John Sebastian is probably best known for his time with the ‘60s band, The Lovin’s Spoonful. But in 1976, he scored a #1 hit with Welcome Back, the theme song to Welcome Back, Kotter. A sitcom about a wise-cracking teacher who has returned to his high school alma-mater to teach a remedial class of students, Welcome Back, Kotter featured a group of students who are viewed by most as misfits. But they are also their own close-knit little community. As John Travolta’s Vinnie Barbarino puts in the pilot episode, “This is my place. And these, these are my people.”
That feeling of community that drew Gabe Kotter back to James Buchanan High School isn’t all that different than the feeling that drew Erica Marois back to ICMI. After several years away from the contact center industry, Informa, the parent company of ICMI and HDI among others, asked her to come back to the community she always knew was home.
- The Complexities of the Grocery Industry
- The Importance of Community in Contact Centers
- Getting Reacquainted with the Contact Center Industry
- The Evolution of Work-from-Home Dynamics
- Fostering Community Engagement and Connection
- The Convergence of IT Support and Customer Experience
- Innovative Community Engagement Initiatives
Connect with Erica on LinkedIn
Music courtesy of Big Red Horse
Transcript
Rob Dwyer (00:01.962)
Erica Marois, you are next in queue. How are you?
Erica Marois (00:05.8)
Amazing. I'm so excited to do this rub. How are you today?
Rob Dwyer (00:08.894)
I am fantastic. We should let everyone know before we go any further that you are the Senior Manager of Content and Community for HDI and ICMI. And if people aren't familiar with those communities, they will be by the end of this show, because we're certainly going to talk about that. But now that we've got that out of the way, I have a question for you.
Erica Marois (00:37.768)
shoot.
Rob Dwyer (00:40.13)
This is your second go round here. You got out. were, think most recently with Albertsons, which for those that don't know is like one of the largest grocery chains in America. Like you got out of the contact center world. What pulled you back in?
Erica Marois (01:01.008)
Yeah, it's a great question. It's been an interesting journey. So to kind of take a step back, I left my role at ICMI in 2019. I had been here for six and a half years, really loved the job.
But I was kind of at that point in my career where I was looking for the next challenge. And at the time, 8x8 approached me. Justin Robbins was building out a content marketing team. And he said, hey, do you want to come work with me? It seemed like a cool challenge. And it was a really great experience after having been on this side for six and a half years to kind of get inside of a vendor and see how they run. So I loved that.
Again, this was 2019. And you may remember some things got a little weird and crazy in 2020. On top of that, we had our first child in March of 2020. so I had an intro. Yeah, right. I had an interesting experience coming back from maternity leave with no daycares open, trying to do it all. I ultimately, after trying to juggle it for like nine months, kind of decided I was going to take a step back.
Rob Dwyer (01:56.909)
that.
Erica Marois (02:08.248)
And I've always loved to write. Like I was that kid in elementary school that I would finish my exam first and then I would sit and write little storybooks. I still have some of them today. My son found them the other day.
Rob Dwyer (02:20.344)
awesome.
Erica Marois (02:20.926)
So I was like, what if I just lean into that a bit? And I started a freelance writing business on my own doing copywriting. While I was doing that, I met the senior brand copywriter for Albertsons grocery store. She brought me on to do some contract work and then built a full-time role for me on her team. And I did that for two and a half years. Super interesting working in a large retail chain. I enjoyed it. I learned a lot.
but I always felt like I was missing out on something. And I realized that as much as I do enjoy writing, what I really love even more is connecting people. And I miss the community building aspect of the role that I had at ICMI. And as fate would have it, Tara Gibb, who is the director of ICMI, she also is director of.
HDI and data center world reached out and said, hey, I think we've got a new and interesting role opening up in our team. Is there any chance you'd be open to talking about it? And I knew instantly that I wanted to come back. So the rest is history. I just hit my one year anniversary last week and
Rob Dwyer (03:27.894)
Yeah, congratulations.
Erica Marois (03:29.402)
Yeah, it really is the people that brought me back. mean, so many people in this community I kept in touch with even after I left. I got baby gifts from some of these people. And so being back here has kind of been like a reunion experience. I've loved every minute.
