About Callzilla

  Stepping outside the echo chamber: A wake-up call for CX leaders A prestigious annual list of CX thought leaders was recently published, and surprisingly, I only recognized about 10% of the names - a stark contrast to previous years when I knew most or all of the honorees. What a wake up call! I realized how stuck I was in my comfort zone. I realized how much was going on in my industry without me knowing about it. I realized I need to get familiar with the work of some of these people and [...]

  "We've been telling them about this packaging issue for months, but nothing ever changes." How many times have your customer service agents muttered this phrase after handling the same complaint for the 100th time? I hear this bottleneck often when speaking with potential clients - especially CPG brands. To fix the feedback silo problem, build these 4 bridges: Develop standardized categorization systems with product-specific tagging. Establish cross-department feedback teams with weekly rapid reviews. Integrate feedback technology with AI-powered pattern recognition. Create closed-loop verification that confirms when product changes address customer concerns. It's ok for [...]

  The voice of your customer is the most valuable product research you'll ever receive - and it's already paid for. Yet in most CPG organizations, those insights never reach the people who need them most. Your customers are literally telling you how to improve your products every single day. They're doing your R&D for free! But instead of this feedback reaching your product teams, it's dying a slow death in an employee's Excel spreadsheet. A critical mistake CPG brands make is siloing customer feedback within the consumer affairs department rather than creating an information [...]

  84% of C-suite executives believe they must leverage AI to achieve growth objectives, yet 76% say they struggle to scale it across their business. This disconnect is particularly evident in the CPG customer service space, where many brands remain unaware of how accessible and effective modern AI support tools have become. In my work with CPG companies, I've seen firsthand how implementing tools like Agent Assist can provide real-time responses and instructions for agents to: Access accurate product information instantly Get real-time suggestions for solving specific issues Retrieve similar past cases and their resolutions [...]

  You're heading into your busiest sales period of the year. You put months (even years) of work into the big day. The success of your business is riding on this moment! Things start well, but then ***t hits the fan! Your customer service team gets overwhelmed. You assumed your regular-sized CX team could manage the load. Now there aren't enough people to handle all the calls, msgs and emails flooding in. Wait times balloon from seconds to minutes to hours. Social comments pile up unanswered. Email backlogs grow exponentially. Every year, we see numerous [...]

  Imagine this...It's Friday afternoon and you've just learned one of your flagship products has a potential health risk. By Monday morning? Thousands of concerned customers will be calling, emailing, and posting on social media demanding answers you don't have yet. This exact scenario happened to one of our clients - a pet food manufacturer who discovered a potential Salmonella contamination. Within hours, they faced a decision that would impact their entire brand reputation for years. Here's the truth: When a product recall hits, you have about 24 hours before it transforms from an internal [...]

  Outsourcing customer service doesn't have to mean losing your brand's identity. In fact, the right partner can amplify it. Here's how... When we visit clients and prospects, we’re not there to sell them. I'm there to get to know them - to experience firsthand how they operate so our team can embody their brand. Aim for an outsourcer that feels like an extension of your own team. That's when the real magic happens. When considering outsourcing your customer service, look for these 3 green flags in a potential partner: 1. They focus on solutions, [...]

  Every time I hear someone say "you MUST do X" in customer experience, I see the same reactions from business leaders: Nodding. Agreement. Implementation panic. Common responses I hear: "That sounds great, but we have hundreds of thousands of customers!" "Our agents are already overwhelmed!" "We don't have the budget for that!" My response: Stop looking for universal solutions. What works for a boutique service with 50 clients won't work for a telco with millions. Your customers aren't the same as your competitor's customers. A healthcare provider needs different CX strategies than an e-commerce [...]

  The contact center world is drowning in metrics. Average handle time. Service levels. Disposition codes. Customer satisfaction scores. Net promoter this. Effort score that. Let me be blunt: It's all mental masturbation. We fill libraries with articles debating the "top 5 metrics" while missing the only things that actually matter: Did the customer's problem get resolved? How much effort did it take? Could they easily escalate if needed? Professional organizations. Analyst firms. Certification bodies. They've all created frameworks, standards, and endless reports. But here's the truth: No certification guarantees a great customer experience. What [...]

At Callzilla, we celebrate every milestone, but this achievement is truly one for the books! Neal Topf, President of Callzilla, has been recognized as one of ICMI’s Top 25 Thought Leaders of 2025, a prestigious honor that highlights his profound influence on the customer experience (CX) industry. Each year, the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) acknowledges the trailblazers who are redefining the contact center landscape. After carefully reviewing over 200 nominations from across the globe, ICMI identifies leaders who are not only experts in their field but are also driving transformative change. The Importance of [...]