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Putting the Business First -- A Service Approach to Delivering Value

Thursday, June 12, 2008 --11:00am PT/2:00pm ET

High performance IT organizations KNOW the impact their service delivery has on the bottom-line business. They are disciplined to focus on what matters most to their customers -- ensuring availability of critical business systems, prioritizing response resources when services are disrupted, and expediting resolution and recovery.

Join SupportIndustry.com and FrontRange as they frame the foundation for becoming a high performance IT service delivery organization. It starts with a business aligned strategy and transitions to cultural organizational change, new roles and responsibilities and tools that have the ITIL processes built in, avoiding costly customizations.

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CBS to buy CNET Networks
CBS has agreed to acquire CNET Networks in a deal valued at $1.8 billion, the companies said last week.The purchase price comes to $11.50 per share, representing a 44 percent premium over last Wednesday's closing price of $7.95. The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique users per month, and about 200 million users worldwide, the companies said.

LivePerson Raises the Bar in Online Engagement
LivePerson, Inc., a provider of online engagement solutions that facilitate real-time assistance and expert advice, announced its Spring ’08 Update Release of Timpani. The updated version of the company’s hosted enterprise platform provides innovative new features, including Account-to-Account Transfer and Data Publication Service (DPS). Timpani is a fully integrated multi-channel communication solution that facilitates real-time sales, customer service and marketing. Timpani delivers tools that support and manage all online customer interactions: chat, voice, email and self-service/knowledgebase. By supplying a single agent desktop and unified customer history, Timpani enables companies to deliver a personalized and seamless service experience.

CA, Eurekify Team to Provide Faster Time-to-Value in Identity Management Deployments
CA, Inc. announced a deal with Eurekify that will give customers a more efficient approach for implementing an identity management solution to cost-effectively manage and control the identity lifecycle and demonstrate compliance. The combination of CA Identity Manager with Eurekify Enterprise Role Manager provides customers with a system for “smart provisioning,” which means customers have the ability to clean up the identity data first and then model the roles with the best available information. This facilitates effective automation of the provisioning process and enhances identity lifecycle management. Under the agreement, CA will resell Eurekify Enterprise Role Manager, helping customers quickly discover, model, and manage corporate roles using Eurekify’s advanced pattern recognition technology.

Secrets of Great Software Helpdesks

How do highly effective helpdesks offer the sort of breakthrough customer support that drives business growth and strong customer loyalty? Discover how in this case study.

The Customer Service team at ShowingTime remotely supports installation and post-installation issues for 300,000 agents of its real estate software solution. The company has experienced rapid growth, and the support team has been able to deliver more responsive service and higher levels of customer satisfaction.

See how they did it – get the case study today.

The survey reveals that, while support organizations are evolving processes and adopting technologies to improve service delivery, they continue to face significant challenges.

Some of the highlights from this year’s survey include:

Everyone Wants a Piece: Every year that the service and support metrics survey has been conducted, there has been an overarching theme. For support teams, whether they are serving customers or their own company’s employees, the pressure is constant. They continue to report that the demand for their services increased over what they experienced the previous year. In this survey, three quarters of executives (74.1%) said they have seen increased demand and use of their services.

Multi-Talented and Multi-Tasking: More than ever, everyone expects to be able to choose their means of interaction with support agents. Approximately 43 percent of respondents said that more than three quarters of their agents handle multiple channels of support including, phone, email, live chat, and co-browsing to meet the needs of their customers.

Getting it Together: In this year’s survey, more than half the respondents (56.8%) said they have managed to integrate at least some of their channels, whether it be at the level of multichannel queuing, through a single view into multichannel interactions, or via a common knowledgebase for interactions across channels.

Helping Others Help Themselves: Numerous incentives such as, cost reduction, customer demand, and the need for a more rounded services portfolio have driven organizations to fund self-service projects and strengthen existing offerings over the last few years. Nearly three quarters (72.6%) of responding executives said they offer access to a searchable knowledgebase or dynamic FAQ. Nearly 44 percent now offer clients the ability to submit cases electronically via the Web if they can’t find their answers in a searchable knowledgebase.

Your Place or Mine: Nearly 40% of the respondents have entrusted their support technology implementations to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models. The research shows that CRM and other sales and service-related technologies lead the types of applications driving the on-demand software market. Of the respondents who don’t currently use a hosted solution, a third say they likely will within the next year.
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Customer Satisfaction is Key When Determining Offshore Outsourcing Options
Outsourcing help desk services to an offshore location may yield as much as 30 to 40 percent cost savings, but customer satisfaction must be a key factor when making this decision, according to Gartner, Inc. Based on informal client interviews, Gartner analysts found that offshore help desk service voice support services have experienced problems, particularly those located in India. The problems are focused on poor quality that can lead to significant customer dissatisfaction.

Four factors have been identified as the main contributors to the customer dissatisfaction:

• Client knowledge -- When a help desk is internal, the client has its own employees supporting the help desk. These employees have access to internal communications which enable them to clearly understand their business and, therefore, support end users. When the help desk is outsourced, the service provider tries to capture the information into a knowledge database, but the information is not always kept up to date or easily understood.

