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2009 Service & Support Metrics Survey: The Results

Supportindustry.com conducts an annual survey designed to explore the state of enterprise service and support -- technology adoption rates and deployment plans, financial challenges, workforce issues, performance metrics and other industry trends. This year's survey, sponsored by Parature Inc., a provider of on-demand customer service software, reinforces previous years' findings, highlighting support organizations' continued adoption of better-integrated and responsive technologies, efforts to improve processes, and growing recognition of the strategic role of service delivery in corporate growth. At the same time, however, these organizations continue to battle the ongoing challenges that have come to characterize the service function. Key metrics to benchmark your support operation were also captured and discussed.

Get your copy of the results today!

Intel to Acquire Wind River for $884 Million
Intel Corp. agreed to acquire Wind River Systems Inc. for $884 million as the semiconductor giant moves to boost its presence in handheld devices. Wind River helps companies develop and manage device software, notably in embedded systems and wireless products. Both are key growth targets for Intel as it continues to seek diversification avenues beyond personal computers and servers, where is it the market leader in providing chips. Under the agreement, Intel will pay $11.50 a share, a 44% premium to Wednesday's closing price of $8 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. But Wind River shares traded near the offer price as recently as late August.
source: WSJ

Southwest Airlines Callers Are Now Free to Hang Up on Hold Time
Southwest Airlines has implemented virtual queuing software from Virtual Hold Technology, LLC, (VHT), giving callers the freedom to hang up the phone, keep their place in line and get a callback when an agent is available. Virtual Hold Technology's virtual queuing solution for Southwest Airlines includes the Concierge and Rendezvous technologies. When hold time is more than a couple of minutes, the Concierge solution offers to hold customers' places in line and calls them back when it's their turn to speak to a Southwest Airlines agent. With this option, Southwest Airlines customers have the freedom to continue other activities instead of being tied to a phone. The Rendezvous solution expands the functionality of Concierge offering customers the opportunity to actually schedule a time to receive the callback if the queue time is not convenient for them.

IBM Expands Software Portfolio to Help Clients Keep Pace with Information Explosion
IBM announced a global expansion of its Information on Demand strategy with the addition of new software and services designed to derive new intelligence from business information. To support this effort, IBM is expanding its Information Management capabilities and providing industry specific, analytic applications in the areas of financial performance, human capital management and customer management.  The new offerings provide industry specific, information intensive analytic applications. These solutions go beyond business intelligence to help clients plan, analyze and manage performance in real time as information is being fed in massive amounts from different sources.

FatWire Launches New Releases of TeamUp and Content Integration Platform
FatWire Software announced the launch of FatWire TeamUp 3.1 and the FatWire Content Integration Platform 1.5. These new releases streamline the collaboration and content creation process for the web, and save time and cost in sharing and reusing content. FatWire TeamUp 3.1 is an advanced collaboration platform that enables disparate teams to work together and share content, with social computing features such as simple to set up wikis, blogs, comments, social tagging, and more. This new release gives users an even richer tool set for creating web content, encouraging creativity across multiple projects, driving efficiencies in personal productivity, and facilitating team communication.

How to Migrate Customers to Paid Support
Boston, June 26

If you're still giving away tech support, it's time to make a change.

This one-day workshop, produced by the Association of Support Professionals (ASP), will give you a detailed roadmap for turning post-sale support and services into a true profit center. Topics include how to reduce service delivery costs, design flexible maintenance plans and add-on services, reduce price resistance, identify customer pain points, and generate internal buy-in.

Registration, $475.
https://www.asp-secure.com/workshop.html

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Market to Grow to $2.7 billion by 2011
DMG Consulting LLC, a provider of contact center and real-time analytics research, has published its inaugural Hosted/Managed Service IVR Market Report.
 
According to the report, the recession has sped up the pace of adoption and infused momentum into the hosted/managed service IVR market. After years of relative quiet, the IVR market is now attracting a lot of attention and investment dollars. Sales of IVRs are growing rapidly based on the strength of new applications, rapid deployments and product innovation from a range of highly competitive hosted/managed service providers. DMG projects a 4-year CAGR of 13.4% for the hosted/managed-inbound IVR sector and 18.7% for the outbound IVR segment. Sales of premise-based IVR solutions are expected to decline over the same period. Organizations of all types - companies large and small, governments, higher education, non-profits, etc. - that previously bypassed hosted/managed service IVR offerings are not only considering these offerings, but making commitments.

