Challenging Call Center Stereotypes with Empathy

And in essence, we're a bilingual, dedicated call center in Central America. north of Panama, south of Nicaragua. And Costa Rica is a beautiful Central American country with some incredible ecotourism, wonderful labor, pool that we have here, and our infrastructure is incredible. And so maybe today I can break some of the misconceptions that people have in regards to what a call center is, a telemarketer, or even a CEO, because it does take a dash of grit to break those sort of stereotypes and to show empathy with those with whom work with you and to be able to not call people at dinner for that bad reputation that telemarketers have A Dash of Grit Podcast. Do you trust your intuition or have you let fear stand in your way? Season 6 Episode #13. In this weekly podcast, Bryan Lefelhoc chats with local leaders who had to overcome challenges to find success. Be inspired by real, local stories of true grit and courage. By Spire Advertising In Northern Ohio We believe communities are transformed by local leaders like you. At Spire, we want to be a vehicle of connection, inspiration, and support for local leaders like you. Our purpose is empowering local business success that transforms communities.We are here to help you overcome hurdles that slow your growth and to support you with a team that can bring your ideas and vision to life. Our vision is to expand our community impact to a number of other cities in rural communities across Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania by 2028. If we can invest our lives doing this well, the local communities we all serve will be immeasurably better because of your success and your positive local impact. Have you had a dream that you were just too afraid to pursue? At just 27 years old, Richard Blank, CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Center, landed in Costa Rica with passion and a dream. What was seen as a risky choice, for a young man out of college, turned into his greatest opportunity. Do you trust your intuition or have you let fear stand in your way? Hear more about his decision to leave his friends and family as he pursued a career in another country and his advice on building a company and life that you’re proud of. https://youtu.be/QtHsnC50__A Spire, Bryan Lefelhoc, A Dash of Grit Podcast, Richard Blank,Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing Call Centre, BPO, Nearshore Contact Center, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, Business, Podcast, Gamification,Leadership, Marketing, CX, Guest, Money, B2C education, BPO trainer,call centre, contact centre, contact center A Dash of Grit podcast has accepted Richard Blank's invitation to join the audience for a solid discussion regarding starting a company from scratch in Costa Rica as an expat. Topics include: advanced telemarketing strategy, conflict management, interpersonal soft skills, customer support, rhetoric, gamification, employee motivation, phonetic micro expression reading. 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. Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies. https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/ #Spire #BryanLefelhoc #ADashofGritPodcast #RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Leadgeneration #Appointmentsetting #dashofgrit Grit and Determination in Personal and Professional Life Which is why, Richard, your wife is already impressed with you because of the grit you're showing in trying to learn the violin. And folks, it goes all the way down to when he decided to start his business. Starting is the first level of grit. Every single day, picking up that mantle and going to the next level is another level of grit. But you've accomplished something. When you go to bed at night, you look back and say, what did I accomplish? you've accomplished something there. It took some grit to get there The Realities of Success: More Than Just Personal Effort But Richard, is it that easy? Can anybody do what you did? So you showed up in Costa Rica, out of Philadelphia, started a new business. You know, all these employees and doing all these amazing things. Can anybody just say, you know, let's just go and let's just make good decisions. Like there had to be something about you that made this success. It wasn't all perfect, was it? And it wasn't all me. I mean, no way that I could have scaled without people that have been with me over a decade or believed enough in me to invest their time. I'm not an octopus. I can't wear a thousand hats. I can't be in the kitchen and on the floor as well. And so there had to be a time. Or I let go of the bike and allowed a supervisor to represent me, allowed the human resources department to interview for me. I could, once again, out of all those years working with these individuals, show them my style, my culture, but to grow to the size that I did, no. And if you don't have your own internal balance, how can you expand on others? There's no roots or branches there. And so once again, being a leader is dressing for it, showing up for it, being respectful and following through on my word. You know, I'm not just I am a guest in this country. Creating Empowering Work Environments in Business The difference with the call center here is that we have infrastructure. And also, I do have the liberty of getting places without natural light and bad air. I chose to have vaulted ceilings and bay windows.