Richard Blank is the CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Center, a division of Cheyenne Consultants, a company incorporated in Costa Rica. When Richard was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica, where he started training employees for one of the large call centers in San Jose. He’s trained over 10,000 bilingual telemarketers, shaping them to be the finest in the country. Richard is often sought after for private training sessions and consultations.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Richard Blank shares misconceptions about telemarketing and call centers
- Business and services that are not a fit for call center support
- How COVID impacted call center operations
- Maintaining culture through gamification
- How Richard trains bilingual telemarketers
- Diplomatic phrases to improve your customer support
- Telemarketing mistakes businesses often make
- How can you use a call center for exit interviews?
- The different parts of an outbound call
- How to handle inbound calls
- Guidelines for call center agent upsells
In this episode…
When business owners think about telemarketing, they often envision those aggressive-type callers who inundate people with calls, so they pass on implementing it into their business. As a result, they miss out on the opportunity for inbound support, outbound lead generation, and appointment setting.
Additionally, many businesses that do set up call support often make the mistake of focusing on the number of calls made or received rather than the quality. They’re not adept at handling inbound calls, tackling upsell opportunities, and rendering poor customer service. So how do you improve your customer support?
Listen to this Inspired Insider Podcast episode with Dr. Jeremy Weisz featuring Richard Blank, the CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Center. They discuss misconceptions about telemarketing and call centers, diplomatic phrases to improve your customer support, how to handle inbound calls, and more!
Resources mentioned in this episode
Related Episode(s):
- “A Career Built On A Passion For Pinball with Roger Sharpe Founder of Sharpe Communications”
- “’But wait, there’s more!’ – with Infomercial King Ron Popeil, Founder of Ronco.com”
- “Leading with the Customer Education Approach and more with Rick Cesari Founder of Cesari Media”
Sponsor for this episode
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Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
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Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:19
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs leaders today is no different I’ve Richard Blank of Costa Rica’s Call Center you can check it out. I’m going to formally introduce Richard in a second. But Richard, I always like to talk about other episodes people should check out of the podcast and because Richard is a pinball fanatic, we will definitely point out Roger Sharpe they call him the Babe Ruth of pinball. He called his shot in 1976 to I guess, Pinball the day was illegal. And he made it legal somehow. So watch that there was an episode on Drunk History of Roger sharp That’s hilarious. Also, because we’re talking call centers and direct response you know, I’ve had some direct response legends on the podcast. You can check them out Ron Popeil if anyone’s heard the saying But wait, there’s more. He is an infomercial legend selling over $2 billion worth of stuff unfortunately, may rest in peace he passed away. But check that episode out. He was fantastic. And Rick Cesari as well, was a great episode direct response he helped Sonicare toothbrush and George Foreman grill with our infomercials and juice man juicer, and so many other legendary companies. So check that episode out as well. This episode is brought to you by Rise25 and it Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships. And how do we do that we help you run your podcast. You know, for me, Richard, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to do that than to profile the people and companies I most admire over the past decade and have them on and shout from the rooftops while they’re working on what they’re doing. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected] and Richard Blank is a CEO of Costa Rica’s Call Center. His journey in the call center space is filled with a lot of twists and turns. And I know Richard for you when you were 27 years old, you relocated to Costa Rica, and you started training employees from a larger call centers in San Jose. You shared your knowledge and train over 10,000 Bilingual telemarketers and I know people could check out Costa Rica’s Call Center.com where they have a variety of services we’re going to dig into, like customer care, telesales, lead generation appointment setting, and much more. And, Richard, thanks for joining me.
Richard Blank 2:52
So happy to be here today. Jeremy, thank you so much for having you know,
Jeremy Weisz 2:56
I’m excited because there’s so much stuff we’re gonna talk about gamification of culture. Expat moving there some of the challenges of call centers training soft skills, but I want to start off with people have misconceptions of call centers, right. They picture is just like a churn and burn calling people. What are some of the misconceptions that you come across in the call center, call center space.
Richard Blank 3:22
The first thing is my friend, they say that I call them during dinner. And we don’t have any campaigns that do that. But it’s pretty much what you’ve seen in Hollywood, from Glengarry Glen Ross boiler room, and of course, The Wolf of Wall Street. You see these environments where it’s fast paced aggression, and they’re selling stock? Well, not every single environment has those sorts of verticals. In fact, at my call center, most of our campaigns revolve around inbound support, outbound lead generation and appointment setting. So there’s a certain level of assertiveness not aggressiveness in regards to the campaigns that we accepted. Work with the senator,
