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9/30/05 - Observation: Benchmarking is Out
The attraction to compare one's operations to others can be quite strong. It may be intellectual curiosity, competitive drive or even incentive based compensation. Regardless of the motive, now is the time to look beyond benchmarking your contact center.
Operational metrics like average handle time, first call resolution and a host of others might tell you about efficiency but they do little to measure overall effectiveness. To be sure, what is the point of measuring how cheap you can do something if what you do is of dubious value? I'm not suggesting metrics aren't important. In fact, they are more important than ever but not because they can be used for benchmarking.
Benchmarking will not make you better, let alone world class. Outcome based metrics, those measures that tell you how effective you are, along with operational metrics will create the balanced scorecard for making a real difference. What about benchmarks? There is one benchmark you should keep. Read this column on Monday to find out.
Gary Lemke, Publisher
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TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK (more)
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Syntellect and Apropos announced that they have signed a merger agreement in which Syntellect has agreed to acquire Apropos for $2.76 per share of Apropos outstanding common stock, or approximately $50 million. The board of directors of Apropos unanimously supports the transaction, and shareholders representing approximately 42% of the outstanding shares of Apropos have agreed to vote in favor of the transaction.
Despite growing pressure on support prices, software maintenance "continues to be a 'must-have' service that customers are extremely reluctant to give up," according to a new research report from the Association of Support Professionals (ASP). The report, based on data from 187 software companies, shows that the median renewal rate for support contracts is currently 89%.
Verint Systems announced the latest Opus Performance Analytics solution. The new Opus offering combines proven process optimization techniques with sophisticated performance analytics to help enterprises enhance operational performance across their customer-facing and back office operations.
Addressing the need for outbound contact centers to improve their revenue generating potential, IEX Corporation announced the introduction of the TotalView Workforce Management System for the outbound environment. The TotalView Outbound Solution applies inbound workforce management techniques-forecasting, scheduling, adherence, change management, etc.-to the outbound environment for cost savings and productivity improvements.
Witness is introducing its new workforce optimization solution - Impact 360. The solution fundamentally redefines the market landscape for contact center and workforce optimization (WFO) technology by enabling global organizations to deploy a holistic, streamlined framework and accompanying a solution set with more speed and confidence than any combination of point systems in the market.
Avaya announced Avaya Proactive Contact 3.0, which lets organizations enhance their contact centers with advanced customer outreach capabilities that increase the productivity of agents, drive new cost-efficiencies, and boost business continuity.
Primary Matters released a new White Paper titled "Contact Center Outsourcers! Prepare RFP Responses that Win Projects". This paper discusses how using activity-based analysis enables outsourcers to prepare competitive and profitable bids that win business and meet customer requirements.
UniPress announced that its second annual FootPrints User Conference is being held from September 25 through October 1 at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.
The SSPA Conference in Las Vegas has a content-rich agenda. Attend to learn why Cisco Systems, IBM and HP are leading the service revolution during their keynote presentations and discover best models for supporting open source, peer-to-peer support, Web-based support for complex products and more in breakout sessions.
eGain announced that StubHub has selected eGain OnDemand, the hosted version of applications in eGain's customer service software suite, eGain Service, to build a multichannel customer interaction hub. StubHub will implement eGain's software for web self-service, email management, and chat to provide an array of high-quality interaction options to its customers.
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 FEATURE WEBCAST (more) |
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"From Tactical to Strategic: The Workforce Optimization Maturity Model"
Bill Durr, Principal Solutions Consultant, Witness Systems
Asking about the maturity of a contact center is certainly a delicate matter. But it is a question that has to be asked. In this webcast, we explore a maturity model that gives you new insights into your own organization and explores how you can make your contact center a change agent for the entire business. What you will hear will help you move from a tactical to strategic way of thinking, especially in the area of workforce optimization. So if you are dealing with the unprecedented pressures brought on by the Internet, hyper-competition, and voice over IP along with the familiar demands of cost-cutting and employee retention, this webcast is for you. Register now to receive your complimentary copy of Witness' latest white papers: "Reinvention of Workforce Management" and "Reinvention of Quality Monitoring."