Rob Dwyer (03:44.143)
That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay. I, you're a writer among other things. I know that you love to tell stories. Going back to Albertsons, did you have any great stories about shopping carts? Did you create a great story about, you know, the, I don't know the.
Erica Marois (03:55.538)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (03:59.848)
Yes.
Erica Marois (04:04.672)
you
Rob Dwyer (04:10.626)
the broken boxes that end up in the back of the grocery store all alone and not going home.
Erica Marois (04:17.872)
Yeah, so the first thing that I think is funny about my time there is that I never stepped foot into an Albertsons grocery store the whole time I worked there because we don't have them on the East Coast. And it was one of those other weird things that happened and, you know, post COVID is people got to to work remotely. But probably one of my favorite things that I worked on there was what we call the entertaining guide. And so
While a lot of Albertsons focus was on B2C, obviously customers coming into grocery stores, a lot of their business really was through catering services, believe it or not. We did a lot of corporate catering for like corporate parties and events. And I got to work with our design lead to write all the copy for this 30 page guide about our holiday catering options. And that was really fun. I also got to learn a lot about
Rob Dwyer (04:59.531)
Mmm.
Erica Marois (05:15.354)
what went into everything behind the scenes operationally to kind of bring that magic for the customers because as we were building that guide, we got to meet with different stakeholders across the business, including people in ops, people that were district managers, store managers, and to hear their stories. mean, man, I don't think I ever realized how much goes on behind the scenes. so grocery shopping will never be the same for me anymore.
Rob Dwyer (05:39.958)
I love this because I was actually just recently having a conversation. I've got a family member who runs a grocery store, a large Kroger affiliated grocery store. Kroger, for those that don't know, it's probably the largest grocery company in the States. But they have all these sub-brands because they've
Erica Marois (05:51.933)
Yeah.
Erica Marois (05:57.021)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (06:02.705)
It is good.
Rob Dwyer (06:07.746)
pursued this strategy of buying these regional grocery stores and then they keep those brands. So, but what's interesting to me about that business is exactly what you're talking about. The complexities that go into it that we often as consumers, if you've never been in that business, you just don't think about it. You walk in, you find the stuff you're looking for, you get upset when something's moved or they're out of whatever it is that you're looking for and go check out.
You're upset because your line is longer than you want, or you're excited because it's not. And that's about it. That's probably the most you think about grocery stores. But it is a really complex thing for us to be able to go into this place and buy the incredible variety of things that we are able to buy.
Erica Marois (07:01.95)
Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (07:04.846)
Really 24-7 too, in a lot of places.
Erica Marois (07:08.19)
It's such a massive operation and there's so much behavioral science behind at least the work that we did on the brand marketing side, like thinking through every single touch point. Like what is the customer feeling and thinking when they're getting their cart out of the corral and what copy can we put on that sign to tap into that moment? It's wild. So many touch points.
Rob Dwyer (07:29.474)
Well, there's another business that is wild and more complicated than people might think. like contact center and contact center community. Like I don't know that when I got into this business, actually, let me back up. I know for a fact when I got into this business that I was not thinking about community or
Erica Marois (07:34.6)
Thank
Rob Dwyer (07:56.226)
meeting other people around the world that are in this business or anything like that. But it is absolutely a thing. It's the thing that you're back into. I recognize that this is a bit of a homecoming, a reunion for you, but what is it about the community within that of that contact center community that really excites you?
Erica Marois (08:25.234)
Yeah, I think what's especially unique about the contact center community is, so we're all helpers by nature, right? That's what we do every day, but that extends so far beyond the job. I don't think I've ever encountered a professional community of people who are more willing to lend a hand and help other people in the community, whether they need advice, whether they're looking for a job reference. I think a lot of other industries are a bit more guarded.
and people kind of stay within the walls of the corporation that they work for and they don't want to give away their secrets. And you don't find that with the ICMI community. Whether I'm at an in-person event and the instructor asks, does anyone have any experience in this area? At other events, it might be crickets. At ICMI, everyone's raising their hand and they're wanting to share what they've done in their centers. And I think it's so unique. And to me, that's the most valuable way to learn is from hearing what other people are doing.
And there's also so much value in feeling seen and known and just even realizing that other people are going through the same struggles that you are every day. There's something comforting about that.
