Don't Miss 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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EU says "geeky" tech jobs need new image
The information technology industry needs to show that it isn't just for "geeky, unsociable" people if it is to attract more women to fill a skills shortage, according to the EU's top technology official. EU Commissioner Viviane Reding said stereotypes that IT careers are "boring and too technical" for women need to be overcome because few young women are taking engineering and technology degrees despite huge demand. The field will need 300,000 qualified workers by 2010 in Europe alone, according to EU estimates.

EMC Acquires Infra, and IT Service Management (ITSM) Software Provider
EMC Corporation, a provider of information infrastructure solutions, announced that it has acquired privately-held Infra Corporation Pty Limited -- a provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) software. This acquisition further solidifies EMC's "Closed Loop Service Orchestration" strategy, designed to automate data center operations and return visibility and control to IT management. Infra provides a Web-based, ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)-verified solution that automates IT Service Management processes in enterprise organizations. Infra's service desk, with its ability to manage the full lifecycle of IT services, complements EMC's automated discovery, rich analytics, native dependency mapping and model-based approach -- better enabling customers to manage service delivery end-to-end.

Apple Positions IPhone as Rival To the BlackBerry
Apple Inc. unveiled plans to make the iPhone more appealing to corporate users, part of an ambitious effort to reshape the cellular-phone business that has picked up a deep-pocketed new backer.The plan, outlined by CEO Steve Jobs and other executives at an event at Apple's headquarters in Silicon Valley, is designed to make the iPhone a serious rival to the BlackBerry and greatly broaden the array of programs available for the device. To compete more seriously for the business audience and its huge spending power, Apple said it licensed a technology from Microsoft, called ActiveSync, that will deliver email more immediately to iPhone users whose companies run Microsoft's Exchange corporate email software Apple also said the iPhone will have features that make it more secure to use over wireless networks and give corporate information-technology departments better control over the devices.
Source: WSJ

Parature and KnowledgeBroker Announce Integration Partnership
Parature, a provider of on-demand customer service software, and KnowledgeBroker, Inc. (KBI), a prepackaged computer support content provider, announced that they have completed an integration partnership agreement. KBI's KnowledgeBases are now fully integrated with Parature Customer Service help desk software, providing customers the ability to immediately populate their knowledgebase with out-of-the-box answers to computer support questions. KBI's KnowledgeBases for Parature's help desk software streamlines the support process by providing customers immediate answers to thousands of computer support questions. Inbound call and email volume is also reduced as end users find answers themselves via self-service options. KBI's KnowledgeBases provide immediate first-tier support for more than 190+ desktop applications.

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!

79% Companies Seek Focus on Issues With Greatest Customer Loyalty Impact
A new national study conducted by the Gantry Group LLC, Best Practices for Customer Satisfaction, reveals that 60% of companies value customer satisfaction programs that help them to focus efforts on those issues with the greatest impact on customer loyalty. The customer satisfaction data of most value to companies is the understanding of the degree to which customer’s expectations are met (38%) and tracking the customer's perception of value (37%).

According to the study, the cost of customer satisfaction tracking programs is rationalized more by high customer satisfaction scores (25%) than increased revenue (18%), reduction in customer churn (12%) or increased repeat sales (9%).

Study respondents included C-level executives (26%), CMO/head of marketing (26%), and heads of professional/customer support services. Two-thirds of study respondents were with companies with over $100M in annual revenues, and 31% from companies with $11M - $99M.

The study revealed the following additional findings:

• Companies with no formal, periodic customer satisfaction surveys in place are limited by "bandwidth" -- too many competing priorities (67%).

• In addition to knowing where they should focus to gain maximum impact on customer satisfaction (60%), companies value the ability to forecast customer loyalty and retention (42%) and isolating individual customer data (41%).

• Tying customer satisfaction to employee performance-based compensation is a key challenge to 32% of respondents.

• Service delivery and solution performance are the most important customer touch points to be monitored (93% and 80%, respectively) followed by customer service (80%), sales/account management (71%), and technical support (66%).

• 79% of respondents are not satisfied with merely tracking performance metrics or overall company “satisfaction” and desire the ability to diagnose issues down to the business process level to accurately identify problems.

More...

Outsourcing, Open Source, Data Storage, and IT-Enabled Innovation on the Rise; Backsourcing on the Decline
Cutter Benchmark Review has conducted its IT Trends 2008 survey. Which technologies and IT trends are enduring? Which ones are emerging? According to CBR Editor and Cutter Senior Consultant Gabriele Piccoli, the results "offer both opportunities to cheer and some reasons to worry. Here's a look at some of the results:

Virtualization: 61% of respondents indicate their companies are currently using virtualization tools, a 9% increase over last year's results. The greatest use of virtualization tools is for application testing and development (42%), followed by system patches and update testing (25%), and production (25%).