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 Research Notes (more)
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Siebel + Oracle > SAP? - Oracle just announced to acquire Siebel. Technically speaking, this will make Oracle the number one CRM vendor in the world, even though the official legitimation has to wait until early 2006. There is however, another saying that SAP is catching up fast that she will likely replace Siebel as the CRM leader one day or the other. Would Siebel + Oracle > SAP in CRM in the coming years? We don't know yet. But it makes sense to have an individual review on each of them to see how they are doing so far and listen to what 443 survey respondents have talked about their image and product.(GCCRM)
|  | | Why Oracle CRM Is Only the 4th Choice - An Independent Survey and Perspectives from Global / China Experts on Oracle(GCCRM)
| | | How to Complete the Customer Self-Service Picture - Enterprise Reporting has become a critical component of Customer Self-Service. This is especially true in service businesses where customers place a premium on information and online information delivery, and account management is increasingly becoming the most efficient (and desired) way to interact with and serve them. (Actuate)
| | | Optimizing Online Service to Build Effective Customer Relationships - Customer service plays an important role in the shopping decisions consumers make across sales channels. As their satisfaction with online service wanes, online buyers turn to staff-intensive, phone-based service, and will make purchasing decisions based on past service experiences. Amid elevated stakes for high-value buyers, consumers are seeking improved access to knowledgeable service staff and speedy resolution of their increasingly prevalent service issues. Consumers will continue to find phone and e-mail to be the most satisfying channels for service resolution. (ATG)
| | | Microsoft Enters the Contact Center Market - One of the biggest challenges in creating a Contact Center has been the diversity of components needed to build a center.(Ventana Research)
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 White Papers (more)
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Quality and Value with Home-Based Call Center Services - Remember when "outsourcing" just meant sending your call center services to an off-site facility? Then, as costs began to rise and labor markets became saturated, off-shore outsourcing to countries like India and the Philippines became popular. While some calls will continue to be sent offshore for cost-cutting purposes, transactions that involve a premium customer, a sale or involved customer service issue are returning to U.S.-based call centers in droves.(Alpine Access)
| | | CRM Integration Across Marketing, Sales and Service - Many companies fail to appreciate the importance of developing specific, well-defined, and integrated business processes focused on the customer. This paper covers eleven key customer-focused processes and success factors associated with implementing process change.(Siebel)
| | | Hammering the Siebel Communications Server - To a Call Center agent, "Siebel" really means a desktop and everything that supports it (application servers, databases), a phone and everything that supports it (switches, routing, IVRs and telephony infrastructure), and the link between the two worlds - Computer-Telephony Interface, or CTI. CTI is not manufactured by Siebel but the perceived health of your "Siebel" application is intimately related to the health of the CTI integration.(Empirix)
| | | Application Management: Optimizing Your Contact Center Technology Investment - In the aftermath of heavy technology spending, contact center managers are no longer looking to expand their portfolio of technology investments but rather explore methods for exploiting those in which they have already invested.(DataMonitor)
| | | Montgomery Research White Paper - Defying the Limits: CRM: The Key to Superior Business Performance - In a daily ritual known to thousands of service professionals, in a wide range of industries, corporations lock themselves into a time warp by using traditional solutions - all in the hope of providing superior customer service - and while facing a tidal wave of requests. The lack of solutions that provide access and visibility into customer all interactions and integrate pre- and post-sales customer interactions - Web self-service, email, chat, telephony integration and knowledge management - for cross channel support services makes achieving superior customer service, loyalty, and retention virtually impossible.(Talisma)
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Building Relationships Beyond the Hand-off - A recent post on CRMAdvocate notes that with help-desk outsourcing contracts, an improper hand-off is what kills a lot of deals. It's true that any problems with a deal become apparent during the handoff, but it's not the handoff itself that's the problem. There are any number of issues that can sour a relationship, including poor expectation setting and lack of trust. Following are three examples of issues that we've encountered in our 20-plus years of delivering outsourced technical support to companies around the globe. The good news is, for each issue addressed, we have lessons learned - expertise in dealing with these types of situations has helped us turn many difficult situations into spectacular results.(TechTeam Global)
| | | CRM's New Future - Oracle's planned purchase of Siebel will put it at the top of the CRM market, but competitors are ready to knock it back down.(InformationWeek)
