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Last Chance! Participate in the Trends in Customer Relationship Management Survey
We need your input! CRMindustry.com is conducting a benchmark study on the current state of and future direction of customer relationship management (CRM) in organizations today. The questions were designed to capture important information related to budgets, vendors, in-house vs. hosted solutions, the impact of CRM on the organization and more. We recognize your time is valuable so we have kept the survey questions quick and concise. In addition, as a participant, you will receive a complimentary copy of the executive summary. You can start the Trends in CRM survey at the following link:
http://www.customersat3.com/TakeSurvey.asp?si=hYAMT%2Fqam0s%3D
Your response is requested by October 24, 2007.

AOL to cut global work force by 20 pct
AOL is cutting its global work force by an additional 2,000 jobs as it continues a transition from Internet access provider to online advertising company. The elimination of 20 percent of its work force comes on top of 5,000 positions cut last fall, after AOL said it would try to boost traffic to its ad-supported Web sites by giving away AOL.com e-mail accounts, software and other features once reserved for paying subscribers. The cuts affect about 1,200 positions in the United States, including 750 in northern Virginia, which has long been AOL's headquarters. AOL recently announced it was moving its headquarters to New York to be closer to the media advertising industry. Last year's reductions were mostly in customer-service and marketing personnel as AOL opted to stop producing and distributing its famous trial discs aimed to luring new customers to its Internet access subscriptions. The latest cuts were expected to affect employees across the board.

Aspect Software Announces OpenSpan Integration for PerformanceEdge Quality Management Application
Aspect Software, Inc., a company focused solely on the contact center, and OpenSpan, enabler of the new enterprise desktop, announced the general availability of the OpenSpan integration with the company’s PerformanceEdge™ quality management application. The integration with OpenSpan allows Aspect Software to extend Aspect® Quality Management™ functionality -- such as screen capture and call tagging – to record all back-office interactions with applications across the enterprise, helping companies gain insight into overall agent performance and create actionable plans to enhance productivity, performance and the customer experience.

Bomgar Announces the Availability of Bomgar 10.0
Bomgar Corporation announced the availability of Bomgar 10.0, an enterprise-grade version of its remote support software. Feature additions being announced make Bomgar an ideal software solution for organizations addressing a variety of remote users, regardless of location, language or operating platform. Additionally, with this release, Bomgar provides enterprises of all sizes with the resources required to identify and resolve costly technology and business issues that cycle through the help desk.

Service-now.com Announces Discovery to Empower IT and Give Visibility to the Business
Service-now.com, an On Demand IT service management vendor, has announced the availability of Discovery technology. The ability to automatically discover network attached assets and build relationships between applications and infrastructure components will fundamentally change the way IT operations manage systems and applications. Service-now.com provides service visibility to the business, improves the end user experience and provides IT with the ability to more effectively manage disparate but connected activities across organizational silos, groups and time zones.

Free Report: Service Management Success

Help desk demands continue to grow, often without growth in IT staffing. While it is possible to streamline your help desk process using on-demand solutions, certain considerations need to be addressed before rolling out any solutions.

Questions such as how do you create a roadmap, how can Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) help, and what service management solutions work best are addressed
in this free report, Service Management Success
by AMI Partners.

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Survey Quantifies Huge Costs, Workflow Disruptions and Frustrations Caused by Fragmented Communications
The largest-ever survey of enterprise and contact center employees and their workflows reveals the silent but staggering true costs of fragmented communications: Enterprises of 1,000 persons could lose nearly $13 million a year in lost productivity and avoidable expenses. That's just one of many startling results from a recent, landmark in-depth poll of 517 communications end-users across North America and Europe conducted by independent Insignia Research and commissioned by Siemens Communications, Inc.

The survey report is the first to fully quantify the costs of the status quo -- including workflow disruptions, added costs and associated frustrations to enterprises lacking unified communications. It explores pain points at the individual, team and enterprise levels in terms of time and impact on serving customers as well as the frustration and anxiety to users and their teams. A solid majority of the respondents (62%) identified themselves as being in customer service and sales roles. The survey asked very specific questions about experiences with existing communication systems while involved in customer-facing and time-critical processes.

Highlights of the survey include:

-- Ninety-four percent of respondents reported waiting an average of 5.3 hours per week for information from others to complete tasks. In 1,000-employee enterprises, this can translate to more than $9 million yearly in lost productivity based on a $37 weighted hourly wage. Taking a process view of this nearly universal pain point, the negative impact of 5.3-hour delays in customer-facing activities has larger implications on customer sales, service and revenue realization.

