| [View Past Issues] | March 9, 2010 |
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Learn how improving First Call Resolution can directly impact your bottom line!
Customer satisfaction and loyalty are two highly desirable results in a support environment. But which performance factors deliver both? View this interactive Webinar to hear Dave Brown, president of Support Center University and author of Optimizing Support Center Staffing, explore the difference between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and explain why both are critical for success.
View this interactive Webinar to learn:
- Which industry best practices are a must-have for your performance program
- How support performance translates into customer loyalty
- Key tactics that will ensure both customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Learn how improving First Contact Resolution can directly impact your bottom line
- Hear specific questions answered directly by our expert speaker
InQuira Web Self-Service and Contact Center Solutions Now Available On Demand
InQuira, a provider of enterprise knowledge solutions, announced the availability of InQuira On Demand, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) version of its popular InQuira for Web Self-Service and InQuira for Contact Centers solutions. With InQuira On Demand, enterprise customers can rapidly deploy and begin benefitting from InQuira's advanced knowledge capabilities through a subscription-based model that easily scales as needed, requiring no additional IT resources. InQuira On Demand solutions integrate with the leading CRM and contact center solutions, and include application administration and optimization, 24x7x365 support and data backup and recovery, all available through a tiered subscription pricing model.
CIMCO Communications Announces Affordable Hosted VoIP Contact Center Solution
CIMCO Communications, Inc., a provider of data and voice solutions, announced the availability of their new IP Talk Hosted Contact Center. This network based, integrated telephony and automatic contact distribution (ACD) solution, provides the flexibility and features to enable small and medium businesses to use the technology previously available only to the largest of contact center customers. CIMCO's IP Talk Hosted Contact Center offers advanced contact center functions including advanced reporting, ACD manipulation, computer telephony integration and much more. Combined with the remote office and business continuity features of CIMCO's IP Talk Hosted telephony services, customers are receiving a solution that is flexible and reliable for their contact center needs.
GMT Selected by Three Rivers Federal Credit Union
GMT Corp., a provider of enterprise workforce management and performance optimization solutions, announced that Three Rivers Federal Credit Union (TRFCU) selected GMT On-Demand to satisfy its branch workforce optimization requirements. GMT's hosted solution will provide capacity modeling and scheduling for TRFCU's sales agents and member service representatives across its network of 18 branch locations in Indiana and northwest Ohio.
Best Practice Case Study Series: Support Center Solutions
Get a complete case study on your company's product or service straight into the hands of SupportIndustry.com's senior level service and support executives. Each case study will tell a compelling story on how your offerings help support executives meet the challenges they face today. You will receive full publishing rights to your final piece, making it a valuable marketing tool you can use over and over. The final piece will have a brief intro with each sponsor having their own section.
For more information, click here.
US contact centers handled 6.6 billion complaints in 2009
New research published by ContactBabel, the contact center industry analysts, has found that US contact centers handled 6.6 billion complaints in 2009. Research for the report has found that the technology, media and telecoms sector receives the greatest proportion of complaints, with 27% of all calls received by this sector being from disgruntled customers.
However, the research has found the vast majority of complaints received by a contact centre are not about the contact centre itself (or its staff), but rather 'failure demand', caused by a breakdown of processes elsewhere in the organization, as the following table
shows.
CEOs Prioritizing the People Agenda as a Means to Recover and Grow
Insight from the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 13th Annual CEO Survey, suggests that CEOs are prioritizing the people agenda as a means to recover and grow.
The research found some areas of weakness have been highlighted by the recession and the vast majority (79%) of CEOs expect to overhaul the way their organizations manage people during change as a consequence of the economic crisis. Attending to staff morale was highlighted by three-quarters (75%) of CEOs as an area also in need of reform and increased investment. Some 59% said they will make changes to flexible working while 55% will revise global mobility arrangements such as staff travel.
Despite a massive majority seeing the existence of a talented, well-skilled and well-educated workforce as critical to future competitiveness, only one in five (20%) think their government has been effective in helping to create a skilled workforce.
Previously released findings showed that CEOs recognize the importance of having the right people in the right place - with over a third (39%) hoping to increase headcount over the next 12 months. That said, 48% stated they had reduced headcount over the last year. Perhaps in recognition of the new skills required of the emerging business environment, more than three-quarters (77%) plan to increase investment in training and development.