• High turnover -- A recent Gartner survey for all IT services showed that the worldwide attrition rate was 14.7 percent and offshore it was 22.1 percent. Although this can be a problem anywhere in the world, it can be extremely prevalent in low-cost countries where many IT job opportunities exist and many IT help desk agents will switch jobs for a small salary increase.

• Cultural differences -- If a client has a problem, he or she will relate the problem over the phone, but because of cultural differences, the help desk agent may not interpret the problem and react in the most appropriate manner. For example, a client employee may have a problem on a PC and want to know how to fix it. Instead of explaining how to fix the problem, the offshore agent may take control of the employee’s PC and change the image without explaining how this was accomplished because the agent doesn’t want to insult the client. However, the client employee may be dissatisfied because he or she doesn’t learn what was wrong or how to fix the problem resulting in a need to call the help desk again in the future.

• Language dialects -- Although Indian-based providers’ agents speak English, they are generally trained in U.K. English and may use British words or a more formal context, format, tone and enunciation. Because many clients are from North America, this adds to oral communication problems. This can cause frustration for the client and the agent, and lead to dissatisfaction with the help desk experience. However, when a help desk problem is sent via e-mail or on a Web chat site, this language problem is not a factor, and customer satisfaction is positive.

Gartner offered key recommendations for enterprises to help ensure the success of an offshore help desk service:

• Assess and validate whether the offshore provider’s services can meet requirements.

• Review the service provider’s offshore practice for building and updating its knowledge database.

• Review the provider’s offshore service for cultural understanding, language proficiencies and employee turnover ratios.

• Talk to references using offshore help desk resources and ask what issues they may have encountered.

• Understand that the help desk may be the first line of IT support to your end users, so offshoring should not just be a cost decision.

• Evaluate low-cost onshore alternatives as well. The savings available from low-cost onshore and “nearshore” alternatives may negate the desire to go offshore.

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CEOs Battle to Keep Up With the Pace of Change
The IBM Global CEO Study reveals a dramatic increase in the number of global business leaders who see important change ahead, and also highlights how the ability to absorb and manage change is widening the gap between winners and losers in the global economy.

CEOs reported a surprising level of optimism about change as an opportunity to build new competitive advantage. Overall, 83 percent of surveyed CEOs expect substantial change in the future, an increase of 28 percent in just two years. However, CEOs report their ability to effectively manage change is increasing at a far slower pace.

Collectively, CEOs set their organization's ability to manage change 22 percentage points lower than their expectations for the level of change they will have to manage - - a ‘change gap’ that is widening.
CEOs point specifically to their own customer base as the source of the most important changes they will have to address, as two new and more demanding classes of customers emerged: the ‘information omnivore’, and the ‘socially-minded’ customer. Of all the trends identified in the study, surveyed CEOs plan their most substantial increases in investment in response to these customer sets.

The IBM Global CEO Study, based on face-to-face interviews with 1,130 CEOs from 40 countries across 32 industries, is designed to capture insights on how the challenges CEOs face today will impact the future of business. The study, titled “The Enterprise of the Future,” was conducted by IBM Global Business Services in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The Rise of the Information Omnivore
The “information omnivore” craves all types of information and often broadcasts its views and expectations worldwide via the Internet. These customers are swapping passive roles for much deeper involvement. “Consumers” are becoming “producers,” often creating entertainment and advertising content for their peers, while demanding flexibility and responsiveness from companies with whom they choose to do business. Although these customers are more demanding, the majority of CEOs do not see them as a threat, but as an opportunity for differentiation based on meeting the heightened expectations of this group, and capitalizing on new market opportunities that will emerge.

Overall CEOs are planning a 22 percent increase in investments in the next three years to serve these more sophisticated and demanding customers. The investment is even more pronounced among financial out-performers. CEOs of firms with higher net profit margin growth indicate that investments targeted at information omnivores will increase 36 percent over the next three years. The majority of these new investments will be dedicated to new operational capabilities that improve collaboration and product innovation, and that are more oriented to transparency and tailored to specific market segments.

The study shows the impact of the information omnivore is driving investment in every major geography. In Europe, CEOs indicated they plan a 23 percent investment targeted at these customers over the next three years, a 20 percent jump from the previous three years. In North America, CEOs plan a 19 percent investment – jumping 27 percent over the same time period. Asia Pacific CEOs plan a 16 percent investment – a 20 percent jump -- and Latin America CEOs indicated a 16 percent investment -- jumping 18 percent over the last three years.

The Rise of the Socially-Minded Customer
CEOs agreed that customer expectations around corporate social responsibility (‘CSR’) are increasing, and that CSR will play an important role in differentiating an enterprise in the future.

Customers are coalescing around organizations’ CSR profile – including, but not limited to “green” initiatives -- and are increasingly demanding socially-minded products, services, and even supply chains.

CEOs indicated that while customers have always cared about societal issues, those concerns are now more frequently turning into action as the more socially aware customer evaluates an enterprise’s CSR profile before making purchasing decisions.

