| [View Past Issues] | May 25, 2010 |
Featured Link
Analyst/Bytes & Statistics
In Other News
Required Reading
Our News
About Us
2010 Service and Leadership Trends in Customer Support
This groundbreaking survey assesses the state of customer service issues in the customer support industry: How our customers and agents are doing, how we are managing people and measuring performance, how effective our training and coaching is, and how we are using technology to get closer to customers. It is meant to be a snapshot of what we in the support industry fundamentally do and how well we do it.
Groundbreaking NYC 311 Customer Service Center Receives 100 Millionth Call With Support from Accenture
New York City's 311 Customer Service Center officially received its 100 millionth call since its inception, according to City officials and Accenture. The Bloomberg administration launched the 311 Customer Service Center in March of 2003 to provide easier access to non-emergency services in a cost-effective manner. The 311 service consolidated more than 40 separate call centers and hotlines, encompassing 11 pages of government listings in the City phone book, into one easy-to-remember number. The City worked with Accenture to launch the Center and has continued to work with the firm to operate and further develop the 311 system.
RightNow Introduces RightNow Mobile
RightNow has introduced RightNow Mobile, which helps organizations engage and support consumers via any mobile device. With RightNow Mobile, consumers receive a feature-rich, exceptional experience across any mobile device, including smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and GPS systems. As a result, organizations can extend their customer experience strategies to mobile devices, seamlessly integrated with their web, contact center, and social channels.
Software Maker CA Changes Name
Software maker CA Inc., formerly Computer Associates, is tweaking its name again, an acknowledgement that it moved too quickly five years ago to shed the taint of an accounting scandal and picked a name that doesn't say enough about what the company does. Although it isn't changing its name legally, the company said it will use CA Technologies as the brand for all of its products and marketing. To get the word out, CA plans to boost its marketing budget 50% this year to around $200 million, says a person familiar with its plans. The campaign started to roll out over the weekend featuring an overhauled Web site and new advertisements.
White Paper: Tools and Technologies To Maximize Your Support Center's Potential
Companies understand they must deliver the best possible customer experience each time they get the opportunity and, further, leverage every opportunity to deepen customer relationships. Ultimately, delivering that experience depends on ready access to accurate customer data. It's a straightforward goal, but creating high-level customer visibility into customer data and making it accessible to relevant parties -- agents, partners, customers -- requires that support organizations surmount a number of inherent challenges.
Read the full white paper...
Vertical Market IT Spending Will Grow 4.1 Percent in 2010
Worldwide enterprise IT spending across all industry markets is forecast to surpass $2.4 trillion in 2010, a 4.1 percent increase from 2009 spending, according to Gartner, Inc. Industries are returning to growth after a difficult year in 2009 when IT spending by vertical market totaled $2.3 trillion, a 5.6 percent decline from 2008.
Banking and securities, and communications, media and services will experience the greatest growth through 2014, growing at 2009-2014 compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 5.2 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively. Manufacturing and natural resources, and wholesale trade will experience the weakest growth through 2014, growing at 2009-2014 CAGRs of 3.0 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively.
Gartner recommends that technology and service providers execute business and marketing plans for 2010 based on a 4.1 percent annual growth rate, but prepare contingencies to mitigate the downside risk of a slow-growth scenario or a "double dip" recession, based on uncertainties in the economic environment.
More...
Consumer Survey Reveals the Customer Care Experiences That Most Impact the Relationship Between Cable Operator and Subscriber
CSG Systems International, Inc, a provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, announced the results of its latest consumer survey, designed to poll end consumers on the service experiences that most impact the relationship between cable operators and their customers.
Survey results indicate delivering high-quality customer communications along with a positive customer care experience across all customer touch points can greatly improve the ability to retain and grow a customer relationship. However, the survey also illustrated that the threshold for poor customer service experiences is low, in many cases prompting a customer to label a cable operator as a poor customer service provider after only one negative experience.
Summary of Key Findings:
Customer Service Tipping Points
- Respondents stated that it takes only two occurrences of bad customer service before they become likely to change their opinion of the service provider to one that has poor customer service. Respondents aged 24 to 29 are more likely to alter their opinion of a service provider with just one occurrence of bad customer service.
- Top three bad customer service incidents chosen by respondents: 68% on hold for an extended period; 66% rude/impolite service representatives; 63% told issue is resolved when it isn't. (Respondents could choose more than one option).
- A majority of respondents will switch to another service provider when bad customer service occurs more than 50% of the time, regardless of age and gender.
- Friendly staff consistently ranked highest (77%) as a meter of good experience with a service provider, followed by fast, polite and courteous service.
- More than 10% of respondents said they would write about a good customer service interaction on a social media site. This statistic nearly doubled for a bad customer service experience (i.e., a service disruption).
- Speed of response (37%), faster service changes (36%) and fast resolution of issues (35%), most influence the decision to use online customer care channels.
A Variety of Channels Drive Customers to Learn About and Buy New Products and Services
- Mail (65%) and email (46%) are the most preferred ways to learn about new product and service offerings, while telephone (41%), online website (37%) and mail (37%) are the most preferred ways to buy new product and service offerings.
