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10/28/05 - Point, Counterpoint - Part I
There are organizations that exist for the sole purpose of providing benchmarking information to call centers. As you might imagine my sometimes sharp opinions about the limitations of call center benchmarking practices has caught the attention of such firms.
It is important to me for you to know that I am not picking on any firm. If you've been following the column, you know that.
So today, I want to share the column with Dr. Jon Anton of Benchmark Portal. Read his point, counterpoint to what has been previously written about benchmarking. He promises to provide more thoughts in the future so consider this part one.
Gary Lemke, Publisher
(Share your thoughts)
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TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK (more)
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Spoke Software announced the general availability of a new release of its on-demand application, Spoke 3.0. The latest release delivers a number of innovative new capabilities for sales and marketing professionals, including the ability to more effectively manage highly-targeted prospect lists, which speed the process of pipeline development and lead generation.
eOn Communications announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") to sell its 54% interest in Cortelco Shanghai Telecom Equipment Company ("Cortelco Shanghai") to the 46% minority holder, Shanghai Fortune Telecommunication Technology Development Co. Ltd. ("Shanghai Fortune") and members of management of Cortelco Shanghai.
Silverpop announced on CNBC's "Wake Up Call" earlier this week the launch of its new RSSDirect solution, which gives businesses a new way to communicate with their customers. RSSDirect improves on RSS by transforming it from a broadcast, one-to-many communications medium into a targeted, one-to-one marketing channel.
Vocal Laboratories announced the results of its fourth SectorPulse study on the quality of customer service among major US Airlines. Southwest Airlines with its reputation for quality customer care earns another "A" for Caller Satisfaction, and in fact Southwest's satisfaction scores are among the highest across all industries, not just airlines. Still, the airline dropped from an "A" to a "C" in Call Completion, a measure of the percentage of customers who had to call back more than once to complete their business.
Siebel Systems announced the general availability of Siebel Business Analytics 7.8, a new release of its analytic applications and next generation BI platform products. This release includes a series of new predictive analytic solutions for driving more intelligent customer interactions, new and enhanced analytic application offerings, and new and expanded enterprise BI platform products and functionality.
eGain announced that CashDirectExpress has selected eGain OnDemand to build a multichannel customer interaction hub. CashDirectExpress will implement the solution for web self-service, email management and chat to route, track and resolve service inquiries, and improve customer satisfaction.
New research by database marketing company Total DM, amongst senior marketers within the top 1000 UK companies, has found that approximately one third of UK Plcs are making their loyalty schemes deliver consistently across all channels of communication with the customer - allowing an increasing number of companies to segment their customers and discretely influence their purchasing behaviour.
Witness Systems announced that its pre-packaged workforce optimization solution is compliant with key IP telephony and contact center solutions from Avaya.
Callidus Software unveiled its Callidus TrueAnalytics solution, the company's newest offering that enables organisations to monitor and analyse sales performance to improve and optimise incentive compensation plans, and drive revenue and profitability.
Convergys announced the addition of the Convergys SpeechPort Open Hosting Environment (OHE) to its portfolio of speech and multi-channel technology solutions. Convergys clients can take as much control as they want over the development and management of their speech recognition applications to automate customer interactions, while still enjoying the many benefits associated with a hosted services environment.
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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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Tool sheds light on the B2B tech purchasing process - Strategic Oxygen's decision-making repository helps tech marketers divvy up their dollars more effectively()
| | | Real estate firm signs SAP Safe Passage deal - A Cleveland real estate management firm joins a list of 30 companies that have chosen to replace their J.D. Edwards or PeopleSoft applications and replace them with SAP products.(SearchCRM)
| | | Unless You're Offering Multiple Channels, You May Be Missing Something: ROI - Recently, I received a "special offer" from Southwest Airlines, and, as it coincided with travel plans, I ended up booking a Southwest flight to Los Angeles, reserved a car and started making a hotel reservation. Halfway through, I canceled the hotel transaction, so my husband and I could consider whether we wanted a hotel near Disneyland.(CRMGuru)
| | | Sage Has Eye on Global CRM - "Realize that Sage has been in the CRM space for a long time," said Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone. "They are not coming to the market with new technology; it's more of a repositioning and branding effort in the U.S. and globally."(CRMDaily)
| | | Oracle to Bully Microsoft With Open-Source Database - Oracle's recent acquisition of the open-source Innobase database technology could mean that the firm is preparing to release an open-source database. The vendor could use the database to "bully" Sybase and Microsoft, according to Donald Feinberg, distinguished analyst and vice president at analyst firm Gartner. Innobase's flagship offering, InnoDB, is distributed under an open source license. It is not a standalone product, but is distributed as a part of the MySQL open-source database.(CRMBuyer)
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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.
| | | 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 | 41.95 |  | -1.75% |
| Dow Jones | 10,275.18 | | -0.68% |
| Nasdaq | 2,074.03 | | -1.25% |
| S&P 500 | 1,184.55 | | -0.58% |
| Top Gainers |
| ICT Group | 13.03 |  | 1.72 |
| Amdocs | 25.84 | | 0.36 |
| Astea | 7.9 | | 0.35 |
| Top Losers |
| Witness | 18.6 | | -1.64 |
| salesforce.com | 24.23 | | -1.22 |
| eOn | 11.2 | | -0.89 |
| Complete Stock Index |
| As of close 10/27/05 | |
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