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Drive Self-Service Success with Adobe® Captivate®4 movies
Create your own movies, improve self-service efficiency and see the resolution rates zoom. ’Show me Movies’ help increase productivity and customer satisfaction. By creating more visual and engaging experiences Adobe Captivate helps tech support professionals improve self-service, hike productivity and cut costs. You can create videos rapidly without any programming or multimedia skills, embed in PDF and publish in various formats. Demonstrate complex concepts effectively and let users become active participants with interactive let me try movies. Start creating movies now. |
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Apple iPhone and iPod Touch Users Take Business Anywhere with LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone
Apple iPhone and iPod touch users everywhere are enjoying the freedom and productivity of anytime, anywhere computer access with LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone and iPod touch. With one click from their Apple device, users securely access their Internet-enabled office and home computers -- including all the applications and files on them -- and work as if they were sitting in front of them. LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone and iPod touch connects to desktops and laptops running LogMeIn Pro, LogMeIn Free or LogMeIn IT Reach and can be used to control Windows-based PCs and Apple computers.
CA's New Standardized Services Offerings Help CIOs Achieve Lean IT
CA, Inc. announced the immediate availability of 17 new and updated standardized Services offerings to help CIOs achieve the benefits of Lean IT. Lean IT is an approach being adopted by IT organizations to optimize performance, minimize cost and maximize value. The standardized Services offerings announced focus on application performance management, infrastructure management, service management, project and portfolio management, security, and mainframe.
Amcom Software Selects TechExcel CustomerWise Help Desk Solution
TechExcel, Inc., a provider of IT Service Management and help desk issue tracking software, announced that Amcom Software has selected TechExcel CustomerWise for their Customer Service Data Centers in Minnesota, New York, Florida and Australia. CustomerWise is a powerful integrated CRM solution used to optimize processes among sales, marketing, and customer support teams. Using CustomerWise, Amcom Software will improve collaboration and communication, enabling them to resolve issues more efficiently and exceed their customers' service expectations.
Elevate Your Service Levels: Support More Users on More Devices
Mobile devices are no longer used solely by top executives -- road warriors, field service professionals and "corridor warriors" also rely on smartphones.
With LogMeIn Rescue, you can help elevate your service levels by remotely resolving issues and training users on their BlackBerry® smartphones.
And did we mention it works on PCs, Macs and Windows Mobile® and Symbian™ devices, too? Try it free for 14 days and see how easy it is to support more devices across your entire organization.
Research finds companies pursue customer satisfaction but lag in support of agents
Ventana Research has released the findings of its new benchmark research on Agent Performance Management (APM). This new research examined the interplay of information, technology, process and people aspects in 365 companies of varied sizes, industries, geographic regions in the world and, most importantly, varied contact center sizes to yield a number of important findings. The research confirms the importance of using the right information, metrics and software to optimize agent effectiveness, showing that companies that shift their focus from saving money on agents to training them and evaluating their performance more effectively realize benefits. Moreover, deploying agent management technology, as well as smarter call delivery systems to route calls to the agents most appropriately skilled and best at handling particular types of interactions or customers, improves customer satisfaction.
However, the research also finds that companies are lagging in applying these best practices. Analysis using the Ventana Research Maturity Index indicates that companies have not matured very far in their management of agent performance, with more than four times as many organizations at the lowest Tactical level of maturity as are at the highest Innovative maturity level.
The report offers recommendations for improvement:
- Improve interaction-handling by thinking more strategically. Focus on automating the agent quality monitoring process, using speech analytics tools to improve the agent assessment process, and utilizing more outcome-focused key performance metrics.
- Make better use of available technology and applications. Follow the example of Innovative companies and deploy unified communications, smarter call routing to best-skilled and -performing agents, desktop screen capture and analysis, and the latest contact center-specific performance management tools including text and speech analytics.
- Reassess key performance metrics. Explore supplementing basic measures such as number of calls handled, average length of calls and percent of calls placed on hold with more outcome- and business-related measures.
