Last time, I talked about knowledge management processes and people that lead to a sustainable knowledge management approach.  Thanks to all who commented and moved the conversation forward!  Now, a good knowledge management system is all well and good, but in light of some of the comments I got – what happens when reality sets in and we face a less-than-ideal situation?  What happens when the system breaks down? Read More »

The other day, I was thumbing through an old copy of Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence and was thinking about how the management lessons they discuss in this seminal book–for instance, stay close to the customer–are still just as relevant today as when the book was first published almost 30 years ago.  This book has served as a guide for business leaders the world over who seek to understand what makes truly exceptional organizations tick. 

At the same time, I started thinking about all that’s changed in the world during the three decades since this book hit shelves–the pervasiveness of technology, the extent to which the global economy is more interconnected, etc.  

What has changed for service leaders in the past 30 years?  According to ICMI, Rockwell installed the first ACD system 30 years ago, suggesting that call centers existed perhaps decades earlier than that (or there would have been no demand for ACD as a technology).  The call center was a massively disruptive innovation to the service industry for it marked the beginning of the end of live (face-to-face) service as the dominant means of doing business with companies. Read More »

I’m a consistent viewer of NBC Thursday night TV, so I probably would have given the new show “Outsourced” a chance even if my job had nothing to do with customer service.  My experience in customer service, though, did make me a tougher critic.  While most professional critics have focused on the cultural and economic aspects of the show (reviews are mixed, at best), my focus here is mainly call center specific.

As a quick background for those who did not watch the show: the premise is that an American novelty company has run into financial difficulty, so they cut costs by sending their call center operations—and one American manager—to India.  The main dynamic for the manager is that of a stranger in a strange land – experiencing the TV-version of India for the first time.  What ensues is an in-your-face barrage of crude humor that is as subtle as a jackhammer.  This being TV, I expected everything to be exaggerated for the sake of gaining a few extra laughs, though I’d argue that the writers beat my expectations. Read More »

Customer Service News

• Kenmore washers and dryers now communicate directly with customer service reps via revolutionary technology. [PR Newswire]
• Interview with British Telecom (BT) director of social media on using Twitter for customer service  [Econsultancy]
• Anticipating the Christmas online retail season(and next week’s National Customer Service week), 22% of surveyed Australian adults say the online service they received did not meet expectations. [IT Wire]
• Rosetta Stone takes its customer service to Facebook. [Internet Retailer]
• According to a new study, teens engage in a disproportionate amount of word-of-mouth promotion [Adweek]
• How businesses are using social media to empower their employees [Mashable]
• Review finds NBC’s “Outsourced” way behind the times. [Fierce CIO]

You may recall Nick’s post in May about a new threshold recently crossed in the United States: cell phones were, for the first time, being used more for data exchange than for voice services. At the time, Nick pondered what the role of service should be in the increasingly data-heavy mobile world—what exactly IS our opportunity here?  Nick’s hypothesis, in essence, was that although a few companies have launched innovative service apps, executives should be prudent in their strategies: 

“While many companies don’t interact with customers on a frequent enough basis to warrant a dedicated app, increasing consideration should be given to mobile-friendly versions of self-service portals. Yes, it’s time for a bare-boned version featuring the most frequent transaction types. Conventional sites are simply too slow to load and cumbersome to navigate via smartphone.”

The story picks up steam with the recently published results of a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, which adds new clarity to Nick’s post.  Pew’s survey examined mobile app adoption among American adults, and based on the results, it seems that the recommendations Nick laid out in May were spot on.

How does this latest data confirm Nick’s advice to proceed with caution for service-dedicated apps?  I’d turn to two conclusions: Read More »

This is a guest post by Vanessa North of the  Communications Executive Council, our sister program for communications leaders and their teams. While applicable to all employees in a company, it’s got some great tips for contact centers whose employees are contantly multi-tasking with technology as they work with customers.

