Draft Agenda
QATC Annual Conference
September 29-October 1, 2026

 

Monday, September 28

2:30-5:00 p.m. – Registration

3:00-4:00 p.m. – Complimentary Pre-Conference Session

Roadmap to the QATC Annual Conference.  New to the QATC conference?  Come to this fun and interactive session to hear how to make the most of your time at this event.  Review the agenda and learn how these key topics will give you specific takeaways for your organization and help you with business decisions down the road.

4:00-5:00 p.m. – Complimentary Pre-Conference Session

Speed Networking.  Everyone has heard of Speed Dating.  Attend this session for a variation that will help you start off the conference with a bunch of new friends!  In our Speed Networking session, you will spend just a few minutes getting to know some of your fellow attendees, and exchange business cards so that you can talk more over the next few days and keep in touch after the conference is over.  

Tuesday, September 29

7:30-9:00 a.m. – Registration & Continental Breakfast

9:00-10:30 a.m. – Welcome & Keynote Address

10:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m. – Workshops

A Blueprint for Quality Form Design: Steps to Building a Fair and Objective Program to Drive Business Results. Creating comprehensive call standards requires getting the right people in your call center to collaborate and construct a set of call expectations used to analyze customer interactions and to develop your frontline staff. This session provides the blueprint to guide you through the steps to develop your center’s QM evaluation form.  Learn what is involved in every step of the process: call flow mapping, skill grouping, identification of behavior-based standards, defining, scoring, validating and more! - Speaker:  Deelee Freeman, Call Center Training Associates Inc.

Before You Deploy: AI Readiness for the Modern Call Center.  Artificial intelligence is reshaping contact center operations faster than most organizations are prepared to manage. Before a single tool is deployed, leaders must confront a fundamental question: is your organization truly ready for AI, not just technically, but operationally, culturally, and from a risk perspective?  This session offers a candid, practitioner-focused look at what AI readiness really means in the modern call center. Drawing on real-world implementation experience, attendees will move beyond the hype and work through a structured readiness framework, from articulating a clear AI vision aligned to business goals, to identifying and mapping the risk landscape specific to contact center environments.  A significant portion of the session addresses access governance and agent-level AI profiles, exploring who should access what, under what conditions, and how organizations can build controls that protect both customers and the business. Attendees will also examine the often-overlooked intersection of API governance and standard operating procedures, including the growing threat of AI-enabled manipulation tactics such as white-text email prompt injection.  The session concludes with a practical guardrails framework that organizations can immediately begin applying, a tiered model distinguishing between must-haves, should-haves, and best-practice controls. Attendees leave with a concrete roadmap for responsible AI adoption that doesn't sacrifice speed for safety, or safety for speed. – Speaker:  Penny Tootle, Red Clay

What Organizational Structure Works Best for Training & Quality Assurance?  Come to this session to hear from the panelists about how their teams are aligned, and the pros and cons of QA and Training being together and apart from both a scoring and customer experience perspective.   

TBD

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12:00-1:30 p.m. – Luncheon & Keynote –

1:30-2:45 p.m. – Workshops

Integrated QA:  Driving Performance Through Smart Rubrics and Strategic Coaching. Quality Assurance is more than just compliance; it’s a strategic lever for contact center performance. This session will present a holistic framework for maximizing the impact of your QA function. We’ll delve into the process of designing simplified, actionable evaluation rubrics that serve as the foundation for effective coaching. Furthermore, we’ll explore how these refined tools empower QA teams to transition from traditional evaluators to proactive coaches and positive culture drivers, ultimately fostering a high-performance environment and demonstrating the value of a truly integrated QA strategy. – Speaker:  Matthew Byers, Sentry Insurance 

