New Solutions for Old Problems: Driving Growth from the Contact Center

Sheila McGee-Smith, who founded McGee-Smith Analytics in 2001, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant focused on the contact center and customer experience communications markets. Sheila serves as the Contact Center Track Chair for Enterprise Connect, is a frequent contributor to No Jitter and can be following on Twitter @mcgeesmith.

As the Senior Director for Product Marketing at NICE inContact, Laura Bassett leads a comprehensive go-to-market strategy for current and next-generation solutions. Laura leads a team of product marketers to define positioning, drive sales and marketing plans, and execute cross functionally on those plans. Throughout her 25+ year career, Ms. Bassett has a track record of defining business strategies and establishing best practices that drive revenue. Prior to NICE inContact, Ms. Bassett spent several years with Avaya where, in her most recent role, she worked directly with customers to establish Contact Center and Customer Experience strategies and managed global marketing for contact center and vertical solutions. By establishing an Innovation Model and Early Adopter Program at Avaya, she helped accelerate the company’s commercialization of newly developed solutions. As a principal consultant at Texas Instruments, she created an eBusiness service practice that developed web-enabled e-business applications for more than 200 consultants, enabling them to sell and deliver solutions. Ms. Bassett’s extensive experience and expertise has made her a sought after subject-matter expert, who is regularly featured in industry publications. She has also written numerous blogs and articles on Unified Communications, Collaboration, Customer Experience, disruptive technologies and industry trends. Ms. Bassett has a BSBA in Computer Science and an Executive MBA from the University of Florida.

Michelle Burbick is the Special Content Editor and a blogger for No Jitter, Informa Tech's online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/unified communications industry, and the editorial arm of the Enterprise Connect event, for which she serves as the Program Coordinator. In this dual role, Michelle is responsible for curating content and managing the No Jitter website, and managing its variety of sponsored programs from whitepapers to research reports. On the Enterprise Connect side, she plans the conference program content and runs special content programs for the event. Michelle also moderates Enterprise Connect sessions and virtual webinars which cover a broad range of technology topics. In her tenure on the No Jitter and Enterprise Connect teams, she has managed the webinar program, coordinated and ran the Best of Enterprise Connect awards program, and taken on special projects related to advancing women in the technology industry and promoting diversity and inclusion. Prior to coming to No Jitter, Michelle worked as a writer and editor, producing content for technology companies for several years. In an agency environment, she worked with companies in the unified communications, data storage and IT security industries, and has developed content for some of the most prominent companies in the technology sector. Michelle has also worked in the events and tradeshows industry, primarily as a journalist for the Trade Show Exhibitors Association. She earned her Bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is an animal lover and likes to spend her free time bird watching, hiking, and cycling.