SupportIndustry.com Featured Webinar:

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, Pete McGarahan 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.

Register today!

Enkata Breakthrough in First Contact Resolution Technology Delivers "Instant Replay" of Entire Customer Experience
Enkata, a provider of performance management software, unveiled the next generation in First Contact Resolution (FCR) solutions, for the first time enabling contact center professionals to walk in a customer's shoes and replay an entire end-to-end customer experience. The new Sequence Replay technology, introduced in Enkata's First Contact Resolution 2.0 Business Solution, illustrates customer moves between all channels of contact, such as agent-handled calls, interactions on the Web, and self-service IVR transactions. This rich customer experience context helps managers deliver more effective agent coaching, discover hidden process breakdowns and uncover potential self-service improvement opportunities.

National Foundation Selects Parature Customer Service Software
Parature, a provider of on-demand customer service software, announced that the American Legacy Foundation has selected Parature Customer Service software to manage the inquiries they receive about the organization, including advertisements, grants, and general FAQs. Parature enables any organization to fundamentally change the way they support their customers through its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery and integrated, intuitive design that empowers them to better and more efficiently serve, support, engage with and retain customers in today's Web world.

Verizon Wireless to Expand Usage of Knowledge Management Software to Enhance Customer Service
KNOVA, a provider of service resolution and knowledge management (KM) solutions for the enterprise, announced that Verizon Wireless, operator of one the nation's wireless voice and data networks, serving more than 67.2 million customers, has chosen KNOVA as part of several initiatives set to enhance the quality of service and support provided to all of its customers. Verizon Wireless has been using KNOVA since 2003 to provide service and support to its customers via technical support centers and to customers via verizonwireless.com. Verizon Wireless uses KNOVA Contact Center and KNOVA Self-Service solutions to help provide customer care agents and online users with easy access to information. KNOVA will be rolled out nationally to all Verizon Wireless customer care representatives.

New Research: Assessing the Revenue Impact of Support

A customer's support experience plays a significant role in a company's success and profitability.

According to a study conducted by Harvard University, a "reduction of 5 percent in the customer-loss ratio results in a 25 to 85 percent increase in company profitability."

Read the Frost & Sullivan White Paper to learn how to:

-- Create a richer support experience
-- Better measure the impact of the experience
-- Disseminate this information to the rest of the organization

Click here to download the white paper.

International demand continues to mitigate the impact of the U.S. slowdown to some degree, particularly in relation to favorable currency trends which have buoyed the reported earnings of U.S.-based vendors. Some tentative signs of weakening demand and indicators have emerged in Europe and Asia, however, and there remains an elevated risk of further downside patterns in the next three quarters. Worldwide IT spending is expected to increase by 5.7% this year on a constant currency basis, down from last year's 7.2%.

The first quarter results have not disrupted IDC's prior view on U.S. IT spending this year, with signs of softening demand in the PC market confirming that a broad-based but so far contained slowdown is in effect. We reaffirm our view which calls for hardware market growth in the U.S. of less than 2% this year, while software spending will increase by 7% and IT services by 5%. Strongest growth continues to come from back-end software (system infrastructure and application development tools), network equipment, and mobile devices. However, downside risks relating to macroeconomic weakness in the U.S. are expected to persist throughout the remainder of 2008.

International markets are also feeling the impact of the U.S. slowdown, to varying degrees. IDC has lowered its forecast for Western Europe to 4.1% growth in IT spending this year, and for Asia/Pacific to 5.4%. Manufacturing exporters and financial services firms are likely to be the hardest hit, and this will be reflected in adjustments to their short-term IT investment plans. Booming growth has continued in resource-based economies such as Russia and the Middle East, however, and IT spending in those regions is expected to continue its double-digit rate of expansion this year.

More...

Call Centers Not Optimizing the Value of CRM Investments
In the global contact center industry, estimated to be worth some USD 130 billion per year, organizations are not optimizing the value of their investments in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) practices. That's one of the findings in the 2008 Dimension Data Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, which includes survey responses from 300 contact centers in 36 countries across five continents. This year's report confirms that only the minority of contact centers have established CRM practices and capabilities.

A key CRM indicator is the establishment of a single view of the customer. Ten years ago, 39% of participating contact centers already possessed this capability, with a further 45% of centers planning to implement a single view within the next two years. However, this year's results show that the percentage of centers with a single customer view has decreased to 34%.

In addition, in 1997 many organizations stated their intention to deploy a more sophisticated set of customer metrics within their contact centers. These metrics included customer lifetime value and profitability. However, this year's statistics reveal that contact centers that are able to measure or actively employ these types of metrics are in the minority. For example, less than 10% of centers surveyed have the capability to measure lifetime value, and only 18% of centers use customer profitability as a metric.

