my friends, and anyone I relate to then makes a decision. And I feel that if given the chance to explain how I feel and to answer their questions, everybody can leave with something on the. I, I think it's a wonderful way to start relationships.
Inside BS Show has accepted my invitation to join your audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dave Lorenzo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/dbAl7gwXUEA
https://getinsidebs.com/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/
https://player.fm/series/inside-bs-with-dave-lorenzo/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/inside-bs-with/how-to-build-a-world-class-y0jPVSM64FX/
https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/id1506769228?i=1000567719961
https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Build-a-World-Class-Call-Center-Richard-Blank-Show-95-Podcast/B0B54HPXGK?ref=a_pd_Inside_c1_lAsin_1_7
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lGBT4kd7026zRzP3C8mlu
https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Inside-BS-with-Dave-Lorenzo-p1258770/?topicId=173106229
https://www.ivoox.com/en/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-audios-mp3_rf_88970286_1.html
Dave Lorenzo: All right, Richard. So before we went to that break, I asked you to think of a case study for us. Have you come up with one?
Richard Blank: I have, in fact, I can make it easy for you. I could do it across all verticals. How does that sound? So it applies to every account that I have. I always have an answer for that. A couple things we can do.
Richard Blank: The first thing is there's certain words that you have because the vowels in Spanish in English could give away. So we write certain words out phonetically for them, even though they need to know how to spell it properly, that can eliminate any sort of confusion or any sort of guessing. The second thing is, let's say for an example, that we're representing a company that's out of Chicago in a certain suburbs.
Richard Blank: What we like to do with a lot of the times is just take a Google. Right around the block and just to see the local pizza parlors, the parks, the churches, and what's going on around there. So instead of just giving us specific direction, we can talk about Mike's pizza, which everybody knows more than anything.
Richard Blank: And finally, we, we have to ensure that if people do follow up or even subcategory questions that we need to have every single sort of vocabulary for that. Doesn't mean that we need to have it memorized, but we should have a glossary of terms. So just, if something comes up, we're skilled enough to say that's an excellent question, Dave, and we could look it up while we're answering that question for you.
Richard Blank: Many people are capable of doing that. So as long as we're on a level playing field and we're given all the resources to, as you say, make it. Like we're in the United States and we know what the shore is and cheese fries and things like that. Then, uh, maybe tell us a couple more local flavors that we have or things that we should be aware of.
Richard Blank: And those are the sort of calls that we make to the people where it sounds like we have more in common with them and we know where we're going. It's. A simple, an example, like what we're calling businesses, instead of just saying, how are you a lot of the times we'll ask, Hey, how's Costa Rica's call center doing today in the tens of thousands of calls, I've analyzed.
Richard Blank: We find that company name, spike technique by asking about a company or organization, a lot of people have responded with you've been here before, or you an alumni sounds like, you know where you're going. You can parlay that with an extension or a person's name. And so you're rotting on that sort of high of familiarity, and they'll be able to transfer you.
Richard Blank: I always believe that lying on the phone is not ethical. I'm not saying I'm lying and I'm not saying that we're being slick. There's nothing wrong with being clever. And as long as you say a person's name a certain way, or a company's name a certain way with your anonymity, they can kind of maybe reduce the fact that you're a telemarketer or you're selling something and you make a different sort of first impression approach.
Richard Blank: And so these are the sort of things that enable us to prolong our conversations to at least increase our odd. Of a conversion ratio. I could give you 50 tips and tricks today, but we don't have as much time to go over that. But I think the most important thing, my, my friend, Dave, and thank you so much for you and your audience's time is that I think the first 30 seconds of the phone call is ideal.
Richard Blank: You need to, once again, not be egocentric, you need to put that company first and by saying their names and being polite to those that answer the phone. And making sure that they get credit when you are transferred or have given you information. And you should especially do that when you do a follow up letter, because you're probably separating yourself, Dave, from a thousand other people, and I've had the secretary or gatekeeper say, you know, thank you very much for that positive escalation.
Richard Blank: I got a raise or I got acknowledged, or it just made me feel good after 30 years, you're the first person to say that. So of course they're waiting for my call to transfer it for the close. I believe in woo way. Why have resistance do at least resistance allow the wind and the current to take you so any sort of friction and forced motion is not natural.
Richard Blank: I think that if I can gain their confidence in the beginning and show very nice, uh, reserved side where I can still close a deal, but I'm not gonna do it. Like you see in the movies I can, but that's out of character for. And if I'm looking to have long term relationships with people, it's not a one and a done, I want to get referred.
