Contact Center Show

Amas Tenumah & Bob Furniss
  • 4.9 (68)
  • Management
  • Biweekly

This is the public square for all things contact center. This is where the world's best Call & Contact center professionals come to get better at delivering a great experience for customers. Your contact center mentors - Amas Tenumah & Bob Furniss

  1. 3d ago

    What if your employees aren't the problem?

    In 1982, General Motors shut down its Fremont assembly plant, notorious for poor quality, absenteeism, and dysfunction. When Toyota helped reopen the plant under new management, it rehired much of the same workforce. The results were dramatically different. Same people. Different leadership. Different results. This week, Amas Tenumah and Bob Furniss ask an uncomfortable question: Are we running our contact centers like the old GM plant? From rigid attendance policies and obsessive handle-time monitoring to requiring supervisor approval for a $50 credit, contact centers have built entire management systems around the assumption that employees can't be trusted. And when a handful of employees abuse the system, leadership often responds by creating another rule for everyone. Bob argues that the problem isn't necessarily the metrics. It's the absence of individual coaching and the unwillingness to address poor performance directly. He also makes a surprisingly radical suggestion about attendance policies that leaves Amas momentarily speechless. The conversation explores the difference between accountability and control, why blanket policies are easier than actual leadership, and what happens when rules designed for your worst employees eventually punish your best. Same people, different results: What the GM–Toyota Fremont turnaround teaches us about leadership and trust. The tyranny of the exception: Why organizations punish hundreds of employees for the behavior of a few. Coaching versus control: Why changing a system setting is easier than having a difficult conversation. When quality assurance becomes absurd: Bob shares a story about his son receiving a zero quality score despite providing excellent service. The attendance policy debate: Should three absences automatically cost someone their job, regardless of circumstances? The hidden cost of rigid policies: How rules designed to stop abuse can strip managers of the ability to exercise judgment. Accountability without micromanagement: Why trusting employees doesn't mean abandoning standards or performance metrics. Are your policies written for the employees you trust or the employees you're afraid of? Because eventually, the rules you created for your worst employees will be enforced against your best ones. And when that happens, don't blame the policy. Blame the leadership that created it. 00:00 – Welcome and catching up 00:59 – The Fremont factory: Same workers, radically different results 03:10 – Why contact centers operate on distrust 06:01 – Do employees really need constant monitoring? 08:52 – Why leaders punish everyone instead of coaching a few 11:32 – Bob's story: Excellent service, zero quality score 14:00 – What would we change if we ran a contact center today? 14:46 – Bob challenges traditional attendance policies 17:31 – When company policy punishes employees during life's worst moments 19:26 – Are we writing policies for the worst offenders? 20:23 – Leadership matters more than another rule The Contact Center Show with Amas Tenumah and Bob Furniss challenges conventional thinking about customer service, contact center leadership, employee experience, and the future of the industry. Subscribe for conversations that question how we've always done things—and whether we should keep doing them.