AI in Training: Smarter Content, Sharper People.  The contact center training function is undergoing a fundamental reinvention and AI is the catalyst. From content production and translation to adaptive learning pathways and real-time agent coaching, artificial intelligence is creating capabilities that were economically impossible just a few years ago. The organizations that learn to harness these capabilities intelligently will develop sharper, faster, more resilient teams. Those that don't will fall further behind with every hiring cycle.  This session examines AI's expanding role across the full training ecosystem: strategy, design, delivery, and evaluation. Attendees will explore a practical before/after comparison of how AI transforms each layer of the training function not as a replacement for instructional expertise, but as a force multiplier that frees learning professionals to focus on higher-order design and human connection.  Content production is examined in depth, with a focus on how AI can accelerate scenario development, first-draft authoring, multilingual translation, knowledge checks, and evergreen content refresh cycles. Critically, this session does not shy away from the quality control imperative: AI-generated content carries real risks factual errors, bias, outdated information, and misalignment with regulatory requirements and the human review function is non-negotiable.  The session also explores the power of AI-driven personalization at scale: adaptive learning paths, proficiency-based pacing, role-specific scenario delivery, micro-learning cues, and manager-facing analytics. Attendees will leave with a phased AI Training Innovation Roadmap a structured three-phase approach to building, expanding, and optimizing AI capabilities across the training function over a 12-month horizon.  – Speaker:  Penny Tootle, Red Clay

Don’t Forget to Train Your Coaches!  Coaches play a key role in the success of your employees. Has your company adopted a particular coaching model and have all your coaches been trained? What do you do beyond that training to ensure your coaches are using the model properly and encouraging the reps for good work while also lining up plans for opportunities to improve? The panelists for this session will share what they’re doing and provide insight that could work in your contact center.

Fostering Employee Engagement in Today’s Contact Center.  Employee engagement is critical in contact centers, as agents act as the frontline to your customers. Agents need to be brand ambassadors, remaining positive about the organization even in the face of customer issues. Contact centers that focus on increasing employee engagement are certain to reap substantial rewards.  Join us for a discussion to share your challenges and wins on how to foster employee engagement in today’s contact center environment.

TBD

2:45-3:45 p.m. – Afternoon Break

3:45-5:00 p.m. – Workshops

QA As An Early Warning System.  Most QA programs focus on scoring past interactions, but high performing organizations use QA as a proactive signal system to identify customer experience risks before they escalate. This session explores how to move beyond simple scorecards and uncover meaningful patterns in QA data that reveal operational breakdowns, training gaps, and emerging customer pain points. Attendees will learn how to connect QA insights across teams to improve visibility, consistency, and response time. The goal is to turn QA from a reporting function into a predictive tool that actively protects and improves the customer experience. – Speaker:  Beth Reedy, Black Rifle Coffee Company

AI in OCM: People First, Technology Enabled.  "People who use AI well will replace those who don't." This is not a distant prediction, it is the current reality in contact center environments where AI adoption is accelerating faster than organizational readiness. Yet technology alone does not drive transformation. People do.  This session reframes Organizational Change Management (OCM) for the AI era, making the case that the change management playbook itself must evolve. Traditional OCM models were designed for linear, discrete change events. AI adoption is continuous, iterative, and touches every layer of the organization simultaneously. The frameworks that got organizations through CRM rollouts and workflow redesigns are not sufficient and this session shows what must replace them.  A central focus of the session is the role of quality control as both a risk mitigation tool and a change enabler. AI systems are only as good as the source material they are trained on and the guardrails built around them. Attendees will explore how quality gaps in existing content, processes, and knowledge bases become visible through AI, and how smart organizations treat those gaps not as problems to hide, but as a roadmap for improvement.  The session also tackles the human dynamics of AI adoption head-on: how to activate internal champions, how to manage resistance without dismissing legitimate concerns, and how to build a culture where agents see AI as a tool that elevates their work rather than a threat to their role. Attendees leave with a practical model for people-first AI change management they can apply in their organizations immediately.   – Speaker:  Penny Tootle, Red Clay

