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11/4/05 - Benchmarking - An Innumeracy Crisis
I often do my best to summarize the notes I receive in response to what I write in this column. Today, I can't.
I can't because the email I received is so eloquent. The reader takes a step back from all the pros and cons of benchmarking and frames the issue quite nicely. But rather than trying to summarize her line of thought, allow me to share her perspective in whole.
Read why this reader feels the call center is facing an innumeracy crisis and why it isn't a simple matter to "draw a line between good and bad." Do you agree with her position?
Gary Lemke, Publisher
(Share your thoughts)
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TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK (more)
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"CRM's Secret Sauce - Everything You Need to Know About CRM"
Gary Lemke, Founder and Publisher, CRMAdvocate
Ah CRM . . . So much investment, so little return. Even today, a great divide exists between the promise and the benefit of CRM. Why? The answer is a paradox of simplicity and complexity - that is, the straightforward desire for customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention against an unyielding realization that not all customers act the same. Nor are all customers valued equally. This webcast is the first in a series on a single strategic focus and metric that can catapult your organization to the next level of revenue growth and profitability. Listen now to learn more.
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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.)
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Six Simple Rules For Successful Self-Service - You can save money, increase revenues and generate loyalty when you let customers help themselves. But only if you do it right.(CIO)
| | | How To Build Profits? Let Service People Do What They Do Best - In a former life, I was customer care director for a national cellular network. At the time, we were the No. 1 player in the market, having been the first to launch a proposition aimed at bringing consumers into the mobile arena. They were heady days. At the time, there were just 450 employees in the whole company plus another 500 employed by an outsourcer to support the fast growing consumer business.(CRMGuru)
| | | Rivalry Brews Between On-Demand CRM Providers - Rivalry Brews Between On-Demand CRM Providers(CRMDaily)
| | | It's All About the Customer - To maximize the return on customer, we need to treat different customers differently, and to do this involved a lot of management issues such as customer governance versus product line governance, cross-departmental coordination and conflict resolution.(CRMBuyer)
| | | Considering the Hosted-VoIP Model - Given today's competitive operating environments, the benefits of the hosted model provide some compelling reasons to consider it. These may include lower operating expenses, ability to provide enhanced security, improved performance and capability to quickly rollout new services such as VoIP.(Contact Center Today)
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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 | 43.39 |  | 0.09% |
| Dow Jones | 10,522.59 | | 0.47% |
| Nasdaq | 2,160.22 | | 0.74% |
| S&P 500 | 1,219.94 | | 0.42% |
| Top Gainers |
| SPSS | 27.3 | | 0.76 |
| RightNow | 14.67 | | 0.58 |
| Teletech | 11.24 | | 0.56 |
| Top Losers |
| salesforce.com | 26.52 |  | -0.39 |
| Vignette | 16.59 | | -0.33 |
| SAP | 43 | | -0.30 |
| Complete Stock Index |
| As of close 11/03/05 | |
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