Security: The number of companies concerned with intrusion detection has jumped 24% from 2006 to 2008. All of that gain has gone toward networked-based systems, which are more than twice as likely to be employed as host-based or target-specific technologies.

Open Source: As many as 65% of respondents say their organization has deployed open source systems -- a 16% increase over the last two years.

Outsourcing: Cutter's 2008 survey shows that 55% of respondents have or are planning to outsource work -- a 7% increase since 2007. The types of work being outsourced include development work (78%), maintenance work (64%), and help desk support (49%). In 2007, only 38% of respondents outsourced the help desk. That number has jumped to 49% in 2008.

Backsourcing: The number of respondents who are considering backsourcing is down 10% from 2007. A total of 39% of respondents indicate that their organization is considering backsourcing in 2008.

IT Staffing Plans: Despite the recent economic turmoil, 55% of respondents expect to be hiring IT staff in 2008. While another 36% of respondents expect no changes in their IT staffing plans, the remaining 9% expect to be downsizing.

Service-Oriented Architecture: 57% of respondents say their organization has implemented an SOA initiative or program, a 6% increase over 2007. The primary drivers behind today's SOA initiatives are: to increase IT's responsiveness to business demand (73%), to reduce cost of IT operations (58%), to exploit strategic competitive opportunities (51%), and to retire legacy technology (33%). The highest-level champion of SOA initiatives is the CIO at 35%; followed by the EVP, SVP, and VP at 19%; and then the CEO at 17%. There are significant impediments to the adoption/expansion of SOA in the organization, according to 61% of respondents. The reasons cited include a lack of visible ROI (31%), a lack of alignment with business strategies (25%), a lack of business buy-in (23%), and insufficient sponsorship (23%).

Enterprise Architecture: 61% of surveyed individuals indicate their organization has an EA initiative underway, an increase of 6% since 2007. The most common driver for EA requirements is the imperative to reduce cost (51%), followed by alignment to a defined enterprise business architecture (47%), and a formal development of enterprise business requirements (37%). Central IT groups have taken a 22% jump to be the most common owner of requirements for EA (39%), followed by IT director or executive (16%). Only 12% of enterprise-level business groups and 7% of business units are responsible for EA requirements.

Emerging Trends:

Enterprise 2.0: 8% of respondents indicate their organization has already launched an Enterprise 2.0 initiative, while 7% are in the implementation planning stage, 18% are doing early experimentation, and 34% are still gathering information. A full 33% of respondents say their organization is not actively pursuing Enterprise 2.0 initiatives at all.

Web 2.0: Only 5% of respondents say that their organization has already begun using Web 2.0 to interact with customers. Another 12% are in the implementation planning stage, 25% are doing early experimentation, and 31% are still gathering information. 28% of respondents specify that their organization is not currently pursuing using Web 2.0 to interact with customers.

Mashups: Mashups initiatives have already been launched by just 2% of respondent organizations, while 3% are in the implementation planning stage, 21% are doing early experimentation, 19% are gathering information, and 56% have not actively pursued mashups at all.

IT's Role in Business Innovation: The IT organization's role in business innovation is foremost reactive to business innovation initiatives, according to 38% of respondents. Another 35% of respondents view IT's role as a key enabler for business innovation. Just 15% of respondents indicate that business innovation is not a role for their IT department -- a 6% decline from 2007.

More...

Green Is The New Gold
Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company, announced upcoming findings from "The 2008 Aberdeen Report: State of the Market." Over 4500 survey participants identified how their organizations are seeing the emergence of "Green" initiatives like never before fueled by social, ecological and economic implications. The increasing complexity of the global business environment, rising energy and transport costs, and mounting compliance challenges are driving a major focus on sustainability and green initiatives.

Forty-seven percent of the 4,645 companies participating in the 2008 Aberdeen Report revealed that they already have green initiatives in place. Of these firms, 74 percent cite Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as the main driver for their green initiative and 52 percent of the surveyed audience identified competitive advantage as the second top pressure for having a green initiative (see chart). Overall, green initiatives ranked in the top eight corporate strategic goals for organizations in 2008.

