• SupportIndustry.com Research Insight: First Contact Resolution
• 2009 Service and Support Metrics Survey
• 2009 Research Results: The Distributed Workplace: The Challenges of Support
• 2008 Service and Support Metrics Survey
• 2008 Trends in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• 2007 Multichannel Service and Support Executive Survey Report (member log-in required)
• State of IT Outsourcing - October 2006

View the latest research related to the Service and Support Industry!

CIOs Forecast Increase in Second-Quarter IT Hiring
Chief information officers (CIOs) expect an uptick in hiring in the second quarter, according to the latest Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report. Nine percent of technology executives plan to hire additional IT staff and 4 percent anticipate personnel reductions. The net 5 percent increase is up two points from the first quarter's forecast and three points higher than the year-ago projection.

Survey Reveals 38% of IT Managers Ignoring Web 2.0 Risks
FaceTime Communications' fifth annual survey showed social media and Web 2.0 applications have been adopted by 99% of end users to support business processes, even though 38% of IT professionals believe there is no social networking present on their networks. Web chat also featured in 95% of organizations, yet was recognized by only 31% of IT Managers.

Demand for Pay-per-Use Software Pricing Will Force a Reassessment of the Industry's Value Framework
A recent software pricing survey by International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that customers want software pricing models that allow them to pay only for what they use while maintaining an even distribution of costs over time. To achieve this, vendors and customers will have to work together to redefine the software value framework.

US contact centers handled 6.6 billion complaints in 2009
New research published by ContactBabel, the contact center industry analysts, has found that US contact centers handled 6.6 billion complaints in 2009. Research for the report has found that the technology, media and telecoms sector receives the greatest proportion of complaints, with 27% of all calls received by this sector being from disgruntled customers.

Survey: CEOs Prioritizing the People Agenda as a Means to Recover and Grow
Insight from the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 13th Annual CEO Survey, suggests that CEOs are prioritizing the people agenda as a means to recover and grow. The research found some areas of weakness have been highlighted by the recession and the vast majority (79%) of CEOs expect to overhaul the way their organizations manage people during change as a consequence of the economic crisis.

Service Revenue: A Top Goal for Chief Service Officers in 2010
The latest research published by the Aberdeen Group found that leading organizations are looking to their service resources to generate sustainable and predictable revenue streams to help support margin initiatives. As such, these organizations look to generate nearly 40% of their overall revenue from the service side of the business in 2010, as compared to 35% in 2009.

Multichannel experience most dysfunctional aspect of customer service
eGain Communications Corporation reported that over 70% of leading North American enterprise businesses were rated “below average” or “poor” in multichannel customer service experience. Analysts used a “mystery shopping” approach to measure customer service performance in six dimensions: choice of communication channels, email response, web self-service, cross-channel consistency, single-channel cross-agent consistency, and phone customer service.

2010 Software Spending Devoted To Existing Systems More Than Emerging Technologies
More than half of IT software budgets in 2010 will go toward ongoing operations and maintenance of existing applications as opposed to implementing new software solutions, according to a recent survey by Forrester Research, Inc. According to Forrester's Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q4 2009, the poor economic environment created a backlog of business application software upgrade activities for firms, and many plan to address the issue this year.

IT Workers Getting 1.8% Pay Bump
During two years of turmoil, the great recession of 2008-2009 brought budget cutting and layoffs across most IT organizations, large and small.  But the picture is brightening for IT workers, and Computer Economics' 2010 IT Salary Report finds that IT organizations are budgeting to give the typical IT worker a 1.8% boost in pay.