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White Paper: Communications Skills for Remote Support
Today's support transaction is a little more like meeting someone for lunch than reading scripts over a telephone, and like a powerful close-up mirror, these transactions can magnify both the strengths and weaknesses of your interpersonal skills and the quality of your support delivery. At an organizational level, these skills can in turn have a tremendous influence on your bottom line.
The good news is that specific, procedural techniques can dramatically change the effectiveness of your remote support agents, and give them the confidence to handle any support situation live on a customer's own computer.
This white paper walks you through four specific steps that will help supercharge your customer relationships in an era of remote support.
Dell to Buy Perot Systems for $3.9 Billion
Dell Inc. agreed to buy information-technology service provider Perot Systems Corp., long seen as a potential Dell target, for $3.9 billion as the world's No. 2 computer seller looks to expand on core personal-computer business. The acquisition creates a company with $8 billion in services revenue as Dell seeks to better position itself among more diversified rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and International Business Machines that already have substantial services units. Dell was widely expected to acquire an information-technology services company following H-P's purchase of Electronic Data Systems in 2008. In recent years, companies that supply computers and other hardware have been combining those products with services--such as providing customer support or managing data centers and computer networks--which offer new growth areas and recurring revenue streams.
source: WSJ
Global Media Company Selects Sitel to Provide Customer Care
Sitel, a global business process outsourcing (BPO) provider, announced that a premier global media company has selected Sitel to provide customer care support. Sitel's associates will handle in-bound calls from the media company's subscribers, processing address changes, vacation delivery suspensions, subscription renewals and new accounts. Approximately 200 Sitel associates in the U.S. and the Philippines will provide
customer care support.
IBM Unveils New Business Analytics Software for Midsized Clients
As part of IBM's ongoing investment in business analytics, IBM launched IBM Cognos Express, an all-in-one business intelligence and planning solution specifically designed and priced for midsized clients. Deployed in just a matter of hours, the new solution offers clients a low-cost and low-risk, integrated approach to planning, analyzing and reporting performance, identifying trends, and ultimately helping businesses make smarter business decisions. The new solution also offers a centralized, Web-based console that manages all administrative aspects of installation, deployment and ongoing management, minimizing the need for IT staff assistance.
CA to Acquire NetQoS for $200 million
CA announced plans to acquire NetQoS for $200 million, adding application-aware network and systems management products to the software maker's broad enterprise IT management portfolio. CA executives say the pending acquisition offers little overlap by way of products and will help CA products diagnose the root cause of application errors within the network and systems infrastructure. The added technology will also boost CA's efforts to manage advanced infrastructures that feature virtual systems and cloud computing environments, the vendor says.
The 10 *Worst* Practices for Technical Support and How to Overcome Them
This white paper explores 10 of the "worst practices" that are common to customer support operations. Each of these feature a section discussing how these worst practices can creep in to your contact center, and new ways in which to deal with them. We touch on how to eliminate well-intentioned management blunders that can hurt your performance from within, together with good and bad uses of support technology. Taken together, the guidelines in this report represent a summary of a new kind of best practices for support.
Dimension Data Unveils Results of Annual Contact Center Survey
Dimension Data, a $4.5 billion IT services and solutions provider, announced the findings from its 2009 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report, an annual survey of more than 550 contact centers in 36 countries across five continents. Among the numerous findings, the results reveal that contact centers are focused on: serving as key value centers for their overall business; finding new ways to drive satisfaction among existing customers; and implementing processes and systems to better identify sales opportunities during inbound calls.
"Rising in importance this year, more than 20% of respondents named customer retention as the number one trend affecting their contact centers," said Martin Dove, global managing director for Customer Interactive Solutions, Dimension Data. "It's widely accepted that it is seven to eight times more costly to win a new customer than retain an existing one. For this reason, companies are waking up and focusing their energies and resources on delivering better service to the customers they already have."
The report also unveiled clear signs that companies are looking at new ways to place the customer at the center of their business. According to Dove, "Businesses are offering more options to customers to improve overall service levels. For example, this year, we're seeing more contact centers - a rise of 10% to almost 70% - focus on how to streamline and simplify processes, and also offer more self service options, for their customers' convenience."
Changes in customer behavior are also prompting contact centers to focus on the new ways people prefer to communicate with them. "Fifty-two percent of consumers between the ages of 16 and 34 are using the Internet as their first port of call. As younger consumers change the way they interact with businesses, and in light of the global rise in popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, companies need to find ways to offer these customers more communication choices, or face losing them," Dove said.
According to the report, more companies are recognizing the key role that the contact center can play in creating overall value for the business. However, even as they become core value drivers, contact centers continue to remain focused on driving costs down, with 66% of centers stating they have a strategy in place to cut the costs of serving customers, a year-over-year increase of 9.4%.
For example, the number of contact centers telling their customers about the benefits of using lower-cost methods of communication, such as the Web and self service, has doubled to 36% this year. Dimension Data believes this is an encouraging sign that companies are evolving. However, this will only benefit the business if the lower cost options meet customer expectations.
U.S. Online Community Software Market Doubled in 2008: Traditional Corporate Culture Acts As Larger Barrier To Adoption Than Recession
Now that consumer social networks have hit the mainstream, people are demanding similar applications in the workplace that provide easy-to-use and many-to-many personalized online experiences for creating, publishing, locating, and sharing content internally and externally with colleagues, customers, and partners. If these applications are not provided by an organization, IDC observes that employees are bringing them in through their own initiatives. One of the best ways to secure social networking activities is for the organization to provide social software for employees to use. This emerging business need has created a suddenly crowded market of online community software providers aiming to make the business world a more social place.
