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10/21/05 - Benchmarking - A Consultant's Perspective
One reader/consultant wrote, "Benchmarking has a place - but in my presentations I warn audiences against 'benchmarking to mediocrity'. This lines up with your point that the best benchmark is YOU. If there is one consistent call I get from enterprise contact center managers it is the search for benchmarks (AHT, ASA, average time to abandon). So often the search is for the NUMBER that they can defend to management or finance because it drives staffing levels.
He goes on to say, "Benchmarks are a nice starting point, but then you really need to do the homework on getting customer sat data and start tying that to relevant performance metrics. THEN establish plans to IMPROVE on them. Funny - where one would think it would be the smaller centers that would call looking for this data because they lack staff time to analyze metrics - it's the VERY LARGE ones that always call me."
If you have been following this discussion thread, you most likely realize that many of our readers have some strong feelings opposed to the practice of benchmarking. I feel most of those readers actually want to wake people up to the fact that benchmarking in and of itself will not make you better. It may be a start, it may be a part, but benchmarking is not the main path to best-in-class customer satisfaction.
Gary Lemke, Publisher
(Share your thoughts)
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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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Using an Online Survey to Put Customers on Your Side - To win over hesitant advertisers, wouldn't it be helpful to have an 8 million standing army on your side? Guideposts, a leading publisher of inspirational books and magazines with a total circulation of over 8 million, decided it was time to try some innovative techniques to reach out to customers and show the advertisers the full power of its readership community.(WebSurveyor)
| | | 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)
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The Danger of Defection - Over the last fifteen years, the cult of customer retention has gone from strength to strength. For many industries, winning new customers consumes far less intellectual effort than keeping the ones you already have, and developing their value to your organisation. Much modelling effort goes into predicting which customers are likely to defect, as well as building strategies to stop them doing so. Research from Pitney Bowes tells us that by the end of 2005 more effort will be going into marketing to existing customers than is devoted to winning new ones - a watershed moment in marketing.(CRMToday)
| | | SAP Vies for Customers as Siebel Seeks to Reassure - Siebel used its sales confab to reassure customers and partners. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison addressed the crowd gathered in Boston for the event via video conference, saying that Siebel "will be the foundation for Oracle CRM going forward."(CRMBuyer)
| | | Optimizing the Inbound Phone Channel - The ability to improve the efficiency of a call based on a customer profile, or some other demographic, is a powerful business tool. CRM software vendors have been providing this capability to call center agents and Web sites for years, but such tools have only recently begun to find their way into automated call center solutions. (Contact Center Today)
| | | The Science of Customer Happiness - Understand the nuances of what keeps a customer happy and you have a customer for life.(Call Center Magazine)
| | | 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)
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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.
| | | 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.
| | | November 17-18, 2005: Telecoms Churn Management & Customer Retention - ViB events' Churn Management and Customer Retention conference will arm you with the latest customer loyalty approaches, churn and customer marketing strategies, and methods of cementing brand identification among your customers so they want to stay with you rather than join your competitors. Two days of case studies and worked examples will allow you to benchmark your approaches, think of new solutions and create something truly unique, something that makes your customers want to keep their relationship with you.
| | 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 | 41.66 |  | 2.09% |
| Dow Jones | 10,281.10 |  | -1.29% |
| Nasdaq | 2,068.11 | | -1.12% |
| S&P 500 | 1,177.80 | | -1.52% |
| Top Gainers |
| West Tel | 38.47 | | 2.10 |
| Convergys | 15.76 | | 1.83 |
| salesforce.com | 23.71 | | 0.79 |
| Top Losers |
| NICE | 40.67 | | -0.65 |
| SPSS | 22.56 | | -0.63 |
| SupportSoft | 4.23 | | -0.39 |
| Complete Stock Index |
| As of close 10/20/05 | |
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"OUR TAKE"
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