In 2008 "Green" is more than just politically correct; it is a path to sustainability and to a more competitive position in the global market. Companies have also found innovative ways in which to successfully implement Green initiatives into their organizations such as green product development, green technology infrastructure, and green server architecture, to name a few. Green Marketing is also an emerging notion as companies seek targeted, lower volume direct mail solicitations stemming from environmental awareness. Green Supply Chains are also cropping up in companies with global operating requirements, increasing environmental challenges, and supply chain cost pressures which are rapidly driving the need for improved sustainability and social responsibility programs and solutions.

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Enterprises Should Not Block Access to Web 2.0 Technologies, but They Can Better Secure These Applications
Businesses need to resist the temptation to exclude their employees' access to Web 2.0 technologies and services if they are to benefit from the considerable creativity that Web 2.0 can unleash, according to Gartner, Inc.

Business demands will increasingly require security organizations to secure, rather than block enterprise access to the Web 2.0 global ecosystem. Many IT organizations are responding to the demand for Web 2.0 technologies. According to a Gartner Executive Programs survey of 1,500 CIOs worldwide, half of the respondents said they plan to invest in Web 2.0 technologies for the first time in 2008.

"Rather than just stopping the use of Web 2.0 technologies, IT groups should be providing secure means of developing and deploying such applications," said Joseph Feiman, vice president and Gartner fellow. "The business application movement toward Web 2.0 and other related-trends, such as increased use of open-source software and wider deployment of service-oriented architectures, are combining to change how applications are developed with significant implications for security."

According to Gartner, with mashups, Ajax and other Web 2.0 technologies already in widespread use, saying "no" to the Web 2.0 ecosystem will generally not be an option. Instead, enterprises should take tactical and strategic steps to increase the odds that business use of Web 2.0 will increase the bottom line rather than have a negative business impact through security incidents.

"Organizations need to extend their security processes to enable safe use of Web 2.0 technologies" said John Pescatore, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Strategies to contain and protect the use of new technologies will always be more effective in the long run than security approaches that rely solely on blocking."

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The Top Five Reasons Why Third-Party Remote Call Monitoring Is a Must
To completely understand why customers have become dissatisfied, the call center has to be able to monitor and measure the interaction between the center and the customer. The third party providing the monitoring service is qualified to provide unbiased results of the call monitoring and help the call center learn how to improve.
Full Article...

Knowledge Management on the Road: Mobile Applications
No matter how light a laptop is, carrying it around, opening it and booting up is never entirely convenient for a mobile knowledge worker. The popularity of much more portable devices such as the BlackBerry from Research in Motion and more recently, smartphones, reflects their value in keeping workers connected to their e-mail. But what about the other business applications on which employees rely to be productive? Although such solutions have not been pervasive on mobile devices so far, improvements in hardware, software and connectivity are pointing toward a much more dynamic market in the coming years.
Full Article...

ITIL: 10 deployment mistakes (and fixes)
The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is implemented in companies worldwide to change and improve processes within an organization. With ITIL, everything is changing -- organizational change as much as process change. But change doesn't always come easy. Organizations often make mistakes within the first year of an ITIL implementation, and that's normal. In his presentation at Pink Elephant Inc.'s 12th Annual International IT Service Management Conference & Exhibition, Graham Price, IT management consultant at Pink Elephant, addressed the 10 biggest mistakes IT organizations make during the first year of an ITIL implementation.
Full Article...

In Search Of...
There are several important differences between Web search and enterprise search, not least of which is the fact that enterprise search is inherently far more difficult. Web search is based on algorithms that analyze naturally occurring metadata, such as the title of a site and how many other pages link to a given page. With no organic metadata to work with, enterprise search is a different and more complex animal, particularly since users want information that's of the best quality, not just the most popular. New technologies make searching for internal documents as easy as surfing the Web. What's that got to do with CRM?
Full Article...

Customer Complaints: The Income Multiplier Effect
Implementing an effective customer care program is vital to the well being of your business. Not only does it create satisfied customers, but it affects your bottom line in more ways than you might think. As the "Income Multiplier" effect shows, the potential for lost income grows with each person with whom your customer shares a bad experience.
Full Article...

Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Leadership Potential One Skill at a Time
by Kevin Eikenberry

Remarkable Leadership is a practical handbook written for anyone who wants to hone the skills they need to become an outstanding leader. In this groundbreaking book, Kevin Eikenberry outlines a framework and a mechanism for both learning new things and applying current knowledge in a thoughtful and practical way. Eikenberry provides a guide through the most important leadership competencies, offers a proven method for learning leadership skills, and shows approaches for applying these skills in today's multitasking and overloaded world of work. The book explores real-world concerns such as focus, limited time, incremental improvement, and how we learn.

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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