  2. Oct 20

    The importance of personalized and agent-specific surveys

    Most contact center agents hate customer surveys. And for good reason. A customer is furious about a company policy, a delayed shipment, or a broken process. The agent does everything right. The customer leaves a terrible survey. And somehow, the agent gets punished. We've spent decades measuring customer satisfaction while making the people serving those customers miserable. But what if surveys could actually help agents instead of being used against them? This week, Amas Tenumah and Bob Furniss welcome Scott Thomas from Proponicy to challenge everything we think we know about customer feedback, quality assurance, and the role of AI in the contact center. Scott makes a surprising claim: At many of his company's client organizations, agents actually love the feedback they're receiving. Naturally, we had questions. In this episode: Why agents hate surveys: How companies routinely punish employees for problems they have no authority to fix. The simplest survey fix nobody uses: Separating satisfaction with the company from satisfaction with the human who helped you. What happens when customers know an agent will read their feedback: Why asking customers to help a specific person improve can change the conversation. The QA contradiction: What happens when quality assurance says an agent failed but the customer says the agent was fantastic? AI evaluating 100% of calls: Could comprehensive, evidence-based evaluations be fairer than judging someone on a handful of randomly selected interactions? Coaching instead of punishment: Turning customer feedback into recognition, practical coaching, and continuous improvement. The end of after-call work? How AI-generated notes can free agents to focus on customers instead of typing while they talk. AI that helps humans instead of replacing them: A different vision for automation in an industry obsessed with reducing headcount. The bigger question: We've built entire systems to measure agents, monitor agents, score agents, and correct agents. But how much of that effort actually makes them better at helping customers? Perhaps the problem was never that customers weren't giving us enough feedback. Perhaps it was what we chose to do with it. About our guest Scott Thomas is with Proponicy, a company focused on customer feedback, agent performance, quality monitoring, and AI-powered contact center improvement. Website: https://proponicy.com Listen to The Contact Center Show with Amas Tenumah and Bob Furniss for an unscripted conversation about what needs to change in customer service. #CustomerService #ContactCenter #CustomerExperience #CX #EmployeeExperience #AI #QualityAssurance

  3. Oct 6

    Bots vs Humans vs Bots

    summary In this episode, Amas Tenumah and Bob Furniss explore the rapidly evolving world of AI, chatbots, and their implications for contact centers. They discuss real-world experiments with AI agents, the future of customer service, and how businesses can prepare for a world where bots may replace human agents. key topics AI and chatbots in contact centers Real-world AI experiments with Muse Implications of AI replacing human agents Customer experience in a bot-driven world Business strategies for AI adoption

  4. Sep 23

    It’s Time to Kill Customer Service Email

    Email was supposed to make customer service cheaper. It didn’t. It was supposed to make it more efficient. It didn’t. Instead, we built a channel where customers write essays explaining their problems, wait hours or days for a response, answer a follow-up question, wait again, and somehow call this progress. Maybe it’s time to kill customer service email. This week on The Contact Center Show, Bob and I get into that argument, plus: Salesforce getting very serious about the contact center. Why digital workforce management may finally be moving beyond forcing phone-era math onto email and chat. Why the back office might be a better place to spend your next technology dollar than another chatbot. And why the contact center technology market has become one giant game of Hungry Hungry Hippos where every vendor suddenly claims to do everything. Also, naturally, we end by discussing whether AI is going to kill us all. A normal episode. #CustomerService #ContactCenter #CX #AI #Dreamforce

  5. Sep 16

    The AI Math Isn’t Mathing

    This episode cuts through the gap between what executives are saying about AI and what is actually happening inside contact centers. Companies are reporting major efficiency gains, yet contact volume and contact-center employment haven’t collapsed. Amas and Bob unpack the contradiction: pent-up customer demand, harder calls reaching humans, rising handle times, and ROI stories that are far more complicated than “AI saved us 30%.” They also tackle the growing anxiety workers—particularly younger workers—have about AI taking their jobs. Their argument isn’t that AI won’t transform the industry. It will. The advantage increasingly belongs to people who understand what the technology can do, what it cannot do, and where human judgment still matters. Then the conversation turns to Dreamforce and Salesforce’s AI future. If the interface increasingly becomes an AI assistant sitting in front of Salesforce, does Salesforce risk moving from the center of the user experience to infrastructure running quietly in the background? Bob adds an important Dreamforce reality check: what gets announced on stage can still be nine to twelve months away from becoming something customers can actually use. In this episode: AI efficiency versus actual headcount; why better service can create more demand rather than less; the hidden customer demand traditional contact-center metrics miss; what leaders should tell employees worried about AI; why judgment may become more valuable as automation improves; Salesforce, Claude and the rise of “headless” enterprise software; and why you shouldn’t confuse a Dreamforce announcement with a deployable product. The central question: If AI really is making the contact center dramatically more efficient, why aren’t there dramatically fewer humans working in it?

  6. Aug 1

    AI Didn’t Replace the Contact Center. Now Comes the Hard Part.

