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10/2/06 - Making the Case for Field Service
Although I have implied as much in this column, I've never specifically stated that field service is more important in some industries than others. One common denominator tends to traditionally be large equipment manufacturers as well as utilities. Another common denominator deals with businesses that sell a product at cost or at a loss in hopes of making profit on the subsequent services.
One vendor wrote, "Field service is important for customers purchasing a 2-Ton HVAC unit for a building from York/Johnson Controls or the consumer buying a set top box from DirecTV. Both purchases have an added component of service implied in the purchase of the asset, and the quality of that service delivery will likely dictate the duration and continuation of the relationship."
This person went on to quote a Gartner study by noting "for more than 80 percent of organizations in asset-intensive industries, revenue gains from aftermarket business from established customers will exceed sales to new customers." Thus, field service talks directly to customer loyalty and retention.
Gary Lemke, Publisher
(Share your thoughts)
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TODAY'S NEWS (more)
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Metrix announced a new subscription-based pricing model for Mobile Techlink, a mobile field service solution. The subscription pricing will charge users a set amount per user, per month.
Oracle announced the availability of Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Release 7.3. The new release includes a systems management console and a performance optimization dashboard that enables service providers to experience application performance and availability. In addition, this release includes a productized integration with HP OpenView enterprise management software.
Respond has revealed details of its latest release, Respond 3 XA, a suite of enterprise applications that represents a solution for customer complaint and feedback management. The focus of Respond 3 XA is to provide a foundation to improve customer service and enable businesses to rollout group minimum standards and customer service policies on an enterprise-wide scale.
Sage Software announced that LEGOLAND California, a 128-acre interactive children's theme park, has successfully used Sage CRM SalesLogix to increase its consignment contract and prepaid sales accounts nearly threefold, growing from 250 to 725 accounts, since implementing the solution in 2002.
SPSS announced that Apartment Investment Management Company -- Aimco has purchased SPSS predictive analytics software to enhance its employee recruitment and retention efforts.
Vodafone Netherlands and Amdocs announced that Vodafone Netherlands has signed a five- year managed services agreement with Amdocs. Amdocs will assume responsibility for Vodafone Netherlands wholesale and retail billing, provisioning and partner settlement operations.
Epicor announced that governments around the world are successfully using Epicor Enterprise solutions to manage budgets through providing controls over commitments and expenditures, and accurate reporting across consolidated national accounts. Specifically, Epicor is implementing National-level solutions for the governments of Tanzania, Malawi, and The Gambia, as well as solutions for dozens of city, municipal and district councils and governments throughout the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and Canada to manage financial, operational and customer information.
Interactive Intelligence along with its subsidiary, Vonexus Inc., will host a free "Unified Communications Technology for Business" seminar in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 8 a.m. to 3:20 p.m. This educational seminar is designed for contact center supervisors, IT managers, CIOs and others involved in voice/data decisions at enterprises of all types and sizes who want to learn how to leverage unified communications technology to increase profits and decrease expenses.
Aspect Software announced that Portman Building Society is generating an additional £3 million (approximately $5.59 million U.S.) of revenue every month as a result of intelligently routing varying amounts of new business calls to mortgage managers at its branches using Aspect Spectrum ACD (automatic call distributor).
Presence Technology has announced that NexxLinx has selected Presence OpenGate, the flagship call center solution for Asterisk. Asterisk is an OpenSource IP telephony platform which allows companies to interoperate with all telephony standards in the market.
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| CRMAdvocate Stock Index |
| CRMSI | 52.18 |  | -1.08% |
| Dow Jones | 11,721.33 | | -0.09% |
| Nasdaq | 2,261.84 | | -0.42% |
| S&P 500 | 1,337.88 | | -0.03% |
| Top Gainers |
| HP | 37.46 |  | 0.67 |
| ICT Group | 31.95 | | 0.64 |
| Sykes | 20.49 | | 0.49 |
| Top Losers |
| salesforce.com | 35.79 | | -1.05 |
| Verint | 29.61 | | -0.79 |
| RightNow | 15.26 | | -0.62 |
| Complete Stock Index |
| As of close 09/29/06 | |
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 White Papers (more)
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Marketing Automation: The New Automation Frontier - Marketing, it's show time. Finance was automated in the 1960s, HR in the 1970s, manufacturing in the 1980s, and sales and customer service in the 1990s. This is the decade for marketing automation.(MarketingCentral)
| | | Defining CEM - Wen Joe Wheeler and Shaun Smith wrote "Managing the Customer Experience - turning customers into advocates" in 2001, they did not realize that it would help to stimulate a worldwirde interest in CEM that is growing all the time. For example, a 2005 Forrester survey found that 83% of executives considered customer experience to be more important than in the previous year. This year the figure is even higher. The question is why has CEM become such an issue for organizations.(GCCRM)
| | | Contact Center Manager KPI Survival Guide - Contact center managers are confronted with volumes of data and dozens of reports generated by automated and manual systems and processes. They may have a surfeit of metrics, but lack the fundamental information needed to manage their operating environment. Too often contact centers have no way of systematically measuring and communicating how well internal and coprorate objectives are being met and identifying where change is required.(DMG Consulting)
| | | A Strategic Guide to Self-Service for the IT Help Desk - Self-service support can be a make-or-break proposition. A self-service strategy that is properly developed, tested, implemented, and managed over time can add remarkable business value through saved costs and improved employee productivity.(Pete McGarahan)
| | | Seven Actionable Tactics for Critical Contact Center Improvement - In this white paper, Tim Montgomery, founder of The Service Level Group and Certified Associate of the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), shares a career worth of valuable research to help your organization take its contact center to a more customer-centric level.(etalk)
| | | Customizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Complex Field Service and Sales Organizations - Microsoft Dynamics CRM software is the fastest and easiest way to customer relationship managemetn (CRM) capabilities to any organization that uses Microsoft Office programs or the Microsoft outlook messaging and collaboration client. Because it was designed to partner with Outlook, Microsoft CRM delivers lower training cost, broader user adoption, less application-switching, higher productivity and and incredibly rapid impact on investment.(Microsoft)
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