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Despite the Recession, Now is the Time for IT Leaders to Prepare for a Return to Business Growth
While the recession is still under way, now is the time for IT leaders to prepare for business growth, and organizations should aim to complete these plans by July 1 of this year, according to Gartner, Inc. This advice especially pertains to the nations that first entered the recession, such as the U.S. and the U.K.

Gartner acknowledged that many countries are experiencing ever-increasing levels of unemployment, rising home mortgage payment delinquencies and business bankruptcies while also seeing reductions in consumer confidence, business earnings and overall economic performance. However, in recent months, analysts have observed that many organizations are reporting that their staff are working at near- or full-capacity levels. This demand level will almost certainly increase when businesses start detecting a resurgence in demand from customers, a more stabilized economic climate and a far-healthier lending environment from which to access credit.

Gartner believes that the July 1 "deadline" will well serve those organizations believing that modest business growth could occur during 2010. Such a belief would require placement of new IT project and other related expenses in the 2010 budget, whose preparation period is between August and the end of 2009.

While Gartner's recommendations call for the resolution of key preliminary cost optimization and governance-related issues before the era of business growth returns, Gartner said that it is not necessarily advocating that organizations automatically revert to the same management techniques they were using in the years leading up to the recession.

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After Five Quarters of New Lows, Private Companies Show Increasing Optimism in U.S. Economy
After five consecutive quarters of record-low levels of optimism in the U.S. economy, the rate of decline in attitudes among CEOs of the nation's leading private companies surveyed for PricewaterhouseCoopers' Private Company Trendsetter Barometer appear to have stabilized. For the first time in recent months, attitudes among CEOs are beginning to show some optimism that the U.S. economy may begin to recover in early 2010. Looking at the next 12 months, optimism rose seven points to 19 percent, only seven points lower than the 26 percent who were optimistic a year ago when the U.S. first entered the recession cycle. While pessimism has dropped 13 points from a majority 54 percent in the prior quarter to 41 percent, insecurity towards the U.S. economy is still prevalent, with 40 percent of CEOs responding "uncertain" about the next year.

The number of Trendsetter CEOs planning major new investments of capital over the next 12 months fell to 24 percent (down from 29 percent from last quarter and 35 percent from a year ago), as companies continue efforts to increase cash flow. The mean investment of capital as a percentage of sales holds steady at 7.2 percent of sales among fewer planners.

However, slightly more than half of private businesses (51 percent) are planning to increase operational spending budgets over the next 12 months. Increased operational spending for research & development remained low at 10 percent.

While the majority of leading private companies' hiring plans will remain the same over the next 12 months (59 percent), an overall increase to the composite workforce of 1.1 percent is projected, down from 1.7 percent the previous quarter and well off 5.9 percent a year ago. Large private growth companies are flat, averaging 0.5 percent workforce additions (20 percent adding/22 percent reducing), but smaller private companies plan to add 5.2 percent to their workforces (36 percent adding/6 percent reducing).

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Business Continuity Planning Evolves With Emerging Technologies
The dramatic rise in social networking and mobility trends is presenting new challenges and considerations to companies' network security, disaster planning and business continuity programs. The good news: businesses are stepping up their technology investment and efforts to meet these challenges despite the economy; and mobile devices are increasingly part of business continuity plans. These are some of the findings to emerge from AT&T's annual study on business continuity and disaster recovery preparedness for U.S. businesses in the private sector.

For the eighth consecutive year, AT&T surveyed IT executives from companies throughout the United States that have at least $25 million in annual revenue to get their views on disaster planning and business continuity trends. Sixty-eight percent of the companies surveyed this year have locations outside of the U.S.

2009 AT&T Business Continuity Study Key Findings:

-- 2009 IT Spending Trends and Investment in New Technologies. Two-thirds (65%) of all executives indicate that their companies will be investing in new technologies for 2009. Investment tends to focus on new equipment and a variety of software, storage and security upgrades.

When looking at IT spending trends for this year, forty percent of executives surveyed indicated that their IT budgets are expected to be lower this year than in the previous two years, while nearly one-fourth (24%) indicated that budgets will be higher. Interestingly, companies with business continuity plans in place are significantly more likely than those without plans to anticipate budget increases (32% compared
to 11%).

-- Mobility Considerations Emerge. Sixty-seven percent of executives indicate that wireless network capabilities are part of their business continuity plan. Furthermore, nearly half (46%) stated that mobile devices play a major role in their plan's considerations.

-- Social Networking Heightens Security Threats. Three out of four executives surveyed are concerned about the increased use of social networking capabilities' potential impact on network security. Forty- four percent allow employees access to such social networking sites. However, hacking still continues to be listed as the biggest security risk to companies (30% compared with 3% for social networking).