I  just got back from a glorious ten days in Croatia (which by the way, I would HIGHLY recommend– totally beautiful and so far, unspoiled) and now that I’m back, I am noticing more than ever the constant bombardment of information, emails, & instant messages that distract me from doing any true thinking.  Matt Richtel has coined the term the “three-day effect” when you are away from all technology and distraction.  After three days you start to relax, sleep better, and lose that nervous twitch of checking your blackberry every 3 seconds.  This is probably why the average weekend just doesn’t feel long enough; you get close to relaxing and then get pulled back to reality with a thump.

The New York Times reports that the average computer user checks 40 websites a day and can switch programs 36 times per hour.  Think of what that means in terms of how much information that you are subjecting yourself to on a daily basis.  It’s no wonder we hear, “I haven’t had time to think” so often.  It is only when you actually stop reading and taking in new information that you can sit back and really think what it all means, and actually process it.  By constantly rushing from one idea to the next without giving ourselves the time to think, we aren’t giving ourselves time to know what we really think.  I’m probably not the only one who sits there and has revelations when I’m on holiday.  You realize opinions you never knew you had.  You make life-changing decisions (or at least come up with the ideas for them).  In short, you think.

So as companies are striving to add more channels to reach their employees from all angles– are we actually doing more harm than good?  Read More »

Customer Service News

• Interview with L.L. Bean’s President on top-notch customer service (Hint: Treat customers like human beings) [National Retail Federation]
• Does social media introduce a new social customer relationship management (sCRM) system?  [Fast Company]
• Diaspora, a Facebook competitor, has been released [TechCrunch]
• Domino’s executive personally visits customer who complained about substandard pizza via social media [NYT]
• The founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, explains 4 concerns about the mobile web [ReadWriteWeb]
• Using smartphone’s GPS to provide location-based customer service – an idea ahead of its time or the next big thing? [BusinessWorld]
• Google will ad social networking elements to its search and product offerings, starting this fall [WSJ, subscription required]

Every few months companies pose questions about the upcoming trends of the service and support function.  Though typically prompted by companies revisiting their strategic plans and technology roadmaps, vendor whitepapers are probably equally responsible for causing hype and questions.

I’m certainly an avid reader of trade press and secondary research, and keep a list of the top trends to the side of my desk (CCC members, find the latest here).  But in my role as a researcher, I also try to break away from the latest technology enablers and innovations and consider more holistically what an “excellent” customer experience might truly look like.

So what are the top things that would radically change the service and support experience?  Here’s my take:

Read More »

Is the next big trend backshoring? In the past year, several organizations have reversed their offshore decisions—Delta Air Lines, Dell, and IBM to name a few.

We get a lot of questions from the membership asking whether everyone is onshoring again – and if they should onshore their operations. We hear more members casually mention they’re taking their outsourced/offshored operations back home. Perhaps they didn’t follow the 3 Keys to Offshoring Success, or maybe this is part of a bigger trend.

To find out, let’s start by reviewing the facts. There are several reasons companies take operations home: Read More »

Customer Service News

• Hotel chains turning to video games, improv comedy to improve customer service [NYT]
• YouTube will begin testing a live-streaming platform this week [YouTube]
• The case to align corporate communications and customer service – and a great example of why CCC’s concept of experience engineering is so powerful [PR Week]
• Taking a look at the reasons businesses need a mobile commerce strategy [Mashable]
• Steve Rubel thinks Google Instant has ‘killed’ search engine optimization… [Steve Rubel]
• But Econsultancy disagrees – SEO will have to change, but won’t die off [Econsultancy]
• Depositing checks virtually via your iPhone is the latest in banking customer services [NYT]
• The lowdown on U.S. Congressional proposals to enact legislation that will define new rules for outsourcing [NetworkWorld]
• Starting a new company?  Here are some tips for your customer service strategy [ReadWriteWeb]
• Amazon is reducing customer effort, incentivizing its ‘frustration-free’ packaging – but the going is slow [NYT]