By Corey Stout

Companies increasingly turn to remote reps to improve employee engagement, enhance the customer service experience, and achieve cost savings. Thirty six percent of companies surveyed by CCC in 2010 (n=98 companies) reported that they use remote reps – and this number is expected to continue to grow.

As a result of the sustained interest in this topic among our member companies and across the industry, the CCC team has pulled together our collective insights into a portal dedicated to all things remote reps. These new web pages will provide you with rich insights that will help you incorporate the right variables when making the decision to launch a remote rep program as well as develop effective on-going remote rep support.

Read More »

Customer Service News

• The ‘Customer Aggravation Index’ (not to be confused with the Customer Effort Score)—an alternative to predicting loyalty using customer surveys? [Business Finance Magazine]

• Flexible work arrangements lead to increase in productivity—and not just for call center representatives [InSing News]

• A sign of things to come? Amazon expands its presence in South Africa with new customer service operation [Tech Central]

• The pros and cons of mobile apps, and why they may not be in the best interest of the customer experience [eConsultancy]

• And finally, as Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple, a look back at his personal commitment to customer service [Xconomy]

By Kirsten Robinson

Did you miss our webinar featuring what you need to know about social media?

If so, worry not—we’ve compiled key ideas and takeaways discussed during our Q&A with Cindi Freeburn, Director of Community at QVC, and Joanna Howard, Head of Strategy at BT. Cindi and Joanna told us how their companies are using social media as a customer service channel, including insights covering:

-Using social media to provide technical support

-How to measure the ROI of social media activities

-Whether reps should specialize in one channel or work across platforms

-Lessons learned and advice for using social media as a service tool

CCC members, find out the key insights you missed and learn how QVC and BT use social media as a customer service channel.

• British Airways is attempting to improve customer service by equipping cabin crew with iPads. [WebProNews]
• A twitter post now coined as “the greatest customer service story” ever told. [BusinessInsider]
• Study shows more customers would use social media for service if they knew exactly what was available to them. [1to1 Media]
• Six social media myths that service organizations must debunk. [CRM Magazine]
• A podcast discusses the importance of remaining transparent when dealing dissatisfied customers. [Freakonomics]

Customer Service News

• New customer service mobile app does everything for you, except the talking [Tech Cocktail]
• The unintended consequences of call volume and checklist quality assurance, and why it might be time to modernize QA [Chicago Sun-Times]
• By paying attention to micro-trends, businesses can use social media to gain more insightful, honest understanding of customers [1to1Media]
• As consumers gain voice in healthcare model, organizations see greater need to focus service and segmentation [Peppers & Rogers Group]
• Coming back from summer vacation? Here’s how to survive the transition back to the working world [PositiveSharing]

This post was written by guest blogger Hans Eisenbeis, Iconoculture’s senior Financial Services editor

For a decade now — since the rise of the global economy — political pundits from Mumbai to Madrid, Hamburg to Honolulu have argued about “American exceptionalism”: the idea that the US is unique and can hold itself to different standards than all other nations. When it comes to love and war, you can argue both sides. But when it comes to the hard facts of economics, not so much.

Last week Standard & Poor’s downgraded US creditworthiness from a top rating of AAA to a less-than-top AA+. That’s the first downgrade in America’s credit rating since credit rating began, early in the last century (WashingtonPost.com, 8 August 2011). It also puts the US behind many of its European allies, not to mention Canada. (Canada!)

What does it mean? First, we should recognize that credit-rating agencies themselves have been in hot water. There’s evidence that folks like Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and other credit raters contributed to the Great Recession (and the Not-So-Great Recovery) by rubber-stamping financial instruments and portraying risky investments (mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps) as safe, easy money. The raters are in a fight for their lives, a fight that depends on reestablishing their credibility as objective, neutral evaluators of creditworthiness. Read More »

This post was written by Tom Distantis, who leads the Advisory team for the Customer Contact Council and the Sales Executive Council (SEC).  It was originally published to SEC’s Sales Challenger blog.

J.C. Penny, the American retailer, is getting a new boss.  Ron Johnson will become their new CEO in November after having led Apple’s retail store operations for the last decade.  Mr. Johnson is credited with the success of Apple’s retail store operations – and the results speak for themselves.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal:

• More people now visit Apple’s 326 stores in a single quarter than the 60 million who visited Walt Disney Co.’s four biggest theme parks last year.
• Apple’s annual retail sales per square foot have soared to $4,406. Add in online sales, which include iTunes, and the number jumps to $5,914. That’s far higher than the sales per square foot and online sales of jeweler Tiffany & Co. ($3,070), luxury retailer Coach Inc. ($1,776), and electronics retailer Best Buy Co. ($880), according to estimates.
• Needham & Co. puts Apple stores’ profit margin at 26.9% in an industry that typically has profit margins hovering around 1%.

These results are impressive, but not surprising.  Why?

Because Apple, through their training and support, enable their retail staff to sell the way customers want to buy. Read More »

Customer Service News

• Companies launch a plan to create 100,000 new customer service jobs by 2013 [USA Today]

• The best way to understand your customer’s experience is to be a customer yourself [Innovate on Purpose]

• Poor customer service is the fastest way to disappoint your loyal retail customers [PCR]

• Imitation stores in China copy even the customer service offered by the global companies they’re channeling [WSJ]

• Social media can make winners and losers, and acting honestly and admitting your mistakes is the best way to come out on top [HBR]

• In light of the controversy over Netfilx’s price increase, one customer’s perspective on paying for a service based on its value [HBR]

This post was written by Neha Ahuja, an  Analyst with our broader Sales, Marketing, and Communications research team.

Last year, my colleague Lara Ponomareff talked about how knowledge management processes and people—not just the technology—lead to sustainable knowledge management. She followed up the post with a write up on failure points in knowledge management efforts. A quick recap is that there are four key failure points—

1. poor knowledge generation channels,
2. poor knowledge usability,
3. lack of knowledge-related feedback, and
4. unclear knowledge management priorities.

In today’s post, we’ll examine how Oracle addressed those failure points in their successful strategy to sustain and scale knowledge management efforts.

Historically, more than 80% of Oracle’s knowledge base was accessed on a monthly basis, creating high demands for quality knowledge. However, traditional centralized knowledge management processes didn’t scale well due to Oracle’s large number of products and increasing product complexity. This required the company to decentralize knowledge efforts and make knowledge management everyone’s responsibility. In doing so, Oracle: Read More »

Customer Service News

• US Airways distributes over $250k to employees who go ‘above and beyond’ to serve customers [Market Watch]

• Facebook debuts new resources to help small businesses leverage the social media site to connect with customers [Gigaom]

• And as Facebook looks to serve the needs of businesses small and large, customer service is poised to take on a greater role for the social media giant [PC World]

• Customer loyalty: a fragile relationship, as Netflix may have to learn the hard way [1to1 Media]

• And finally, check out this ‘Outsourcing Reading List’ for a first-hand account of what call centers in India are really like [WSJ Online]