Business Continuity Planning Trends

One-third of companies surveyed have used their business continuity plan that is in place. Nationally, companies are most likely to invoke their business continuity plan due to extreme weather (25%) or power outages at facilities (19%). When looking at the five markets surveyed, companies in Houston and Miami/Orlando/Tampa are significantly more likely to have invoked their business continuity plan (52% and 51% respectively, compared with 36% nationally). These results are not surprising considering these regions have been hit the hardest with hurricanes.

Nearly seventy-four percent of businesses surveyed set target recovery times for their key business processes (compared with sixty-seven percent in 2008), an indication that businesses understand not only is it important to have a plan in place, but that plan needs to identify goals and expectations for recovery should it be invoked. In the event of a natural or man-made disaster, these companies have special arrangements for communicating with key executives spanning voice, email and text-messaging.

In addition, the study found that companies have put increased attention to not only their own business continuity plans but those of their key partners and suppliers. One-third of the respondents require suppliers and other vendors to have a business continuity plan in place in order to do business with their company.

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Unconventional Agents: Not Your Ordinary Contact Center Staff
The role of contact centers -- and that of the people who work in them -- has rapidly evolved beyond traditional operational and business models. Order takers, customer care specialists, software supporters and sales reps are no longer the only people donning headsets and working to empty ACD queues; today's contact center cubicles (and home workstations) are also filled by registered nurses, mental health counselors, language interpreters, art dealers, accountants -- even lawyers. The entire contact center landscape has changed, broadened.
Full Article...

Microblogs Get Down To Business
Sure, you can use Twitter to keep up with Ashton Kutcher and Oprah. But can you actually do anything useful with it, something that justifies using it on the job? You bet. Twitter and similar services are being adopted by companies such as JetBlue and Alcatel-Lucent to help improve customer service and teamwork across business units and continents. As a customer service tool, Twitter's advantage is that almost everything people say on the service is public and easy to find using Twitter's built-in search. That makes Twitter an instant focus group, made up of millions of people, many of whom are your customers.
Full Article...

The Four Keys to Customer Loyalty
In many organizations, it's all too common to think of customers only in terms of numbers -- of what they mean to the bottom line. However, for businesses to understand what makes a customer loyal, they need to understand the person behind the number. They must not overlook the fact that a customer is a human being whose service experience can drive -- or destroy -- loyalty. Organizations begin to cultivate customer loyalty only when they recognize that those human experiences wield the power to positively or negatively affect the business.
Full Article...

The IT Jumble
Data centers could well be some of the most complex technology environments on the planet. In many of the best-run corporations, layers upon layers of technology have been added into data centers over the years. It has been compounded to the point where no one is quite sure what all of the equipment does, where the security holes are and how efficiency could be added into the system. In fact, no one is quite sure what interacts with what or how shutting down one machine or moving data to another could affect the entire enterprise. Forbes caught up with Jeff Johnson, Deputy CIO at Constellation Energy Group and the person responsible for wringing order out of the IT infrastructure at one of the nation's largest energy companies.
Full Article...

The 4 Hidden Costs of Business Intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) has been shown to help organizations do more with less. But it's also possible that a BI initiative will cost your organization more than you expect. In a recent Aberdeen Group report, analyst David Hatch has outlined four potential cost factors likely to arise in a BI initiative if an organization isn't paying attention. The report also notes, however, that best-in-class companies manage to mitigate these risks while achieving operational excellence in BI.
Full Article...

Calming Upset Customers
by Rebecca L. Morgan, CSP, CMC

How do you make your upset customers happy? What can you do to ensure upset customers will return, will be satisfied, and will refer others to you? Learn what upset customers want, how to calm them, and how to retain their business. Upset customers are a part of every organization. If they are responded to promptly and professionally they will become some of your most loyal customers. You'll learn how to do this. Having sold over 250,000 copies, this business best seller has been featured in USA Today, Oprah Winfrey, Home Office Computing, and National Public Radio.

Click here for more information on this book.

2009 Service and Support Technology Showcase Now Available
SupportIndustry.com has released the 2009 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.

SupportIndustry.com White Paper: Best Practices for Coaching Your Support Team to Handle Anything
This white paper provides a step-by-step game plan for solving your support agents' worst nightmares, based on the author's experience in successfully "turning around" support performance, as well as current research in the psychology of how we communicate with people. In the process, you will learn how specific, procedural skills -- both for how your agents respond to customers, and how you coach your team -- can change everything about how your interact with customers, in a way that will impact both your support metrics and your bottom line.
Get the full white paper 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

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