Bart Miller: Improving Businesses’ Efficiency by Alleviating the Pain of Managing a Call Center

The Most Influential Business Leaders to Follow, 2021

Creating an in-house multi-channel contact center is costly. It necessitates capital expenditures in terms of facilities, equipment, technology, and human resources. Outsourcing allows many businesses to better control expenses and enhance customer satisfaction. Read on to learn the reasons why outsourcing call center operations to a professional make sense.

Outsourced call center providers can spread the costs of facilities, equipment, and training over a number of clients, allowing them to pay just for the services they require on a transactional, per-minute, or per-hour basis. If each customer requests it, outsourcing companies can “share” agents with several clients, decreasing idle time and offering a cheaper cost-per-call rate.  Conversely, clients can request “dedicated” agents that become experts in the operations of their account.

Bart Miller, CEO and founder of Centrinex, was nominated for Midwest Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young in 2009. He is an industry leader in call center management and increasing organizations’ bottom-line performance with industry-leading experience and talent.

Centrinex is the nation’s leader in call center management for banks, financial services, healthcare, transportation corporations, and government organizations. In addition to the people management component of the firm, it gives a consulting approach to its clients’ demands. Bart says, “We are not just order takers.  We believe we have the inside track on what their customer’s experience is and we can provide feedback to the client about how to best attain that for them.”

Centrinex’s innovation, according to Bart, stems from the company’s ability to tailor a solution to each client’s specific requirements. Every customer that the firm has enjoys doing things a bit differently. He says, “Whether it’s the reports they want to see, how they analyze data, their growth trajectory, or how they interact with us.  Our management team is nimble enough to manage each client and their needs individually to create a path to success different from everyone else’s.”

Centrinex

Managing people may place a lot of burden on a company’s human resources. Rather than planning and predicting the organization’s development and profitability, one might become bogged down in administrative difficulties all day. Centrinex can take that away from organisations by managing their contact center and delivering a full customer experience solution. Centrinex manages everything with dedicated agents to its client’s account, from contacting prospects to phoning delinquent customers and everything in between.

Centrinex’s contact speed technique does this. Over half of the calls it makes require “one call resolution,” according to its workforce management team and supervisory personnel. As a result, there are fewer efforts to contact the client in the future.

Centrinex’s procedure will quickly execute client requests for clients that want a speedy response from their consumers, whether they are at the point of sale or online on their computer or smartphone. Its usual reaction time is two minutes, and it gets in touch with 80% of leads.

The CEO of Centrinex

Bart has developed a habit of being meticulous. His aim as CEO is to ensure that the company’s day-to-day operations are managed appropriately. While he does not get in the way, he is well-versed in those elements of day-to-day operations. The rest of his time, he adds, is spent gradually pushing the needle on more strategic parts of the company in part by asking workers, clients, and other business executives’ questions to try to find out their problems and get their advice on how to solve them. So, while Bart doesn’t have a “normal” day, he makes an effort to include current events reading, talks with people about what’s going on in their lives, exercise, and time to deal with any client or staff concerns that arise.

Seeing Challenges as another Door to Knock

Bart believed there was a better way to operate each firm he worked for before starting his own; more effectively, intelligently, and with a more family-like atmosphere. It was the driving force behind his decision to establish his own business.

In the 16 years that Bart has owned this firm, he has only encountered roadblocks that have led to new opportunities. He opines, “Setbacks always reinvigorated me to work on the solution in the present and then new successes in the future while every closed door allows me to find more open doors.”

The Significance of Having Small Breaks

“The Work-Life balance is easy,” says Bart. He thinks that compromises must constantly be made, both professionally and personally, in order to avoid obsessing over one or the other. “There’s always that one sale you can’t spend the appropriate amount of time attempting to complete, and there’s always that musical or sports event of your children that you’ll have to miss,” he adds.

To keep employees motivated, Bart makes sure employees use their vacation time every year.  He mentions that they need to take that time throughout the year to recharge their batteries.  In addition, between impromptu fun meetings, happy hours, picnics, scavenger hunts, dinners, and other celebrations, he makes sure all get a chance to relax before, during, and after work with each other.

Plans for the future of Centrinex

Bart wants to create a symbiotic relationship within every department in the company.  He emphasises that each group or team must work in lockstep with all of the other groups, teams, and departments within the organization.  He says, “There is no wasted time or effort, and this is done by working hard, but also celebrating victories and successes together as well.”

Bart’s future goals are the same as they have been since he began. He intends to continue hiring and promoting fresh people from the bottom up. Operations employees are promoted from within the company 100% of the time.  Centrinex offers individuals a professional path unlike any other, and Bart intends to keep doing so for as long as he can.

Message for Emerging Leaders; Learn, Plan and Navigate

Bart’s advice to aspiring company executives is to become experts in the industry they wish to run. He claims that before beginning a firm, one must thoroughly understand every aspect of it. He or she should only recruit a high-level person to take over that section of the firm after that. Even so, they must have their finger on the pulse of every department. He further adds, “Little by little, over time, the business will be comprised of people that you trust to handle the day to-day while you, as the business leader, can then work on mid- and long-term plans for the company. Never stop planning.”

Success that Ensures Employees Growth and Client Satisfaction

In business, success is defined not by the executives of the company, but by the workers, clients, and community. According to Bart, a business will be successful if the employees are happy and respected where they work, the clients are satisfied with the product or service being given, and the firm is helping the community and those in need.