| [View Past Issues] | October 27, 2009 |
Featured Link
Analyst/Bytes & Statistics
In Other News
Required Reading
Our News
About Us
The Perfect Agent: Tools and Technology for Coaching Your Support Team
Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 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 support performance
Brewin Dolphin Deploys Impact 360 Recording Software
Verint Systems Inc. announced that Brewin Dolphin Ltd., one of the UK's largest independent private client investment managers, has implemented the next-generation Impact 360 Recording software from Verint Witness Actionable Solutions. Impact 360 Recording is designed to offer the highest levels of resilience, supporting Brewin Dolphin's multi-site contact center and back-office operations in adhering to the latest UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) compliance recording guidelines. In selecting the technology, a key requirement for the company was the ability to record all customer-related calls from any handset across the organization -- front or back-office -- in order to meet the management information demands of the FSA’'s Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) initiative.
Dell, Salesforce Partner In Online CRM
Dell launched system-integration services for small and medium-sized businesses that want to manage salesforce and customer relations through Salesforce.com. Dell offers the services in partnership with Salesforce.com. Dell is also reselling Salesforce.com's online service on a subscription basis starting at $9 per user per month. A professional edition of Salesforce.com is also available for an unlimited number of users that include everything in the group edition, plus reports and analytics, custom dashboard, sales forecasting and mobile access.
Harris Corporation Awarded Potential $7.5 Million Technical Support Contract for U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command
Harris Corporation, an international communications and information technology company, has been awarded a potential three-year, $7.5 million contract to provide technical and support services -- including information assurance, development testing, configuration management and training -- for the U. S. Air Force Air Mobility Command's (AMC) command and control systems.
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.
CEOs Report Competitive Environments Pose Largest External Challenge to Growth
Frost & Sullivan announced the results of its third annual CEO Survey, an evaluation of the thoughts and strategies of global industry leaders. Consistent with last year's results, CEOs continue to report that growth is their top objective (60% of respondents). Vision strategy and innovation round out the top three growth objectives; conversely, employee satisfaction and shareholder satisfaction are the lowest growth objectives rated.
CEOs have varied ideas on how to achieve this coveted growth. The largest proportion of CEOs (45%) report the number one projected growth strategy is increasing sales. Rounding out the top three projected strategies are strategic partnering (40%) and product development (34%). Additionally, customer strategies and geographic expansion have also been utilized by nearly one third of CEOs (both 29%). For its second consecutive year, the least successful growth strategy appears to be growth outsourcing (5%).
However, CEOs realize the need for a competent, experienced management team in place to carry out growth strategies. In the survey, slightly more CEOs report having a dedicated team for growth strategy compared to last year's results (up 2 percentage points to 40%).
Economic downturns or a slowing economy often provide the most punishing environments in which to pursue growth strategies. Likely due to the economic recession, Frost & Sullivan finds that CEOs appear to be less confident in their organizations' ability to conduct core growth strategies. The largest decline was noted in launching new products (31%), down 22 points from 2008.
As a final point, given this year's economic climate, the most prominent external challenge to CEOs is the economic recession (65%), up 17 percentage points from 2008. All other external challenges appear to have become afterthoughts – becoming less important in just a short period of time.
More...
The State of US Workforce Technology Adoption
A new Forrester Research Inc. Workforce Technographics survey, designed to demonstrate the technology adoption habits of information workers (iWorkers), shows that while email and desktop computers are ubiquitous, few other applications or devices are and that more experienced employees -- not Generation Y -- are the leading users of social technology on the job.
Forrester surveyed respondents on workplace adoption of technologies such as devices -- PCs and laptops -- productivity tools, mobility, collaboration software, intranet portals, and Web 2.0 technologies. Highlights include:
Devices. The desktop still dominates the workplace. Three out of four iWorkers use a desktop, and 63 percent of desktop users spend four or more hours per day on it. However, more than one-third of respondents use more than one device at least weekly.
Productivity tools. Email, word processing, and spreadsheets are the top three productivity tools used by iWorkers, but even the use of those applications fluctuates greatly. Email is used by 57 percent of iWorkers hourly. However, word processing and spreadsheets are not used as frequently -- only 16 percent and 14 percent, respectively, of iWorkers use these applications every hour.
Mobility. Only one in 10 iWorkers has a smartphone for work, but almost one in three iWorkers agree that they use a personal mobile phone for work purposes. There is demand among iWorkers for smartphones.
Collaboration. With collaboration tools going widely untapped by companies -- only one in four iWorkers use Web conferencing and one in five use team sites -- email remains the de facto collaboration tool for most professionals, with an 87 percent adoption rate.
Intranet portals. Seventy percent of all iWorkers visit the employee portal and 43 percent do so at least daily. Search is the most commonly used resource on the portal, followed by information related to performance reviews and personal goals.