Another key CRM indicator is the deployment of 'trigger events' within inbound customer service contact centers. These involve the initiation of an outbound customer contact as a result of the nature or outcome of an inbound call. These trigger events usually relate to either customer dissatisfaction, retention of a customer or a policy, or new revenue generation such as an inbound inquiry about a policy surrender. According to this year's Report, only 21% of contact centers actively engage in this type of customer management activity.

More...

Global Research reveals major gaps between C-Level executives and customer service professionals
When it comes to aligning the executive suite with the customer service organization, there is a significant gap between what C-level executives promise and what customer service organizations see, according to the results of a comprehensive worldwide survey. Titled "The Executive Disconnect: The Strategic Alignment of Customer Service," the survey takes an in-depth look at businesses across key regions worldwide, with detailed data for major markets in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific.

The research, which covers 47 countries and 927 participating companies, was commissioned by Genesys to better understand the challenges in strategically aligning customer service with the business goals of the company. The participants were comprised of senior C-level titles and management contributors from a variety of markets, including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, government, retail, manufacturing, technology, and education. Approximately one-third of the participants were from companies with 500 agents or less, while another third were from very large organizations with 2,500 agents or more. The size of companies' customer service operations ranged from under 100 to more than 10,000 employees, and respondents included more than 1,500,000 contact center agents, as well as back office, branch, and field level support professionals.

The survey found a significant gap between C-level perceptions and the reality experienced by most of their customers. Here are a few highlights:

Strategic vs. Operational Role -- Customer care professionals and executives overwhelmingly agree that customer service impacts the company's brand identity, yet very few think their customer service acts mainly as a strategic function.

Only 20% of CEO-level executives and 20% of customer care professionals say their contact centers are very strategic.

Both groups agree that customer service is key to brand identity -- with 92% of C-level executives and 85% of customer-centric employees agreeing.

But C-level executives (73%) overestimate the effort in their companies to measure customer lifetime value, compared to a smaller number of customer-level employees (60%).


Measuring Revenue and Customer Experience vs. Speed and Efficiency -- Most C-level executives underestimate the emphasis their organization places on efficiency, and overestimate how easy their organization makes it for customers to purchase during interactions:

For example, 55% of C-level executives believe their operations use average speed to answer as a critical metric, compared to 70% of customer service professionals. On a worldwide basis 67% of all organizations considered this a key metric.

Among C-level executives, 41% think they measure the experience in self-service by quality rather than just cost savings, but only 35% of customer service professionals think so.

At the same time, 36% of C-level executives think their customer service is measured on revenue per call, when in reality only 28% of customer service professionals validate that notion. Among global respondents 30% say they measure revenue per call.

Capturing Customer Feedback -- There is a major (16%) gap between C-level execs who believe they are capturing important customer feedback, and the views of customer service professionals

While 78% of C-level execs think their company is doing a good job of collecting information on customer and market needs and passing it on to sales, only 62% of customer service professionals agree.

Interestingly, on a regional basis, Germany is the leader, as 75% of companies have processes for systematically passing on customer feedback, followed by Asia, France and Spain at 74%.

Finding a Cure -- On a positive note many companies have already implemented or plan to initiate priority projects over next 18 months, to address misalignment:

More than 28% of the companies surveyed have or will add "click for a call back" capability, and in Germany a surprising 54% of companies say they will or do support it.

To support proactive business management, nearly 30% of those surveyed plan to enable information consoles to provide real-time views that leverage customer data across the entire enterprise.

And 36% of companies worldwide plan to improve visibility into customer processes by identifying the root causes behind customer interactions and behaviors through analytics.

Leveraging the Entire Organization -- There are two significant areas of investment that are helping companies become more dynamic -- extending customer service to branch offices and virtualization.

Over 28% of the companies surveyed are already moving to incorporate branch offices to expand the pool of resources available during high volume periods.

Regionally, the UK is the leader, where 39% of companies are doing so followed by Spain at 38%.

Nearly 40% of contact centers worldwide are currently virtualizing by operating multiple contact centers as a single entity, or plan to do so.

Asia Pacific and the UK are the leaders in this, with 49% and 50% of companies respectively virtualizing.

More...

Worldwide Services Spending to Surpass $965 Billion by 2012 and It Won't Be Long Before It's a Trillion-Dollar Market
IDC forecasts that companies and government agencies will spend more than $746 billion on external services in 2008, representing a growth rate of 6.8% over 2007. Despite – and in some cases because of – a weak U.S. economy, there are many market forces driving enterprises to continue to turn to service vendors for assistance. Additionally, increased customer use of new and often disruptive delivery options (e.g., hosting, SaaS, and utility computing) will encourage service provides, especially outsourcers, to focus their investments in these areas.

