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SupportIndustry.com Webinar Series: The Perfect Agent: Tools and Technology for Coaching Your Support Team
Tuesday, 20 October, 3 PM (UK/Europe)
Wednesday, 21 October, 11:00am (Indian ST & Australian EDST)
Thursday, 10 December, 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET
How do you motivate people to deliver excellent performance, whether they are in the next cubicle or far away? Communications skills expert Rich Gallagher joins with Citrix Online to share the secrets to getting the best out of today's distributed support team. Topics this Webinar will cover include:
- The psychology of a typical agent
- Strength-based coaching techniques that create real performance change
- Managing performance problems from near and far
- Making your agents part of a team
- How technology can help improve remote support performance
Indian Tech Outsourcers Aim to Widen Contracts
Indian technology-outsourcing companies no longer just want to serve their clients' computing departments -- they want to be them. They are aggressively pursuing on-site work like managing companies' entire information-technology departments, networks and help desks. They are looking to run external data centers for customers -- a foothold that would help them expand into the hot new area of "cloud computing," where all of a company's critical software is hosted remotely. And they are trying to tie all of their services into end-to-end outsourcing packages for clients. How well the Indian firms manage to upgrade to this more sophisticated work in the next few years could determine whether India's $58.8 billion-a-year technology services industry -- a flagship of the nation's economic surge in the past decade -- will see even brighter days or become a back-office also-ran to more sophisticated tech companies in the West.
source: WSJ
Convergys lands $55 mln customer service contract
Convergys Corp. said Wednesday that it has landed a $55 million contract to handle customer service for Internet customers of a major telecom company. It will provide tier one, or basic, technical support to millions of Internet subscribers. Convergys also will survey consumers to gain insights to improve customer experience. It will dedicate 1,000 full-time employees in offshore centers to fulfill the contract.
Cisco and Salesforce Unite on Integrated Call Centers
Cisco and Salesforce.com are teaming up to sell a web-hosted call center package to small and medium-sized businesses. The duo's newly minted Customer Interaction Cloud hooks Cisco's call-processing technology into Salesforce's web-based customer relations management platform. Cisco is contributing its Unified Contact Center suite into the mix, for call-center functionality like intelligent contact routing and voice commands over the phone. The tech has been integrated into Salesforce's Service Cloud 2 platform for a customer care or support center offering that's hosted off in the wild blue yonder.
PRD Software Releases the Latest Version of HelpMaster Pro
PRD Software has announced the release of the next major version of its helpdesk / service desk solution, HelpMaster Pro v9.1. This new version has several major enhancements to the core functionality, including the ability for helpdesk technicians to belong to mutliple skill-groups within the system. This allows organizations to create more efficient helpdesk and service workflow by partitioning work requests into different service channels, and then designing workflow processes and automation around those channels.
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.
IT Sector to Help Drive Global Economic Recovery
Global IT research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) and Microsoft Corp. released the results of global research, finding that the information technology (IT) industry will create 5.8 million new jobs and more than 75,000 new businesses over the next four years. The expected growth rate for IT employment of 3 percent a year is more than three times the rate of growth of total employment and a strong indicator that investing in IT will contribute to economic recovery and growth.
The IDC study, commissioned by Microsoft, investigates the contribution of IT to gross domestic product (GDP), job creation in the IT industry, employment in the software sector, formation of new companies, local IT spending, and tax revenues in 52 countries, representing 98 percent of total worldwide IT spending. The research found that Microsoft and its ecosystem of local partners, vendors and service providers are a major catalyst of local economic growth and opportunity, during both the current economic difficulties and recovery.
Summary of Key Findings About the IT Industry
- IT spending is expected to grow at triple the rate of GDP growth in the 52 countries. Although forecasted growth of IT spending is muted since the advent of the global recession, it is pegged at 3.3 percent per year between now and the end of 2013.
- Global spending on IT will create 5.8 million new jobs between the end of 2009 and the end of 2013. The expected growth rate of 3 percent a year is more than three times as fast as the growth of total employment.
- Software drives IT growth. Spending on software is growing faster than spending on IT overall - 4.8 percent a year between 2008 and 2013, compared with 3.3 percent for all IT spending. During 2009, total IT employment in the 52 countries dropped a fraction of a percentage point, yet software-related employment grew 4 percent.
- The IT market will create more than 75,000 new businesses over the next four years. Most of the new companies will be small and locally owned organizations.
Additional Findings About the Software Industry
- The emerging countries on the list of 52 -- all countries excluding the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Western Europe -- will account for only 21 percent of IT spending in 2009 and 39 percent of IT-related employment. But, over the next four years, they will account for more than 50 percent of net new IT spending and 70 percent of new IT-related jobs.
- IDC estimates that cloud services could add $800 billion in net new business revenues between the end of 2009 and the end of 2013.
- IT spending provides revenues for more than 1.2 million companies selling or distributing hardware, software and services. Those companies, in turn, employ more than 13 million people. Another 22-plus million IT professionals work in IT-using organizations.
