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Webinar: Putting the Business First – A Service Approach to Delivering Value

Join Pete McGarahan and FrontRange on June 12 as they frame the foundation for becoming a high performance IT service delivery organization. It starts with a business aligned strategy and transitions to cultural organizational change, new roles and tools that have the ITIL processes built in, avoiding costly customizations.

Kaiser Permanente's Appointment and Advice Call Center Improves Employee Coaching and Development Activities
May-11-2008

Numara Software Launches New Version of Numara Track-It!
May-11-2008

Workforce Performance Management Market Still Maturing and Still Hot with Revenues Expected to Reach $2.5 Billion by 2012
May-11-2008

Study Challenges Popular Perception of Founder Makeup of Technology and Engineering Companies
May-11-2008

Scheduling Principles and Problems
May-11-2008

Holy Web 2.0 Herding Nightmare
May-11-2008

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
by Timothy Ferriss
May-11-2008

Outsourcing America: The True Cost of Shipping Jobs Overseas and What Can Be Done About It (Paperback)
by Ron Hira, Anil Hira
May-04-2008

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Scheduling Principles and Problems

Holy Web 2.0 Herding Nightmare

Four Secrets to Becoming a Rising IT Star

Telecoms Stressing Better Customer Service

Five IT Skills that won’t Boost your Salary

Hiring and Motivating the Best IT Workers

The Next Level in Performance Management

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Contact Centers Calls: Keep 'em Short

The Limits of Running IT Like a Business

Gadgets at Work

The Top Five Things to Teach Call Center Agents

5 Tips on IT Alignment that can Generate Profit

Cross-Selling and Upselling: Translating Sales into Service

Web Sites Want You to Stick Around

Virtual Office Deployment Can Make Good Business Sense
In 2008, 41.4 million corporate employees globally will spend at least one day a week teleworking, but there is still resistance to this trend from those preferring face-to-face interaction, according to Gartner, Inc. Enterprises must create formal plans for establishing and sustaining virtual office arrangements to make this arrangement successful. Although virtual offices vary in format, the most typical kind of teleworking involves an individual who works from home at least one day a week and has work space available at a corporate office for the remaining days. A successful pilot typically follows these steps:

Step 1: Decide the criteria for success of the pilot and how to measure, report and review them

Step 2: Find a supportive environment that is not too large in order to get started

Step 3: Establish a steering committee of key decision makers and a project team to plan the initiative

Step 4: Ask for volunteers to participate in the pilot

Step 5: Educate employees on the initiative, focusing on process changes and changes in roles

Step 6: Launch the pilot

2008 Service & Support Metrics Survey Results Released
Parature and Supportindustry.com have announced the release of a free white paper outlining the results of the 2008 Service & Support Metrics Survey. The survey reveals that, while support organizations are evolving processes and adopting technologies to improve service delivery, they continue to face significant challenges. Some of the highlights from this year’s survey include:

Multi-Talented and Multi-Tasking: More than ever, everyone expects to be able to choose their means of interaction with support agents. Approximately 43 percent of respondents said that more than three quarters of their agents handle multiple channels of support including, phone, email, live chat, and co-browsing to meet the needs of their customers.

Helping Others Help Themselves: Numerous incentives such as, cost reduction, customer demand, and the need for a more rounded services portfolio have driven organizations to fund self-service projects and strengthen existing offerings over the last few years. Nearly three quarters (72.6%) of responding executives said they offer access to a searchable knowledgebase or dynamic FAQ. Nearly 44 percent now offer clients the ability to submit cases electronically via the Web if they can’t find their answers in a searchable knowledgebase.

Your Place or Mine: Nearly 40% of the respondents have entrusted their support technology implementations to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models. The research shows that CRM and other sales and service-related technologies lead the types of applications driving the on-demand software market. Of the respondents who don’t currently use a hosted solution, a third say they likely will within the next year.