- 79% of global CEOs expect to overhaul the way their organizations manage people though change
- Prosperity depends on an increasingly-limited number of talented people producing wealth; only one in five (20%) think their government has been effective in helping to create a skilled workforce
- Unanticipated rate and scale of people management changes required in the downturn brought some human capital failings to the surface
- Over a third (39%) of CEOs hope to increase headcount over the next 12 months while more than three-quarters (77%) expect to increase investment in training and development
IT Service Management Industry Survey Reveals Top 5 IT Trends for 2010
This is the 5th year that Consulting-Portal, an IT Service Management (ITSM) consulting firm, has conducted the IT Service Management Industry Survey. This year results pointed to 5 trends that we feel will prevail in 2010:
- Organizational governance is still very weak
- Software as a Service (SaaS) adoption is on the rise as an ITSM solution
- Organizational support for ITSM is on the rise
- There is a lot more focus on customer-facing processes like Service Level Management and Service Catalog Management
- Auto-Discovery / Dependency Mapping is more popular than ever
For the second year in a row, as little as 29% of organizations surveyed have defined, implemented and enforced ITSM governance in place. Lack of governance makes it hard to comply with standards like Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II, not to mention making it difficult to quantify the return on investment (ROI) from costly IT projects.
Software as a Service, Cloud Computing, Utility Computing - whichever name you prefer, the trend toward customers subscribing to hosted ITSM tools is definitely on the rise having grown from 0 to 17% in just 2 years.
Best Practices in Multichannel Management
The influx of email, chat, web calls and online self-service has made managing a call center -- and ensuring high customer satisfaction -- more challenging than ever. Here's what leading multichannel call centers have in common.
Full Article...
Improve Retention in the Contact Center
Contact center agents are problem solvers. And solving problems all day is no easy gig. It can be hard to maintain a positive attitude; as a result, turnover is a major issue. But contact center directors can help to a great extent to keep up morale and improve retention in the process.
Full Article...
Keeping Score -- The Right Way
It's true that measurements serve a vital role in assessing effectiveness and highlighting potential points of failure. However, if you aren't tracking the right metrics, prioritized in the right order of importance, you could be failing to spot performance issues, defocusing what matters most, or even missing out on additional revenues or cost savings. Therefore, instead of relying on a massive laundry list of metrics and reports, this article recommends approaching measurement, site efficiency, and overall success with a three-step strategy.
Full Article...
Three Ways to Reprioritize Your IT Infrastructure Investments in 2010
It's often hard to change people and process, but in this post-recession era you'll find it's easier to take advantage of the crisis we're coming out of and realigning your teams' attitude, behavior, and culture. Stop rewarding your team as heroes that put out fires in IT and start motivating them to improve efficiency. The goal is to integrate IT operations with broader business operations. If you do nothing else in 2010, focus on IT automation tools to build a more efficient infrastructure and operations foundation.
Full Article...
Three Strategies for Satisfying Customers in the Wake of a Product Safety Recall
Product safety recalls are a real business issue. More than half of the consumers (55 percent) indicate that, if a brand they usually purchase is involved with a recall or safety concern issue, they will at least temporarily switch to another brand, and 15 percent will permanently switch to another brand, according to a 2007 Harris Interactive poll of 2,563 adults. Customers have good memories. They will remember how they were treated long after they have forgotten about the recall. This article presents three strategies for satisfying customers in the wake of a product safety recall.
Full Article...
Keeping Employees Accountable for Results: Quick Tips for Busy Managers
by Brian Cole Miller
All managers want to hold their employees accountable for results, but few know how. Moving beyond the far-from-ideal annual performance review -- which only evaluates what has already occurred, and not what the manager wants to achieve -- Keeping Employees Accountable for Results contains checklists, how-tos, and other tools to manage performance on an ongoing basis. The book gives busy managers quick, step-by-step advice on: * Setting expectations * Monitoring progress * Giving feedback * Following through Light on theory and heavy on practical application, Keeping Employees Accountable for Results gives time-pressed managers the proven, practical information they need to help their people accomplish more.
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2010 Service and Support Technology Showcase Now Available
SupportIndustry.com has released the 2010 version of our Service & Support Technology Showcase. This in-depth buyer's guide features the latest tools and technologies in the support services industry that enable support operations to deliver superior customer service. To view the listings,click here...
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