| | | Customer Disservice? - Critics say the promised savings from offshoring come at too steep a price, while companies say very little at all.(CFO)
| | | EAgency Bolsters Wireless CRM Offering - In a two-month pilot, insurance company Aflac has replaced paper day planners and cell phone calling lists with the RIM BlackBerry 7520 PDA and access to eAgency's Nice Office service. Aflac gets the usual BlackBerry instant e-mails, but also can access Aflac customer forms and a variety of company reports in the field as they work with clients and prospects, without having to return to their offices. (CRMDaily)
| | | Going Rural: An Alternative to Offshoring - More large companies are considering a range of options because offshoring is such a complex process, says Frances Karamouzis, research director at Gartner. Outsourcing labor to towns in rural parts of the country is particularly attractive given that many state governments are giving tax breaks to employers who move jobs there, she says.(Contact Center Today)
| | | Microsoft Warms Up Telephony Plans - "What they want to do ultimately is own the interface," says Irwin Lazar, an analyst with Burton Group. "They want to provide that client on the desktop, the mobile phone, the softphone regardless of the backend [voice] system." (Contact Center Today)
| | | Goofing up Global CRM - The biggest threat to global business is the Income Statement. Think of the top line entry: Revenue. And if you're a company doing business globally, that means global revenue. You want it. And your markets are bursting with possibility. Look at China, India, South Africa, Australia, the EU (hey, no constitution yet, but still they're consuming frantically).(CRMToday)
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 Case Studies (more)
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Kronos Incorporated with Citrix GoToAssist - Citrix GoToAssist interfaces with Kronos' internal products and provides a strong support solution for Kronos. Key benifits that Kronos sees include reduced costs while improving quality of service, increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, improved first-call resolution, measured success with comprehensive reporting functionality, and Citrix can have someone up and running within 48 hours with no additional infrastruction needed.(Citrix Online)
| | | Barrie Hydro Adds Energy to its Help Desk with LiveTime - The implementation of LiveTime Help Desk has allowed Barrie Hydro to benefit from built-in reporting.(LiveTime)
| | | Bank of America with IEX - Customer satisfaction scores have exceeded the bank associates goals as a result of using adherence scores as an incentive for identifying behavior that exceed team goals.(IEX Corporation, a Tekelec Company)
| | | Witness Helps 4 Wheel Parts - By deploying eQuality ContactStore for IP within its Cisco converged voice and data environment, 4 Wheel Parts has been able to achieve the following results * Increased agent monitoring efficiency by 30 percent * Increased sales and order volume by eight percent * Enhanced training and development program.(Witness Systems)
| | | MessageOne Improves Salesforce.com with InsideScoop - Sales users are no longer spending time to copy and paste date into Salesforce.com. Instead, they get all the research they need for companies and contacts right at their fingertips.(InsideScoop, Salesforce.com)
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February 27 - March 01, 2006: Linking Customer Feedback to Business Results - Looking for new ways to get more actionability out of your customer data? Interested in innovative ideas for responding to your customers to drive business improvement and profitability? Welcome to IIR's 10th annual Linking Customer Feedback to Business Results.
| | | Oct 26-28, 2005: Help Desk Professionals - This event is dedicated to the advancement of the Technical Support Professional. The program will feature the industry's top speakers who will share with you current trends, templates and hands-on experiences.
| | | Oct 9-12, 2005: SSPA Conference - The conference remains on the very same dates with the same amazing program in the city where anything is possible, Las Vegas. The conference hotel is the Mandalay Bay. Please register for the conference as soon as you possibly can. By registering early, you can assist us in finalizing the numerous logistics required due to the quick transition to Las Vegas and the Mandalay Bay. **There is no need to register if you already registered for the conference when the location was in New Orleans.
| | | Nov 7-9, 2005: The Customer Contact Conference - Join the Customer Care & Services Forum (CCSF) and DCI at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort in Scottsdale, AZ, November 7-9, 2005, for the premiere of the Customer Contact Conference: Turning Strategy into Action.
| | February 27 - March 01, 2006: Linking Customer Feedback to Business Results - Looking for new ways to get more actionability out of your customer data? Interested in innovative ideas for responding to your customers to drive business improvement and profitability? Welcome to IIR's 10th annual Linking Customer Feedback to Business Results.
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| CRMAdvocate Stock Index |
| CRMSI | 42.74 |  | 0.83% |
| Dow Jones | 10,552.78 | | 0.76% |
| Nasdaq | 2,141.22 | | 1.21% |
| S&P 500 | 1,227.68 | | 0.88% |
| Top Gainers |
| Verint | 39.94 | | 1.51 |
| NICE | 45.04 | | 1.16 |
| SPSS | 24.05 | | 1.07 |
| Top Losers |
| salesforce.com | 22.93 |  | -0.46 |
| Interact Intell | 6.16 | | -0.34 |
| ICT Group | 11.4 | | -0.22 |
| Complete Stock Index |
| As of close 09/29/05 | |
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