Webinar Series - Best Practices in Customer Support

Parature's Webinar Series "Best Practices in Customer Support" continues with new presentations delivered by some of the industry's leading minds. This month Michael Buckham-White of Premier Global Services will deliver an informational session on, "The New Era in Customer Support in a Web 2.0 World. How to Enable Customer Self-Service and Reduce Calls and Emails By Up to 80%".

Gain the insight you need to help reduce costs and enable customer self-service by attending these exciting and informative webinars.

Register Today!

Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan Selects CDC’s Pivotal CRM Appls
CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and a provider of industry-specific enterprise software applications and business services, announced that Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan has selected its Pivotal suite of CRM applications to improve client understanding, promote best practices, streamline marketing activities, and capitalize upon untapped opportunities within the customer base. Using Pivotal CRM, Farm Bureau Insurance will be able to consolidate client, household, activity, marketing, policy, and claim information into one intuitive and holistic view to empower its 2,500 agents and employees to more effectively grow and service its business and improve overall organizational performance.

Pio-Tech Improves Customer Service, Sales, and Marketing Using Soffront CRM
Soffront Software Inc. has announced that Pioneers Information Technologies Co. (Pio-Tech) is using Soffront CRM to improve customer service, sales, and marketing. Headquartered in Amman, Jordan, Pio-Tech is a systems integrator and business solutions provider, specializing in enterprise management solutions. Soffront CRM enables Pio-Tech to improve the entire customer management life cycle–from prospect, through sales, to valued customer. Soffront CRM is also helping Pio-Tech enhance their sales cycle. Additionally, Pio-Tech’s marketing department is using Soffront CRM.

Office Depot Selects SAS For Global Customer Intelligence
SAS, a provider of business intelligence solutions, announced that Office Depot, a global provider of office products and services, has selected SAS Customer Intelligence across its global enterprise. In 2005, Office Depot decided to deploy a global analytical CRM solution. At the time, Office Depot in Europe was using SAS Marketing Automation to evaluate the financial and logistical impact of different communication plans, streamline campaign management and reduce costs but different products were used in other corporate regions. After a multi-vendor comparison, Office Depot chose to keep SAS and implement additional key solutions of the SAS Customer Intelligence suite across its global operations, including SAS Marketing Automation, SAS Marketing Optimization, SAS Interaction Management, SAS Web Analytics and SAS Digital Marketing.

Next-Generation of Info@Hand CRM Product Announced
The Long Reach Corporation has announced the next generation of its flagship product, info@hand, a Customer Relationship and Business Management (CRBM) System for small and medium-sized businesses. The application blends first-class CRM features with extended business management capabilities for Order Management, Project and Resource tracking, Customer Service, and Human Resources.

Saaspoint Puts CRM Field Scheduler on Salesforce.com's AppEx
Saaspoint, a dedicated Salesforce.com consultancy and systems integrator, has announced the availability of its Mobile Field Scheduler for Salesforce.com AppExchange. The Mobile Field Scheduler allows field service organizations to manage and deploy technical support teams on the road. Users can now graphically view locations of field staff with ease, plan more productive itineraries or reschedule them dynamically using Salesforce.com mobile and Google Maps technology. Data exchange between two Web services has been made as easy as if they were on the same computer -- a mash-up.

Customer Service Is Key Differentiator
Verint Systems Inc., a provider of analytic software-based solutions for workforce-enterprise optimization and security, has announced the findings of a recent customer service survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Verint Systems. Results confirmed that consumers overwhelmingly prefer good customer service over the hottest, most innovative product offerings and that most consumers tell others about their customer experiences, bad or good.

Of those surveyed:

• 88 percent reported they find a company with good customer service more enticing than one with the hottest, most innovative product offerings. Only 12 percent preferred a company with the hot, innovative product.

• 90 percent report that, on average, they tell at least one person about a bad customer service experience, and 85 percent tell multiple people.

• 8 percent of customers tell at least one person – and 81 percent tell multiple people – about a good customer service experience.

More...

Customer Care Attitude Needed to Control Rogue Employees
Yankee Group has announced that IT’s steel grip on control of enterprise applications and services is slipping because of consumerization of the enterprise -- the adoption of consumer technologies in the corporate environment. Nearly 50% of employees feel more empowered than IT to control their personal IT environment. This consumerization trend will be a nightmare for IT departments because it will create major maintenance and support problems that will swiftly overwhelm IT resources.

According to the recent Yankee Group Report, Zen and the Art of Rogue Employee Management, enterprise IT that tries to ignore the adoption of these technologies in the workplace will potentially lead to a hazardous mix of secured and unsecured applications in the enterprise. Instead, IT must adopt a Zen-like approach to manage the technology and the rogue employee. Ceding control to end users via an internal customer care cooperative model reduces IT’s burden while improving customer satisfaction. The Zen support model is fundamentally different than most IT organizations use today because it doesn’t seek to dictate policy and enforce standards, but rather set guidelines and steer users in the right direction.

Some best practices in a Zen-like approach to an IT care co-op solution include:

• Using Web 2.0 tools to create customer care cooperatives that save IT time and money while improving end-user satisfaction.

• Facilitating online social networks and wikis, which allow end-user communities to manage their own IT support function.

• Setting security baselines that aren’t flexible for IT groups to gracefully stitch wikis and collaborative technology into their existing infrastructure.

More...