    AI was supposed to replace contact center workers. Instead, there are more people working in contact centers today than there were at the beginning of the year. That does not mean AI failed. In many areas, it has exceeded expectations. In this season finale, Amas and Bob examine what they got right, what changed their minds, and what contact center leaders should expect next. They discuss why AI is changing frontline work rather than eliminating it, how automation is exposing leadership failures, and why the agents who remain will handle increasingly difficult work. They also explore where AI is already delivering—particularly in quality assurance, knowledge management, and customer self-service—and why even impressive bots still fail when companies deny them the information or authority required to solve real problems. The next phase will not be about acquiring more technology. It will be about managing what companies have already bought, determining where humans still matter, and separating genuine guidance from vendors selling both the product and the consulting required to make it work. Plus, Amas and Bob revisit their position on customer surveys, predict the issues that will dominate the rest of the year, and reflect on The Contact Center Show’s rise to number 22 among Apple’s management podcasts. In this episode: Why AI has changed contact center jobs without eliminating them What Bob learned from two very different AI service experiences Why better automation creates harder work for human agents How weak bots expose leadership, data, and authority problems Where AI has exceeded expectations Why customer surveys may still have value when used to develop agents The growing importance of AI management and governance Why technology companies are becoming consulting companies The danger of buying more features than an organization can use What The Contact Center Show should tackle next season The Contact Center Show will return at the end of September. Until then, explore the archive and send Amas or Bob your feedback on LinkedIn.

  7. Jul 16

    Paying up for customer service

    In this episode, Amas Tenumah and Bob Furniss explore the evolving landscape of customer service, tiered service models, and the role of technology in delivering personalized experiences. They discuss how companies can strategically implement paid and differentiated service levels to enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. takeaways Companies should consider tiered service models to meet diverse customer needs. Charging for premium support can recoup costs and improve service quality. Operational execution of tiered support requires careful planning and training. Technology enables effective routing and personalized service levels. Customer expectations vary based on loyalty and payment for support. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and casual chat about sports 4222:10:50 Pivot to service: Should companies charge for attended support? 6972:11:09 Examples of tiered service in airlines and hospitality 9388:51:23 Consumer perspective on paying for better service 11916:38:11 Operational challenges of implementing tiered support 15472:11:43 Technology solutions for differentiated customer routing 215277:45:28 Historical context of tiered service in business 227499:58:49 Recommendations for adopting tiered service models 279166:39:06 Operational considerations and workforce planning 353611:06:28 Ensuring customer satisfaction and avoiding queue degradation 375277:46:37 Closing remarks and World Cup discussion

  8. Jul 7

    The Survey Is Dead. Now What?

    Customer surveys were once the backbone of quality programs. Today, response rates are collapsing, customers are ignoring them, and contact centers are left wondering how to measure performance without reliable feedback. Fresh from Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas, Amas shares a conversation that kept coming up among industry leaders: transactional surveys are failing. Some organizations have seen response rates drop nearly 90%, creating real problems for coaching, quality scoring, bonuses, and operational decision-making. Bob and Amas explore: Why surveys became the default measure of customer experience.Whether survey fatigue has finally reached a breaking point.Why AI-powered quality monitoring may be replacing traditional Voice of the Customer programs.The hidden flaw in most customer surveys.How changing who the feedback is for—from the company to the individual agent—can dramatically improve participation.The conversation also tackles a bigger question: if customers are giving you their time and feedback, what responsibility do companies have to actually use it? If your contact center still depends on post-interaction surveys, this episode is a timely look at what comes next.

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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
68 Ratings

About

This is the public square for all things contact center. This is where the world's best Call & Contact center professionals come to get better at delivering a great experience for customers. Your contact center mentors - Amas Tenumah & Bob Furniss

Information

  • Creator
    Amas Tenumah & Bob Furniss
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    101
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Amas Tenumah & Bob Furniss
  • Show Website
    Contact Center Show

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