Unlocking Customer Satisfaction: Top 5 Key Indicators

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:44:19 -0500

Tech issues, even small ones, can have an enormous impact on customer experience. Today's contact centers are extremely complex, featuring multiple communication channels, self-service applications, routing schemes, agent groups and vendor equipment. Often times, companies may not even know there is an issue until it is reported by a customer. Frustrated customers today have no problem taking their business elsewhere, and they're likely to tell others about their experience. A complaint that a few years ago would have been aired to a small circle of family and friends can now easily reach thousands, potentially even millions, via social media.

To illustrate this point, consider the global retailer attempting to provide better service with a CTI screen pop via its newly deployed CRM system. Unfortunately, they experienced multiple integration issues. Although everything worked properly at low call volumes, the solution was not able to handle peak traffic loads. The screen pop response time went from less than two seconds to an astounding 38 seconds.
In addition, while the agent waited for the screen pop, the entire custom CRM application froze, making it impossible for the agent to assist the customer at all. This resulted in hundreds of frustrated customers.
To better understand the customer experience, it is important to track certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). By closely monitoring these KPIs in real-time, companies can spot service degradations and possibly preempt their impact on customers. The top five KPIs to watch include:

Voice Quality of Service: Poor voice quality reflects badly on any company. It also leads to an increase in call length when customers and agents cannot understand each other and are forced to continuously repeat themselves. In extreme cases, customers will hang up and try again. Either way, these delays can be...

SaaS Enterprise Valuations Will Continue Fast Growth

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:37:53 -0500

SAN RAMON, Calif., Feb 06, 2012 -- martinwolf, the world's leading middle market IT M&A advisory, today released its MW IT Index(R) for 2011. The Index is a proprietary analysis that serves as a benchmark and guide to better understand how key financial metrics affect the enterprise value of IT outsourcing and managed services companies. The Index continually tracks the enterprise value of 120 companies in IT Services and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO); IT Supply Chain Services; and Software including SaaS.

According to Marty Wolf, Founder and President, "The MW IT Index is the only index of its kind in our industry. We use it to counsel buyers and sellers of companies and companies use it to better understand how business decisions they make every day can either build or destroy enterprise value."

Key findings by industry include:

-- SaaS, which has experienced accelerated growth and premium valuation multiples over traditional software companies, will continue its fast growth for the next 12-24 months, especially in new segments and specialized industries;

-- BPO will continue to see valuation growth driven by market demand for specialized solutions;

-- IT Supply Chain Services are mature segments and companies will see continued consolidation; and

-- The traditional enterprise Software market is really giving way to SaaS.

For a more information about the MW IT Index for 2011 report, and to find a copy of the report, please visit http://martinwolf.com/mw-index .

About the MW IT Index

The MW IT Index(R) is an analysis using securities that are weighted according to the market value of their outstanding shares. The Index includes 120 IT companies traded in the U.S. stock markets (NYSE, NASDAQ, and OTC) that are a composite representative sampling of enterprise values in the following categories:

Dynamics CRM Going Fully Mobile with Update from Microsoft

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:15:10 -0500

Days after Salesforce.com announced the release of a customer service desk for mobile devices, Microsoft has announced that the new service update for its Dynamics CRM will feature the ability to access full functionality on any device.

The cloud-based, mobile client service is intended for Windows Phone 7.5, iPad, iPhone, and Android or BlackBerry devices.

Dennis Michalis, general manager of Dynamics CRM, said that its customers, working in a "hyperconnected world," need to be able to "access their business-critical data on the device of their choice wherever they are."

Syncing, Administration

As an example of the value of management via mobile devices, Microsoft noted that the update allows sales and marketing personnel to capture and convert leads, develop marketing campaigns, or conduct case management on smartphones and tablets, on the road.

As a cloud-based service, information in Dynamics CRM is automatically synced between, say, a smartphone and a desktop. All configuration, security, management, and updates are accommodated in the cloud. Each registered mobile user can access the service from as many as three mobile devices, and there is an offline mode on most devices to enable some functionality even without Internet connectivity.

CRM administrators at a company can determine the record types, forms, views, offline synchronization rules and navigation structure for the service, which is published once. Multiple profiles can be established to determine data and functionality available for given roles, and administrators can remotely wipe CRM data off devices if they are lost, stolen or moved outside a company.

While mobile access is highlighted, the second-quarter service update is also enhancing social functionality for real-time communication and more effective collaboration, and adding multiple Web browser options, including Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari, on PCs, Macs or iPads.

Huge Acceptance of CRM

The Dynamics CRM service update last fall delivered micro-blogging and other social collaboration capabilities...

Small Businesses Get Help Exporting to China

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:43:49 -0500

New Orleans entrepreneur Kyle Berner is taking his all-natural rubber flip-flops to one of the world's fastest-growing markets: China.

This year, Berner plans to list his eco-friendly flip-flops on Chinese e-commerce site Tmall.com, joining the ranks of large American companies such as Levi Strauss that already do so. It's a step that Berner hopes will help take the small company he founded, Feelgoodz, from a "bootstrap business" that generated about $330,000 in sales last year to one with as much as $50 million in sales in five years. While the U.S. remains Feelgoodz's main market, exporting overseas helps protect against the risk of a domestic downturn, according to Berner, who also sells his flip-flops in New Zealand.

