Business Infrastructure Podcast. #213: Scale Tales From the Ground Up. How to build a call center?

Richard Blank Podcast Guest Appearances from Costa Rica's Call Center

While his friends pursued careers in fields like law, medicine, and technology, Richard Blank went in a completely different direction – language. In fact, his love of language and communications led him to study abroad for one semester in Spain. That experience changed the trajectory of his life.

Discover how Richard used a cash-only approach to invest in the business infrastructure required to lay a foundation for sustainable growth, his tips for reducing attrition, and why he urges entrepreneurs to “act their wage.” Growth is not a bad thing. But too much growth, too fast presents a set of challenges often overlooked when discussing small businesses. The emphasis tends to center on the marketing and promotion necessary to grow your business, and not on the operations and business infrastructure needed to scale your business in a sustainable manner. These back office operations can make or break your business. The Business Infrastructure show provides solutions and real life stories to owners and operators of fast growing small businesses seeking practical tips for dealing with growth spurts. A few years after graduating from university, he accepted an offer to conduct training at a call center in Costa Rica. At 27 years old he decided to call Costa Rica home. That was over 20 years ago. And he never looked back. In this episode, Richard takes us on his journey as he leverages his advanced Spanish-speaking skills, business prowess, and emotional intelligence to build and scale Costa Rica’s Call Center from a one-seat to a 300-seat operation. Alicia Butler Pierre is the Founder & CEO of Equilibria, Inc. Her career in operations began over 20 years ago while working as an engineer in various chemical plants and oil refineries. She invented the Kasennu™ framework for business infrastructure and authored, Behind the Façade: How to Structure Company Operations for Sustainable Success. It is the world’s first published book on business infrastructure for small businesses. Alicia hosts the weekly Business Infrastructure podcast with a global audience across 60 countries. Equilibria, Inc. is an operations management firm specializing in business infrastructure for fast-growing organizations. Our mission is to provide access to tips, resources, and proven frameworks that revolutionize the way small businesses operate. We do that through original podcast episodes, blog posts, videos, presentations, workshops, and coaching sessions. The Business Infrastructure 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 discussed with Richard 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. 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/ #RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Leadgeneration #Appointmentsetting #businessinfrastructure

https://youtu.be/qw09sFl1DZU

https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Business-Infrastructure-Curing-Back-Office-Blues-p1341671/?topicId=173886099

https://player.fm/series/business-infrastructure-curing-back-office-blues/ep-213-scale-tales-from-the-ground-up-how-richard-blank-built-costa-ricas-call-center

https://youtu.be/iYUtNAu84Mk

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-business-infrastructure-cu-47518280/episode/213-scale-tales-from-the-100285783/

https://www.stitcher.com/show/business-infrastructure-curing-back-office-blues/episode/213-scale-tales-from-the-ground-up-how-richard-blank-built-costa-ricas-call-center-205332388

https://castbox.fm/episode/213%3A-Scale-Tales-%7C-From-the-Ground-Up---How-Richard-Blank-Built-Costa-Rica's-Call-Center-id2072496-id518195298?country=us

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4dfGdoRdJYQyD5iv2XAJvq?si=38d9a651aa564a05

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/213-scale-tales-from-the-ground-up-how-richard-blank/id1436083621?i=1000574527108

https://www.eqbsystems.com/podcast/213-scale-tales-from-the-ground-up-how-richard-blank-built-costa-ricas-call-center/

https://go.ivoox.com/rf/90474498

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