1312 – Building Confidence with Costa Rica’s Call Center’s Richard Blank

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the CEO, President, and Bilingual Telemarketing Trainer of Costa Rica’s Call Center, Richard Blank. Costa Rica’s Call Center is a bilingual call center with high caliber college educated employees. Richard explains that ecotourism, cost of living, and culture are major advantages to living in Costa Rica compared to countries such as The United States. Costa Rica’s Call Center was created when Richard worked at a friend’s call center in Costa Rica teaching English. The work was something he gravitated to and decided he wanted to start his own call center business venture. Richard explains they work to fulfill the needs of the client and agent by providing support, training, and adequate hiring. Richard explains that he helps make his employees feel more confident in their language skills and broaden their vocabulary to aid them in their work duties. Costa Rica’s Call Center sets itself apart from other competitors as they are bilingual with an incredible skill set that also upholds the reserved values of Costa Rica. Richard explains a misconception about working with Costa Rica’s Call Center is getting a cheaper price because that is the price commonly used by other call centers in different countries such as India. Another misconception is the being able to partner with the company and not blurring ideals between the two such as using profanities when they do not do so as things work differently between different areas. Key Points from the Episode:

• What Costa Rica’s Call Center is
• Advantages of Costa Rica
• How Costa Rica’s Call Center was created
• The importance of linguistics
• How Costa Rica’s Call Center differs from its competitors
• Misconceptions of using Costa Rica’s Call Center

About Richard Blank: 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 over 5000 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 has been the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008. Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelor's 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. Want to learn more? Check out the Costa Rica’s Call Center website at https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/costa-ricas-call-center-2/ Check out Richard Blank on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/costaricascallcenter/ Check out Costa Rica’s Call Center on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/businessprocessoutsourcingcallcenter Check out Richard Blank on Instagram at