Richard Blank: I want Dave you and my network together to grow as well. And as I say before, coming on your show today, I, I wanted to share with you certain things that enabled me to be in business for 14 years and running this call center. If I were not able to do these sort of baseline ethics, morals, sort of phone calls for my clients, this would've never worked.
Richard Blank: and, um, if anything of nothing taking that away today is that if you, if you reject more than you accept, if you stand tall to your beliefs and you do things to make your great grandparents proud, you're gonna preserve, you're gonna last, you'll have the endurance. You'll make it through the tough times.
Richard Blank: Cuz those are the times you look in the mirror and you ask yourself, is this still worth it? Well, it is worth it. I have a luxury trade. This should have never happened. The fact that I'm here in Costa Rica for 21 years. And I have a company with my wife after 14 years. It's a long shot from Northeast Philadelphia.
Richard Blank: So I smile every day. I've learned to do that and I've learned to give my agents dignity and to know every single one of their names and to break bread with them. And I have the largest collection of pinball here. When you visit me, you'll see. So it's free play that it can play pinball with me, go to the Pacman machine, make yourself comfortable.
Richard Blank: Because that's my goal in a call center environment, which is a grind is, is to be the opposite. This is not a boiler room. This could be a career for these young men and women. They could build it like me. And if I could be the last boss they ever have, maybe when they move on, they can know every agent's name and keep that sort of tradition that I have. Dave.
Dave Lorenzo: That's terrific. I love it.
Inside BS Show has accepted my invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dave Lorenzo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/30D56dNySFU
https://getinsidebs.com/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/
https://player.fm/series/inside-bs-with-dave-lorenzo/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/inside-bs-with/how-to-build-a-world-class-y0jPVSM64FX/
https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/id1506769228?i=1000567719961
https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Build-a-World-Class-Call-Center-Richard-Blank-Show-95-Podcast/B0B54HPXGK?ref=a_pd_Inside_c1_lAsin_1_7
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lGBT4kd7026zRzP3C8mlu
https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Inside-BS-with-Dave-Lorenzo-p1258770/?topicId=173106229
https://www.ivoox.com/en/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-audios-mp3_rf_88970286_1.html
Dave Lorenzo: Biggest takeaway from my time in Costa Rica related to the people was that. And my, my friends here in Miami are gonna kill me for saying this, but it is the God's honest truth. People in Costa Rica speak better English than the people in Miami . It's just the facts. I'm not, I'm not saying anything.
That's, that's not true. The people in Costa Rica are extremely well educated. I, the healthcare system is excellent, correct for people who retire there, the healthcare is fantastic.
Richard Blank: Absolutely. There's a lot of medical tourism, and I believe you are mentioning to having more of a neutral tone. in regards to some other Latino countries.
So yes, we've been known to have a certain sort of accent that could be more relatable compared to let's say offshoring in India, where the Philippines, where it's more noticeable. But as I say before, Spanish, it will be the most spoken language in the United States, if not today, very soon. So the fact that these agents here, as you say are.
Structured and disciplined and they show the cognitive skills to become bilingual, which takes a lot of work. I get these individuals that are walking through the door already showing me something. And so what I try to do, and I think you'll agree with this, cuz you've been here. I will focus on not just their grammar, but more their vocabulary.
We look in thesaurus so we can choose certain words that would be more appropriate for a phone call or for customer support. So we can do a first call re. Because just by saying the word help, Dave, you know, this, that could open up so many rabbit holes, it's better to say assist, lend a hand or guide somebody.
And so under my direction, that's where I take this delicate second language of theirs and use our experience being an Anglosaxon and growing up in the United States and giving them the ability to be able to communicate more properly with the sort of clients that we have in the United States.
Inside BS Show has accepted my invitation to join your audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dave Lorenzo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/nYuKleFQ1H8
https://getinsidebs.com/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/
https://player.fm/series/inside-bs-with-dave-lorenzo/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/inside-bs-with/how-to-build-a-world-class-y0jPVSM64FX/
https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/id1506769228?i=1000567719961
https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Build-a-World-Class-Call-Center-Richard-Blank-Show-95-Podcast/B0B54HPXGK?ref=a_pd_Inside_c1_lAsin_1_7
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lGBT4kd7026zRzP3C8mlu
https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Inside-BS-with-Dave-Lorenzo-p1258770/?topicId=173106229
https://www.ivoox.com/en/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-audios-mp3_rf_88970286_1.html
Dave Lorenzo: All right. So, uh, talk to us about. The, uh, the type of work you do. Uh, I think a lot of people who are listening, a lot of people who are watching, they think of when they think of a call center, they think of, you know, calling like the help desk to solve problems. But you do a lot more than that. So explain the spectrum of work that you do at Costa Rica's call center,
Richard Blank: Many different profiles that we have here.