-- Respondents reported an average productivity loss of 7.8 hours a month at offsite locations because they lack the communication tools they have in their main office. Nearly a full day each month is lost because they are not properly equipped with effective, remotely-accessible, collaborative communications systems. As workers continue to become increasingly mobile, the net effect of this may become more dramatic. Fully weighted, in a 1,000-person enterprise, these costs can exceed $3 million a year.

-- Enterprises are wasting at least $3,400 per person each year in unnecessary business travel expenses because of ineffective or non-existent collaboration with existing communications systems. Managers are forced to synchronize teams through expensive internal meetings requiring travel. In a 1,000-person enterprise, these costs can top $3.4 million a year.

More....

Five Major Trends Will Force IT Organizations to Change the Way They Support Workers
Five major discontinuities are combining and will force IT organizations to change long-standing practices for procuring and managing IT, according to Gartner, Inc. The intensity of these trends will grow through 2011, according to Gartner, Inc.

The five discontinuities include - Web 2.0, software as a service (SaaS), global-class computing, the consumerization of IT and open-source software. SaaS is already empowering business units to act independently of corporate IT strategies. Global-class systems, built on tera-architectures (as in Google Apps), threaten to upset the careful balance of power between IBM and Microsoft in messaging, and more importantly, they introduce entirely new ways to implement and scale applications. “Consumerization” and users’ clamor for IT organizations to be as responsive as Internet vendors are giving many IT departments headaches. Web 2.0 communities are bonding people in ways many people do not fully understand. Community members are doing business in ways that most enterprises had never even considered as they laid out their communications strategies. Open source is a hidden “secret” that enables many elements of the other four discontinuities to develop.

Gartner recommends five actions that can help IT managers take advantage of, rather than just react to, these five trends.

• Question Core Assumptions about the Role of the IT Organization — Once upon a time, it was the only source of IT. Now that users can often buy “what they need” from the Web, business executives must re-evaluate IT-related operating principles, guidelines, policies, practices and governance.

• Experiment with Free-form Environments — Create free-form searchable “personal Web pages” for users, along with folksonomies, tag clouds, navigation by tag or type of user, feeds, blogs and “wikis”. Companies need to provide free-form, open environments to facilitate productive social interactions and to allow patterns of behavior, interaction with the rest of the business ecosystem and new business models (and opportunities) to emerge and evolve over time.

• Help Users Innovate — Innovation speeds economic development. IT managers should apply this general rule to the enterprise by helping selected users interact in an open environment and thereby innovate. Allow them to exploit Web-based tools and share their experiences with other users.

• Segment Users — The IT organization needs to stop providing the same support to everyone. One size does not fit all. IT managers should segment users based on difference in roles, responsibilities, and information and application access requirements. The IT organization can increase workers’ effectiveness by giving them support that better fits their individual needs.

• Stop Trying to Provide Everything — The IT organization should admit that it can no longer compete with the Web in providing many personal and social tools. The IT organization should define what it is really good at, and for other activities, play the role of advisor and facilitator. It should no longer assume responsibility for supporting and managing all IT systems that workers use. Users must take personal responsibility for experimenting with new software and communities.

More...

Contact Center 'Empathy and Advocacy' Standards are Falling According to New European Consumer Research
Aspect Software, Inc., a company focused on the contact center, and Leo J. Shapiro and Associates, a market research company, announced the results of the 2007 Aspect Contact Center Satisfaction Index - Europe, the first and only published independent survey of consumer experience versus expectations of contact centre interactions in Europe. As the balance of power continues to shift from businesses to consumers, the Aspect Index - Europe study provides practical, objective insight into consumer attitudes and behaviors that organizations can use to close the gap between consumer expectations and experiences.

The 2007 Aspect Index – Europe surveyed more than 1,250 consumers in six European countries (the UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy and Spain).

The European study reveals that customer satisfaction with contact center-delivered service fell between 2006 and 2007. European consumers rated satisfaction with their last contact center interaction as an E grade (64 percent). This compares with 67 percent, a D grade in 2006.

Among the countries surveyed, British, Italian, French and Spanish consumers all awarded contact centers an overall satisfaction grade of E (scores fell between 61 and 62 percent). Dutch consumer ratings were slightly higher at 65 percent (D grade). While German consumers were the happiest in Europe, rating their last interaction 72 percent out of 100, a C grade on the Aspect Index - Europe.