Rob Dwyer (09:36.814)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm wondering in that time away, I you're away from the industry at kind of a pivotal time, although your time at 8x8 wasn't really away from the industry, but certainly while you were at Albertsons. When you were getting reacquainted, what surprised you the most about what had changed in the meantime, if anything?
Erica Marois (10:05.862)
Yeah, I love this question and it's funny. I think there are a few parts to the answer. The first thing is I was surprised by how much really hadn't changed. know, everyone's talking about AI right now, of course. When I started in this role, everyone was talking about social media and SMS. like technology comes and goes. Obviously, AI is here to stay. But really, when I'm talking to people day to day and asking them about what their challenges are, it's the same things that they said.
10, 12, 15 years ago. It's how do we deal with age and attrition? How do we better engage our employees, career paths for them? How do we handle QA? What do we do about our scorecards? We had a conversation about this last month that has really resonated with the community. So that was surprising to me, how much hadn't changed, even though it feels like so much has changed. The other big change though is it certainly has been a shift that our research shows that
pretty much a majority of contact center roles now are hybrid. And when I went away in 2019, nobody was letting their agents work from home. That was a big deal. So that's been a shift. And I think it's made that agent engagement piece a little bit trickier because managing people who aren't in front of you day to day in person is a bit of a different skillset for people who've been doing this for 20 plus years and they're used to having their team in the office every day.
So that's probably been the biggest thing. I know you maybe were expecting me to say AI and to me just no, you know, I think people still aren't as far along with AI as we maybe think that they are. And it really comes down to the fundamentals.
Rob Dwyer (11:48.334)
I mean, it's funny. You're right in that I don't think people are as far along in that AI journey as maybe people think they are just as, maybe even today, but certainly a couple of years ago, people weren't as far along in that work from home journey. Even though they had been forced into it and had been in that mode for a while,
Erica Marois (12:07.984)
yeah.
Rob Dwyer (12:15.69)
I feel like I have a little bit different perspective because I was working at home in 2010 in a contact center. And that was a minority type of situation. It was very unusual back then, but it was a thing. And then all of a sudden in 2020, was like, well, everybody's at home. and we had to figure it out, but those that went home,
Erica Marois (12:22.087)
Me too.
Rob Dwyer (12:45.066)
intentionally, I think carried an entirely different mindset than those that were forced to go from home. And if you didn't ever really change that mindset, you're exactly right. It's a different skillset. It's a different way of viewing things and a different level of intentionality that comes with managing people who work from home, encouraging people who work from home.
Erica Marois (12:53.65)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (13:14.862)
motivating them, like all of those things, it's just, it's a little bit different.
Erica Marois (13:19.87)
It's very different. Do you remember how it felt for you when you first started working from home? Was there an adjustment period?
Rob Dwyer (13:27.23)
It, it was, but for me, it was really easy. So, I started actually on a program that was just launching kind of work from home. And so we went into the contact center for training and for what we call soft launch, which is like your nesting period. kind of weren't fully in production, but you were doing the job. Just a lot of extra support around.
Erica Marois (13:52.443)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (13:59.105)
And then after that, I went home and I worked at home for like a year before I came back into the contact center to train. And I'll tell you the piece that was the biggest adjustment and every now and then I would come back into the contact center. Like if I had an issue with equipment or something like that, the biggest adjustment was the noise in the contact center versus at home. At home I had
Erica Marois (14:23.731)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (14:26.286)
kind of my home office. had a bedroom just dedicated as my home office. I only wore a one earpiece headset, right?
Erica Marois (14:39.432)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (14:40.782)
Going into the contact center and having all of these other agents around me while I was trying to focus was actually really, really difficult for me. I hated going into the contact center just because of that, because I would literally hold my finger in my ear while I was listening to customers at times because there was just too much noise around me. And so I think we discount often.
Erica Marois (14:46.75)
Yeah, it's distracting.
Erica Marois (14:50.974)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (14:59.358)
So.
Rob Dwyer (15:09.932)
The level of distraction that can be present at the same time, there's a lot to be said for having your neighbor that you can overhear when you're not trying to focus on a customer. You hear how other people do things that you lose when you're at home, particularly if you just start from home from the very beginning.
Erica Marois (15:25.384)
Yeah. Yeah.