- Software accounts for a modest slice of overall IT spending but has a disproportionately positive impact on local economies. Software drives activity in the services and distribution sectors, as well as in organizations using IT, so although worldwide spending on packaged software will be only 21 percent of total IT spending in 2009, 51 percent of employment in IT will be software-related.
- The employees and companies in these 52 countries will pay nearly $1.2 trillion in taxes in 2009. In the next four years, there will be nearly $366 billion in net new tax revenues.
More...
Requesting Funding in Tough Economic Times
In these tough economic times how can CIOs get the budget necessary to support key initiatives and application plans. The following steps from Janco & Associates are how to approach a presentation seeking to gain management support for the required funding.
- Define the scope, objectives, and requirement - It is not enough to have an objective of getting more funding or gaining executive support. Define exactly how much funding is needed, or exactly what form the executive support should take.
- Verify expectations - Define what management's expectations for the meeting are.
- Focus on immediate term business impact - It makes more sense to get the commitment for resources to achieve a preliminary objective than to demand the resources for an entire new program and get nothing.
- Anticipate objections - Realize that the number one objection is the cost, and prepare accordingly. Let the results of the business impact analysis (BIA) justify the "investment" (not "cost").
- Prepare a competitive analysis - Executives care what their competition is doing. Annual benchmark studies and surveys are good sources of information on the investments in IT being made by industry, by size of organization, etc.
- Prepare examples of what has happened to others - Remind the executives of the regulations that affect their business, and the impact of not achieving them.
- Define the Risk/Reward - Research and develop the request's return on investment.
- Get buy-in for key decision makers before you meet to ask for a decision - The effort will have greater success if key decision makers and other departments within the organization support the program. The power of a presentation supported by key executives, marketing, IT security, physical security, human resources, facilities, and risk management is highly significant.
Business Productivity and Cost Reduction Top Concern for IT Executives
CIOs, CTOs, and senior IT executives cite business productivity and cost reduction as their top business concern, according to the 2009 IT Industry Trend Survey, commissioned by the Society for Information Management (SIM, www.simnet.org).
IT and business alignment, the number-one concern in 2008, fell to number-two on the survey, which annually provides important benchmark data in areas including spending, salaries, job scope of IT professionals, and technical/business trends.
Rounding out the top 10 concerns in SIM's annual survey, the list includes:
3.) Business agility and speed to market
4.) Business process re-engineering
5.) IT cost reduction
6.) IT reliability and efficiency
7.) IT strategic planning
8.) Revenue generating IT innovations
9.) Security and privacy
10.) CIO leadership role
Respondents indicated the number-one application/technology of importance is Business Intelligence. It was followed by server virtualization, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer/corporate portals, enterprise application integration/management (EAI/EAM), and continuity planning/disaster recovery.
The Impact of Conflict Management Training on Customer Service Delivery
By Rosanne D'Ausilio, Ph.D.
The Impact of Conflict Management Training on Customer Service Delivery. This was the title of my case study in partial fulfillment of my doctoral degree which I completed in 1996. More on this in a moment. Here it is 13 years later. In a recent survey where training participants were asked what types of courses would greatly increase their effectiveness at work, 53% of respondents chose dealing with conflict or difficult people.
Full Article...
Fresh Service Strategies
Finding new ways to make connections with consumers is at the very heart of today's innovative customer service strategies. Now that many companies have cut staffing levels to the bone, many of the values that drive customer loyalty are being abandoned. As this becomes more apparent, however, some business owners are realizing the only way to survive in this market is to maintain their current customers. So how should you invest in customer service? Take cues from the service leaders.
Full Article...
Self-service Software Demands a Strong Knowledge Base
There is nothing like a global recession to get organizations interested in self-service technology. Yet self service requires a knowledge base, and launching a knowledge base to extract full value from customer communication channels like IVR, chat and email response requires a careful approach.
Full Article...
Take Control of Your Customer Service
Quality customer service is your competitive edge. Everyone can have similar products or services, but what they can't replicate is your people, how they treat your customers, and how your customers feel when they are doing business with you. The best way to "wow" your customers is to take care of the people who take care of your customers. Businesses have to care about their people both internally and externally. When the people who work for you feel valued, they will make the customer feel valued. This builds customer loyalty.
Full Article...
Deloitte Technology Debate: Optimize To Reduce Costs Or Enable Business Value
Ask a dozen people what information technology (IT) optimization means and expect to get a dozen different answers, especially when you focus on what the desired objective should be. To some, it's all about minimizing costs. Others care most about improving capabilities and generating more value for their business. So, which is it?
Full Article...
Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges
by Andrew McAfee
Web 2.0 is the portion of the Internet that's interactively produced by many people; it includes Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and prediction markets. In just a few years, Web 2.0 communities have demonstrated astonishing levels of innovation, knowledge accumulation, collaboration, and collective intelligence.
Now, leading organizations are bringing the Web's novel tools and philosophies inside, creating Enterprise 2.0. In this book, Andrew McAfee shows how they're doing this, and why it's benefiting them. Enterprise 2.0 makes clear that the new technologies are good for much more than just socializing-when properly applied, they help businesses solve pressing problems, capture dispersed and fast-changing knowledge, highlight and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas, and harness the wisdom of crowds.
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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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