Richard Blank: And that's an excellent question, Dave. We, we're very flexible. If there's non-voice support, you can have people that are just answering emails or just doing chat support. Then you have people that are inbound customer support, which is what you're usually used to calling any sort of company. We also have certain agents that are capable of doing outbound lead generation and appointment setting for people.
Richard Blank: My favorite is a hot lead transfer. One. You get it while the lead is hot, and then you have the, the ACEs, you got the closers, they're very competitive down here and they're in high demand. So, uh, once again, I kind of see them as mercenaries. They'll just jump to. Best deal and you might not keep them along.
Richard Blank: So I usually like to feel most comfortable around a level one customer. Lead generation and appointment setting, and then avoid, uh, eventually we can mold them into being salespeople on the phone. Uh, these individuals, it's very important that the client respects the labor laws here in Costa Rica, because a lot of the times they will be asking for certain overtime or certain adjustments that they need to understand.
Richard Blank: Um, you are dealing with another country and they have different types of rules. So the best thing for us to do prior to working with the clients, to let them know of our holidays that we have and the other things that might disrupt any sort of workflow. We also would like for them to know the sort of culture that we have here, not necessarily in Costa Rica, but at my call center.
Richard Blank: I don't like when supervisors write in bold or they write in red, I don't like cursing or screaming because you can bend them, Dave. But the worst thing we can do is break. Yeah. And it's not fair, not for our reputation for your project or even for the vibe of the project. The clients have to ensure that we have all the resources well before making phone calls.
Richard Blank: I gotta make sure that the station is set up. Do we log into you through a VPN? Are we using your CRM or our CRM? Our dialer, your dialer list, scrubbed rebuttal script. Do you have recordings for me? Who's doing the onboarding. Who's doing the training. What sort of quality assurance and QA scores do you have there?
Richard Blank: So, and it's okay. Dave, if I've worked with people before that don't know the, the terminology or the QA forms or onboarding, that's my pleasure because my resources are your resources. And anytime I can, uh, educate a client and guide them through a quality assurance form on what we should be looking for from the agent, then you and I see consist.
Richard Blank: So your sales cycle gets a little bit shorter. You build your pipeline more, you're closing more on first calls. And when we're listening to these calls, you and I will be able to deduct where our strengths, where there areas of focus, where we were dropping the ball on the rebuttal, on the pauses with the tele signs.
Richard Blank: So my class here is not just a bilingual person taking a script and making calls. I am very, very, uh, strict. In regards to representing our clients in the best light. I'm very selective of the tone that we have on the call. It's always empathetic and confident. And then I always teach my agents how to do these sort of micro expression reading on the phone.
Richard Blank: So when they allow the client to talk or then it's our turn to interject to be able to do a follow up. And I've seen that our conversion ratios just by not, uh, having a hedge for an. Where somebody says, um, okay. Or just wonderful. Great. When someone's answering a question, Dave, you know, it's much more to your advantage for someone not to repeat, let us repeat it.
Richard Blank: Let us do it for our clarification. If it's ABC or 1, 2, 3, and the same thing goes, my friend, when there's a bad cell phone connection, a dog barking music, cuz people are working from home now that's to our advantage twice. We can get things in the background to have things in common and inadvertently and passive aggressively.
Richard Blank: I can tell you how much I love your dog, which is pretty much a hint to, you know, have him quiet down. But it also gives me a chance to be able to work with these clients in that certain way, to be able to move that conversation forward and to understand how they speak. I always believe in active listen, because a lot of the times the people are just moving things forward. Um, in case there might be some sort of family situation or a business promotion, a lot of people just skip through that. They should pause for a moment they should celebrate with them or should they pay condolences. And the one thing that I'm really missing on these calls is when people give positive escalations, you'll have a business associate M.
Richard Blank: That does a wonderful job written me multiple times with the emails, just to make sure that we were locked in today, a plus. So there's a lot of people, a lot of team behind Dave Lorenzo and Richard blank. And so I want your business strategy and marketing strategy to take very much into consideration all those, that answer calls, filter calls, and that may be able to give you company culture or might be able to tell you about a promot.
Richard Blank: or it might just get real with you for a minute. And then when you're at that stage of the call, Dave, then it's not selling anymore, then it's really just, uh, strangers are friends you haven't met yet. So now you're just really hanging out with somebody and just finding ways to meet in the middle.