Erica Marois (15:34.642)
Yep. Yep. I think working from home is actually one of the reasons why I became so passionate about community building. First of all, when I saw that this job was remote back in 2013, I kind of thought I was being scammed when I applied for it because nobody worked from home and I thought it was the dream and it is like now I wouldn't want to go back into an office full time. But it took me like a good six months to adjust to it. And I felt like pretty lonely, a little bit depressed being home alone all day. And so community was
everything to me at that time. So I think, I don't know, it's one of those topics where I don't think there's a right or wrong answer because everyone's so different, you know? My husband, for example, loves going into an office. He wants to go in every day. So I think, you know, when we talk to leaders when they're making these decisions about whether they should have their agents back in the office now or keep them from home, I don't really love like blanket policies because I don't think they...
They cater to the needs of each individual. Someone like you, like to have to hold one of your ears? my gosh, that's not great. If it's not great for you, it can't be great for the customers.
Rob Dwyer (16:43.34)
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. think there are, there are contact center environments where if you just don't have an infrastructure to support agents in a single location, then obviously that you're not going to hire for people that want to come into a location. But I don't think there's anything wrong with having a physical contact center where people go into.
There are inherently challenges with both of those models that you just have to understand how to deal with it. And I've lived in both of those models, back and forth actually, between those models. And I can tell you there are some things that I do not miss about a brick and mortar contact center. And then there are things that I go, yeah, but I do kind of miss this part of a brick and mortar contact center. So.
Erica Marois (17:29.853)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (17:34.11)
Thank
Erica Marois (17:38.243)
Right? It's all about being intentional with whatever the circumstances that you're in. Because they're both very different.
Rob Dwyer (17:44.076)
Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about. First of all. For those that don't know anything about ICMI, let's just start there. What the heck is ICMI?
Erica Marois (18:01.02)
Well, ICMI is an acronym that originally stood for the International Customer Management Institute and Brad Cleveland, who all of us know, was one of the co-founders of this organization. We've been around for 40 years now, which is kind of wild to think about. But really our mission is pretty simple. We are here to make contact centers better and we do that through in-person events, through training, consulting and content in our community.
Rob Dwyer (18:31.374)
Okay, let's talk about community. How do you go about fostering a community in a group of people that may not, like we've already talked about, some people are working in contact centers, some people are working at home, some people are working in the source for a company brand, some people are working at BPOs, like how do you bring these people?
Erica Marois (18:34.6)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (19:00.066)
together into a community.
Erica Marois (19:01.758)
Yeah, it's a good question and we do it in a lot of ways. So we have our marquee event every fall. This year it's in October in Orlando. It's called ICMI Contact Center Expo. That is my favorite way that we bring people together because it is so much fun to get everybody in the same room and you know people are taking selfies and we're having parties. That's a lot of fun. But then even more fun. My job really is to keep that drum beat going 365 days a year and to engage with people that
Maybe can't even make it to the in-person event because we know like budgets are tough right now. Everyone's up against that challenge. And so I personally am big on experimentation.
I am fascinated, I've always been fascinated by psychology and like how the human mind works and kind of that hierarchy of needs. And so I lean into that when I'm thinking through what experiences we can design to better engage members of our community. A few of the ways we do that, we kicked off an effort and I know you were a part of this, cause I got a picture of the selfie this morning, but we call these the ICMI.
Rob Dwyer (20:04.386)
Ha ha ha ha.
Erica Marois (20:07.09)
community coffee chats and to be quite candid, I stole this idea from Informa, the parent company of ICMI. We have 14,000 employees here working all across the globe and we can opt in every month or so to be paired up with four other random colleagues from anywhere for coffee.
And I did that and I thought it was really fun. so I thought, hmm, I feel like this is something that I see my community would like to. And so we have a simple Google form and basically you just say, hey, I'm in, I want to meet four other people in this community and just like get on a virtual zoom call and chat. And we kicked that off this month. It's been really popular. That's one small thing. We're really active on LinkedIn. And so we're always looking to
to create dialogue in the industry about what's going on. We have an awards program and that has been one of my favorite parts of this job. Not only for the stories that we get to spotlight, but because I feel like awards alumni, at least at ICMI, have kind of become their own little community. I think back to my first year when I was here in 2013, I think I was maybe three weeks into the job.
