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Webinar: How to Give GR8 Service & Have Your Followers 'Like' You in All Social Channels
July 22, 2010 11:00 AM PDT / 2:00 PM EDT
Customers are increasingly turning to social media to air their service issues - especially when they feel companies could give a tweet about them through other channels. In the process, your service reputation is now out in the open for everyone to see. But some companies are leading the charge to use services like Twitter, Facebook, and virtual communities to brand their 21st century service identity. This webinar, featuring industry expert and author Rich Gallagher, will show you how to leverage social media for better service if you're new to it, and how to sharpen your virtual service image if you're an old pro. Topics we'll cover include:
- Why your service is going public and going viral: a look at today's digital consumer
- Social media service success stories: Comcast, Southwest Airlines, Zappos, and more
- Understanding virtual service channels
- Do's and don'ts: How to communicate effectively in a cyber service world
Service-now.com Spring 2010 Release Includes Six New SaaS Applications for Modern ITSM
Service-now.com, the creators of modern software as a service (SaaS) for IT service management, announced the Service-now.com Spring 2010 release. The release includes six new Service-now.com SaaS applications for service portfolio management, IT cost management, project and portfolio management, field services, and shared services for HR and facilities business process automation.
TechTeam Global to Help Europcar Improve and Expand IT Service Desk Support
TechTeam Global, Inc., a provider of information technology outsourcing and business process outsourcing services, announced that it has won a three-year contract to provide service desk support to Europcar, the European leader in passenger car and light utility vehicle rentals. Under the agreement, TechTeam will help Europcar standardize and optimize its existing IT service desk operations and will also provide incident overflow and night-hour support to augment Europcar's service desk.
Canvas on Demand Deploys inContact Cloud-Based Call Center Solution
inContact, Inc. has announced the successful deployment of its cloud-based call center platform at photo-to-canvas conversion service Canvas on Demand. Use of the inContact platform to replace Canvas on Demand's in-house system saved thousands of dollars in capital expenses and ongoing maintenance over a conventional premise-based installation, while also enabling improved call handling, real-time agent monitoring and easy port expansion/contraction to accommodate seasonal call volume fluctuations.
Webinar: Measuring and Managing First-Contact Resolution: Challenges & Techniques
Thursday, August 5 at 11 AM PDT/ 2 PM EDT
First contact resolution, or FCR, is the key to superior support and operational efficiency for an organization. Get is right, and you win with customers, but get it wrong and it wreaks havoc across the company. So how do you effectively measure and manage this crucial metric in order to grow your success? Join industry expert Dave Brown, author of "Optimizing Support Center Staffing," and Brenda Dentinger of Citrix Online to learn why FCR should be a top priority and how to accurately assess and measure.
Attend the Webinar to learn:
- The growing importance of FCR
- Methods for capturing and calculating FCR
- How to align your measurements with industry benchmarks
- The relationship between FCR and other performance factors
Federal Tech Spending To Reach $112 Billion
Spending in the federal information technology market will grow from $86 billion in 2010 to $112 billion in 2015, at a compound annual growth rate of 5.4 percent, according to Federal Information Technology Market, 2010-2015, a new report from INPUT.
Contrary to other industry groups forecasting negative growth in the government contracting market, INPUT's research shows that while overall spending growth has decreased, the Obama administration's management priorities, coupled with empirical spending trends, strongly suggest that IT spending has some protection from significant reductions.
The report strengthens the fact that IT budgets are somewhat insulated from major cuts by outlining that initiatives for cost reduction, increased efficiency, and program oversight and performance all depend on IT. In fact, some of the administration's near-term priorities revolve around IT: leveraging shared services, automating processes to improve delivery of citizen services, cybersecurity, and investing in technology infrastructure to reduce energy costs.
That gap in federal IT expertise also addresses contractors' concerns regarding insourcing in the federal work force. INPUT analysts predict that the government will face difficulty in growing its work force to a degree required to significantly reduce its reliance on contractors, especially as agencies strive to fulfill more requirements using fewer resources.
Survey Spotlights Consumers' Influence on Enterprise IT
Cisco announced the results of a survey exploring the security implications of social networking and the use of personal devices in the enterprise. One of the most striking findings was that employees are consistently working around information technology security policies to use unsupported devices and applications. Another significant finding: 71 percent of the survey respondents said that overly strict security policies have a negative impact on hiring and retaining employees under age 30.
Conducted on behalf of Cisco by InsightExpress, the survey polled 500 IT security professionals across the United States, Germany, Japan, China and India. The results illustrate that the consumer influence on enterprise IT is growing and that more employees are bringing personal devices and applications into the network, presenting new business opportunities and security challenges. The survey explores the changing enterprise security landscape due to the evolving requirements of today's borderless networks, the benefits and drawbacks of accommodating an increasingly mobile workforce, and the challenges of protecting sensitive and proprietary data.
Highlights
-- More than half of the survey respondents have determined that their employees use unsupported applications, including:
Social networking -- 68 percent
Collaborative -- 47 percent
Peer to peer -- 47 percent
Cloud -- 33 percent
-- Nearly half (41 percent) of the respondents have determined that employees have been using unsupported devices, and more than one-third of that number said they have had a breach or loss of information due to unsupported network devices.
