Author: Admin

Sarina is multi-faceted and multi-talented as one would expect from a woman with two master’s degrees and several other academic achievements.

Magdalene’s world is one that fuses matrimony, innovative training techniques, progressive study and chocolates – and a vibrant teenager that keeps this world spinning around.

My career started off in the insurance industry as a claims supervisor. Later I ventured into the learning and development sector.  Fast forward eleven years, I am now the Head of Talent at Talksure.

Specialist Trainer & Content Design
Team and Business Performance coach
Certified NeuroLinguistic Coach

Chief of Strategy Implementation & Operational Efficiency

Natalie is qualified in Psychology, Short Term Insurance, Human Resources and Business Commerce.

She started her corporate career as part of the start up team for one of the first Direct Insurer businesses in South Africa. Prior to the company’s “go-live”, she enjoyed the privilege of a 6 month Business Management Internship Programme. Within Guardian Direct, Natalie was ultimately responsible for the Sales Call Centre.

Jeffrey is primarily focused on supporting organizations improve performance through COPC Certification and Consultancy services.  As Vice-President Digital Customer Experience and Consultancy EMEA, Jeffrey is responsible for the development of the COPC framework in regards of Digital Systems and Digital Channels as well Consultancy services.

Mikovhe Mulaudzi is a young woman who is running a company in the cutting edge of ICT solutions. Mikovhe is a graduate of the university of Johannesburg and runs a company that employs over 40 people most of whom are professionals. MBV IT has developed its own voice platform during the pandemic and offers true value for money for clients especially contact centers.

Abdul is a founder of a telecommunications company Primo Dialler, he has a wealth of experience in sales of tech solutions and running contact centres. His background allows him to resonate with call centre owners, understanding their issues and finding solutions that can work for them.

Navlika Ratangee is currently the Managing Director of ICAS SA. A GIBS MBA graduate and Clinical psychologist with diverse experience in human capital management, behavioural risk, change management, managerial consulting, global management consulting, leadership, women in leadership, organisational resilience and organisational strategy.

Karl Reed is an ICT expert with more than 30 years of industry experience. He currently applies his vast knowledge and experience in his role as Chief Solutions Officer at Pivotal Data, where he delivers a range of basic to highly complex cloud and premise-based contact centres, process automation/workflow, and enterprise unified communication solutions.

Karl combines his strong technical background in multiple fields, including engineering, development, process and product management, complex solution design and architecting, and deployment, with his proficiency in business development, pre-sales, sales and support to deliver a return on investment for clients.

He fulfils an active executive role to connect resources and competencies across the company’s entire sales, solution development, project deployment and support value chain.

www.pivotaldata.co.za

Yolande is a contact center professional who believes in the value of people, process, and technology.  She is a qualified life coach and NLP practitioner.

She has more than 15 years’ experience in contact centers, where she held roles from agent level to heading up the quality and training functions within BPO’s for various industries and had won the BPESA regional accolade for quality.

Yolande finds herself working side by side with Contact Center Operations Teams and has impressive insight into how effective training and quality can drive performance.

www.surgo.co.za

Yousuf Karodia opens the line of communication between clients, customers, and businesses to get the business’s message across its internal and external platforms. With over 5 years in both internal and external communication, Yousuf has experience in management consultation, team building, professional development, strategic marketing implementation, and company collaboration.

www.surgo.co.za

Rita Govender is an Accredited Management 3.0 Agile Leadership Facilitator, a Licensed Individual and Team Enneagram Practitioner and Transformational Coach.     

Lauren Potgieter has extensive experience and knowledge of the local and global BPO and contact center outsourcing landscape, and has been involved in this industry for almost 20 years.

Peter is the epitome of enterprise transformation expert. With over 30 years of senior experience, both in the UK and worldwide, he has consulted on, managed, set-up and right-shored large contact centre Sales and Service operations. In addition, Peter has led training and development functions and helped major change initiatives in IT implementations, target operating model transformations and omni-channel service strategies.

After many years in the education field, Gail moved into Operations Management, Training, Consulting and Coaching where she been working for the past 23 years across multiple corporates that include the financial, insurance, legal, telecommunication, e-commerce and consumer support industries. The work she does integrates directly into Operational activities, helping leaders navigate organisational complexity, their roles and responsibilities and the work they are accountable for.  Her professional focus is on the development and sustainability of a competent, capable and robust workforce which supports the VUCA business terrain and helps leaders navigate challenges while building resilience.  This places people enablement at the core of her work. She engages with executives, managers, team leaders and frontline staff at ‘the point at which work gets done’ – and delivers a performance partnership that has learning at its centre.  Her vision for the work she does is: businesses optimisation through people optimisation.