I went to my very first contact center expo and Luke Jamieson was there and his team won for best small contact center. And he was like a total newbie at the time. And now like I'm back and he's obviously one of the biggest creators and influencers in this space. So that's been a cool part of our community, but really I try to be intentional about connecting one-to-one with community members every single week, asking them what they need, what their challenges are.
And then I do one of two things. I either help to create content to solve those challenges or I help to connect people with others who can help them solve those challenges. That's really what it's all about.
Rob Dwyer (21:55.072)
Yeah, love that. And Luke, friend of the show, he's been on a couple of times. He is a character and I believe he owes me some Vegemite or something.
Erica Marois (22:08.702)
Well, you know, I heard he's coming to Contact Center Expo this fall. So Luke, if you're listening, pack extra.
Rob Dwyer (22:15.13)
I think he will be there. Yeah. So you mentioned LinkedIn. if I'm not mistaken, in the early days, and I'm a relative newbie to the ICMI community, I think my relationship with ICMI goes back three or four years. But I understand that Twitter used to be kind of the place.
Erica Marois (22:22.493)
Yep.
Erica Marois (22:36.967)
Okay.
Rob Dwyer (22:44.334)
And now I feel like a LinkedIn is a little bit more of a place and Slack is definitely a place where, um, there's a lot of community and I'm wondering from a technology standpoint, how do you go about managing and keeping up with where people want to meet? feel like the whole social media landscape has changed. I mean,
Erica Marois (22:44.638)
for sure.
Erica Marois (22:51.646)
Hmm.
Erica Marois (23:13.054)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (23:14.574)
2013 was. I don't want to make you feel old Erica. I don't like making myself feel old. But 2013 was more than a decade ago like. I don't know if MySpace was still around, but people knew exactly what it was. If you talk about that now, there's a generation of people who are like what is that? I don't know what that is. So how do you manage that?
Erica Marois (23:19.614)
It's okay, I'm getting on.
Erica Marois (23:27.463)
I know.
Erica Marois (23:34.173)
Yeah.
Erica Marois (23:39.326)
Yeah. So first of all, I refuse to believe that 2013 was that long ago. It was five years ago, right? But I'm just a naturally curious person about trends and technology. So I kind of keep up with this in my personal life as it is for fun. I'm a little bit of a nerd about that.
Rob Dwyer (23:47.096)
Hahaha
Erica Marois (24:01.308)
But I've always had the mindset that you should go where your audience is rather than try to be where everyone else is and force your audience to come there. So for example, 2013, Twitter was like the place to be. And we had a weekly Twitter chat called ICMI chat that ran for years. And that's how I met a lot of people in this community. Like people like Neil Topf, Nate Brown, Justin Robbins, Jeff Toister, like all the OGs. We were like chatting with each other for an hour every week on Twitter.
And it's funny because when I came back, Neil reached out to me and was like, are we bringing back the ICMI chat on Twitter? you know, we talked about it, but we looked and we realized that nobody was using Twitter anymore. We tried TikTok for a little bit, but that wasn't it either. so I just paid careful attention, A, to the data that we have. But B, like I said, I have conversations every week with people. And so I want to know like,
Where are you hanging out? Those sort of things. Because I don't want to force like a round peg into a square hole if that makes sense. Or I'm not about like trying to be cool or trendy. To me, like what makes ICMI such a strong brand is the authenticity. And so as the leader of this community, I feel a responsibility to be authentic and show up authentically. And you know, maybe TikTok is not for us. Twitter is not
Rob Dwyer (25:08.12)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (25:29.702)
or X is not for us anymore. But our people are on LinkedIn and I know that they're getting a lot out of that experience because they're commenting and they're sharing and they're sending me DMs and they're sending me suggestions of things they want to see. And so to me, that's all the confirmation I need to invest time there.
Rob Dwyer (25:48.002)
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. OK, are you ready for a controversial question? OK, so you're an ICMI OG, but now you're with ICMI and HDI. I guess first, tell us what is HDI, and then I want to know what's different. Because there's some overlap, but.
Erica Marois (25:56.521)
yeah, I'm here for it.
Erica Marois (26:01.907)
Yep.