What Matters to Our Customers?  A few years ago, my job was to help my contact center customers use their data to answer their pressing and tough operational questions.  One of the best we heard? “What matters to our customers?”  Closely followed by its powerful complement: “How hard are we to do business with?”  In this session, we’ll explore how contact center data can help answer these questions. We’ll also introduce a powerful metric—Active Contact Resolution—a smarter, more actionable twist on FCR that can drive meaningful improvements across your operation. – Speaker:  Ric Kosiba, Real Numbers 

The Evolution of the New-Hire Process.  You’ve wrapped up an extensive round of interviews and have recruited new agents for your contact center team.  The next phases in the career of an agent can make or break the agent experience in your contact center. Prioritizing the initial months of an agent’s tenure is crucial for ensuring high levels of employee and customer satisfaction.  “Activate” your new hires and introduce them to your company culture through your example so they can effectively navigate forward.  Come to this session to hear tips for helping your agents get the right start.   

TBD

5:00-7:00 p.m. – Networking Reception

Wednesday, September 24

7:45-9:00 a.m. – Breakfast & Industry Roundtables

9:00-10:15 a.m. – Workshops

What Works Best:  A Collaborative Approach to Quality Form Design.  If you want to learn how other call centers have designed their quality forms, this session is for you!  Participants will be placed in small groups and given quality form-related topics to discuss and share what has worked best in their centers.  Next, the group will create a master list of best practices.  Some of the topics will include the following: Eval form organization, scoring, use of auto-fail, bonus points, and how to make quality more objective.  – Moderator:  Deelee Freeman, Call Center Training Associates

Separate Roles, Shared Goals: Why QA and Training Work Better Together.  Many contact centers treat QA and Training as separate handoffs, creating inconsistent coaching, missed insights, and slower agent development. The truth is, the strongest contact centers don’t leave that connection to chance – they build it intentionally.  In this interactive session, we’ll explore how QA insights, continuous coaching, onboarding, and ongoing training can actually work together in real time instead of bouncing between systems and spreadsheets. When they’re aligned, performance improves faster, coaching becomes easier, and teams feel supported instead of scored.  You’ll leave with practical, real-world ways to turn QA and Training into a true partnership where feedback fuels learning, learning fuels coaching, and coaching fuels results. – Speakers:  Rachel Hizer & Stephanie Meyer, WebMD Health Services

Beyond the Bandwagon: Using AI to Make Your QA Team Indispensable.  You didn't get into quality management to sit on your hands while AI calculates quality scores.  Yet here you are, watching AI get deployed all around you: the Board calls it innovation, CX scores aren’t getting better, while headcount shrinks.  It doesn't have to be this way.  Join Corvoca for a session tailored for QA leaders who want AI to work — not just get deployed so the company can say “Look, y’all! We got some AI!”  We'll show you how to orchestrate human expertise and AI capability so that your team's judgment, intuition, and contact center knowledge drive the technology, not the other way around. You'll leave with a practical framework for evaluating AI tools, building a compelling executive business case, and measuring results that prove your team's impact — in language leadership actually understands. AI should elevate your team, not replace it! – Speakers:  Michelle Gaffney & Shawn McCormick, Call Design

The Future of Hybrid Work: Optimizing Collaboration, Culture, and Productivity.  Hybrid work is here to stay in the contact center.  “Hybrid” may not mean the same thing in every organization, but in this session, we will discuss best practices for managing distributed teams, fostering connection, and ensuring equitable experiences for all employees.  We will also look at the challenges and wins for hybrid workers, along with needed policies and guidelines.

