You're Invited to SupportIndustry.com’s Featured Webinar!

Topic: Winning the Battle of Expectations vs. Reality in today's service desk
Date: Thursday, March 27
Time: 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET
Speakers: Pete McGarahan, McGarahan and Associates
Stephen Fenter, Director, Best Practices, SupportSoft

This webinar, conducted by SupportIndustry.com and presented by industry experts Pete McGarahan and Stephen Fenter, Director, Best Practices, SupportSoft, provides you with an insider's view of what is happening in the Service Desk today. Attendees will learn how implementing best practices and taking advantage of the latest support technologies can increase productivity and improve the performance of the Service Desk.

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HP Makes Big Investment in Consumer Tech Support
HP has announced the most substantial investment in consumer technical support in its history – the aim of which is to enable people to get faster, more effective help with the HP technology products in their homes. Customer service agents from Missouri to Moscow are now equipped with state-of-the art tools to help customers quickly return to their tasks, whether printing photos or connecting online with friends. HP’s investment is focused in three areas:

• A new customer support infrastructure, serving customers in 132 counties and 31 languages;
• Eight new call centers, including ones in Alabama, Missouri and Oregon and five others around the world; and
• A support agent training pilot program and expanded availability of key technology tools.

Skywire Software Launches Enhanced Version of Documaker Customer Communication Management (CCM) Suite
Skywire Software, a provider of software and services to key vertical industries, has launched Documaker 11.3, the newest version of its enterprise customer communications management (CCM) suite. Documaker is a dynamic publishing platform used by more than 1,000 customers worldwide to acquire, create, manage and present batch, real-time and interactive customer communications. This can include statements, invoices, bills, and other essential customer communications. The Documaker suite helps companies manage customer communications enterprise-wide -- including document production, correspondence, Web presentment and cross-selling campaigns -- across all locations and lines of business.

Services Industry Summit - eService Strategies and Challenges
April 21-23, 2008

Join us for the Services Industry Summit - eService Strategies and Challenges, April 21-23, 2008 in historic Charleston, SC. Industry luminaries from leading organizations will share their insights and discuss the latest issues and trends in the areas of eservices, knowledge management and others!

Register today!

Improving Web-Based Support is Crucial to Good Customer Service
InQuira, Inc., a provider of integrated software applications for intelligent search, knowledge management, analytics and user experience, announced the publication of a study it sponsored from independent research firm ServiceXRG that examines the current state of online shopping and customer service. The study, entitled "Influencing the Online Experience," reveals that in order to maintain customer mindshare and loyalty, companies must improve available content and provide a superior web-based service experience.

ServiceXRG surveyed nearly 1,000 companies and online shoppers to gain insights from both the consumption and supply sides of the online experience to learn how the web is changing the way businesses engage with customers, and in turn how it impacts consumer perceptions of companies. Specifically, ServiceXRG examined how consumers use search for online support, conduct product research and engage in shopping activities; and then explored the investments, tools and resources the "supply side" provides to encourage Web use, drive successful online transaction and deliver a positive customer experience.

Key findings from the study include:

• Content quality and the ability to find information remains a top concern for consumers: 74.5% indicate that they use a company's web site to get information about a product or service, but only 44% of consumers surveyed felt that the information met their needs;
• Only 38.9% of the surveyed companies say they're currently able to provide a powerful advanced search function to their site visitors. In addition, 31.2% say they specifically plan to implement enhanced search in the future;
• 97% of companies surveyed plan to make future investments to enhance customer's ability to find the service information they need, with content enhancements topping the list; and
• Less than 20% of companies provide a form of escalation through live chat to help customers during their shopping experience.

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IT Leaders Must Place IT Modernization at the Core of Their 2008 Objectives
CIT management teams must place modernizing strategic planning at the core of their 2008 objectives and immediately apply this capability to IT modernization efforts, according to Gartner, Inc. By year-end 2010, more than one-third of all application projects will be driven by the need to deal with technology or skills obsolescence.

Gartner defines IT modernization as a movement that includes market forces, strategies and approaches to manage the ongoing, coordinated evolution of the business process, application and supporting technology portfolios to achieve an optimized value, cost and risk objective.