Some Substantial Changes in How Americans View Various Industries’ Service
This year’s annual Harris Poll ranking industries on how well they serve consumers finds that the supermarket industry does the best job according to U.S. adults. Fully 92 percent of adults think supermarkets generally do a good job, and only eight percent think they do a bad job, giving them a net positive score of 84 percentage points. At the bottom of the list, only 26 percent think tobacco companies do a good job, while one-third (33%) believe oil companies do a good job.

Other industries that receive high net scores are:

• online search engines (77 points positive);
• computer hardware companies (64 points positive);
• computer software companies (61 points positive);
• hospitals (58 points positive);
• banks (56 points positive);
• packaged food companies (55 points positive).

At the other end of the spectrum, the industries with the worst net scores are:

• tobacco companies (46 points negative);
• oil companies (33 points negative);
• health insurance companies (21 points negative);
• managed care companies, such as HMOs (20 points negative);
• cable companies (1 point negative).

There have been substantial changes since last year, with two-thirds of the industries trending downward. Six industries showed improvements this year, while 14 industries went down, many by double digits (one, computer hardware companies, stayed the same). This survey shows what has changed and by how much, but of course it does not explain why these changes have occurred. Some possible explanations (which we cannot validate or invalidate) for these changes are discussed below. Some of those with the greatest changes from last year are:

• Cable companies dropped 29 points from 28 points positive in 2006 to one point negative this year. With more and more competition and with cable companies now offering more services, being spread so thin may be hurting them in the customer service department;

• Tobacco companies have dropped to their lowest levels since this question was first asked in 1997 and dropped from 25 points negative last year to 46 points negative this year. After a few years of slightly positive media about how the industry is trying to adapt, this may be a case of people no longer believing that media coverage;

• Managed care companies, such as HMOs and health insurance companies have both seen large decreases this year. Managed care companies dropped 17 points and health insurance companies dropped 18 points. Michael Moore’s latest documentary does focus on this industry and this could be one cause of their decline;

• Airlines have dropped 16 points since last year, but have dropped 36 points in just two years. Much of this decrease is most likely due to the constant media barrage of flight delays and passengers sitting on runways for hours on end;

• Car manufacturers are one of the shining industries this year as they have increased 15 points, from 31 points positive to 46 points positive. As the U.S. auto industry has tried to adapt to meet the challenges from foreign companies, and the foreign companies have subsequently responded, the changes have been met with a warm response in the eyes of the consumer.

More...

Business Intelligence: Not Just for the Big Boys Anymore
Business intelligence (BI) is getting big buzz. Publicity over the mega consolidations between pure BI vendors and larger software companies such as Hyperion and Oracle, Microsoft's soon-to-be-released PerformancePoint, open source BI offerings and advancements in the integration of structured and unstructured data have thrust BI into the spotlight.
Full Article...

Understanding the 'Want' vs. 'Should' Decision
Like having both an angel and a devil whispering advice in our ears, consumers often wrestle with the "want" versus "should" decision. Yes, I want to purchase that chocolate bar, but I should snack on granola instead. Yes, I want the gleaming red Ferrari, but given my budget, I should purchase the used Toyota Camry. How consumers weigh those decisions is crucial information for retailers.
Full Article...

How To Optimize Your Contact Center
As today's contact centers make the transition from cost center to strategic asset, accurate and effective matching of customer interactions to agent skills and availability is a fundamental requirement. Routing allows companies to match any interaction with the appropriately skilled resource at the level of granularity that best suits business needs.
Full Article...

Self-Service: Talking the Customer's Language?
"Customers don’t like self-service technologies." Time was when this had more than an element of truth, as we all regaled friends and colleagues with ‘war stories’ of poor customer service, long holding queues and having to constantly repeat information before getting through to a call agent. The problem was -- and still is in some cases -- the adoption of IVR and related solutions were designed to save the business money, with little or no thought for the customer experience. And, as research has shown, the problem customers have is not with the inherent technology, but with poor implementation.
Full Article...

Crucial Connection: CRM and Contact Centers
While the link between CRM and contact centers should be more than apparent, experts say the lack of synergy and communication between them is costing companies millions in lost revenue. Even though many companies collect customer data and invest heavily in marketing campaigns to entice customers to make contact, many of them fail to use the data they already have to provide the same individualized customer care to which online clients are accustomed.
Full Article...

Build Your Customer Strategy: A Guide to Creating Profitable Customer Relationships
by James G. Barnes

Goods and services are no longer enough. Today's customers attach an emotional connection to the products they use and to the businesses at which they shop. Wouldn't you love to have your customers raving about your company or about your product and calling it their own? Now you can. Jim Barnes shows how managers and executives can create lasting and genuine customer relationships that will withstand the competitive overtures of other companies. Filled with case histories of companies that have succeeded in building solid, genuine relationships with customers, this book will help you to maximize and capitalize on the opportunities your customers represent.

For more information, or to order your copy...

You can find more industry sepcific books at our web site:
http://www.crmindustry.com/

Visit the CRM Solution Center
CRMindustry.com and KnowledgeStorm have joined forces to offer you access to the CRM Solution Center, a fast, intuitive way to locate, research and qualify potential CRM and IT solutions.

The CRM Solution Center provides you unlimited access to white papers, case studies, detailed product information and more. Registration is quick and easy -- in 30 seconds or less, you will be on your way to accessing this valuable resource

Click here to start searching!
http://knowledgestorm.crmindustry.com

Manage Your e.Newsletter Subscription!
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 CRMINDUSTRY.COM's weekly newsletter!
Copyright © 2007, crmindustry.com

CRMindustry.com
665 San Ysidro Road
Santa Barbara, CA 93108
ph. 805.565.3243