Winning the Battle of Expectations vs. Reality in today's service desk

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.

View the webinar today!

Call Center Employees Target Wachovia With Potential Class Action
A federal lawsuit filed recently in Alabama alleges that the nation's fourth-largest bank failed to pay call center employees for the time required each shift to log on to their computers and related software before taking calls. If a class action suit proceeds and the plantiffs prevail, the Charlotte, N.C.-based company could be required to pay millions of dollars to compensate call center employees for back pay and overtime. Specifically, the suit alleges that Wachovia violated terms of the Fair Labor Standards Act by not paying for the time required at the beginning of an employee's shift to prepare to receive customer service calls.

GWI Software Announces c.Support Version 7.0
GWI Software has announced the release of c.Support Version 7.0, with two editions to better address the needs of support centers of differing sizes and needs. The two web-based editions leverage a single code stream but allow different feature set combinations. The c.Support 7.0 Service Desk Edition's features include incident, problem, change, SLA, asset, knowledge, and workflow management, as well as customer self-service, ad-hoc reporting, and much more. The c.Support 7.0 Incident Management Edition's features include powerful incident, knowledge, asset, and SLA management, as well as customer self-service, custom reporting, advanced routing, and much more.

Moniker Online Services Selects Parature Customer Service Software
Parature, a provider of on-demand customer service software, announced that Moniker Online Services, LLC has selected Parature Customer Service software to manage the support needs of their 65,000 customers. Moniker is a provider of domain name registration, management, and monetization services for individuals and businesses that wish to have a unique address and branded identity on the Internet. Prior to implementing Parature Customer Service, Moniker was managing all of their support requests via Microsoft Outlook. Parature enabled Moniker to fundamentally change the way they support their customers through its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery and integrated intuitive design.

Eniro turns over a new page with eGain
eGain, a provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software, announced that Eniro, the Nordics' leading directories and search company, has selected its email management products to improve the quality and efficiency of its customer service. eGain Mail is set to alleviate the pressures and demands of email communication between its multiple contact centers and its customers. It is replacing existing Microsoft Outlook programs that were unable to cope with the company's increasingly high volumes of customer demand.

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!

Standard Customer Satisfaction Surveys Don't Make the Grade in Improving Service Levels
Customer surveys are everywhere -- at the store, on the phone, the Web -- and still customer service horror stories flourish. With all the solicitation for customers' opinions, companies should wonder why there isn't an increase in customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

According to a new white paper by Impact Achievement Group, "Asking the Right Questions: How to Get ROI on Customer Surveys," the data gathering is not contributing to a better understanding of customers. In part, there are fundamental flaws in common attempts to measure customer satisfaction.

Surveying the wrong customers:
Companies should consider how many customers have the time or are bored enough to provide time-consuming answers for the survey company. Forget random sampling--companies need to survey their best customers, not those with an axe to grind. Notably, it is more common to survey the wrong customer in the business-to-business market (decision makers versus users).

No actionable feedback:
Frontline employees are adverse to long surveys -- they're not paid enough nor have the time. For employees to improve customers' experience they need to survey frequent customers -- who spend enough money -- to elicit appropriate solutions from management.

A disguised marketing initiative:
Many customer satisfaction surveys are nothing more than an attempt to gain data to help better market and advertise products and services. Years of this practice discourages customers from participating even in legitimate surveys, further limiting survey reliability.

Scores don't equal improved economics:
Research has consistently shown an unpredictable link between satisfaction scores and profitability/growth. For example, detailed analysis of surveyed customers has shown that between 60 and 80 percent of customers who've turned to another supplier have rated themselves as "satisfied" or "very satisfied."

One-size-fits-all solutions can't meet a company’s unique needs:
Cookie-cutter surveys produces crummy data, yielding an "average" insight to customers' attitudes. Instead, companies need custom, local research that addresses the unique customer relationship and internal business practices. Simple, anecdotal feedback is of more use to management -- not to mention those on the front line.

Surveys focus on transactions -- not relationships:
Customers focus on the overall experience -- not individual transactions. Evaluating the quality of the relationship includes every detail of the customer's experience combined with the emotional and branding ties the customer has. Specific, transaction-oriented questions don't address customers' overall company experience.

Dissatisfaction as a result of the survey itself:
Intrusive, lengthy and ambiguous surveys are frustrating. When company decision makers forget this and use outside survey companies, they avoid direct customer dissatisfaction with the survey process. Worse, they entrust responsibility for customer information to people with very little -- if any -- interest in representing the company's brand positively. Lousy survey data, ignored by management, further add to customer dissatisfaction.

Manipulation destroys credibility:
Tying performance marks or dollars to the scores can encourage manipulation among employees. When punished or rewarded for goals they can’t control or influence, employees instead focus on “gaming” the reward or eliminating the punishment.

More...

Study Reveals Video and Web 2.0 are Helping Companies Increase Collaboration in Today's More Interactive and Global Workforce
According to a new study by Cisco, consumer adoption of video and Web 2.0 has grown, companies are increasingly interested in using video to help grow their businesses, reach new customers, increase collaboration between their employees and look for more environmentally conscious means of communicating. More than half of the 850 corporate information technology (IT) decision makers surveyed say they are using video and Web 2.0 tools today. Another 25 percent said they are exploring such tools. However, nearly all those surveyed said more needs to be done to ready the network before they can implement video and Web 2.0 technologies to support organization-wide communication and collaboration.

