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Consultant Sentenced To 5 Years In Prison For Stealing Customer Information
A business software consultant who stole identifying information on more than 110,000 people from the insurance company he was working for was sentenced this week to five years in federal prison. Binyamin Schwartz, 28, of Oak Park, Mich., was sentenced to 60 months on charges of identity theft, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, and wire fraud. According to a report from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Schwartz admitted to investigators that he stole Social Security numbers and related information from two databases within Wisconsin-based Sentry Insurance while he was working as a consultant there, developing business software. The government reported that Schwartz sold information on about 70 customers to one buyer before he was caught when attempting to sell the stolen information to an undercover Secret Service agent. [Source: InformationWeek]
Amdocs Chosen By Cambodian Service Provider Applifone
Amdocs, a provider of customer experience systems, announced that Applifone, an emerging Cambodian service provider, has selected Amdocs Compact Convergence suite to support rapid delivery of next-generation products and services. The Amdocs solution will provide Applifone with flexible and innovative ways to market new value-added services to its customers. This win expands Amdocs' presence in the Asia Pacific region and marks the company's entry into Cambodia.
ForeSee Results Provides Valuable Insight to Oakley about its Online Customers
ForeSee Results, a provider of online customer satisfaction management services, has announced Oakley Inc., a provider of sports performance optics, as its newest customer. ForeSee Results will utilize its American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)- based system to provide Oakley’s Web team with performance metrics regarding its consumers’ satisfaction with the online experience and the resulting impact on loyalty, retention and customer acquisition.
BScaler Delivers Next Generation ERP With CRM, SFA and Service Desk
BScaler Inc. released a new version of the Enterprise Resource Manager (ERM), their SaaS Plus total Web-based business management solution. The software integrates CRM, SFA, Service, MRP, WMS and Financials applications. Customers can go for a subscription and pay per user per month, or own the ERM Appliance and pay only for BScaler support. BScaler will install the Appliance, or host it in-house for customer peace of mind.
Unica Acquires MarketingCentral
Unica Corp., a provider of enterprise marketing management (EMM) solutions, has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MarketingCentral, L.L.C., a privately held provider of on-demand marketing resource management (MRM) solutions, for approximately $12.5 million in cash and transaction-related costs. Integrating MarketingCentral with Unica’s Affinium Plan will enable the company to offer a ‘best of both worlds’ solution -- an enterprise-class MRM system connected to a secure, on-demand collaboration space for working with dispersed project teams and outside partners.
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White Paper: Using Web-based Support Tools to Improve Customer Service
Many service-centric organizations have already integrated their in-house service and support applications with Web interfaces, or deployed systems designed for the Web from the ground up. They’re better integrating channels through customer interaction platforms, greatly expanding self-service functionality, undertaking knowledge management initiatives, and extending their reach through remote support and maintenance tools.
This informative white paper from Supportindustry.com and sponsored by LogMeInRescue and Parature, examines the latest trends and technologies in using Web-based support tools to improve customer service.
Get your copy today!
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| Outbound Sales and Marketing Changing in Response to Consumer Backlash
There is no question contact center services outsourcers will continue to give their customers a solid mix of offerings related to horizontal functionality. However, according to a report by independent market analyst Datamonitor, the manner in which traditional services provided (including inbound customer care, outbound sales and marketing and technical support, in addition to relatively new functions such as business-to-employee care), are delivered, is shifting. The handling of outbound sales and marketing in particular is changing in response to consumer backlash. In addition, outsourcing vendors have new services such as ‘warm calling’ and debt collation in the works.
From the standpoint of contact centers, Datamonitor’s report examines what emerging trends are in store in 2007 in terms of functionality, and how outsourcers can best meet the requirements of both investors and consumers. A function-by-function analysis done by Datamonitor indicates inbound customer care, which could include contact center agents handling loyalty programs or taking messages, will remain the largest single horizontal market through 2012, accounting for nearly half of all outsourced contact center agent positions (APs). Outbound sales and marketing (proactive selling of products and services) contact center APs are expected to proportionately drop through this period.
Investors in outbound sales and marketing services have faced considerable hostility from consumers and governments alike over the past four years, which has manifested in a number of Do-Not-Call lists.
Developing a horizontal contact center mix that drives new investment is a priority for outsourcers, and one that is multidimensional. Outsourcers looking for the optimal mix of contact center service offerings need to first consider the opportunities being afforded by geography and vertical market. Once they have identified potential sweet spots, they should examine the nuances associated with each separate function they wish to provide, identifying any potential challenges. Once this analysis has been made, outsourcers need to consider their own internal operations in order to determine what they are capable of doing at that point in time, and in what they may need to invest for the future. http://www.datamonitor.com
Operational “Improvements'' Lack Customer Insight
What’s driving most firms’ operational improvement priorities? If you think it’s customer intelligence you’re dead wrong, reports Customer Loyalty book author and consultant Jill Griffin. Her 2007 Customer Insight Study fielded with research firm, CustomerSat, offers key evidence why the customer experience provided by many companies continues to disappoint.
When making operational improvement decisions, over half (57%) of marketing executives and 50% of sales executives reported using internal factors or no formal process at all to identify problem areas and prioritize improvement efforts.