IDC forecasts that the U.S. online community software market will grow from $278.4 million in 2008 to $1.6 billion in 2013 at a compound annual growth rate of 41.8%. While the U.S. online community software market was not immune to the recession, dominant vendors in this space reported double-digit growth rates in 2008 and higher-than-expected growth in the first half of 2009. Overall, the U.S. online community software market doubled in revenue from $135.3 million in 2007 to $278.4 million in 2008 based on the promise of online community software to help organizations deepen relationships with customers and innovate at much faster speeds.
The overall growth rate for U.S. online community software did not meet expectations for 2008 due to the tough economy and drastic cuts in marketing budgets. However, IDC expects a resurgence of growth in 2010 as the economy recovers, more traditional enterprise players enter this market, and methods for measuring return on investment become more standardized. Still, gaps in adoption will remain based on the failure among some organizations to adjust to these more transparent ways of operating, and some community initiatives will fail due to the lack of understanding about the human capital investments required by the community management model.
Expected Job Reductions in IT Begin to Taper Off
In the midst of a slowly developing trend toward recovery in the information technology arena, data from the latest CDW IT Monitor indicates the first glimmer of good news about hiring. While industry sentiment falls short of promising new hires, the number of large companies planning on reducing IT staff continues to fall rapidly.
According to the August CDW IT Monitor, only 10 percent of large companies say they may be reducing IT staff in the next six months, down from 17 percent in February. In addition, the number of medium-size businesses planning to reduce staff fell to seven percent, down from nine percent in April. For the first time since December 2008, the overall IT Monitor score, an indicator of the direction, momentum and mindset of the U.S. IT industry, climbed one point registering a reading of 70.
The tapering of IT job reductions is also consistent with higher expectations of improved performance. According to the IT Monitor, 63 percent of large businesses expect better performance in the next six months compared to 43 percent in February. Similarly, 56 percent of medium-size businesses and 53 percent of small businesses also anticipate better performance in the next six months. Both sectors registered 47 percent in February.
More...
3 Strategies for Ensuring Advanced Customer Service
The adage about how much less it costs to keep the customer you have, instead of finding a new one, is even truer in a difficult economy. Indeed, if the cost ratio between acquiring new customers and retaining old ones was 10:1, today it's probably more like 100:1, given the relative scarcity of customers with available spend. Therefore, organizations want to do everything they can to retain their existing customers. And that raises an interesting question: Can the service department do more to help? This article presents three key strategies for developing a proactive service approach.
Full Article...
10 Best Places for Tech Jobs
It's a recession, so few things are booming and no city is exactly thriving. But within the tech industry, some cities clearly have more job opportunities than others. Although tech employment overall has suffered along with the rest of the economy, there's been variance: High-tech manufacturing jobs have been shed more rapidly, while IT service jobs--in engineering and in software services, for instance--have fared better. This article takes a look at 10 cities that seem to have better opportunities for tech workers right now.
Full Article...
Why CEOs Must Tie CIO Pay To Customers And Growth
Last year, CIO Michael Harte earned $2.8 million at Commonwealth Bank. This year, 40% of his total compensation -- based on $2.8 million, that would be $1.12 million -- will be tied to customer satisfaction. I think a whole lot more CIOs should pursue similar pay packages that help "focus the mind on a daily basis" because forward-looking CEOs will soon be seeking to clarify the priorities of their chief information officers away from technology operations and management and toward customer-centric growth, performance, and excellence.
Full Article...
Boost Customer Satisfaction, Now
Yes, the economy is in the tank and companies of all sizes are reducing or, in some cases, eliminating "nice to have" activities and expenditures. But customer satisfaction programs and solutions should not be lumped into this category. Now is not the time to dial back on ensuring positive customer experiences. There are several easy steps that all vendors should take in order to cost-effectively enhance customer satisfaction and grow revenues -- especially in a down economy.
Full Article...
Using the Service Desk as a Single Point of Contact
In today's economy, IT needs to constantly look for opportunities to provide value to the organization. As organizations and their stakeholders try to adapt to times of rapid change, they must streamline how staff can request information and services. IT organizations that have matured their service desk capabilities may have an opportunity to provide much needed communication and workflow capabilities to the organization as a whole so employees have a single point of contact for all their needs.
Full Article...
Top CIO Salaries: Eastern U.S.
Curious about how much your boss takes home? Technology staffing firm KForce gathered data on IT salaries from their consultants in various cities across the U.S. Here's what they estimate as the going rate for new hires in the eastern region of the U.S.
Full Article...
Selling to the C-Suite: What Every Executive Wants You to Know About Successfully Selling to the Top
by Nicholas A.C. Read, Dr. Stephen J. Bistritz
It's the goal of every salesperson: getting access to senior client executives -- the C-Level decision makers responsible for approving top-dollar deals. Selling to the C-Suite is the first book that reveals how to land those career-making sales in the words of CEOs themselves!
With 60 years of combined experience selling to corporations around the world, Nicholas A.C. Read and Stephen J. Bistritz , Ed.D., conducted in-depth interviews with executive- level decision makers of more than 500 organizations. One thing they learned might surprise you: leaders at the highest corporate levels don't avoid sales pitches; in fact, they welcome them -- provided the salesperson approaches them the right way. Inside this invaluable book, CEOs reveal exactly which sales techniques they find most effective, as well as those you should avoid.
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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.
Check it out today
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