White
Paper: How to Survive Call Volume Spikes
Call volume spikes do not have to throw your support operation into chaos. They can be forecasted, prepared for, attacked and even prevented; they are not entities unto themselves. Moreover, your help desk's response to them is a clear indication of inherent strengths and weaknesses on many other levels. Don't let call volume manage your support organization! Get out in front of it, understand it, measure it, analyze it and pull together an action plan that puts you back in control.
 |
|
| |
|
Citing Poor Customer Service, Verizon Employees Picket
Workers and customers of Verizon Communications Inc. picketed many of the company's locations across the region this morning, claiming Verizon's customer service quality suddenly is dropping off.
Pickets said the company has started putting excessive pressure on call center workers to sell products such as broadband Internet service or cable TV rather than fixing customer bills. And they say Verizon now puts too much focus on its FiOS phone-Internet-cable TV rollout and neglects its decades-old copper telephone line service. In some cases during recent weeks, customers who lost their traditional home phone service waited a week before Verizon technicians could come fix the problems. Wait times were longer in some cases for issues such as static on the line. Verizon officials, meanwhile, say they recognize some aspects of their repair performance slipped recently.
SupportSoft Announces the General Availability of ServiceGateway
4.0
SupportSoft,
Inc., a provider of software and services that make technology work, demonstrated
its continued leadership in the remote device provisioning and management
market with the announcement of ServiceGateway 4.0 ("SG 4.0").
SupportSoft's ServiceGateway configures, manages and supports multiple
broadband home devices for a full range of service fulfillment and assurance
operations. ServiceGateway uses a centralized Auto Configuration Server
to identify, configure and query virtually all types of current or legacy
Customer Premise Equipment, including those with standards-based or proprietary
interfaces. When a customer calls for new or additional service, ServiceGateway
automatically authenticates the customer, sets up the device and enables
service to begin, all carried out via a secure walled garden environment.
Pitney Bowes Employs Antenna Software's Mobile Field Service Solution
Pitney Bowes
has chosen Antenna's hosted deployment option to offload the complexities
of implementing and managing its wireless deployment via Antenna's AMP
Gateway. AMP Gateway enables connectivity to U.S. and international wireless
carriers and ensures the delivery of transactions between field personnel
and the host applications. In the U.S. alone, Pitney Bowes field service
technicians process 150,000 messages per day through AMP Gateway. Pitney
Bowes developers also use Antenna's AMP Studio, Antenna's model-driven
mobile application development environment, to develop, maintain and enhance
its AMPower SERVICE application.
Novell Selects Bomgar for Online Customer
Support Initiative
Bomgar Corporation
announced that its remote desktop access appliance will provide a key
component for supporting Novell's Volume License Agreement (VLA) maintenance
program. The new VLA maintenance program provides Novell's customers with
unlimited access to technical assistance and product support via Novell
Technical Services Online. Using Bomgar's software, the support engineers
within the Novell Technical Services team provide the company's extensive
customer base with instant troubleshooting and assistance regardless of
location, time zone, Internet connection speed or operating platform.
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.
IT
Leaders Must Prepare for the Industrialization of IT
Many organizations are failing to exploit falling prices in products and
services that should accompany the commoditization of IT, according to
Gartner, Inc. In 2007, 25 percent of IT spending was on unnecessary and
redundant customization and although this will decline, it will remain
at least at 10 percent overspending through 2010.
The need to move ever faster and at a lower cost is driving a shift from 'integration' activities toward greater interoperability and interchangeability with the direct result that many IT product and services markets are becoming commoditized. Gartner likened this 'industrialization of IT' to the two earlier industrial revolutions (of mechanization and electrification) calling it the third industrial revolution: that of digital business in the cloud.
For most organizations, the shift from buying and building IT to accessing IT as a service is not new, but the trend is set to accelerate as traditional delivery models are augmented by a range of new, alternative delivery models that rely on a combination of technology and business advances to delineate and define the extent of the service. Increasingly, these are being used both internally and externally to deliver scalable IT software and hardware functions. These alternative delivery models often make irrelevant the governing principles that worked with the traditional models.