Technology Executives Say Their Industry Will Lead Economic Recovery
Technology executives believe that the technology sector will recover from the current economic crisis substantially more quickly than the U.S. economy, with senior business leaders expecting improved revenue and profitability in 2010 and about half seeing an improved job picture, according to the results of a recent survey of hardware and software company executives conducted by KPMG LLP, the audit, tax, and advisory firm.
In the KPMG survey, two-thirds of these senior technology executives said they thought their industry would fully recover from the current economic crisis ahead of the overall U.S. economy. Silicon Valley-based executives were even more bullish - 77 percent expect the technology sector's recovery to outpace the U.S. recovery. About 43 percent of the technology leaders surveyed expect the U.S. economy to recover after 2010 while 39 percent predict the economy will recover by next year.
Eight out of 10 executives surveyed said they expect business conditions in the technology sector to improve in 2010, with 78 percent expecting stronger revenue and 72 percent expecting improved profitability.
The KPMG survey asked the executives to indicate if their strategic focus was on cost cutting or investing for long-term growth. The results show that most technology executives are focused on building the business with 69 percent indicating they are placing emphasis on long-term growth versus 31 percent who said they are focused on cost cutting.
When asked how they responded to the economic downturn in the past year, the most frequently cited action was reducing headcount (68 percent). Only 14 percent of respondents said they are planning or considering further reductions in 2010. In fact, technology executives are fairly optimistic about the industry employment picture in 2010, as 49 percent expect it to be better.
The second most frequent action cited in response to the downturn was cutting capital expenses (60 percent said they already had done so and 28 percent are considering or planning cuts). When asked what else they would do to adjust to the downturn in 2010, 42 percent of executives said they were creating or modifying risk management plans and another 42 percent said they were looking at implementing IT solutions to reduce operating costs.
When asked to identify the top three triggers they think will spur an economic recovery, 42 percent of the technology executives cited improved business confidence, 41 percent said improved consumer confidence, and 32 percent said an improved job market. Increased consumer spending was fourth (30 percent) but was most frequently cited by the hardware technology company executives (39 percent).
The three triggers cited least frequently were effective regulation (6 percent), government stimulus spending (5 percent) and the government bailouts (4 percent).
When asked to identify the biggest challenges they currently face in dealing with the economic downturn, the executives most frequently said finding new sources of revenue (66 percent), managing costs and restoring business confidence (42 percent each), and adjusting to changing customer demand (37 percent).
State of Economy Leads to Increased Data Loss Risk for Large Companies
In its sixth annual study of outbound email and data loss prevention issues, Proofpoint, Inc., found that US companies are increasingly concerned about a growing number of data leaks caused by employee misuse of email, blogs, social networks, multimedia channels and even text messages.
As more US companies reported their business was impacted by the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information (34 percent, up from 23 percent in 2008), an increasing number say they employ staff to read or otherwise analyze the contents of outbound email (38 percent, up from 29 percent in 2008). The pain of data leakage has become so acute in 2009 that more US companies report they employ staff whose primary or exclusive job is to monitor the content of outbound email (33 percent, up from 15 percent in 2008).
In addition, companies are regularly ordered to produce employee email as part of legal actions, exposing its contents to outside scrutiny. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) of large US companies report that employee email was subpoenaed in the past 12 months.
When US companies investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information via email, blogs, multimedia channels, and/or social networks, the end result for the offending employee was generally very bad news:
- Email still the #1 threat: 43 percent of US companies surveyed had investigated an email-based leak of confidential or proprietary information in the past 12 months. Nearly a third of them, 31 percent, terminated an employee for violating email policies in the same period (up from 26 percent in 2008).
- Blogs breaches continue: 18 percent had investigated a data loss event via a blog or message board in the past 12 months. 17 percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies, while nearly nine percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation (both increases from 2008, 11 percent and six percent, respectively).