Erica Marois (26:07.037)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (26:13.277)
Okay.
Yeah, so HDI, another acronym name that originally stood for the Help Desk Institute has been around for a similar amount of time as ICMI, but really our core audience is IT support and service management professionals. So think like your internal customer service team who's working on IT.
Rob Dwyer (26:17.23)
but these are different groups.
Erica Marois (26:38.394)
And there's a lot that's different about this audience in terms of they're not usually external facing. So they're not interfacing with the company's clients every day. Their clients are their colleagues, their employees. But it's very interesting because even since I started a year ago to now, there have been so many conversations in the last couple of months.
in the HDI community about how much crossover they're seeing between the work that they do and the work that happens on the ICMI side. And they're really getting more interested in learning about CX principles and kind of re-engineering all the processes that they've held onto for so many years to focus more on the human element and to get back to the basics of like, hey, yes, we work in IT, but ultimately we're helping people just like contacts and our agents are helping people.
So there is a lot of crossover between those two audiences. Something unique about the HDI community is they have a local chapter model. And so I believe they're up to 18 local chapters across the country. And these folks operate as a nonprofit on a total volunteer basis. And the amount of passion and love they pour into this has been really inspiring to me. I was aware of the HDI brand when I worked here the last time, but getting to
to know these people and work alongside them has been such a treasure. And it's honestly giving me a lot of ideas and inspiration that I've taken over to the ICMI community. So we've been talking in the last couple of months about how we can find a way to collaborate more closely and bring these communities together. And I think like we're coming up on that time where these industries are converging a little bit. And so we may see some collaborations happening here soon.
Rob Dwyer (28:22.966)
Yeah, I think what's interesting and maybe this is part of what is happening is we're starting to see some convergence of the tools that are used. And I think that has traditionally been this separation like contact center where you guys answer phones and help desk. Maybe there's a phone involved, but we do tickets over here.
Erica Marois (28:34.61)
Yep, exactly.
Erica Marois (28:40.594)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (28:49.554)
Yep.
Rob Dwyer (28:51.168)
And the platforms are starting to have this convergence where it's, it's yes, it's tickets. Yes, it's phone, it's chat, it's email, it's Instagram, whatever, like all of those things are coming together and the platforms themselves keep, you know, buying up all of these other little pieces that they can integrate so they can be the one thing to all people.
Erica Marois (29:04.893)
It is.
Rob Dwyer (29:20.68)
And I have to imagine that's having an impact on the convergence of some of the communities as well.
Erica Marois (29:27.238)
It is. It is. was at HDI Support World Live in May and Nate Brown was there. Obviously he's in the ICMI community too and he and I were chatting about how much we're just seeing the convergence already happening and the light bulbs are coming on for everyone. So we'll see. I think it's exciting. There's a lot of opportunity I think.
it would make sense for these teams to be more aligned even internally in their own organizations. And having worked in both communities, I think there's a lot we can each learn from each other too.
Rob Dwyer (30:05.838)
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, it's June. 2025 is not quite half over, but there's a lot between now and the end of the year. Obviously, you've got this event coming up in late October, and I know you're going to be putting a lot of effort into that. What else are you thinking about as far as community? What are some of the initiatives that you've been tossing around or maybe that
Erica Marois (30:11.166)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (30:22.59)
Thank
Rob Dwyer (30:36.11)
Maybe that you've instituted outside of the coffee chat that you're like, this was surprising. This seems like a good avenue.
Erica Marois (30:46.034)
Yeah, so lots. We're always looking for new avenues to engage our communities. On the ICMI side, we just launched our first mentorship program and we were able to make 21 matches. So we've got 42 people participating, mentors and mentees. It's a six month virtual program and it's gonna culminate at Contact Center Expo this fall where these folks will have the chance to meet up in person for the first time. So I'm excited about that.
On the HDI side, I don't even know if I should be saying this out loud publicly yet because we're still working on it, but we are going to be launching a rising stars program where we're looking for that next level or next generation leader in the IT support and service management space. So kind of think like a 40 under 40 program, but for HDI and the IT support world. And we're really excited about that because I think
One thing that happens in every community and in every industry to an extent is that we start to hear the same voices over and over and over again. And we're trying to find that next voice to give us all a new perspective and to shine a light on people that maybe have not been in the field for 30 years, but they're doing great work and they're solving problems creatively and they have great ideas.