Additional key trends examined in this IDC report include:

• Though representing the smallest outsourcing market, the hosted application management (AM) is expected to grow the fastest at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.9%, followed by business outsourcing services at 10.4%.

• In 2007, IT services continued to represent the lion's share (74%) of the overall services market. But the business services market that IDC tracks is slowly catching up, with a much faster CAGR of 9.6% compared with the IT services market's CAGR of 5.6%.

• Service providers continue to aggressively pursue a geographic expansion strategy to increase their footprint across the globe. While service vendors based in the United States and Western Europe are focusing on building their presence in the emerging markets, service companies based in those geographies are expanding into Europe and the United States.

• The growth of outsourcing of non-core processes and the adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA) are prompting enterprises to shift toward tighter alignment of business and technology. Although such an alignment is critical, it is still not enough. Ultimately, organizations will seek to eradicate any distinction or separation between IT and business in order to obtain convergence between them.

• IDC expects that new types of partnerships along with an expanded ecosystem will increase in importance as service vendors seek to deliver best-of-breed offerings and full-service capability at the lowest cost.

• Vendors need to take active steps to provide higher-value-added services and innovation to their clients.

More...

Customer Experience Design
As technology extends deeper into the marketplace, the ways in which your customers experience your company and its products continues to grow. Now, more than ever, ensuring a universal, consistent experience is delivered to your audience -- no matter how individuals choose to interact with your brand -- is critical to prospect conversion and customer retention. What about your company? Do customers have the same positive experience across all of the touch points you offer? Are there blind spots or vulnerabilities that could leave your customers unsatisfied or, even worse, prompt them to tell others about their negative experience? Enter experience design.
Full Article...

How to Manage Brilliant People
It's a management axiom that the smarter the employees are, the harder they are to manage. Employees with a high degree of left-brain intelligence, which is common among IT professionals, can be demanding, blind to the opinions of others, easily bored and bent on being "right," according to the people who manage them. So, while you may dream of supervising a brilliant staff, be careful what you wish for -- or at least learn the best way to manage ultrasmart people. This article presents six tips from those in the know.
Full Article...

Aligning KM investments with critical business initiatives
A recent AMR Research study showed that U.S. companies will spend an average of $1,224 per employee on KM software and services in 2008, a 16 percent increase over 2007. The total spending number across products, services and internal support amounted to $73 billion in 2007, which will grow to $85 billion in 2008. Those numbers might seem astronomical, especially considering they only represent the U.S. market, but they include a wide range of associated categories, including content management, search, portals, collaboration and knowledge management applications. Moreover, the number considers not just licenses, but hardware, maintenance, services and internal headcount. So, why is knowledge management becoming such a high priority in the minds of IT and business professionals?
Full Article...

Happy customers - and no service staff
When Paul English co-founded his latest company, Kayak.com, he made an unusual rule: No dedicated customer-service staff would be hired. Every employee, including himself, would spend about 20 minutes of each workday responding to online queries and complaints. When it comes to managing customer service, owners such as English have no shortage of high-tech options. Worldwide, companies spend more than $6 billion a year on customer software suites from giants such as Oracle and Siebel. But those products tend to be expensive and cumbersome. Ever since Kayak's launch in 2004, English has used a relatively cheap and simple online tool called QuickBase - and says it saves him about $300,000 a year.
Full Article...

What to Say to a Porcupine: 20 Humorous Tales That Get to the Heart of Great Customer Service
by Richard S. Gallagher

What do a demanding colony of porcupines, an upscale restaurant run by hyenas, and a famous medieval knight have in common? They are all part of one of the most entertaining and instructive books on customer service ever written.

What to Say to a Porcupine uses the format of Aesop's fables to illustrate fundamental principles of customer service, including: By a Hare: Great service is all about going the extra mile, as learned by a group of rabbits running an express mail delivery service. Bear with Me: One grizzly bear's honey shop undergoes an amazing transformation when he discovers a better way to greet his customers. What to Say to a Porcupine: When a newly arrived colony of demanding porcupines wreaks havoc on local businesses, readers get a lesson on handling difficult customers in a positive, constructive manner. Each story is followed by a short discussion, illuminating topics from customer relationships to how to motivate a service team.

More info on this book....

White Paper: Improving Customer Service Using Web-based Support Tools

In the realm of service and support, the Web has made its mark.

Since a business's Web site is the first place many customers go today when they're in need of service, it's imperative that what they find there -- the search tools, the breadth and depth of content, easy escalation paths, the tools that aid in speedy resolution -- meets their needs. Each visit presents the business with the opportunity to impress and influence existing and potential customers.

Find out more! This informative white paper from SupportIndustry.com examines the latest trends and technologies in using Web-based support tools to improve customer service.

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

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