| [View Past Issues] | November 17, 2009 |
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How Zappos Built a Billion Dollar Company through a Customer Focused Culture
Discover how customer phenom Zappos.com grew their gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service. Rob Siefker of the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team will discuss the Zappos commitment to WOWing their customers through service, how they retain repeat customers, and what they do internally to inspire the Zappos culture & core values.
Watch this webinar to learn:
- How Zappos WOWs customers every day
- The power of repeat customers and word of mouth
- Why the Zappos culture = delivering happiness
- Seven steps for building a brand that matters
HP to buy 3Com for $2.7 billion
Hewlett-Packard Co. announced it will purchase networking company 3Com for $2.7 billion, and also preannounced higher fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and raised its outlook for fiscal 2010. HP said it made the acquisition to expand its networking solutions offerings and to "significantly strengthen the company's position in China." The company said 3Com has been very successful in rapidly gaining market share in China, scooping up 30% of the network switching market.
source: CNN
Cisco Transforms Unified Communications With Innovative Business-to-Business Solutions
Cisco has introduced a ground-breaking version of its unified communications platform, featuring innovations and enhancements designed to reduce costs and increase operating efficiencies between and within global enterprises. Cisco Unified Communications System Release 8.0 enables organizations to collaborate in new ways that remove barriers to communications with partners, suppliers and customers through integrated voice, video, presence, instant messaging and Web sessions. Cisco Unified Communications System 8.0 includes advanced integrated Internet Protocol (IP) applications that allow businesses to extract more value from their communications through federated presence across devices and platforms, and through instant messaging, customer care, conferencing, video and mobility capabilities.
TeamSupport.com Announces Latest Release
TeamSupport.com, an integrated SaaS based customer service, product management, and bug tracking system , announced the immediate availability of their Fall 2009 release which includes new customer-focused features and 3rd party software integrations, including: Service Level Agreement (SLA) management; Wiki creation; an Application Programming Interface; new Knowledge Base functionality; Advanced Email Integration and more.
New Empolis:Service Lifecycle Suite 6.1 Now Available
Empolis, an Attensity Group company, announced Empolis:Service Lifecycle Suite (e:SLS) 6.1, the enhanced version of the company's knowledge-centric application suite for customer service and support organizations. For companies with long-term, multifaceted customer relationships or complex technical products, e:SLS provides consistent, proactive and personalized customer experiences across every channel, via an easy-to-use service application. The new release includes a set of easy-to-use service templates designed to address technical service and support requirements for complex products, as well as the offerings of consumer-focused companies.
Conquer the Mobile Workforce Challenge
If you’ve got branch employees, field workers and telecommuters who work on a variety of devices, like PCs, Macs and smartphones – you’re not alone. Your helpdesk should be equipped with the right tools to support an increasingly mobile workforce. If you’re still using tools like VNC and RDP, you may be hindering both your helpdesk and the mobile employees you support.
See how easy it is to support anytime, anywhere workers with LogMeIn Rescue.
Start Your Free Trial Now >>
Enterprise Spending Plans For IT Services Are Mixed
Responding to a still sluggish economy, IT executives in North America and Europe are taking a variety of measures to get more value for the money spent on IT services, according to the latest Enterprise IT Services Survey by Forrester Research, Inc. According to the survey results, IT contractors and consultants will see the deepest decreases in spending, while systems integration and outsourcing services will have the most increases.
Unlike during the last recession from 2001 to 2002, when outsourcing and offshoring experienced growth from firms seeking to reduce internal IT costs, the picture for IT services is much more mixed in terms of spending plans. When asked about changes they expect to see in their organization's total spending on IT services, 30 percent of executives surveyed said they plan to increase spending on systems integration and project work, 26 percent plan increases in applications outsourcing, and 25 percent expect to increase spending on infrastructure outsourcing. However, 41 percent of executives expect to reduce spending on contractors, and 34 percent foresee lower spending on IT consulting.
Other key highlights of the survey include:
-- Infrastructure outsourcing priorities. When asked what infrastructure services their firm is currently outsourcing or plans to outsource to a third-party company in the next 12 months, survey respondents placed convergent telecommunication/network management services and data center management services at the top of the list.
-- Application outsourcing priorities. Managed hosting services lead the list of application outsourcing priorities, with 44 percent of respondents currently outsourcing and six percent planning to use managed hosting services in the next 12 months. In addition, the outsourcing of packaged applications maintenance and support services increased from 27 percent in 2008 to 38 percent in 2009, and another seven percent of respondents are planning to do so in the next 12 months.
-- Systems integration priorities. Integration work installing or upgrading packaged applications remains a top activity, with 42 percent of respondents saying they already have a project under way or will hire a consultant for this in the next 12 months. Custom application design and development follows, with 38 percent of firms doing a project or hiring a consultant to do so in the next 12 months.
-- IT consulting priorities. Forty-three percent of respondents have a security assessment project either already under way or one that will commence in the next year. Infrastructure virtualization and automation programs follow, with 32 percent of respondents hiring a consultant in the next 12 months or already having a project under way.
Gartner Says Industry Vertical Market IT Spending Will Contract by 6.8 Percent in 2009
Worldwide industry vertical market IT spending is projected to total $2.28 trillion in 2009, a 6.8 percent decline from 2008, according to Gartner, Inc. Analysts predict the market will return to growth in 2010, when it will grow at 2.3 percent to reach $2.34 trillion.