TBD

10:15-10:45 a.m. – Break

10:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m. – Workshops

Beyond the Scorecard: Rethinking How Call Centers Measure What Actually Matters.  Most call center QA programs are measuring the wrong things, in the wrong way, at the wrong time. This session starts with a simple question: if you could only measure three things to know whether a customer truly had a good experience, what would they be? We landed on resolution, effort, and sentiment and then we built a program around measuring all three, across 100% of interactions, in near real time. What happened next changed how we think about QA entirely. The measurement is only half the story. The other half is what happens to coaching when the data changes. Come to this session to hear about two case studies using this approach.  Attendees will leave with a practical framework for rethinking what they measure, how they coach, and how they connect both to outcomes that matter regardless of tools or platforms. – Speaker:  Andrew Lee, ttec

Transforming Quality into Business Intelligence.  Come to this session to hear how Fabletics transformed Quality from an auditing function into a strategic intelligence capability by unlocking the value hidden within every customer interaction.  This session showcases our journey from manual QA to AI-powered conversation analytics. We will explore how automated quality evaluations and customer interaction data can generate actionable business intelligence, improve customer experience, strengthen compliance, and drive operational performance. Attendees will gain practical insights for transforming Quality into a strategic business partner.  – Speaker: Crina Sonia Petre, Fabletics

From Designing Content to Designing Change.  Come to this session to hear about a five-stage learning system, with the core message that learning takes place in a greater system outside the classroom, and operations leaders have a stake in successful learning. We will discuss how this system can be effectively implemented in an organizational context where behavior needs to be modified. You will be challenged to think higher of your role in training, regardless if you are in learning and development, operations, or leadership, because you all have a part in the system. – Speaker:  Benjamin Gertz, Instructional IQ 

Coaching Your Star Agents!  Do you find yourself coaching a call and wondering how you can make an impactful change for your star agents?  In this session, we will be focusing on quantifying a “fantastic” call.  We will define great call qualities in a deep discussion.  We will discuss strategies on how to find these qualities and showcase our star agents.  We will then take what you learned from the session and discuss a plan on how you can implement those strategies into your own quality program.  – Speaker. Stephanie Szymanski, Soaring Eagle

OTTO QA Session. Beyond the Score: What AI QA Can Really Do.  Most people think AI QA is about grading calls faster. That's the smallest thing it can do.  This one's for everybody. If you already have AI QA, you'll find out what you're not using yet. If you don't, you'll walk out knowing exactly what to ask for before you buy anything.  Once every call is transcribed and understood, you're sitting on something huge. This talk is about what happens next.  Predicting CSAT and NPS without ever sending a survey. Reading the real emotion on a call, not a guess. Coaching plans that write themselves from an agent's own calls. Letting agents hear what a better version of their call sounds like. Catching the four things they nailed and the four things to fix. Watching the whole workflow, not just the words. Flagging the calls that actually need a human before anyone asks.  This is the session your team makes you explain twice. – Speaker:  Tom Laird, OTTO QA

12:00-1:30 p.m. – Luncheon & Contact Center Jeopardy

1:30-2:45 p.m. – Workshops

Bots, Brains, and Better QA: The AI Advantage.  AI in the contact center is transforming how quality management, agent performance, and customer insights come together. In this presentation, we will explore how AI‑Driven quality assurance automates call evaluations, identifies coaching opportunities, and reduces manual review time, while advanced analytics uncover trends in customer sentiment, behavior, and operational efficiency. We will also highlight how these capabilities create a more consistent customer experience, empower supervisors with real‑time intelligence, and help organizations scale their QA programs with accuracy and speed. – Speakers:  John Watkinson & Todd Williams, Amplix

Ask the Expert – Training.  This event is your chance to ask our panel of experts anything Training! This interactive session will answer questions submitted and chosen by conference attendees. If you have a question or an issue that has been a challenge to your team, bring your question to the panel! The audience will also get a chance to give some input. This session should be dynamic and informative, but the topics covered will be chosen by you and your peers at the event.

Decoding the Soft Skill DNA: Coaching the Unscripted Skills That Move the Quality Needle.  How many times have you listened to a call where the agent did everything right, but they sounded all wrong? Part of the problem is, while we may have soft skills included on our quality forms, we do not have a clear understanding of them, nor objective behavior-based definitions to explain how to effectively communicate to the caller. In this session, join in the discussion of how to implement a coherent Soft Skill Strategy and Development Plan in your call center. – Speaker:  Deelee Freeman, Call Center Training Associates Inc.