These findings were gleaned from an in-depth survey of over 500 sales, marketing and corporate buying executives fielded in the last 90 days. Executives surveyed represented a cross-section of industries including insurance, banking and other financial services, manufacturing, electronics, technology, professional services, healthcare, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals.
How can a firm avoid the plight by which internal factors or no process at all are driving the executives’ priorities for operational improvements? Start by answering these key questions:
- How do you set operational improvement priorities today?
- Where is the voice of the customer in the decision making?
- In debating operational priorities, how often do your decision makers and influencers use “I think” (rather than “The data suggests…”), to express and support their views?
- Which competitors are using customer analytics? How are their strategies changing?
- What risks does your firm face in not linking operational decisions to customer intelligence?
More...
European Online Marketing To Top €16 Billion In 2012
Spending on online marketing in Europe will double in the next five years, from around €7.5 billion in 2006 to more than €16 billion in 2012, according to a new report by Forrester Research. In five years, online marketing -- including email, search, and display advertising -- will represent 18% of total media budgets.
The reason for this shift in spending is simple enough: audience and attention are moving online. According to Forrester, 36% of online Europeans say that they watch less TV because they’re online. And trust in many types of advertising is eroding: 67% of online consumers believe that advertisers don’t tell the truth in ads. At the same time, online consumers don’t seem adverse to the kind of targeted advertising that the online channel can deliver: 34% of online consumers say they don’t mind ads if they relate to their interests; 40% trust price-comparison sites; and 36% trust online product reviews from other users. This opens the doors to new online marketing forms like word of mouth, email campaigns, and blog advertising.
Highlights from the report include:
- Overall marketing spending is growing again in Europe in 2007 after several slow years. 54 per cent of companies have set their 2007 budgets higher than their actual spend for 2006.
- Online display advertising remains universally popular, with almost all of the interviewees using banner ads.
- Most interviewees use paid search, with 17 paying agency fees in the process. This is due to a good return on investment (ROI), a need to follow the general trend, and a desire to do more targeted marketing.
- Spending on display advertising -- for example, banners, buttons, and pop-ups -- will grow from €2.5 billion in 2006 to €5.6 billion in 2012. As the number of European consumers with home broadband access rises from 47 million to 83 million over this period, existing Internet advertisers will ramp up their spend, expanding into new formats such as rich media.
More...
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| Call Center Excellence: Managing Service-to-Sales Cultural Transformation
Today's service environment is more complicated than ever with more sophisticated products and services, demanding customers and costly turnover issues. While customer service managers strive to maintain high employee productivity in a stressful work environment, such challenges must be overcome to maintain satisfaction for both customers and employees.
Full Article...
Sometimes, Good Service Depends on the Customer
How stores treat customer complaints, returns and other service matters varies and can depend a lot on how the customers handle themselves. While the National Retail Federation's Dan Butler says most retailers do everything they can to satisfy customers and typically assume the consumer is right, electronics manufacturers, for example, prefer to have products go back to them so they can better track problems with their products.
Full Article...
Customer Profitability Intelligence for Communications Service Providers
Customer development strategies are crucial as competition among communication service providers accelerates. Carefully developed customer-centric strategies can be highly effective drivers of both revenue and profit. Despite a dizzying rush of fresh technological innovation, old-fashioned customer development strategies will remain key determinants of success in the newest round of competition between communication services providers.
Full Article...
Hear Customers Knocking?
Although over the past few years there has been a growing buzz about text mining and what to do about the staggering amounts of data generated from daily emails, service requests, blogs, and customer forums, very few customer service departments have taken advantage of what the customer is trying to tell them. Current processes of manually reading customer inquiries have become a futile effort due to the sheer mass of data being generated. Given the benefits that text mining solutions provide such as automating the tagging of inquiries, pulling out key complaints, and matching the appropriate correspondence back to the customer, why have customer service departments not embraced text mining solutions?
Full Article...
Best Practices: Outward-Facing CIOs
We often hear that in today's business environment, technology is the business. This is no hype or futuristic thinking. Long gone are the days when CIOs were cloistered in backroom operations rather than being on the front lines with customers. Dynamic and ever-changing competition, increased demands for innovation, complex compliance and regulatory requirements, and cost-efficiency and performance pressures have clearly pushed the role of the CIO into an external-facing leadership position.
Full Article...
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|  The Self Destructive Habits of Good Companies ... And How to Break Them
Jagdish N. Sheth
GM. Ford. AT&T. Sears. Firestone. Krispy Kreme. Digital. Kodak. Once, they were riding high, the exemplars of business excellence. Then, disaster. Is your company headed for the same fate? How do you know? How do you change course? Find out. Shine a light on the dark places in your business. Uncover your self-destructive habits before they destroy you. The blinders, culture conflicts, and corporate denial. The competitive myopia. The focus on volume, not profits. Root them out. Then, instill the good habits your business needs: the habits of sustainable profitability and market leadership. This book shows you how–in detail, from start to finish.
For
more information, or to order your copy...
You can find
more industry sepcific books at our web site:
http://www.crmindustry.com/
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