So sneak peek that's coming soon in July. And if you can think of anyone who needs to be on this list, like be ready, be ready to submit that nomination. think, yeah, that's one of our big focuses for the second half of this year. The other thing I'm really excited about is I have a new boss. We just hired a new portfolio director for HDI training events, content community, and she's amazing. And we're getting together.
next week for a big brainstorm with our team to talk about what we can do to make our training more effective and more relevant for our community members. So excited to dig in deep there. I think the theme for me this year really is just embracing change. It's been a theme at our event this year and I've kind of taken it on as my own too. And just experimenting, you know.
Erica Marois (33:03.484)
having some fun, not being afraid to fail, but trying out new things and figuring out what is genuinely helpful for the communities that we serve. That's really what it's all about.
Rob Dwyer (33:13.996)
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so as we record this, there is a large event, industry event going on that shall remain nameless, but it is a big event. Lots of people go to it.
Erica Marois (33:19.41)
Yes.
Erica Marois (33:24.326)
Mm-hmm.
you
Erica Marois (33:31.549)
Yep.
Rob Dwyer (33:33.43)
What's different? I mean, there are lots of events, right? Let's just be straight out. Like there are tons of events and we are kind of getting into event season. What's different about the ICMI Expo? Like what should people expect and why would it be worth their time and their money to go to that?
Erica Marois (33:38.942)
For sure.
Erica Marois (33:58.918)
Yeah, I love that question. think the funny thing to me that I'll start with is we always get compared to this other event that shall remain nameless, but we're so different in so many ways. And so the big things that I think that make us different, we're a very content driven program and we pride ourselves on making sure the content that's delivered in every single breakout session is vendor neutral.
and that the content that you receive at an ICMI conference is something where you're gonna take back learnings and instantly be able to apply them when you go home. And so the ROI is huge because we have 30 plus sessions and my goodness, I've sat in in these sessions myself and filled up a whole entire, like, moleskin notebook of ideas that you can immediately take back and apply. Our speakers are in the trenches.
working in contact centers. And so instead of maybe hearing from big name, CX influencers who, let's be honest, haven't even ever worked in a contact center before, you're getting advice from people who are currently doing what you do. So it's not theoretical, it's highly practical. I think the community element here is big. Like we are very invested in supporting contact center leaders year round, not just at these events.
We're not just focused on selling passes to a conference so that we can boost our attendance numbers. That's not our focus at all. We're here to provide our community members with an outlet to network and make meaningful connections and to provide them with high quality content so that they can take back their new knowledge and make real changes in their contact centers and a real impact on their teams. It really is
an event like no other that I've been to. And I've been to a lot of conferences too. In the CX space, the tech space, there's just an energy that's different about the people that come to ICMI Contact Center Expo. And we know that we don't have the flashy chefs and celebrity speakers up on the keynote stage, but that's not who we're trying to be. Like back to my point earlier, we are authentically here to make contact centers better and to help contact centers.
Erica Marois (36:21.138)
And we carry that through into the philosophy of building this event. And I will say this too, we're always wanting to get better and we're gonna be trying out new things this fall that maybe we haven't done before. So we've added things like speed networking. We're gonna be bringing in people on our top 25 lists for ask me anything sessions to deep dive on different topics that people are challenged with. There are a lot of unique.
things that we're going to be adding and we're releasing the whole agenda here in the next week or so, so stay tuned. But really, we're here to make contact centers better and that's what we're all about at our event too.
Rob Dwyer (36:58.464)
I love that too. I'm curious in general. know we've talked about things haven't changed a lot when you kind of got back in. But I'm wondering, because I think we're all looking at the quick advancements of technology. And I'm wondering.
Erica Marois (37:10.558)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (37:26.862)
how you
What kind of feedback you're getting from people in the community about the impact that AI is having and kind of the general like feel? it positive? Is it scary? Is it exciting? Is it all of the above? Like how are people receiving and looking at these advancements?
Erica Marois (37:42.739)
Hmm.