European consumers were particularly critical of contact center Empathy and Advocacy* skills - rating their last interaction with a 65 percent score, 5 percent lower than in 2006. In three key Empathy and Advocacy areas highlighted previously as being important to European consumers - “Knowledgeable and Informed”, “Professional” and “Patient”, European consumers rated contact center performance 5 to 6 percent lower in 2007 than in 2006. In addition:

28 percent of consumers in Europe said that their last contact center interaction fell short of their expectations compared with 22 percent in 2006.

Consumers in the Netherlands have the highest expectations of contact center-delivered service at 6.9 out of 9 in 2007, and French consumers the lowest at only 5.9 out of 9.

On average, 2.7 interactions are required with a European contact center in order to resolve a consumer query. Additionally, European consumers wait an average of 4.5 minutes when trying to reach a person within the contact center.

44 percent of interactions with communications companies fell short of European consumer expectations compared to only 20 percent of retail company interactions and 21 percent of financial company interactions (35 percent, 17 percent and 16 percent respectively in 2006).

The 2007 Aspect Index – Europe study examined the impact of good and bad customer experiences on future business, finding that one third of European consumers who were ‘satisfied’ with their last interaction would conduct more business with that company; with 8 percent of these saying they will do much more business. Conversely, nearly half of consumers who were ‘unsatisfied’ claimed they will conduct less business; half of these saying they will do much less business.

Two-fifths of European consumers that were asked to repeat information after being transferred from an automated system to a live agent said they will conduct less business with a company; and, overall, 20 percent European consumers said they were “likely to switch companies based on their latest (actual) interaction”.

More...

CIO Balancing Act: Keeping IT on the Forefront of Creating Value
As companies look for ways to maintain a competitive edge in new markets, CIOs are playing a more central leadership role, taking on increasing responsibility for corporate strategy and other duties outside of core technology. Even so, CIOs are still expected to ensure the quality and performance of the IT organization. How can CIOs balance these priorities --delivering technology that improves business performance while helping to drive competitive growth? To answer that question, Knowledge@Wharton spoke with Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner Executive Programs.
Full Article...

Knowledge Management: 5 Big Companies That Got It Right
American companies will spend $73 billion on knowledge management software this year and spending on content, search, portal, and collaboration technologies is expected to increase 16% in 2008, according to a recently-released report from AMR Research. Knowledge management systems, which facilitate the aggregation and dissemination of a company's collective intelligence, provide numerous benefits, including enabling innovation and improving process efficiency. But successfully implementing these systems can be a challenge. This article showcases 5 companies who got it right.
Full Article...

When It Comes To Software Licenses, The Only Way To Protect Your Company Is To Be Proactive
Software publishers -- and the trade groups that represent them--are increasingly targeting clients, alleging violations of software licenses and copyright laws. At the same time, new licensing models and hardware platforms, such as software as a service, virtualization, and multicore processors, increase the complexity of licensing rules frequently interpreted liberally for the benefit of the software industry and to the detriment of end users. Most CIOs know that managing software license compliance risks should be a priority, but it's not easy to accomplish. This article presents some things to consider when developing your risk mitigation strategies.
Full Article...

The Good and Bad of Tagalong Technology
While many consumer gadgets and software applications can benefit a company -- for instance, by helping employees get their jobs done more efficiently -- the security implications can be huge. Companies large and small are seeing their proprietary information compromised by employees' personal devices, and they're taking action.
Full Article...

Workforce Management Market Report
by DMG Consulting

DMG Consulting is releasing its first annual Workforce Management Market Report in December 2007, to assist end user organizations in selecting the right WFM solution at the right price. This in-depth industry Report analyzes all functionality, technology and implementation challenges for leading and contending WFM offerings from Aspect, Calabrio, Envision, Genesys, GMT, IEX, Left Bank Solutions, UCN and Verint. The Report also provides detailed information about market trends, challenges, ROI, market share, pricing and best practices.

For more information about the WFM Report, please contact Deborah Navarra at 516-628-1098 or via email at Deborah.navarra@dmgconsult.com.

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.

White Paper: Using Web-based Support Tools to Improve Customer Service
This informative white paper examines the latest trends and technologies in using Web-based support tools to improve customer service. Get your copy today!

Multichannel Service & Support Survey of Executives: Report of Findings
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