There are three major contributing factors to why IT modernization is needed now:

Lack of agility of IT systems and services in responding to business requests for change. As the IT environment becomes more crowded and more complex, it simultaneously becomes less able to respond in a timely manner to business demand for change. Every CIO struggles with this backlog of demand, which cannot be addressed simply by working harder with the artifacts that constitute the IT environment. The IT architecture was not designed or built for agility, so working harder is not going to close the agility gap.

Increasing integration among portfolios. Integration is capable of delivering real value to the business, reducing latency and increasing the throughput capacity of the organization. However, there is increased complexity in managing service delivery and maintaining the portfolios of assets needed to support the integrated organization. These benefits come at a price with increased complexity in managing service delivery and maintaining the portfolios of assets needed to support the integrated organization.

Increased obsolescence of deployed assets. The recession in 2000 and 2001 caused many enterprises to take a hiatus for a year or two from investing in IT. IT teams learned the disciplines of placing systems on life support, squeezing the last possible value from sunk costs. Although IT management teams may well be able to keep systems on life support for some time, there is a finite limit to the willingness of business users to keep on using solutions that fail to deliver modern standards of functionality and agility.

Skills crisis. Enterprises worldwide are operating under circumstances in which a significant portion of the people who understand their mission-critical systems are eligible to retire during the next five years. Organizations should not be surprised to find that 25 percent to 30 percent of their employees with legacy skills will be eligible to retire in the next three years.

Gartner recommends that CIOs identify the key asset portfolios across the IT domain, and assign management responsibility across the IT management team for each asset portfolio. The staff should be certain that the CIO will hold them individually responsible for participation in the activity. CIOs must also identify the best individual available to take responsibility for comprehensive IT planning across all portfolios, and make this individual a direct report.

CIOs should also organize a planning session where all the asset owners can explain the maturity and modernization issues inside their own portfolios to all the other asset owners. This will expose opportunities for synergy in all the interactions between each of the portfolio strategies.

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Survey Finds Current Converged Mobile Devices Fail to Compel Users
The conventional wisdom within the portable device industry is that consumers have a preference to use converged devices, meaning single devices that combine the functionality of previously separate devices, reports In-Stat. But the idea that there will be wholesale adoption of a device that simply combines multiple devices is unrealistic, the high-tech market research firm says. A recent In-Stat survey of US businesspeople shows that users tend to remain loyal to older technology, and employers are reluctant to force the issue.

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

• One positive sign of progress in convergence is that 8% of road warriors, businesspeople who travel frequently, have given up a desk phone to rely solely on their mobile number.
• Before employers can insist that employees use fewer devices, manufacturers need to address battery life and ergonomics issues for portable devices.
• The survey shows that many more users prefer to carry redundant devices than chose to have a single telephone number and a single computing device.

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Tech and Telecom Companies Continue to Rely on Traditional Recruitment Methods Despite Talent Shortage
With technology and telecommunications companies still looking to lure talent using traditional compensation-based approaches, there is a disconnect between HR practices and candidates’ priorities, according to a new Deloitte survey.

The study, "Competing For Talent," found that the vast majority of companies in these sectors are relying on financial incentives to attract and retain employees. In contrast, the study found that today’s workforce values greater freedom in schedules and control of where and how they work over financial compensation.

The survey also found that creative and other critical talent that generates greater-than-average value for customers and shareholders is most difficult to attract, and the problem is expected to increase over the next three to five years.

Key findings of the survey include:

• Two-thirds of respondents expect their workforce to grow by at least 6 percent over the next 12 months, and only 6 percent expect their workforce to shrink.

• Technology and telecommunications companies surveyed are generally less worried than companies in other industries about a prolonged global labor crisis. This may be due to the fact that technology and telecommunications companies are considered “sexy” and, therefore, have an easier time attracting talent. It may also be attributable to their younger workforces, which are less affected by Baby Boomer retirements.

• Respondents that fail to address their talent management challenges over the next three years will feel the pain where it really hurts: in limited growth, increased time to market, reduced innovation, damage to customer relationships, and more.

• Forty-four percent of respondents have either not defined a list of critical skills for future growth or are in need of updating their list to meet current needs.