Erica Marois (37:54.076)
Yeah, it's a great question. pulled the audience at both of our events, HDI and ICMI, and the sentiment is very similar in both communities where people are a little skeptical and reluctant. And what I hear over and over again is that the people outside of the contact center are super excited about this new AI technology. And in their mind, they're going to be able to cut costs and we won't need all these agents anymore. And it's going to just solve every problem. And what I keep hearing from members of the
I see my community is that none of that technology really matters or even helps if we're not getting the fundamentals right to start with. If we're operating in silos, if this department doesn't know what this department is doing and we've got one culture over here, but this other team has another culture, our customers can feel that and you can't bandaid any of those problems with the shiny new technology. And we always advise even in our consulting side of the business that
It doesn't matter if you were implementing AI or if you're just now, we went through this exercise when people were implementing social care or SMS. You have to get the fundamentals down right to begin with. So you've got to go through and make sure that your people, processes, and all of your other technologies are ready to go. If you're trying to roll out agentic AI, but your knowledge bases are a mess.
Good luck. So I think in general, what we're hearing is a little bit of frustration from people inside the contact center when they're experiencing this push from people higher up and outside of the contact center to just implement AI and it's going to solve all these problems. And no, that's not the case, at least not immediately.
Rob Dwyer (39:20.11)
Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (39:42.382)
Yeah, it's very interesting. think there are few technologies that have been so like public, right? I mean, everybody who's been in the contact center space knows like these different technologies have come in and, and people in the business have talked about what impacts they will have and how it may reduce agents. And for the most part, none of that ever came true.
Erica Marois (40:10.11)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (40:11.086)
But I don't think that the public perception has ever been as focused on a technology as it is on AI. And despite all of the things it can be really awesome at, it does have certain limitations. And some of those limitations are limitations based off of your organization and the way that your organization operates.
Erica Marois (40:19.602)
Mm-hmm.
Erica Marois (40:26.909)
Yeah.
Rob Dwyer (40:39.298)
way that you have things structured within your organization. I know that we hear about AI readiness. And there are a lot of companies out there that just aren't AI ready. Yeah.
Erica Marois (40:43.422)
Yeah.
Erica Marois (40:55.23)
I would say majority are not AI ready. And you're right. There is so much more public interest in it because to be honest, like we're all using AI in some way, right?
Rob Dwyer (41:04.397)
Yeah.
Erica Marois (41:04.734)
Kind of like after Facebook came out, everyone was curious about it and they're on there and they're using it. But using AI in your day to day life is very different than the complexity that exists within all of these organizations where we work. mean, going back to your point earlier about like how complicated even a grocery store operation is, there are so many touch points. Yes, and inside the contact center, but then outside of the contact center. So it's just not one of those like quick fix.
type exercises as much as we would like it to be.
Rob Dwyer (41:38.958)
Okay, let's say one of my listeners is listening to this show and they're like I didn't know anything about ICMI which seems unlikely if you're listening to this show, but it's possible and you're interested How would they go about finding out more?
Erica Marois (41:46.974)
Okay.
Erica Marois (42:02.534)
Yeah, so the first thing I would say is go to ICMI.com. That's going to take you through our training, our consulting, our events, community resources. But I'm also an open book and I freely share my contact information. So I encourage anyone to reach out to me anytime, whether you've got an idea, concern, a point of feedback. I love hearing from you. So I'm sure you're going to share in the show notes, but erica.marois@informa.com.
is my email and please reach out to me anytime because I would love to guide you through the process of getting more involved in a way that's meaningful for you.
Rob Dwyer (42:35.566)
Those who are long-time listeners know what to do. Go down to the show notes. Look for that. Connect with Erica on LinkedIn, because that's where all the peeps are these days. If you are not already in CX Accelerator, that's another great place to connect with Erica. So go hang out there with all the other cool kids. That's what I'm going to call it, the cool. Does it make me old?
Erica Marois (42:40.168)
There you go.
Erica Marois (42:44.861)
Yes.
Erica Marois (42:53.926)
Yep, I hang out there too.
Rob Dwyer (43:03.704)
when I use the phrase cool kids.
Erica Marois (43:05.168)
I say that too, so I guess I'm old as well.
Rob Dwyer (43:09.515)
Alright, join the cool kids. Erica, thank you so much for being on Next in Queue.
Erica Marois (43:15.336)
Thank you, Rob. This was fun.