Web 2.0 technologies. Surprise -- Gen Y is not leading business adoption of social technologies. Even though 59 percent of these 18-to-29-year-old professionals use social technologies at home, only 14 percent use them in the workplace -- the same percentage as Gen X employees, ages 30 to 43. Instead of social technologies, mobile texting is Gen Y's communication method of choice: 51 percent are using their personal mobile for texting at work.
Facebook Costs Companies 1.5 Percent of Total Productivity
An independent study by Nucleus Research finds that companies that allow access to Facebook lose an average of 1.5 percent in total employee productivity. Key findings of the study of 237 employees concluded:
- Nearly half of employees in the study and 77 percent of those with an account use Facebook during work hours
- Some employees use Facebook as much as 2 hours per day while
at work - One in 33 employees use Facebook exclusively while at work
Of those using Facebook at work, 87 percent could not define a clear business reason for accessing the site. Further, the analysis reveals potential security concerns through email, as most organizations do not monitor and manage Facebook as closely as email. This creates an opportunity for Facebook users to circumvent controls and violate corporate communications policies.
The Nucleus analysis concludes that companies should evaluate their Facebook policy and the cost to the organization in allowing access to Facebook, as today blocking Facebook may actually result in a 1.5 percent gain in productivity.
Alternative IT
Something has changed in the attitudes of CIOs, something that starts with cloud computing but ripples beyond, and it's happened just over the past year or so. CIOs are increasingly open to new, alternative IT operating models, which also could mean new vendor relationships. A grinding recession, paired with new choices in terms of online software, mobile computing, outsourcing, open source, and more, opens the door to this change.
Full Article...
Call Recording: It's Not Just For Compliance Anymore
Gone are the days where call recording was a necessary and expensive evil, performed minimally if possible for compliance reasons and just to keep the contact center agents on their toes. Now more organizations see recording as heaven-sent means to improve customer satisfaction and revenues and boost productivity. They are also seeking these tools to slice expenses like average handle times and new customer acquisition costs, which are five to 10 times the price tags of retaining existing buyers.
Full Article...
Qualifying Outbound Leads: Four Questions Your Agents Should Use
Outbound business-to-business contact center sales can be challenging at best, especially during tough economic times. One of the keys to success is rigorously qualifying prospects before you move them through the sales process. Too often, though, agents fall into the trap of trying to "sell" from the moment they get a prospect on the phone. They are wasting time and resources, though, unless the prospective client is ready, willing and able to make a decision. This article presents four critical questions your agents should ask early in a call to qualify prospects and close more new business.
Full Article...
Home Agents: How the Remote Model Reduces Expenses
When you think of cost savings for locating call center agents at home, certain factors come to mind, including office space, parking space, furniture, and utilities. These hard costs can equal at least $2,000 per year in savings per agent. But what if the actual cost savings were four or five times that amount? While the contact center market is trending more in the direction of at-home agents and more companies are embracing this for the inherent cost savings, how can we be sure that a remote workforce will reduce business expenses? This introduces a compelling reason to explore at-home agents further.
Full Article...
5 Ways Customer Experience Analytics Solutions Can Help You There is a growing problem in the information marketplace where enterprises have a lot of data, but they lack the ability to extract the right information from this data in order to make smart, timely decisions. A new breed of tools has emerged to address this issue. Instead of focusing on data collected from various systems, Customer Experience Analytics (CEA) solutions focus on the customer. These new solutions go beyond the capabilities of traditional BI tools and allow companies to understand the real motivations of their customers, enabling them to make more informed and timely business decisions. Instead of gathering data and then trying to figure out what to look for, CEA tools aggregate behavior patterns and present them to the analyst in a visual way.
Full Article...
Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value
by Richard Hunter, George Westerman
In The Real Business of IT, Richard Hunter and George Westerman reveal that the cost mind-set stems from IT leaders' inability to communicate about the business value they create-so CIOs get stuck discussing budgets rather than their contributions to the organization.
The authors explain how IT leaders can combat this mind-set by first using information technology to generate three forms of value important to leaders throughout the organization:
- Value for money when your IT department operates efficiently and effectively
- An investment in business performance evidenced when IT helps divisions, units, and departments boost profitability
- Personal value of CIOs as leaders whose contributions to their enterprise go well beyond their area of specialization
SupportIndustry.com is Now on Twitter
Check us out and follow us for regular updates on the service and support industry!
http://www.twitter.com/supportindustry
SupportIndustry.com is Now Mobile!
Get the latest service and support news on your mobile device! Our mobile site is ready for you to visit via your favorite mobile device, or you can view it on your personal computer. Our mobile site is optimized to run with Windows Mobile software.
Check out http://www.supportindustry.com/mobile today!
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
Log-on to the member's only page and you can to change newsletter formats, remove yourself from the list, or update your member profile.
Editorial suggestions, feedback & comments:
Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@supportindustry.com
Advertising Information:
adinfo@supportindustry.com
Thank you for reading SupportIndustry.com's weekly newsletter!