• Roughly a third of respondents regularly discuss the talent shortage at board meetings, while another third discuss it once or twice a year. Moreover, nearly half of the surveyed companies have started to conduct workforce planning to identify critical skills and talent gaps.
  
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How to Use Statistics in Your Call Center
If you believe call centers are statistics driven, then you are right on the money. Today’s fantastic CRM (Customer Relationship Management) packages allow management to gain a complete grasp on performance in the call center. In turn, these platforms benchmark past, present, and future opportunities. There is a challenge, however. So often call center agents, who represent that critical link between organization and customer, believe they are being measured by statistics. They worry constantly about whether management is going to tap them on the shoulder and discuss call length or after-call time. They feel the job is purely a statistical win or loss. Yet, equally often, they don’t know exactly which categories are being measured. So, what is the solution? What numbers are the right numbers to monitor for your situation? This article presents some tips.
Full Article...

The Ten Easiest Ways To Lose Your Customers
Winning business often requires a significant investment in time. But customer care, unfortunately, is still regarded by many as a costly activity or a burden on resources. Some organizations have already recognized the importance of customer care, and a few are very advanced in the practice of customer service -- but it is only a few. If your company seems to be determined to lose its customers, this article presents 10 tips that will most certainly help the process along.
Full Article...

Hunting The Elusive CIO Dashboard
For too many organizations, IT is a black box. Projects and systems are so complex that few CIOs can predict a direct impact on the business, making it hard to win budget and resources even in prosperous times. And when the CIO can't get a clear picture of the real-time data that underlies critical applications, infrastructure, and projects, IT too often ends up reacting to issues after users and customers are having problems. The answer is a CIO dashboard that gathers key performance indicators, or KPIs, into a central repository that, in a single window, identifies the performance of critical systems and projects in real time.
Full Article...

Gen Y, Gen X and the Baby Boomers: Workplace Generation Wars
Take a good look around your IT department. Who's that cohabiting in the cubes outside your door? Boomers and X-ers and Y-ers. Looks peaceful out there, doesn't it? Don't bet on it. What many CIOs fail to see are the generational tensions simmering among their employees that threaten to lower morale, increase turnover and hobble the IT department's ability to produce wins for the business.
Full Article...

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
by Dan Ariely

When do you get your best ideas? You probably answer "At night," or "In the shower," or "Stuck in traffic." You get a flash of insight. Things come together in your mind. You connect the dots. You say to yourself, "Aha! I see what to do." Brain science now reveals how these flashes of insight happen. It's a special form of intuition. We call it strategic intuition, because it gives you an idea for action-a strategy.

Brain science tells us there are three kinds of intuition: ordinary, expert, and strategic. Ordinary intuition is just a feeling, a gut instinct. Expert intuition is snap judgments, when you instantly recognize something familiar, the way a tennis pro knows where the ball will go from the arc and speed of the opponent's racket. The third kind, strategic intuition, is not a vague feeling, like ordinary intuition. Strategic intuition is a clear thought. And it's not fast, like expert intuition. It's slow. That flash of insight you had last night might solve a problem that's been on your mind for a month. And it doesn't happen in familiar situations, like a tennis match. Strategic intuition works in new situations. That's when you need it most.

More Info...

Visit the SupportIndustry.com Blog

The SupportIndustry.com Blog is another way stay on top of the service and support industry. Our blog, updated at least once a week, is dedicated to covering the latest topics related to service and support, call center management, customer experience management, web-based support, help desks, workforce optimization and more.

Check it out today

Research Results: 2008 Trends in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
The majority of respondents (81%) in CRMindustry.com's "2008 Trends in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)" survey are happy with the overall performance of their CRM technology vendor. The research, conducted in November - December 2007, surveyed high-level CRM executives representing a range of industries. The data gathered provides valuable insight into the issues and challenges important to those responsible for CRM in their organization.

To get a complimentary copy of the executive summary, as well as view the graphs, click here.

White Paper: Using Web-based Support Tools to Improve Customer Service
This informative white paper examines the latest trends and technologies in using Web-based support tools to improve customer service. Get your copy today!

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Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@supportindustry.com

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