Inside BS Show has accepted my invitation to join your audience for a solid discussion regarding taking a chance by moving abroad and starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica. Dave Lorenzo discusses with Richard advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation and phonetic micro expression reading.
Richard’s journey in the call center space is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry.
https://youtu.be/IVFQWhymunU
https://getinsidebs.com/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/
https://player.fm/series/inside-bs-with-dave-lorenzo/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/inside-bs-with/how-to-build-a-world-class-y0jPVSM64FX/
https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-richard-blank-show-95/id1506769228?i=1000567719961
https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Build-a-World-Class-Call-Center-Richard-Blank-Show-95-Podcast/B0B54HPXGK?ref=a_pd_Inside_c1_lAsin_1_7
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lGBT4kd7026zRzP3C8mlu
https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Inside-BS-with-Dave-Lorenzo-p1258770/?topicId=173106229
https://www.ivoox.com/en/how-to-build-a-world-class-call-center-audios-mp3_rf_88970286_1.html
Gwinnett Real Estate Agent is one of the most reliable and trusted real estate agents in Lawrenceville GA. Our team of professional real estate agents who have been in the business for years. We are knowledgeable, experienced, and licensed to provide you with the best service possible.
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Mark Singer Realty is a trusted and experienced best real estate agents in Sarasota FL. With over many years of experience in the industry, Mark has helped countless families buy and sell homes. He knows the area inside and out, and will work tirelessly on your behalf to get the best deal possible. Contact Mark today for all your real estate needs!
Mark Singer - Real Estate Agent Sarasota FL
5220 Paylor Ln, Sarasota, FL, 34240
941.806.9121
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If you're looking homes for sale in Scottsdale, Dealty is the perfect place to find one. We make it easy for you to find homes for sale at the best possible price, and our experienced agents will help you negotiate the best deal possible.
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7033 E Greenway Pkwy #160, Scottsdale, AZ 85331
480-999-5088
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ADVANCED CALL CENTER TELEMARKETING TRAINING
At Costa Rica’s Call Center, we are confident enough in our bilingual telemarketing expertise that we are willing to disclose a sample of our nearshore BPO training for the curious. Our Latin American advanced telemarketing course has been highly rated for our extensive call center knowledge in the areas of interpersonal communication, conflict management and phonetics. We invite all companies interested in outsourcing to discover why Costa Rica’s Call Center ranks among the best in bilingual communication techniques for Costa Rican telemarketers.
From day one, our new customer service and sales agents go through our specialized Early System Programming (ESP) where we train BPO agents in increasing their level of intensity and persistence of behavior. Many courageous people initially display an interest in making outbound cold calls, but not everyone has the ability to be a professional bilingual telemarketer that produces results. A call center agent may be highly intelligent according to a more conservative definition yet unmotivated to dedicate this intelligence to certain outbound BPO telemarketing campaigns.
A call center’s psychology of selling over the phone will be the initial BPO topic covered. The telemarketer’s mind is focused on how to prevail over rejection and to uncover a physical stamina to handle a minimum of 8 hours of quality outbound phone calls a day. Each bilingual agent’s fear of telemarketing is addressed openly and resolved with compassion. Prevention for call center burn out is discussed and will be closely monitored daily for each Central American trainee. This key observation will filter out potential quitters while promoting BPO career team members for your company. At Costa Rica’s Call Center, we are not hard on our nearshore call center staff, we hand pick and train them to work hard at making your offshore campaign successful.
Bilingual phonetics is often discussed and is encouraged as an ongoing study for mastery. Practice calls are always recorded, analyized and studied during every training session and will cover level one (easy close) to level five (non-stop rebuttal) types of telemarketing calls and customer service escalations. An analysis provided from a detailed checklist will judge the agent’s tone, rate, pitch, duration, pause, pregnant pause, delivery and timing of open and close-ended questions. Video taping a call center phone call in progress involves the same phonetics study along with non-verbal communication to understanding how body posture, facial expressions, hands as an illustrator and motion can dramatically improve a voice and projection. All BPO trainees must be a third party observer in order to make the necessary mental changes themselves. The only way anyone can make great strides in career building self-improvement when is to be humbled by their own criticism. Self monitoring and reflection is what will make your telemarketing team rank among the most proficient sounding in the business and will create long term BPO agents for your offshore project.
