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10/14/05 - Benchmarking - Readers Speak Out - Part III
The topic of benchmarking seems to have struck a nerve with many of you. This may be the most responded to topic so far. So we continue today with more reader comments.
One reader wrote, "Surely we must be preaching from the same book, since your comments on the shortcomings of benchmarking exactly reflect ours. As a provider of usability and caller satisfaction testing services, I constantly hit the wall of resistance and excuses of which hiding behind benchmarks is all too common. Not once in memory can I recall a conversation with a call center manager who knew exactly how measurements were made within his/her OWN call center let alone those of others."
The reader goes on to share an example: "Take average call length for example. Does it include time in a front end IVR? Is it timed from trunk seizure or from time of answer? If a caller is put on hold does the clock stop? How are multiple holds and interdepartmental transfers measured? etc. etc." You see, how can you ever have confidence in published metrics when metrics are inconsistently defined from call center to call center?
Gary Lemke, Publisher
(Share your thoughts)
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TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK (more)
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Primary Matters and salesforce.comv announced the availability of The Primary Matters Guide for AppExchange Service & Support 1.0. Built on salesforce.com's Appforce on-demand platform, The Guide for Appforce is currently available, and will be generally available via AppExchange at the same time as the Salesforce Winter '06 release.
Citrix Systems announced Citrix GoToAssist 7, the next generation of remote technical-support and professional-services solution that enables organizations to provide best-in-class support over the Internet, on demand and securely.
Courion announced an integrated user provisioning and enterprise single sign-on offering that will give customers using Citrix Password Manager an end-user access experience, fast time-to-value, strengthened security and a reduced administrative burden.
Small and mid-sized businesses in the United States plan to increase their usage of converged voice and data communications solutions over the next 18 months, new research commissioned by the CompTIA reveals. The survey of some 300 U.S. businesses with 20-500 employees found that 40 percent are currently evaluating new communications solutions that deliver voice and data applications over a common network, or intend to do so within the next 18 months. Another 18 percent of these businesses are currently deploying a converged solution, or will do so in the next 18 months.
J.D. Power and Associates and the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) introduced the Certified Technology Service and Support (CTSS) program during the opening presentations of the SSPA Conference in Las Vegas this week.
Westbury announced that Scope4mation's product ICM will be embedded in Westbury's Inventory Lifecycle Management solution. This solution will unify, categorize and combine the gathered data, compare it against data in the CMDB and selectively or automatically updates attributes of and relationships between CI's in the CMDB of HP OpenView Service Desk.
Mercury Interactive announced Mercury Performance Center 8.1, a part of Mercury BTO Enterprise. The new version of Mercury's application delivery optimization center allows customers to automate application load testing and helps verify that applications will meet business performance requirements.
SER Solutions announced it will unveil CPS Enterprise Edition, the latest version of its next-generation outbound call management solution. Its open architecture supports Microsoft platforms (Windows, SQL, and .NET) and XML standards making it easy to interface with existing applications and ACDs.
FrontRange Solutions USA announced a new release of GoldMine Integration Services for Microsoft Exchange Server. The new version 2.0 of the integration, which syncs Microsoft Exchange Server with the popular GoldMine Corporate Edition solution, contains multi-server support, bi-directional synchronization and allows entire companies to view designated shared calendars, schedule appointments and access contacts whether they are using GoldMine Corporate Edition or Outlook via the Exchange Server.
NetSuite updated its sales-force tools with the release of a new Incentive Compensation add-on module for its CRM+ application. Company officials said the module's capabilities will sound the death knell for Excel-based forecasting.
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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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CEM Panel Discussion - Customer experience management (CEM) is garnering a great deal of attention in the CRM industry. A panel of industry experts discuss the importance of CEM to the enterprise and shed light on what it will take to successfully implement a winning strategy.(CRM Association)
| | | When Customers and Agents Make "Noise" from Surveying and How to Fix It - We have learned not to take things at face value. Naturally, we seem to question everything we see, read, observe and hear. How unnatural is it then that the management team does not question enough about its CUSTOMER Metrics? The inherent problem lies in the types of figures we are looking at without questioning.(Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C.)
| | | 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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Dashboards -- Not just for executives - Frost Bank IT executive Louis Barton is the driving force behind a new effort to bring executive dashboards out of corner offices and into cubicles. Barton, executive vice president in charge of data warehousing and business intelligence at Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc., a $575 million bank holding company based in San Antonio, is one of more than 300 employees at his company using dashboards from Cognos Inc.(SearchCIO.com)
| | | On-Demand Benefits for the Call Center - According to Karen Moser, an analyst with research firm International Data Corp. (IDC), the market for Web-based applications will reach $1.5 billion within one year. You can be sure that the same trend will soon catch hold in the contact center.(Contact Center Today)
| | | U.S. Small and Mid-sized Businesses Find Value in Converged Communications Solutions - Small and mid-sized businesses in the United States plan to increase their usage of converged voice and data communications solutions over the next 18 months, new research commissioned by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) reveals.(CRMToday)
| | | Former PeopleSoft CEO Joins Salesforce.com's Board - After fighting Oracle for more than a year, PeopleSoft's board fired then-CEO Craig Conway a year ago, saying it had lost confidence in his leadership. PeopleSoft was sold to Oracle for $11.1 billion two-and-a-half months after Conway's departure. Conway has kept a low profile since his firing.(CRMDaily)
| | | 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)
| | | Customer Disservice? - Critics say the promised savings from offshoring come at too steep a price, while companies say very little at all.(CFO)
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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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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 | 40.48 |  | 0.13% |
| Dow Jones | 10,216.59 |  | 0.00% |
| Nasdaq | 2,047.22 | | 0.48% |
| S&P 500 | 1,176.84 | | -0.07% |
| Top Gainers |
| Vignette | 15.13 | | 0.77 |
| RightNow | 13.57 | | 0.74 |
| salesforce.com | 21.83 | | 0.65 |
| Top Losers |
| NICE | 43.02 | | -2.21 |
| ICT Group | 11.72 | | -0.64 |
| Unica | 10.25 | | -0.60 |
| Complete Stock Index |
| As of close 10/13/05 | |
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