The Power of Promotion from Within

The Conscious Design Podcast. A Peterman Design Firm episode with call center CEO Richard Blank. Sustainability should support people, our planet, and be profitable. Ian Peterman, CEO and founder of the Peterman Design Firm, shares his expertise in product development, conscious design, and building a more sustainable future through the content here, on our blog, and on podcasts. He also interviews designers, founders, and others who share ideas, products, and brands that can and are making a difference in the world. Our mission is to help people become conscious designers in ever part of design and business and improve our world together. Please like and subscribe so you get our content first! About the Peterman Design Firm: We partner with companies who want to make a positive impact in the world to develop and launch new products, services, and brands. We create and manage legacies for our clients and create growth through our approach, the Peterman Method™. Welcome to another episode of Conscious Design Podcast, today Ian welcomes Richard Blank. Richard starts off by explaining what he does and what his company is based around. Richard even talks a bit about his background. Richard and Ian both discuss the importance of culture and how it shapes the business you are trying to build in the foreign country. Richard then discusses how to properly motivate employees and what techniques he uses. Richard then mentions and recommends how to treat your employees and what are some techniques he has mastered and tried out which bring him results. Richard however mentions what is important when calling customers and what needs to be said and done to make them interested in what you are selling. Richard also mentions trust and how it is built. In the guest outro Richard invites people to check him out. Parts: 0:00 – Guest Intro 4:53 – Culture 8:26 – Motivation 14:46 – Employees 18:46 – Subscribe! 19:11 – Customers 28:48 – Trust 36:10 – Guest Outro Giving Employees a Second Chance sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't work. I've seen people spiral out of control. There's things outside the office where they just, they lose their composure and they do a Jerry Maguire on the phone. They'll curse, they'll scream, they'll cry, they'll kick something, they'll quit. And they'll realize that they overextended themselves at that time. So to me, I almost give people, unless they're really breaking a labor law or really destroying furniture, if they happen to lash out or just lose their cool for a minute, let's do a one or two last chance timeout to see if we can just calm down for a minute. Get them off the phone, water on the face, pinball, buy them something to eat. I love this kid. Let's just see if he can possibly find his focus again before it's too late Leadership and Loyalty During Chaos move through the situation rather than just escalating it, because that doesn't help anybody, making it worse. I'll let you know when it doesn't work, when someone that's been with you for years doesn't give you a two weeks notice. I understand there's opportunities out there, but we walk together, we work together, and it's okay that you leave. Everybody should have opportunities, but it would have been nice to shake your hand and to wish you well, and to say that we had a good run together. And then I had during COVID people that I relied upon so that were very disappointed. And then I had people that out of the blue amongst chaos showed such leadership that I couldn't help but promote them and praise them during that time. So as I say before, there are certain times in life when you see somebody's true character and I'm not asking you to do something you don't want to do, but you told me we had an agreement that you were that individual that I could rely upon. And sometimes business is too forward or too backwards, one forward, or sometimes too. There's always motion in this and I've lost some amazing soldiers, but once again, I promoted more than I lost. So that's how certain businesses can withstand and be able to offset that sort of attrition. Strategic Growth in Business And so as long as let's say I landed one account, I had enough money to pay for the station that I was renting at this blended center, pay the salary of the individual and make myself my margin. And so that worked out well. The only inconvenience was that I didn't have my private space, my office, people were looking by, waving at me constantly, there was no privacy. And the scalability was limited because of the location, but there was a perfect, place to start where I wasn't losing money. As long as someone prepaid me for the month, I had enough to pay for the seat, the person, the insurance, and I made my money. And it just started to grow. And as I mentioned before, after getting a couple dozen seats, it wasn't worth paying the $200 a station. Now you're looking at close to thousands of dollars where I could easily be renting the space and buying the used computers. But it took a while. It took me about two years of renting seats to be able to save enough to build out a center because that cost of close to $65,000. And then we're just talking about 150 seat center in regards to the server room, the desks, the computers, the chairs, HR, where people eat. Right, the structure is one thing. The Art of Managing Attrition in Call Centers I have more of a natural than a forced attrition. Since Amazon is here and other large centers, and this is a big hub for scalability and BPO, business process outsourcing. We compete. So besides just matching your base salary and your benefits, I will lose people because of the distance from their home to the office if they're not working from home. Maybe their boyfriend or girlfriend are working there. The schedule could be better for them in regards to their school. But Ian, there's nobody that's gonna say that they quit this job because you or I berated them on the floor, embarrassed them or did not prepare them. That's number one. Number two, when people come in here, there are options. So it's more of a seller's market. I'm extremely selective of the campaigns that come in. It's not that I can't fulfill the need of the client. I got to ensure to fulfill the need of the agent. Once again, this is a strict Catholic country. They need to go home and tell their parents what they do for a living. So if I can offer them a stable job that will not compromise their ethics values or morals that will reduce their sort of stress burnout or second guessing of what they're doing for a living. So it's delicate and complicated, but also very easy at the same time. If you take all those factors into consideration. The Importance of Financial Stability in Business But in my heart, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I wouldn't feel comfortable. And if it took me a couple more years to ensure that I could weather storms, that I saved enough money to go through drought, to be able to build this building on my own, that's the old school way might not be your way or someone else's way or whatever way but it's enabled me to withstand multiple storms and to be able to still compete i might not have as much money some people expected me to have or want me to have but that doesn't matter putting that aside i've accomplished so many personal goals And I fulfilled so many of my own needs The Power of Promotion from Within But now you, you know there's there's better ways there's there's a lot of better ways to go about the same process and you're you're implementing them uh looking at your your company and your culture that you've been building is there anything else that kind of what are the other things that you think about because you've you've integrated play which is amazing it's definitely I think a huge factor in helping people to enjoy it. You actually know the names of your employees or you're more focused on really the soft skills. And I think those are, I mean, those are, those are amazing in and of themselves, but is there anything else that you really look at as kind of a pillar to how you've been able to have such a well-oiled running machine that you haven't had to take loans out for? You and I are so on the same page and this next question is the most important answer. It's promotion from within. I love to delegate. I love to give people response, even if it's a first day agent, if the kid wants to stand up in class and do some role play, he's showing initiative. So I only promote from within. I look to see what sort of additional responsibilities on and off the phone that could build someone's skills and their self-reliance and self-confidence. The Famous Buffer-Boomerang Technique with Richard Blank of Costa Rica's Call Center 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 #consciousdesignpodcast https://youtu.be/uAIExAPOHgA https://youtu.be/HLUsQctMluw https://youtu.be/LJZUsU54TOo https://youtu.be/MgpywnJWDbE https://youtu.be/qy0njV9q04k https://youtu.be/QBpG9OIxeRg https://youtu.be/B-3yeZjD1uM