 OUR TAKE -
What Can I Do For You?
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 | Accelerate Call Center Performance
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| Lasting Impressions:
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
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Arthur Schopenhauer
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Today, I put a wrapper on the discussion started a few weeks ago regarding the nonchalant, subtly evasive question often recited at checkout time at the hotel: "How was your stay?" If you have not read the subsequent follow-up to that column, go to the bottom and click on the link for the last edition to work through the last ten columns.
There is some great reader input in those past editions discussing insightful subjects like the "conspiracy of silence," a cry for help, a need for larger investments, and the role of new social networks. The discussion would not be complete without exploring whether or not we are in pursuit of genuine feedback. All that aside, I want to offer you a universal question for your customer-facing employees. It is a simple, powerful question that can really focus the customer/agent experience in the right direction. Ready? Here it goes:
"What can I do for you?"
Yup, that's it. In life, I find many people explain or complain. When they do, they often haven't really thought about what they want beyond someone listening. Ah, but the question stops the customer dead in his tracks to think about what is really needed. Try it and tell me how it works for you in business and in your personal life. That's my take. What's your take?
Gary Lemke, Publisher
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| NCR | 9.59 | | 0.89 |
| Epicor | 4.62 | | 0.36 |
| CDC | 1.21 | | 0.09 |
| Interactive | 11.26 | | 0.71 |
| Convergys | 9.59 | | 0.59 |
| Amdocs | 19.98 | | 1.07 |
| APAC | 3.87 | | 0.19 |
| Pegasystems | 19.09 | | 0.9 |
| Teletech | 12.88 | | 0.6 |
| Rainmaker | 0.86 | | 0.04 |
| Sykes | 17.71 | | 0.81 |
| ClickSoftware | 4.25 | | 0.17 |
| HP | 34.43 | | 1.37 |
| Jacada | 2.93 | | 0.1 |
| SPSS | 31.11 | | 1.03 |
| ATG | 2.88 | | 0.09 |
| eLoyalty | 4.57 | | 0.13 |
| Oracle | 19.11 | | 0.54 |
| Vignette | 7.04 | | 0.19 |
| NetSuite | 11.8 | | 0.3 |
| RightNow | 7.69 | | 0.18 |
| Tekelc | 13.64 | | 0.26 |
| Chordiant | 3.76 | | 0.07 |
| SAP | 38.6 | | 0.69 |
| NICE | 26.09 | | 0.44 |
| ICT | 6 | | 0.07 |
| Astea | 2.2 | | 0.02 |
| LivePerson | 2.46 | | 0.01 |
| Salesforce | 37.4 | | 0.02 |
| Unica | 5 |  | -0.05 |
| SupportSoft | 2.35 | | -0.03 |
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As of 3:59 p.m. on 4/9/09 |
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 NEW IN CRM
News: SPSS Launches Latest Versions of Predictive Analytics
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Article: Looking to Score
There’s a timeworn argument between the marketing department and the sales department. Marketing complains that the sales team isn’t following up the bushels of leads it gathers. Sales complains that most of marketing’s leads are of such poor quality they aren’t worth the effort of pursuit. It’s like an endless tennis match where blame is the ball. Meanwhile, opportunities are being lost and revenue is stagnant—at best. It’s the fundamental reason for lead scoring: arriving at a set of qualifications that measure the strength and value of a lead. Directing business from the wide end of the sales funnel to the narrow end is all about having one’s corporate priorities straight, but those priorities change from industry to industry, and from company to company. This is a story about what goes into getting leads qualified, codified, and ranked so that the juiciest opportunities are always the first to get pounced upon, as seen by four industry experts.(DestinationCRM
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Article: Ready to Sell? Quick--Name Your Prospect's Issue!
Author Michael Korda said “great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everyone can understand and remember . . . straightforward but potent messages.” Simplicity alone doesn’t make a message potent. What’s missing? Two crucial factors that Howard Gardner describes in his book Leading Minds: how effectively the scripts are enunciated and how convincingly the deliverers of the communications embody the scripts. In marketing and sales, we live and breathe message potency. We have to. Everything we do must nudge, push, or demand a change in one or more entrenched behaviors. So, when it comes to potency, could the intended change be as significant as the message itself? (CustomerThink
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News: AAA Western and Central New York Selects CDC Software
AAA Western and Central New York has selected Pivotal CRM 6.0 for its membership relationship management system (MRM) that is expected to be used by more than 650 associates at 17 locations throughout upstate New York to help it sustain and increase its membership levels of nearly 880,000, market the association's products and services to its membership base, meet its vision of standardizing core business processes across all business units and provide enterprise-wide access of member data. When fully implemented, Pivotal CRM is expected to provide the functional platform and service-oriented architecture (SOA) that supports AAA Western and Central New York’s relationship management, leads and opportunity management, complaint management, marketing campaign management, corporate knowledge management and enterprise reporting, as well as future MRM initiatives.(CDC Software
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