How To Make Voice of Customer A Part of Everyone's Job.  So much is changing today in the CX field, but perhaps no discipline as quickly and dramatically as Voice of Customer. Our customers are offering up feedback in such different ways and in such different places than they were even 5 years ago. Sadly, for most organizations, the "VoC Engine" has become tremendously out-of-date. It's time for a serious tune up! There is almost nothing more important we can do for the business than effectively capture the customer's voice and drive meaningful change with it, and every employee has a major role to play. This session will equip you with a new mentality and new tools when it comes to all things customer feedback! – Speaker:  Nate Brown, CX Accelerator 

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2:45-3:45 p.m. – Ice Cream Social with the Sponsors

3:45-5:00 p.m. – Workshops

From Insight to Impact: Mastering Quality Observation Calibration.  Everyone knows calibration is important, but may not know how to get started. Building consensus among large groups with different focuses and interests can be tough, but it doesn't have to be! We'll share a case study of how we increased frequency, audience, and alignment through calibration. Come to this session to learn how to turn subjective observations into consistent, actionable insights that actually drive results. – Speakers:  Brian Wilmer & Casey Wallace, Edward Jones

Building the Plane While Flying It: The Evolution of QA & Training at Provo 311.  What happens when a small contact center is responsible for supporting an entire city? Over the past several years, Provo 311 has navigated major system changes, rapid growth in services, evolving customer expectations, and the challenge of training employees to handle an incredibly diverse range of responsibilities. This session shares the story of how our team developed and refined its quality assurance, training, and knowledge management programs along the way-what worked, what didn't, and the lessons we learned. Attendees will leave with practical ideas and real-world examples they can adapt to their own organizations, regardless of size or resources. – Speakers:  Lindsey Rasmussen, Provo City

Ask the Expert – QA.  This event is your chance to ask our panel of experts anything Quality Assurance! This interactive session will answer questions submitted and chosen by conference attendees. If you have a question or an issue that has been a challenge to your team, bring your question to the panel! The audience will also get a chance to give some input. This session should be dynamic and informative, but the topics covered will be chosen by you and your peers at the event.

Hints in Our Data That Point to Better Agent Performance.  When COVID hit, everything changed—including how we managed our contact centers. Suddenly, a simple but urgent question echoed across the industry: “What are our agents doing?”  In this session, we’ll explore how to use your data to uncover performance outliers and identify personalized paths to improvement for every agent. We’ll share real-world examples, practical techniques, and yes—there will be graphs—but we will make it all fun. – Speaker:  Ric Kosiba, Real Numbers

40/20 Ideas in 60 Minutes – Coaching, Rewards, & Recognition.  Yes, you read it correctly! 40 ideas will come from the panel and 20 ideas will come from you, the participants, instead of all 60 ideas coming from the panel. Plan to learn what others are doing and to share what you are doing.  Come prepared to share your success stories or even things you tried that didn’t work.  

6:15 p.m. – Depart for Evening Event

6:30-9:30 p.m. – Evening Event at JBJ’s

Thursday, September 25

7:45-8:45 a.m. – Breakfast & Topic Roundtables

8:45-10:00 a.m. – Workshops

Call Calibration: Methods to Gain Consistency in Your Quality Monitoring Program.  You can have the most advanced call recording technology and a dedicated quality staff but, without consistency in QM and scoring, the integrity of your entire quality program will be compromised. Call calibration is vital to the health of your quality program, but so many find their calibration sessions frustrating and not necessarily helpful in taking consistency to the next level.   This session provides everything you need to know about setting up an effective Call Calibration Program, how to measure calibration, and most importantly how to run a successful calibration session where participants are engaged and committed to the consistent application of quality standards to call behaviors.  – Speaker:  Deelee Freeman, Call Center Training Associates Inc.