Financial services will lead all industry vertical markets, with IT spending totalling $502.6 billion in 2009; however, this segment will decline 8.3 percent . The agriculture, mining and construction market will experience the steepest decline in IT spending this year, declining 9.2 percent. The national and international government industry will show the slowest decline in IT spending as revenue decreases 3.6 per cent.
Gartner recommends that technology and service providers plan their 2010 marketing campaigns, sales and service engagements with clearer value propositions aimed at the chief financial officer (CFO) and strategic business unit (SBU) leaders and with account teams composed and trained to execute in a changed sales environment.
Companies Make Innovation a Priority for Growth in Aftermath of Downturn But Management Shortcomings Hinder Results
Innovation is a top priority for companies seeking to grow in the wake of the economic downturn, but flaws in managing innovation may hinder their progress, according to three studies released by Accenture.
In one study of more than 630 U.S. and U.K. executives, almost half (48 percent) of those surveyed said their companies had increased funding for innovation in the preceding six months, while one-third (33 percent) said their innovation funding remained the same. Additionally, nearly nine out of 10 respondents (89 percent) said that innovation is as important, if not more important, than cost reduction to their company's ability to achieve future growth.
However, the studies found several flaws in the corporate management of innovation, including:
- failure to learn from mistakes;
- widespread risk aversion;
- the need for more collaboration; and
- too much emphasis on making incremental improvements.
These are among the key findings that emerged from three studies conducted by Accenture in the first half of 2009. The U.S.-U.K. study queried executives across several industries, including automotive, banking, capital markets, consumer goods and services, electronics and high-tech, insurance, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and medical products, and retail. The second study focused on innovation in the consumer technology industry in North America, Europe and Asia. The third focused on the communications industry across the U.S. and Europe.
In the most recent study, 50 percent of respondents in the U.S. and the U.K. reported that their most successful innovation has been development of a new product or service. Yet, 74 percent of the respondents said their companies pursue incremental improvements, such as line extensions, and two-thirds (66 percent) said their organizations have made short-term financial results a priority over long-term investments.
Additionally, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of U.S. respondents and nearly one-third (30 percent) of U.K. respondents said their organizations failed to learn from their mistakes.
Among the reasons respondents from both countries cited most frequently for new product or service launch failures were their inability to meet customer needs (57 percent), being late to market (54 percent) and incorrect pricing (52 percent). They also cited the lack of a new or unique customer-perceived value proposition (50 percent), supply chain issues (44 percent) and incorrect forecasting (43 percent).
One-third of the respondents (33 percent) also cited their inability to leverage new technology as a hurdle to innovation.
The Intelligent Self-Service Imperative for Call Centers
Automated multichannel self-service is hot -- so popular that use of options such as Web, email and chat to access care has doubled in recent years, according to recent research. But companies that don't go the extra mile to ensure intelligent self-service face double trouble. Too often, their communications with customers vary by channel, creating a confusing and disjointed corporate approach to the customer experience that frustrates and turns off the customer and creating inefficiencies that increase the cost to serve.
Full Article...
It Just Isn't Working? Some File for Customer Divorce
It's the beginning of the tough-love era. Some small-business owners are ending relationships with aggressive customers who ask for more discounts and concessions or want more leeway on payment time. Hampered by a slack economy, these businesses, mainly service providers, are cutting loose nonpaying or late-paying clients who divert resources away from more loyal or profitable clients. Last fall, many businesses retained customers by discounting, providing special payment terms or creating loyalty programs. But today, they can no longer afford to do so.
Full Article...
Post-Meltdown Lessons Learned for Call Centers
It is always important to remember that economies move in cycles. The bottom of the cycle may be difficult and unpleasant, but it contains within it the seeds of the next upswing. And the primary lesson learned from this downturn is that you need to be able to communicate how valuable the center's role is in ensuring company health.
Full Article...
CFOs to CIOs: Get Real
It's a Catch-22 typical of the conflicts businesses have faced amid the recession. They're looking to information-technology departments for efficiency and productivity, to be sure. But their retrenched budgets may strain their ability to make the full investment needed to meet those goals. In that environment, the divergent agendas of CFOs and chief information officers may contrast even more than usual. Finance chiefs, for instance, want to avoid major risks and know exactly what IT projects will cost, while CIOs are likely to push ambitious ideas they believe could transform the company.
Full Article...
The Seven Principles of Call Center Budgeting
A budget can be defined as "a summary of proposed or agreed upon expenditures for a given period of time, for specified purposes." Simple enough. But the process of putting a budget together is often seen by managers as tedious, time-consuming and, some say, distracting from “more important management responsibilities.” The best managed call centers remember, however, the outcome of this least favorite activity: the funding the call center has with which to accomplish its purpose.
Full Article...
On the Prowl for New Ways to Cut Contact Center Costs
Major changes are in the wind for the contact center industry. Although it has continued to see growth through the recession, there's an intense drive toward cost-cutting. In high-price regions like the U.S., Canada and Australia, that means moving operations to second- or third-tier cities. Another option that's rapidly gaining favor is enlisting the services of home agents.
Full Article...
Reinvent Your Enterprise
by Jack Bergstrand
Reinvent Your Enterprise builds upon the insights of legendary management thinker Peter F. Drucker to help individuals and organizations improve business results better and faster, by leading the next management frontier--improving knowledge work productivity. This breakthrough book is endorsed by The Drucker Institute and has been featured in BusinessWeek.com. It fuses extensive research, practical application, and a proven knowledge work productivity management system.
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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.
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