For the last 30 odd years I have been actively employed in the South African Contact Centre market – in almost equal parts – as either an Employee or a Business Consultant & Trainer. 

Over the years, I have had the good fortune to gather hands on operational experience through a career progression from entry level as a Call Centre Agent through Team Leader, Manager, Executive and Director of various Corporations.

In addition to my experience of hierarchical career progression, my Consulting experience has been the source of exposure to lateral working experience across diverse industries and operational functions.  This has culminated in my having a thorough and holistic understanding of Service Operations in general and Contact Centres in particular. 

As a Service Operations specialist I bring a holistic understanding to the nuances required to achieve sustainable customer service delivery.  Customer Experience Management is my personal passion & Contact Centres my particular expertise. 

Company Profile: Nodube

READ AS “KNOW-DO-BE”

MARGIE MIDDLETON

Nodube is a B-BBEE Level 2 South African registered Management Consultancy specialising in providing robust solutions in Service Strategy and Customer Expectation Management.

Margie Middleton created Nodube to provide a vehicle for collaboration between a network of experienced professionals with complementary skills and expertise.

The core expertise of the members of the Nodube Professional Network is in the disciplines of Service Operations and Customer Experience Management. Each member has extensive hands-on management experience across a range of industries and in turn has their own area of specialisation.

Nodube is driven by the philosophy that in every facet of business there are things that each individual needs to KNOW, things they need to DO and things they need to BE. By understanding and integrating these three dimensions of individual competence, it is possible to create a collaborative and accountable culture in any organisation.

With cooperation and collaboration underpinning the Nodube Operating Model, each project undertaken by Nodube is in partnership with business owners and both internal and external subject matter experts. This ensures that the unique context of the client organisation and existing institutional knowledge are built into the planning of the improvement initiative to ensure sustainability.

Craig Shalekoff has over 20 years BPO experience. with a proven track record, with ‘hands on’ experience, in developing and implementing major transformation projects and efforts involving large international BPO organisations. Craig has run multiple IT departments and has worked across Africa and Asia Pacific building multiple global networks.

Joel Walker has spent 25 years in BPO leadership roles, most recently as Global Head of Procurement for Vodafone, Corporate Services.  Vodafone has over 35,000 agents, with multiple suppliers across multiple markets.  He first worked with South Africa BPO providers in 2003 and has moved a number of roles to South Africa over the years.

Tanya Phillips is an accomplished leader and is considered a stalwart of the Call Centre Industry. As Operations Director for some of the leading Outsource Providers in South Africa she has developed comprehensive experience, including multi-site management, inbound and outbound operations and in-sourced, outsourced and co-sourced solutions.

Topic: A venture into vanquishing violence – How do we vanish GBV together?

Topic: WELLNESS – the NWOW  (^{NEW-WORLD-OF-WORK*}™) chill-pill for mental health?

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away CCMG held the Annual Contact Centre Conference inviting ‘the force to be with us’ as we became Jedi’s in our quest to find the ultimate solution for all our operational and people challenges…. Yep, that was 2018 … A long long time ago! And who would have thought that in 2020 we’d be conjuring up our inner YODA to source answers to inexplicableness.  The song almost got it right – what a difference a year (and a bit) makes!

As most of us believe AFRICA IS CALLING indeed – it’s bunker down time for our contact centre operations to get better getting right what we do so that it’s portable and transportable across the continent. And that absolutely starts with getting our people ‘right’ first.

In our VUCA world, where VUCA 2.0 was promulgated even longgggggerr ago – i.e. 2017… I’m proposing it’s time to look at: ’VUCA 3.0 – 2020 and beyond’. Where we acknowledge that volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguousness IS THE WORLD OF WORK – and not the mastery of a leadership style or a short-term business challenge.

Right now business unusual is where we are at – and we need to REIMAGINE the future (thanks Tom Peters)- or we might not have one to our liking at all. This new future of work is defined by Knowledge Resources as seeing a world driven by ‘collective purpose and well-being’. We need to look at a recovery, reform and regeneration strategy that genuinely has people at its core. Putting aside, though not in any way dismissing the economic crisis business is facing worldwide, we need to take serious cognisance of the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has put unprecedented stress on workers’ mental health. The amount of research being published, and the statistics made available, indicates how critical mental health issues are  …not just right now … but for the future of our workforce (and the extended families they support).