To better understand and reach the new socially-minded customer, CEOs plan to increase their investments by 25 percent over the next three years, the largest percentage increase of any trend identified in the study.

The study shows that while increasing CEO concern about environmental issues has doubled over the past four years globally, this concern is not evenly distributed worldwide. Asia Pacific and European CEOs lead the world in focusing on environmental issues, followed by the Americas.

CEOs also revealed that CSR reputations are also an important tool to attract and retain employees. They are also recognizing that their organizations are being held mutually accountable, along with the public sector, for the socioeconomic well-being of the regions in which they operate.

Global Integration
The study revealed that fundamental shifts in expectations from these more demanding customers and the increased purchasing power in emerging markets are driving major changes in the business models of organizations worldwide. CEOs plan bold moves around business designs that facilitate faster and more extensive collaboration on a worldwide scale, and rapid reconfiguration when new opportunities appear.

Eighty-six percent of the CEOs surveyed plan substantial changes in the capabilities that distinguish leading organizations -- their knowledge and asset mix. CEOs expect to carefully calibrate business model designs based on principles of global integration, which includes global searches for sources of expertise, resources and assets that can help it differentiate. In addition, to take advantage of global integration opportunities, 75 percent of the CEOs intend to actively enter new markets and 85 percent of the CEOs intend to partner to capitalize on global integration opportunities.
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Email blitz ‘giving IT staff information overload’
Almost a quarter of IT support staff in the UK waste up to two hours each day reading irrelevant emails, an industry survey has found.And a further 40% spend up to one hour studying emails which are not related to their jobs, according to the survey conducted by specialist software supplier House-on-the-Hill.

Around 9% of respondents said incoming irrelevant messages took up more than two hours of their time every day. Half those surveyed said they sent between 21 and 50 work-related emails daily, with 25% saying they issued between 51 and 100. One in three reported receiving between 51 and 100 work-related emails on each shift. Over one-third of professionals said that, as end-users, they received too many of these notes with only 14% judging that they received too few. More than half felt the number of automated emails they received was about right.
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Remote Product Service Solutions Gaining Traction in the Service Management Space
In an extremely competitive service landscape, Best-in-Class service firms are turning to remote product solutions to aid in increasing the efficiency of their service organizations, to deliver better service and increased availability to their customers while more efficiently managing service-related costs. As such these firms are seeing significant improvements in asset availability, first-time fix and in service dispatch avoidance, according to a recent research report entitled, “The Maturity of Remote Product Service,” published by Aberdeen Group.

The report finds that leading service firms are twice as likely as all other firms to use remotely captured data to aid their technicians in diagnosing potential service issues and resolution scenarios prior to dispatch. These firms are also leveraging remotely captured data to reduce the need for technician dispatch in cases where service can be performed over a network, via guidance from technical or customer service representatives, or by the customers themselves. As a result, leading firms are experiencing:

• A 16% increase in mean time between failure for their assets over the last 2 years, compared to a 5% increase for all others.

• A 19% increase in percentage of calls resolved without technician dispatch over the last two years.

• A 93% level of asset availability for their customers on average, compared to 65% performance for all other firms.

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It Measures That Matter
The sheer volume of data available, coupled with the critical nature of effective decision-making by senior leadership teams, demands that large IT organizations declare the IT measurement program as a core competency. This requires allocation of sufficient horsepower (number of resources and adequate skills) to position the measurement program for success. A part-time commitment seldom yields a trustworthy repository of information that CIOs and their direct reports can leverage to guide the ship. However, with the right focus, an IT measurement program can return critical information specific to your organization.
Full Article...

Cost Structure and Distribution in Today’s Contact Centers
For years, contact center professionals of all sorts have been quoting statistics about the relative costs of contact centers. With a wide range of percentages and variables and changes in costs over the last decade, the authors of this article began to wonder how costs really are distributed in a contact center today and we set out to put some clarity to the numbers. In this excerpt from Strategic Contact’s white paper, the authors model costs for three representative centers -- large, medium and small.
Full Article...

Secrets of Successful IT Teams: Socially Connected Employees
Successful IT management requires leaders to understand the strengths, weaknesses and connections of the people on their team. In this article, a software developer tells how his former boss used social network analysis tools to identify rising stars and strengthen his bench.
Full Article...

7 Deadly Design Sins That Can Kill Your Conversions
here's a big difference between a well-designed website and a great-looking one. A well-designed site is one that sells! It leads visitors through the sales process without getting in their way. If it's pretty on top of that, fine. That's gravy. But don't confuse the two.
What you want your design to do is entice people to stay on your site when they get there, draw them into your message and make it easy for them to keep reading so they can make a buying decision.
Full Article...

Download this white paper and see how Sutherland developed an innovative program to generate revenue from out of scope tech support calls. Sutherland Global Services helped this client manage explosive growth and established a new channel to support tech support activity. This whitepaper will show you:

--How to effectively handle increasing call volumes without impacting customer satisfaction

--A unique solution to ensure that warranty support calls are routed effectively

--How to turn out of warranty calls into revenue generating activity

Click here to download the Report.

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

Editorial suggestions, feedback & comments:
Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@supportindustry.com

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