At the same time, the giants of the software and services industries are building the facilities to deliver these services. They are building the capacity for mass production: platforms for industrialization. These new mega data centers will form part of the new "mass production" capabilities companies need for IT.
To deliver these applications in a readily configurable and customizable manner, with the promised advantage of scale, will require Web platforms. In a Web platform ecosystem, a service provider uses the facilities of a Web platform provider to build, host or deliver the service. At a minimum, the service provider will use hosting services of the Web platform and may use additional platform services (compute, storage, security, application management, ecosystem management, information, component, application and business process) to build and deliver its services.
North American and European Executives Say Business Strategy Depends Largely
on Innovation
Business
strategy is driven largely by innovation, but corporate responsibility
for the innovation process is highly fragmented, according to findings
of a survey published by Accenture.
The survey of 601 senior executives in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada found that innovation is a top corporate priority, but it also indicates that more senior-level accountability, greater CEO involvement and improved speed-to-market execution can help companies deliver on their promise of innovation and boost their competitiveness.
While nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of respondents said that their organization's business strategy is either totally or largely dependent on innovation, only 21 percent of respondents said their companies have a chief innovation executive, and even fewer -- 11 percent -- said there is a C-suite executive in charge of the process. Nearly half (48 percent) of respondents said that multiple executives are responsible for innovation in their companies.
The survey also found that companies that are successful with innovation are likely to have a chief innovation executive. Specifically, 40 percent of respondents who said their company's level of innovation is much stronger than that of their competitors also said that the person primarily in charge of innovation is a chief innovation executive.
The findings indicate that the challenge of innovation for organizations is not commitment and intent but rather execution against the innovation vision. While 59 percent of executives said that the level of support their CEO gives to innovation is greater than the level of support of CEOs at their closest industry competitors, a majority (57 percent) of respondents also said that their organization's speed of innovation was slower than that of industry peers, and about the same number (55 percent) said that their frequency of innovation was less than that of their industry peers.
Respondents are concerned not only about their ability to generate new ideas, but also with their ability to consistently transform innovation into action. Only 15 percent of respondents said they are very satisfied with their company's ability to convert ideas into service offerings, and only 13 percent said they can do it repeatedly. High on the list of innovation challenges cited by respondents are transforming ideas into marketable goods and services, cited by 29 percent of respondents, and creating a proper execution strategy, cited by 26 percent of respondents.
Respondents were asked how they would rate innovation in various regions, regardless of whether their organization has operations there or not. While respondents regard North America as the most innovative region -- selected as "highly innovative" by 50 percent of respondents - they also consider Asia to be more innovative than Europe. Specifically, more than one-third (38 percent) of all respondents said that Asia is highly innovative, compared with just 22 percent who said that Western Europe is highly innovative. Interestingly, respondents in the United Kingdom and Germany share this view: Only 21 percent of UK respondents said that Western Europe was highly innovative, compared with 39 percent of UK respondents who said the same about the Asia Pacific region. Similarly, only 23 percent of German respondents said Western Europe was highly innovative, while 34 percent of them said Asia Pacific was highly innovative.
Green IT hits the CIO radar
A new report by independent market analyst Datamonitor, "2008 Trends
to Watch: Green IT", predicts a surge in CIO interest and vendor
initiatives in the Green IT space. It reveals that tighter regulatory
measures and advances in technology are feeding renewed interest in Green
IT. In an independent survey conducted by Datamonitor, over 75% of respondent
firms considered eco-friendly computing as an important element in their
IT strategy while a further 15% rated it as their top IT priority.
IT organizations today face the dual challenge of shrinking budgets and
sprawling infrastructure footprints. In addition, regulations around data
privacy and electronic waste disposal are getting tighter by the year.
It is against this backdrop that a majority of enterprises are beginning
to realize the full potential of eco-friendly computing practices –
significant cost savings, increased flexibility in managing IT resources,
and compliance with environmental regulations.
Virtualization technologies have come to be regarded as being synonymous
with green – offering both significant cost savings and reductions
in enterprise carbon footprints. Server and storage virtualization technologies
have matured over the last two to three years, to the extent that one
in three companies with a Green IT strategy in place already makes use
of these technologies.