60 Ideas in 60 Minutes – Training.  This fast-paced session with a panel of vendor experts will provide you with a practice idea each minute.  This is not a sales pitch for products.   These are the vendor experts that can provide tips on how to get the most out of a WFM investment from the early planning stages, implementation, training, and ongoing use. This format will give you some last-minute tips to take home and implement immediately!

If Work Teaches People to Pull Back:  Lift, Lower, Lock, and Lean.  Your people did not wake up one morning and decide to disengage. Work taught them to. Every handle-time target, schedule rule, "quick" fire drill, and half-useful meeting sends a signal about when it pays to care and when it is smarter to pull back. Over time, even high performers learn to protect their energy, stay in the safe lane, and stop volunteering for the hard, important work.  This session is an intervention in how your week actually runs. Using the Lift, Lower, Lock, and Lean framework, you will dissect the real messages your contact center sends about effort, ownership, and risk. Then you will get on your feet. Through fast-paced exercises, live examples, and guided table work, you will choose one pattern that currently teaches people to pull back and redesign it on the spot. You will walk out with three practical moves you can launch in the next 30 days, plus a simple rhythm to keep revisiting Lift, Lower, Lock, and Lean with your teams so the culture you talk about starts matching the culture people feel every day. – Speaker:  Justin Robbins, Metric Sherpa

Ask the Expert – Coaching.   This event is your chance to ask our panel of experts anything Coaching! This interactive session will answer questions submitted and chosen by conference attendees. If you have a question or an issue that has been a challenge to your team, bring your question to the panel! The audience will also get a chance to give some input. This session should be dynamic and informative, but the topics covered will be chosen by you and your peers at the event.

10:00-10:15 a.m. – Break

10:15-11:30 a.m. – Workshops

60 Ideas in 60 Minutes – Quality Assurance.  This fast-paced session with a panel of your peers will have you writing furiously as you try to capture an idea a minute on paper! This format will give you some last-minute tips to take home and implement immediately – if you can catch them all!

From Scorecards to Signals:  How to Reinvent Call Center QA with AI (Without Burning Your Team Out).  If your QA program disappeared tomorrow, would your business lose insight—or just scorecards? This session challenges the traditional approach to quality by shifting from volume to impact. You’ll learn how to identify the signals that actually matter and use AI to find them faster. Less auditing, more insight, better outcomes. Attendees will learn how to cut through noise, identify high-impact signals, and use AI to surface insights faster. – Speaker:  Nicholas Brodbeck, FIGS 

From Scorecards to Smart Coaching: An AI Case Study on Real-Time Coaching.  Traditional quality programs rely on reviewing a small sample of customer interactions long after the conversation has ended. But what happens when AI delivers coaching in the moment it matters most? In this session, we'll share a real-world case study demonstrating how one company transformed quality assurance through real-time coaching, automated quality insights, and AI-driven guidance. Learn the implementation approach, lessons learned, measurable business outcomes, and how AI empowers—not replaces—quality analysts and leaders. – Speaker:  Chaunte Johnson

Building a Resilient Workforce: Strategies for Adaptability and Continuous Learning.  Today’s contact center agents must be able to adapt and change in a rapidly changing landscape.  Come to this session to discuss the most critical skills that agents need to develop for success, how to identify skill gaps and training needs within your existing workforce, and how to empower agents to manage difficult customer interactions and prevent burnout, all while will maintaining high service standards.  

11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.  – Closing General Session

Become A Catalyst for Change Post-QATC.  You are undoubtedly returning home with a head full of ideas following your experience at QATC. But, will you put those ideas into action and ensure that you don’t lose the excitement that you felt at the conference? In this closing session, Justin Robbins will share how to build momentum coming out of QATC and engage your team back at the office in exploring and implementing new ideas to improve quality and training. This will be a high-energy ending to our time together that will ensure you’re set up to succeed post-QATC.  – Speaker:  Justin Robbins, Metric Sherpa

12:00 p.m. – 2026 QATC ends