Video and Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, Wikis, telepresence and web conferencing are helping companies to keep pace with rapid market changes. Nearly 30 percent of companies surveyed reported that the primary business reason for investing in video and Web 2.0 tools is to address the demand for innovative products and services from their customers. The desire to be more environmentally conscious (26 percent) was also reported as a consideration in rolling out video applications.

In this era of the dynamic, collaborative knowledge worker, which is seeing a growing importance in global teaming, and a flatter, more interactive organization, enterprises need to innovate with their communication tools to be more agile in response to market changes. Nearly half the respondents anticipate using video more widely in the next five years, with more efficient collaboration with remote employees (66 percent) and reduced travel costs (56 percent) as the business drivers.

Additional key findings from the study include the following:

• Aside from cost, the biggest barrier to deploying video was challenges associated with maintaining a secure network (27 percent).
• Respondents agreed that IT complexity will increase as companies resolve how to deploy video and Web 2.0 technologies on top of existing collaboration applications.
• Only a small percentage of companies report that their network is ready to support video; the leading barriers are insufficient bandwidth and a lack of network infrastructure.
• Decision-makers in the United States are more likely to state that their network is increasing in complexity, becoming more costly to manage while enabling greater mobility.

More...

Business Budgets Still Cover Upgrades
A new Forrester Research report suggests that despite the uncertain U.S. economy, many enterprises are continuing to plan major software projects and purchases. Seventy-nine percent of 215 North American "business process and applications professionals" surveyed said that they intend to upgrade some or most of their core enterprise applications within three years.

Forty-nine percent of respondents plan to upgrade their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software in either 2008 or 2009, according to the report. Within the same time frame, 47 percent are set to refresh their customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and 37 percent are eyeing supply chain management (SCM) upgrades. These particular results are based on answers from 191 respondents, according to Forrester.

Seventy-six percent of respondents said hardware and data center upgrades or migrations are a "priority" or a "critical priority" during the next 12 months. Sixty-five percent said the same for developing a master data management (MDM) strategy.

This activity will largely revolve around a centralized point of influence, according to the study.

Eighty-four percent of enterprises surveyed said their top IT officer was either "very influential" or has "complete authority" over technology purchasing.

"[F]irms appear to be satisfied with centralized decision-making," the study states. "However, the real organizational battle will be to reconcile major software decisions being made corporatewide as the combination of senior line-of-business execs with significant authority and budget and the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model gives license to make application decisions without IT's involvement."

Forrester touts its framework for developing a long-term packaged applications strategy. The study found that only 20 percent of respondents intended to consider a five-year applications plan during 2008.

More...

Spending on Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance Will Exceed $32B in 2008
AMR Research announced that companies will spend more than $32B on governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) in 2008 -- an increase of 7.4% over 2007. Spending on Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance is expected to grow only 2% to $6.2B.

For the first time since AMR Research began conducting this study in 2003, executives have shifted their GRC budget focus to operational and enterprise risk management -- making SOX and other regulatory compliance programs a necessary "to-do," but not a top-of-mind initiative. 31% of companies reported that better managing and mitigating risk in the business is the most influential issue driving their GRC investment in 2008.

For the last few years, GRC services numbers have been decreasing as companies streamlined compliance activities, but as risk rises in importance, companies report they want and need guidance on how to frame the risk discussion in a business context. Thus, GRC initiatives remain an intensely human effort. Two-thirds of budgets (approximately $21.5B) are earmarked for people-related expenses (services plus head count) in 2008.

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Customer Complaints: Techniques for Special Occasions
Everyone would like something for nothing, given the chance, but most of us stop short of deliberate scheming. Customers who are clearly out to complain to get freebies -- meals, vouchers, tickets -- need firm handling. Otherwise, they go away and tell their friends to try the same trick. They could put you out of business.
Full Article...

E-Mail In Peril
E-mail as we know it is under duress. Ever-increasing loads of spam--estimated at up to 98% of all e-mail--is drowning out the messages business users need to see. Highly targeted phishing attacks are making news and leaving customers and employees jumpy. And for IT, concerns about sensitive data traveling the Internet unencrypted mean valuable e-mail business uses aren't even being considered. Can anyone throw us a lifeline?
Full Article...

Seven Rules for Redefining Customer Experience
For years, companies have made significant investments in customer-oriented initiatives. And the response from customers? Recent market research shows that only 8 percent of customers describe their experience as "superior," and that 59 percent will leave after just a single bad experience.Companies know they need to take action. Many are re-thinking their approach to customers by embracing the proven success of relationship management, which provides a range of sophisticated processes and tools to effectively shape the customer experience. In taking advantage of these evolving approaches, newcomers should consider seven fundamental rules.
Full Article...

Why IT Hates the iPhone
Many IT groups have banned the iPhone from their workplaces, complaining that there is no way to force employees to protect their iPhones with passwords and that they can't erase sensitive corporate data from remote locations if the device is stolen or lost. Additionally, they say the iPhone doesn't support the software many businesses use and that it only works on one cellular carrier's network. But keeping the iPhone out of the office may be a losing battle. As a result, some technology experts say the iPhone could usher in a change in the way businesses adopt new technologies.
Full Article...

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

In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.

Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable -- making us predictably irrational.

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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