Enterprises are embracing a lifecycle approach to retirement and disposal of IT hardware assets, leading to significant benefits in terms of cost savings and mitigated legal risks. Hardware refreshes are planned based on energy efficiency and components are disposed of in a safe manner - over two thirds of enterprises have a formal program in place to recycle their IT assets.
IT vendors are forging the path ahead for Green IT adoption, with all major players announcing corporate initiatives in eco-friendly computing. As a result, innovations across the design, manufacturing and service realms are beginning to impact the user world in a big way. Light Emitting Diode (LED) and Solid State Disk (SSD) technologies are already hitting the mainstream, and so is the Software-as-a-Service mode of application delivery, which exploits shared infrastructure.
Evaluating Support Center Staffing Tradeoff
By Penny Reynolds, Founding Partner, The Call Center School
Running a successful support desk operation means managing by the numbers. And the most important number of all is the quantity of staff that matches the workforce as closely as possible to the call workload. In the previous article on Calculating Support Center Staff, we outlined the basic steps of calculating staff requirements -- calculating workload, defining speed of answer goals, and applying a staffing model to determine the "just right" number of staff to meet service goals. This article takes a closer look at staffing requirements and the many factors that influence the staffing levels in your support desk.
Full Article...
Improving the Effectiveness of Call Monitoring - It's More Intuitive Than
You Think!
If your call center is like most, your organization spends tremendous
amounts of time, effort and money on call recording and monitoring for
quality assurance. However, if you wonder how best to use that information
to change performance at the point of contact and create a better customer
experience, you're not alone. So why do call centers continue to invest
in monitoring? The answer is simple. It's not the monitoring itself, but
the information that can be gleaned from it. This information can be communicated
to the frontline, impact performance and ultimately improve the customer
experience.
Full
Article...
The Challenge of Remote Agent Training
Training agents who work from home adds extra challenges. These challenges
must be overcome, given the increasing visibility in the industry of home-based
agents. Developing training programs for agents working -- and training
-- outside of a traditional call center setting is a necessity. This article
presents tips that are designed to help anyone confronted with the challenges
of training a remote workforce.
Full
Article...
Creativity -- the Key to Success for Small Call Centers
Managing a small call center brings big challenges -- and big opportunities.
While it's true that all call centers -- regardless of size, industry,
function or location -- share several core commonalities, small call centers
(50 or fewer FTEs) often must contend with unique issues and obstacles
that rarely, if ever, impact larger centers.
Full
Article...
Windows Collapsing Under Its Own Weight
Microsoft's Windows juggernaut is collapsing as it tries to support 20
years of applications and becomes more complicated by the minute. Meanwhile,
Windows has outgrown hardware and customers are pondering skipping Vista
to wait for Windows 7. If Windows is going to remain relevant it will
need radical changes. That sobering outlook comes courtesy of Gartner
analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald.
Full Article...
The Big Chill
To paraphrase an oft-used financial aphorism, when business sneezes, IT
organizations catch a cold. Amid grave worries about the U.S. economy's
health, tech leaders are preparing to cut projects and spending as needed,
and in most cases already are, our survey of 374 business technology pros
shows. Hiring's by far the first thing that will be put on hold, with
infrastructure upgrades and new application projects next in line. Whether
budget cuts are in your future or not, technology managers should prepare
for a cold economic climate.
Full
Article...
Managing
Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful
Community Discussion Boards by Patrick O'Keefe
Every day, millions of users log on to their favorite online forums and interact with others to get advice and discuss everything from the latest news and trends to their hobbies to their professions to whatever else strikes their fancy. Administrators have to lead these communities, deal with difficult users, and choose moderators. Legal constraints, spammers, and technical issues can turn the excitement of running an online community into chaos. With the right guidance, however, running forums can be a pleasure. Patrick O'Keefe has spent years developing and managing online communities. Now, he shows readers how to make the right decisions about every aspect of their forums.
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.
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!
Manage Your e.Newsletter Subscription!
Log-on to the member's only page and you can to change newsletter formats, remove yourself from the list, or update your member profile.
Editorial
suggestions, feedback & comments:
Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@supportindustry.com
Advertising Information:
adinfo@supportindustry.com
Thank you for reading SupportIndustry.com's
weekly newsletter!
Copyright © 2008, supportindustry.com