- Video exposure: Given the rapid adoption of video and audio media within the enterprise -- and the popularity of media sharing sites like YouTube -- it's no surprise that more US companies reported investigating exposure events across these channels (18 percent, up from 12 percent in 2008). As a result, 15 percent have disciplined an employee for violating multimedia sharing / posting policies in the past 12 months while eight percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation.
- Friends or foes?: Concerning social networks, US companies are also experiencing more exposure incidents involving sites like Facebook and LinkedIn as compared to 2008 (17 percent versus 12 percent). US companies are taking a much more forceful approach with offending employees -- eight percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation as compared to only four percent in 2008.
- Data loss in 140 characters or less: Even short message services like SMS texts and Twitter pose a risk. 13 percent of US companies investigated an exposure event involving mobile or Web-based short message services in the past 12 months.
As the global economic recession forced many US companies to downsize and reduce spending, the results of Proofpoint's survey show that those actions have often put them at greater risk for several reasons:
- 18 percent of US companies investigated a suspected leak or theft of confidential or proprietary information associated with an employee leaving the company (e.g., through voluntary or involuntary termination) in the past 12 months.
- 42 percent of respondents say that increasing numbers of layoffs at their organizations in the past 12 months have created an increased risk of data leakage. 47 percent of respondents report that layoffs of IT staff have negatively impacted their organization's ability to protect confidential, proprietary and sensitive information in the past 12 months.
- 50 percent of respondents say that budget constraints have negatively impacted their organization's ability to protect confidential, proprietary or sensitive information in the past 12 months.
More...
Elegantly Adaptive Service
Today's stressed customers are weary of inflexible, one-size-fits-all, bureaucratic service. They know adaptable service because they have witnessed it elsewhere. And, as their economic worries mount, their tolerance for rules-R-us rigidity plummets. Show them indifference toward their plight and you inviting them to exit forever along with their funds.
Full Article...
Coping with IT Pressure: Try Doing Less with Less
How much more can IT do with less before IT breaks? That's the question the current recession poses, as it comes on top of other strong pressures on tech staffers, such as dealing with global teams that extend working hours significantly, competition from lower-cost coworkers and contractors overseas, and emerging competition from the cloud.
Full Article...
Avoid Conflicting Call Center Objectives
Nobody purposely establishes call center objectives that are contradictory, but it's easy to do, given the many inter-related activities and processes in centers, and the nature of random call arrival and the behavior of queues. Here are some common pitfalls and tips for avoiding them.
Full Article...
Get Smarter with Knowledge Management
The bottom line in customer service is that consumers want answers. Old CRM methods, however, have been unable to adequately respond to that demand. In fact, despite annually increasing CRM investments, customer satisfaction, first-contact resolution rates, speed-to-answer, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) have continued to decline. Today's organizations can not only weather budget cuts, but overcome the limitations of traditional CRM solutions, improve service levels, and strengthen their competitive position. How? By harnessing the capabilities of "smart CRM" -- an intelligent integration of CRM and knowledge management (KM).
Full Article...
A Better Helpdesk
Your helpdesk and support technicians truly are your "Directors of First Impression," by which people judge your entire organization. If you can't fix my PC quickly or are rude and provide no status information on my problem, why should I think you can deliver on the expensive new application project? And yet so often we set up our helpdesk and support technicians for failure.
Full Article...
Service Strategy (ITIL Lifecycle Core Library)
by Majid Iqbal, Michael Nieves
A view of ITIL that aligns business and IT so that each brings out the best in the other. It ensures that every stage of the service lifecycle stays focused on the business case and relates to all the companion process elements that follow. Subsequent titles will link deliverables to meeting the business goals, requirements and service management principles described in this publication. Concepts and guidance in this publication include: * Service Management strategy and value planning * Linking business plans and directions to IT service strategy * Planning and implementing service strategy.
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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 highlights 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!
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.
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.
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