As organisations we need to be stronger and self-sustaining – yet more accommodating and collaborative. We need to be resilient, flexible and wise – and we need to see that people are not an HR commodity or a ‘labour-force’ boxed comfortably in the Excel spreadsheet column of Human Capital.

COVID-19 has taught us that when humanness, volatility, vulnerableness and mental health is challenged – there is no capital to tally on the balance sheet. The sum total of our business output is directly proportionate to the sum total of our workforce wellness. This is no longer a discussion for the internal ‘wellness committee’ ; ICAS or Team Leaders to manage in isolation. It’s becoming a  corporate strategy line item – if not the number one line item – and it needs to sit on the SOP documentation right there with values, vision, mission, projects and budget bullet points.

The new normal should not the buzzword it’s come to be – it’s the actuality of THE NORMAL every single day. It’s only new because tomorrow is indeed different from today – and that’s normal too, in a VUCA context.

We’ve got this colleagues – and we’ve gotten it before. This time our employees’ mental health just needs to be elevated as a priority. This is not a silver bullet discussion with a packaged solution – and at no time can employers take on mental well-being, and motivation of the workforce for cotton wool soft landings as a corporate deliverable. That’s extrinsic to our sphere of both control and influence. But we certainly need to examine how we can take on the levels of collaboration and engagement – and provide the tools required – for our employees to be better equipped to protect and motivate themselves in the “future as it emerges”!

We can only focus as best we can on ensuring that for all our employees, and also for ourselves, that tomorrow – everyone’s wellbeing and wellness will indeed be better than it was today.

Hello Africa – we hear you calling – and were getting ready as an industry!

Join us for the CCMG conference – its intriguing stuff.

A brief overview of what will be explored:

• Exploring VUCA with 3 levels of iteration
• Knowing that the world of business and the world of work implies uncertainty, turbulence, rapid change, disruption, hyper- competition and flux – and letting these concepts be the promoter and not the inhibitor of business survival
• Investigating whether it’s time for panic and uncertainty or just a wonderful opportunity to view ‘insanity’ differently
• Acknowledging that not since WW2 has so many people in so many places been traumatised all at once – and affirming that good mental health is crucial.
• Seeing that rapid-fire changes are putting extreme pressure on business leaders to lead in ways that have been heretofore unseen and getting that there is also a need for the workforce to adapt to an entirely new work modality.
  • Whether that’s working from home, working from a hybrid context, replacing social engagement with digital interactions, being employee – spouse – parent – educator – family supporter– income generator – housekeeper – caregiver – creative artist – tick-tock expert – AND STILL expected to be an on-target, compliant, team–performer generating high productivity scores to optimise business success.
• Knowing with certainty that digital is here to stay and that the ‘lens of business’ needs to shift drastically to accommodate sustainability.
  • There’s going to be casualties – that’s inevitable. That’s Pandemic fallout and automation consequences! Therefore well-being and wellness, if not addressed as a priority, will make this fallout devastating.
• Shifting leadership behaviours such as:                    
  • prioritising connectedness over connectivity;
  • checking-in versus checking-on
  • active listening versus waiting to speak
  • interpreting distress signals over putting out fires
  • practising asking  different questions and having a tolerance for receiving different answers

In May 2020, Rebecca Gibson from Gibson Learning and Performance – a company that plays in the contact centre realm – reconfigured operational intent around two key questions:

• What do I want others to remember about this tough time?
• How do I want others to feel about how they were treated by me and the company?

Let’s be thinking about this in advance of the conference – as it’s going to come up in a number of the speaker’s presentations – and let’s definitely be asking those questions of ourselves and our organisation,  in the meantime.

Biography

After many years in the education field, Gail moved into Operations Management, Training, Consulting and Coaching where she been working for the past 23 years across multiple corporates that include the financial, insurance, legal, telecommunication, e-commerce and consumer support industries. The work she does integrates directly into Operational activities, helping leaders navigate organisational complexity, their roles and responsibilities and the work they are accountable for.  Her professional focus is on the development and sustainability of a competent, capable and robust workforce which supports the VUCA business terrain and helps leaders navigate challenges while building resilience.  This places people enablement at the core of her work. She engages with executives, managers, team leaders and frontline staff at ‘the point at which work gets done’ – and delivers a performance partnership that has learning at its centre.  Her vison for the work she does is: businesses optimisation through people optimisation.

Topic: From Covid Crisis to the New Normal : From Favoured Destination to Winning Businesses – A journey awaits for South Africa

Topic: New Normal Management – Lessons From The Frontline

Topic: The Modern Leader

Topic: Practicing Agile in a Rapidly Evolving VUCA and Digital Environment