- SMS text messaging is an emerging method that customers prefer to learn (4%) and buy (3%) new services with 9% of respondents aged 24 to 29 choosing SMS. This age group prefers email as its communications and buying channel, with 58% of respondents choosing this as their preferred method.
- Email is also the most effective communication channel (32%) for the respondents to take action on coupons and promotional offers, followed by chatting with a service representative online.
Employee morale and loyalty are vulnerable as companies ask over-stretched employees to do more with less
Companies should be careful that they are not paving the way for a mass exodus of talent once more favorable economic conditions return and the job market strengthens, says PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) following a new survey.
Managing Tomorrow's People explores the work aspirations and expectations over the next decade of 5,000 professionals worldwide. The results show that, while having vastly more responsibility with a salary to match is what the biggest proportion (44%) want from their careers, over a third (36%) now choose better work-life balance as their prime objective, other than salary.
Other than salary, the survey finds that people value flexible working arrangements by far the most (39%) followed by bonuses, paid academic training and exposure to advanced networking and social activities.
There are interesting regional differences. The appetite for flexible working arrangements is greatest in Western Europe and North America. Employees in Latin America have by far the greatest appetite for learning and development. The desire for exposure to networking and social activities is significantly higher in the 'newer' markets of Africa, Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Asia Pacific. Only 9% of respondents globally said a good company pension plan was a prime attraction for them.
When they imagine their future working lives, more people picture themselves working in a virtual place, where employees log on from any location, than they do from centralized hubs in major city centers. Perhaps surprisingly, it is the 16-25 year old bracket alone where a majority imagine an 'office block' in a city center as their future workplace.
Respondents were clear about their ideal future employer. Almost half say they want to work for a company whose values match their own. Exactly a third say that they themselves are their own ideal future employer and the remaining 20% want to work for an elite company that employs only the best.
Having a powerful social conscience intrinsic to the organization's brand and a 'green' sense of responsibility was seen as important by 41% of respondents. (This figure was a high as 55% in Latin America). In CEE a higher proportion believed it will be more important to harness the power of social networking and one in four globally believed it was more important to understand emerging markets. From North America there was a significantly higher response to the importance of emerging markets than there was from Western Europe.
More...
A New View For Customer Service Quality
For many centers, the quality program is primarily a measuring stick, another report. But what we do with that data -- how we use what it tells us about agent performance and overall operations -- is the next logical (and critical) step to success.
Full Article...
An Action Plan for IT
When a CFO assumes oversight of IT, it may be cause for congratulations -- and condolences. Information technology is often an underleveraged asset, and a leader who can tap its full potential will make a major contribution to the business. On the other hand, such an advance is sure to entail headaches and frustration.
Full Article...
IT Pros Have More in Common With Senior IT Execs Than Managers
Scientific revelations about the innate cognitive strengths and weaknesses of IT professionals illustrate the ineffectiveness of traditional career paths and common staff management techniques, while also revealing surprising similarities to C-level IT executives.
Full Article...
Quality of Experience is the Measure of IT Value
Are you measuring the right things for your e-services? Many CIOs aren't, and even those who claim to measure IT value and report on e-services understand the concepts poorly. Why is this important? Because customer perception matters and QoE is the most significant single factor in a real-world evaluation of the user experience and, therefore, the key to your success.
Full Article...
Cloud Computing: What CIOs Need to Know About Integration
When combining cloud computing services with internal systems, confusion reigns. The reasons: lack of standards, concerns about availability and the potential for vendor lock-in.
Full Article...
The Power of Many: Values for Success in Business and in Life
by Meg Whitman and Joan O'C Hamilton
Having helped shepherd Ebay from a $4 million business to an $8 billion behemoth, former president and CEO Whitman reveals her methods in her debut, as much a memoir of her tenure at Ebay as a guidebook for struggling MBAs. Though timed to coincide with her California gubernatorial run, Whitman crafts an engaging and not altogether opportunistic narrative that spells out solid business values, a no-nonsense approach to work, and thoughts on corporate integrity centered around practical advice for employees, managers and business leaders. In an era of bloated corporate profits and downsized prospects for average workers, Whitman's sincere commitment to and insights regarding community-building are refreshing, and should prove helpful for entrepreneurs and voters seeking information about the probable candidate.
View SupportIndustry.com Research Insights: First Contact Resolution and Cost per Call (Phone and E-mail)
Click here to get a full copy of the results.
SupportIndustry.com is Now on Twitter
Check us out and follow us for regular updates on the service and support industry!
http://www.twitter.com/supportindustry
SupportIndustry.com is Now Mobile!
Get the latest service and support news on your mobile device! Our mobile site is ready for you to visit via your favorite mobile device, or you can view it on your personal computer. Our mobile site is optimized to run with Windows Mobile software.
Check out http://www.supportindustry.com/mobile today!
2010 Service and Support Technology Showcase Now Available
SupportIndustry.com has released the 2010 version of our Service & Support Technology Showcase. This in-depth buyer's guide features the latest tools and technologies in the support services industry that enable support operations to deliver superior customer service. To view the listings,click here...
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
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!