-- Despite these trends, about half (53 percent) of the IT respondents said they are likely to allow personal devices on the network in the next 12 months and 7 percent already support personal devices.
-- More than half (51 percent) listed "social networking" as one of the top three biggest security risks to their organization, while one in five (19 percent) considers it the highest risk.
-- Social networking tools are an unprecedented and highly beneficial tool for many parts of organizations, including human resources, marketing and customer service.
-- Nearly three out of four survey respondents said that overly strict security policies have a moderate or significant negative impact on hiring and retaining employees under age 30.
Wall Street Firms Set to Increase IT Spend Through 2011 on Transformation Initiatives
A new survey of nearly 250 business and IT Wall Street professionals reveals that almost one-half expect 20-30% of their technology budget to be allocated for transformational initiatives in 2010 and 2011. The Wall Street professionals polled in the survey shared the view that the most likely increases in IT investments for analytics are expected to be risk, compliance and trading.
The research from Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and IBM has found a greater focus on the development of systemic risk strategies. Of all regulatory activities, systemic risk was chosen by 55% of respondents to be the largest driver of IT investments. Building on that trend, risk analytics for compliance was ranked as the top analytics investment opportunity (37 percent) beating out categories such as analytics for client segmentation (21 percent) and external fraud (13 percent). Over 90 percent of survey respondents expect to increase their investment in analytics over the course of the next year.
While economic uncertainty still remains high, the new survey shows that concerns about the economy are waning from 2009. For the first time since the 2008 financial collapse, firms are revisiting the use of IT to promote organizational sustainability. Key priorities include innovating processes around trading, portfolio management and risk management. Surprisingly, client relationship management ranked last out of 17 categories with only 2 percent of participants selecting that option.
Despite the positive technology investment outlook, Wall Street professionals cite lack of IT staff and high implementation costs as the biggest inhibitors for technology implementation - which remains consistent with findings obtained in 2009. To overcome some of these challenges, the industry is showing a larger appetite for disruptive technologies such as cloud computing (61 percent) to force business model change.
Other key findings from the survey include:
- 90 percent of participants expect to outsource one or more of their processes
- Firms are most likely to outsource compliance reporting and analytics for risk
- Behind cloud computing, mobile technologies are expected to force significant business and operating model changes
How to Know When to Move Your Business to Self-Service Scheduling
Customer scheduling is often a very complex and costly process, especially if your business spans multiple locations. And valuable customer data can be lost if scheduling is done manually, adding to inefficiencies. Moving scheduling to 24/7 self-service can present a great opportunity to improve customer retention and loyalty while increasing business. It also smoothes demand for walk-in services so businesses can better estimate the resources required to handle anticipated customer volume.
Full Article...
8 Trends Driving IT Job Growth, Salaries
Will job prospects for U.S. IT professionals fare better or worse for the rest of 2010? It's hard to tell from the latest economic and employment data being released by IT career experts. Reports issued in the first week of June provide conflicting information about IT hiring, compensation and outsourcing trends. On the plus side, these reports say IT hiring will increase during the second half of 2010, and CIOs are more optimistic about their budgets and staffing levels than they were a year ago. However, IT salaries and benefits are still being squeezed from all sides, and it's difficult to tell which IT skills are most in demand on a month-to-month basis.
Full Article...
Customer experience and the numbers game
Traditional measures of customer satisfaction have little to do with customer experience, or financial performance, for that matter. According to research, 80% of customers who switch suppliers express satisfaction with their previous supplier. Revenue growth has everything to do with 'advocacy', the extent to which customers or clients prefer a supplier and then refer friends and colleagues to it. Advocacy translates into increased share of market and higher levels of retention, all of which mean good news for your bottom-line. So how do you create a customer experience that is so distinctive that customers become your best sales people?
Full Article...
Foundation of Multiapplication Support
Supporting applications is challenging work that can be made manageable with the proper approach. The keys include a clear process flow, a well-documented notification/communication plan, proper operational documentation, adherence to development standards and capturing critical information during incidents. This column focuses on some of the things that can help deliver top-notch application support, especially in a multiapplication environment.
Full Article...
Curb Contact Center Costs Via Customer-Support Communities
Customers want instant access to answers: People spend a larger portion of their day using search tools like Google, specifically in search of answers to their questions. The most valuable information comes from a merchant's customers, employees and partners. In fact, customers are often more knowledgeable than employees themselves. With a wealth of how-to information, customer-support communities can alleviate the need for traditional, more time-consuming services such as phone and e-mail. By providing instant access to the answers, you can lower support costs and increase customer satisfaction.
Full Article...
Service Innovation: How to Go from Customer Needs to Breakthrough Services
by Lance Bettencourt
True service innovation demands that you shift the focus away from the solution and back to the customer. To achieve this shift in your business--one that takes you from making educated guesses to building a clear model to guide service innovation--Bettencourt instructs on the finer points of how to rethink your approach to the customer's needs: how the customer defines value in a product or service.
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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...
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