Chris Kontes is the COO and Co-Founder of Balto, the #1 real-time guidance platform. After graduating from Franklin & Marshall College, Kontes joined Venture for America, a nonprofit that places entrepreneurial college graduates in growing startup ecosystems. Venture for America introduced Chris to TopOPPS, an enterprise SaaS company in Saint Louis. As he quickly made his way through the TopOPPS sales organization, Kontes and his now-cofounder noticed how easy it was to make the same mistakes on sales calls repeatedly. This insight led to the inception of Balto, a software solution that provides real-time guidance to customer service agents and sales representatives using artificial intelligence and conversation analytics. The company also recently launched real-time coaching and real-time QA - features that allow managers to score 100% of calls instantaneously as well as guide agents’ calls directly, all within the same platform.Since its founding in 2017, Balto has guided over 80M phone calls and provided over 160M real-time recommendations for agents.

Justin is a customer service expert, professional speaker, and business consultant that helps organizations maximize the strategic value of their customer experience initiatives. Over the course of his career, he’s coached and consulted with thousands of individuals around the globe on contact center and customer experience best practices. Today, Justin works with organizations to improve the impact of their performance management programs, drive more meaningful outcomes from their data, and align their customer service teams from the executive office to the front line. He is a frequent author of industry research, articles, and best practice content, a professional member of the National Speakers Association and featured expert for the New York Times, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, Fox News and numerous other media outlets.

Katia is an international business consultant with over twenty years of experience in call center management within the financial, sales and travel industries. Throughout her career, she has specialized in the areas of performance management, coaching and development, learning facilitation, instructional design, customer experience, talent acquisition, client relationship, quality management and process implementation. As an active member of the QATC Board of Advisors, Katia is committed to welcome participants, share best practices and maximize every opportunity to make an impact within all her areas of knowledge.

Vicki serves as Executive Director of the SWPP and QATC, and oversees the strategic direction and the day-to-day operations of the associations. She brings to the position over 16 years of experience in the call center and WFM industry, serving for many years in the area of client relations and events management for the former TCS Management Group. She is the editor of SWPP’s On Target newsletter and the WFM Expert Solutions book.