SpeechTEK 2010 Keynote Speaker Emily Yellin Takes Customer Service Personally

LEXINGTON, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Emily Yellin (www.emilyyellin.com) was motivated to write Your Call is (Not That) Important to Us after a personal and particularly bad customer relations experience trying to get someone to fix her broken furnace.

“an illuminating guide whose conclusions are sound”

Does this sound familiar? After waiting on hold in a freezing cold house, Yellin argued on the phone for hours with customer service at a home warranty company trying to get someone to fix her broken furnace. It was while sitting on hold that Yellin, a journalist, decided to turn her experience into a book in which she visited four continents to explore why customer service is so universally exasperating, and how it can be fixed.

Yellin’s findings about the inner workings of customer service are of particular interest to CEOs and managers who are constantly challenged to make their organizations more profitable and efficient without sacrificing service.

Yellin will share her personal insights and unique perspective on customer service as a keynote speaker at the 2010 SpeechTEK Conference and Exposition, August 2-4 at the New York Marriot Marquis. (www.speechtek.com) Yellin will speak on Monday at 9:00 AM.

A longtime and frequent contributor to The New York Times, Yellin has also written for Time, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Smithsonian and other publications.

She is also the author of Our Mother’s War, a comprehensive portrait of what American women were doing and thinking during World War II and how their experiences changed them and society in general.

Wall Street Journal editor Barbara D. Phillips called Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us “an illuminating guide whose conclusions are sound” in a 2009 review. Phillips also said that with her “insightful reporting” Yellin seeks out “the humanity and reason behind the customer service experiences that many people find to be inhuman and nonsensical.”

Simon and Schuster calls the book engaging, funny and far-reaching. “She traverses the country and the world watching, listening and talking to customers, customer service workers, managers, consultants, and corporate CEOs at such companies as Comcast, FedEx, JetBlue, Sprint, Microsoft, Zappos, Amtrak, Credit Suisse and many others” and “sheds light on the complex forces that create these sometimes infuriating experiences.”

When it was published in 2009, Fortune Small Business featured Yellin’s book as one of its picks for the best of new business books, and Library Journal listed it as one of its Best Business Books of 2009. Writing for Dun & Bradstreet’s Allbusiness.com, fellow author and customer service expert Kevin Stirtz recently listed Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us as one of his top-ten customer service books. In mid-August of this year, an updated, paperback edition with a new chapter on social networking will be released.

SpeechTEK is recognized worldwide as the speech industry’s premier event and the largest dedicated exclusively to speech solutions.

The three-day conference will thoroughly examine all aspects of speech and its myriad applications throughout the enterprise and is a showcase of new products. SpeechTEK is co-located with the CRM Evolution, an examination of business strategies designed to reduce costs by solidifying customer loyalty.

In keeping with the increased use of speech solutions in business, this year’s theme is Positioned for Recovery, Primed for Growth.

About SpeechTEK

Launched in 1995, the SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference (www.speechtek.com) and SpeechTEK Europe are recognized worldwide as the industry’s premier events focusing on products, services, applications, solutions and innovations using speech technologies. The trade show and educational conferences attract a global network of speech technology providers and enterprise network customer who are developing and implementing speech solutions.

About Information Today

Information Today, Inc. (www.infotoday.com), parent company of SpeechTEK, SpeechTEK Europe and Speech Technology magazine, is a leading publisher and conference organizer in the field of technology and technology applications in today’s enterprise. In addition to Speech Technology magazine, Information Today publications include Streaming Media magazine, CRM magazine, KMWorld magazine, Database Trends and Applications magazine, EventDV magazine, and EContent magazine.