A mandatory call center training quiz at the end of every BPO class is necessary to make sure that the Latin American agents know how to handle our system and have a confident understanding of your outsourced material taught that day. The offshore campaign information plus advanced rhetoric are a minimum of two written and oral exams that must be passed by all bilingual team members. As the nearshore telemarketing training is near completion, several test calls will be made to you for final approval of the script and our team members ability to properly speak for your company.
Costa Rica’s Call Center operates all bilingual BPO training sessions in a low pressure environment. In the beginning of call center training, it is very important to build a comfort level with our processes before they are on their own. During this stage, they have to get comfortable handling customer service and sales issues very quickly before they are approved to make a single call for your company. The faster the agents get on the phone and take a call will improve their learning curve, become more efficient faster and would decrease their ramp-up time.
Learn more about leadership, strong corporate culture, outsourcing, and becoming successful in the call center space.
Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Mr. Blank relocated to Costa Rica to train over 500 employees for one of the larger call centers in Central America.
By utilizing his motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard has successfully prepared and managed some of the finest telemarketers in the country for the past twenty one years.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/r...
https://youtu.be/F4x-y2_Kg1E
https://youtu.be/Tz1r7IOiVGo
Employment opportunities
Costa Rica’s Call Center employment services department is always open to meet new prospects to join our call center teams at all levels for a variety of outsourced campaigns. Anyone in the corporate world who believes that their advanced communication skills can enhance a telemarketing, customer care or even a web design campaign are all encouraged to immediately contact our employment services department for immediate consideration.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/e...
Learn more about leadership, strong corporate culture, outsourcing, and becoming successful in the call center space.
Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Mr. Blank relocated to Costa Rica to train over 500 employees for one of the larger call centers in Central America.
By utilizing his motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard has successfully prepared and managed some of the finest telemarketers in the country for the past twenty one years.
In addition, he has earned the reputation of running a school for telemarketing and is often sought after for private training sessions and consultation.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/r...
https://youtu.be/F4x-y2_Kg1E
https://youtu.be/Tz1r7IOiVGo
At Costa Rica’s Call Center, your initial BPO consultation will not be with an account executive, but with the CEO himself, Richard Blank. After a careful telemarketing analysis and comfortable understanding of your business needs, we can begin to match your outsourcing plan with our customer service. Our offshore objective on your first call is to offer sound advice and for you to conclude if our nearshore outsourcing solution for your growing company makes financial and logical sense.
In order to fully comprehend your specific Central America outsourcing business needs, we will ask you a series of selective BPO questions. Every telemarketing detail is important and must be considered to properly prepare your call center agents. Take your time when speaking, so we may listen carefully to all of your customer service ideas and concerns. There is no generic format given to anyone who contacts us, which would be a disservice to you and to your company when offshoring. At Costa Rica’s Call Center, each nearshore client is regarded as unique and merits their own tailor made bilingual call center campaign program.
Costa Rica’s Call Center can provide nearshore outsourcing services to match any size BPO budget. What is a comfortable amount for you to begin an inbound or outbound calling project? When our positive telemarketing results increase your working capital, we can talk about a larger offshoring budget, if desired, for even faster growth.
We are firmly intent in maintaining a long term call center relationship that will benefit everyone. Our mutual customer service goal is to help your business grow through a well thought out offshore marketing plan that is financially sound, period. At Costa Rica’s Call Center, we are confident that you will be satisfied with the telemarketing results and will continue to work with us on other BPO programs in the future.
The moment we agree on your particular type of BPO outsourcing needs and the expectations from your customers, the offshore telemarketing process is put into motion. A time frame must be established by both parties for your new call center staff to reach their goals before your launch date. This will take place after our top executives consult with the nearshore customer service managers and training staff on your outsourced campaign. All opinions will be discussed with you to assist in making your final approval.
Hiring and specialized training of your Central America telemarketing team will take place immediately. Depending on the scale and complexity of your BPO campaign, training times and lengths will vary for proficiency and must be taken into consideration. This will be to your call center advantage and will work in your bilingual team’s favor for maximum BPO results. Daily updates on your call center agents can be sent to you at the end of each business day for review, if requested. Normal reporting is on a three day basis.
Learn more about leadership, strong corporate culture, outsourcing, and becoming successful in the call center space.
Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Mr. Blank relocated to Costa Rica to train over 500 employees for one of the larger call centers in Central America.
By utilizing his motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard has successfully prepared and managed some of the finest telemarketers in the country for the past twenty one years.
In addition, he has earned the reputation of running a school for telemarketing and is often sought after for private training sessions and consultation.
Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level.
Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies.
https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/r...
https://youtu.be/F4x-y2_Kg1E
https://youtu.be/Tz1r7IOiVGo