"The Chinese are starting to consume and spend money," he says. "You couple that with the gigantic size of the market, and it makes sense to us" to enter the market.

For large American corporations, exporting -- especially to booming markets such as China, India and Brazil -- is often seen as a logical part of their growth. But small and midsize businesses, with limited resources and staff, may see it as a hassle, according to Ed Marsh, a principal at Consilium Global Business Development Advisors, which advises U.S. companies on exporting. While more than 99% of U.S. businesses are small or midsize enterprises, they account for a relatively small share of U.S. exports, according to a 2010 report by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

"The government can jump up and down and talk about the benefit of diversifying your market and the opportunity to reach more than 90% of the world's consumers, but for a business owner who is frantically trying to keep up with his e-mail, the perceived benefits may not outweigh the perceived impediments" of exporting, Marsh says.

Small companies' mind-sets are starting to change,...

New Profit Pressures To Hit Facebook

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:55:48 -0500

For all the huge numbers in Facebook's IPO papers, a surprisingly small figure stands out: $4.39, the amount the site generated per user last year.

It's one of the company's major challenges because the total is paltry compared with competing Internet companies. Google makes more than $30 a year from each registered user. Even struggling Yahoo and AOL make $7 and $10, respectively.

Once Facebook goes public, Wall Street will surely demand more. That means the social network will almost certainly have to attract a lot more users or be more aggressive with its advertising, perhaps by mining personal data even more than it does now.

But can Facebook do all that without spoiling the user experience?

The company may have a tough time increasing the number of ads on a site that has become primarily a home for online conversations.

"It's a communications tool. Can you imagine what a turn-off it would be if we were talking on the phone and AT&T tried to play an ad in the middle of our conversation?" said University of Notre Dame finance professor Tim Loughran, who studies IPOs.

Facebook stock probably won't begin trading until at least May, but analysts already believe the company will try to sell shares at a price that will give it a market value of at least $100 billion -- more than Yahoo, AOL and Hewlett Packard Co. combined.

To justify a valuation like that, Facebook will need to maximize its revenue to get closer to Google, one of its biggest rivals. Google's revenue of nearly $38 billion last year translated into about $35 per registered user.

Facebook recorded $3.7 billion in revenue last year.

The question is whether it can bring in more money without alienating the 845 million users who have become accustomed to hanging out with friends and family on the social network...

Researchers Look at Which Tweets Interest Users

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:12:28 -0500

Twitter is one of the most frequently mentioned social networks for businesses adopting social marketing. But how can you tell if a tweet is boring or not? A group of researchers is trying to set some guidelines, having found that users actively dislike, or are neutral about, most tweets.

The researchers, from Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology, created a Web site called Who Gives a Tweet? at WGATweet.com. Users registering with the site are asked to rate tweets of friends and strangers, and to have theirs similarly rated.

Only About One-Third Enjoyed

Although more than 200 million tweets are sent by Twitter each day, few users get any feedback about whether their followers enjoy their mini-observations, or even if they continue to read them.

The researchers point out that a better understanding of what makes for an interesting tweet could lead to better content filters and other tools, such as automatically showing location check-ins on maps. It could also lead to more effective marketing and political use of Twitter.

One graduate student involved in the research, Kurt Luther at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that the Who Gives a Tweet? site allows "a more nuanced type of feedback than is currently available," with insight on how updates are seen by different groups.

Over nearly three weeks in December, 1,443 users visited the site, and provided analysis of 43,738 tweets from more than 2,000 user accounts. The comments indicate that slightly more than a third of the tweets, or 36 percent, were enjoyed, while 25 percent were disliked. The feeling toward 39 percent was neutral.

Tweeting Guidelines

Generally speaking, the researchers found, the least-liked tweets are those that relay snippets of other people's conversations, or that give an update on current moods or activities. The best liked were ones that...

Will Facebook IPO Be Long-Term Bust or Boom?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:26:40 -0500

Facebook finally filed for its initial public offering. Now the social-media giant can look ahead to a potentially new source of revenue from "social advertising." Or it could come out with plump prices, only to deflate after a few quarters.

Many industry watchers expect Facebook's valuation to range between $75 billion and $100 billion. Facebook wants to raise up to $10 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Facebook posted a $1 billion profit in 2011 on $3.71 billion in revenues.

"The social network IPOs have been trending down. What is interesting is there appears to be no connection to financial viability," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group. "The weakest company was Groupon, which started the strongest. The strongest company was Zynga and it was also the most tightly connected to Facebook and it barely made it out of the gate."

Dampened Success?

As Enderle sees it, Facebook is massively popular but there is also a sense that people are tiring of social networks. And that, for all the hoopla over the long-anticipated Facebook IPO, could significantly dampen their initial success.

"Odds were this would go big initially and then collapse down to a more reasonable price. Facebook is limiting supply to drive initial price into the stratosphere," Enderle said.

"If investors see the subsequent fall like they apparently did with Zynga, Facebook's initial high could be a fraction of numbers we've been discussing so far. And their prospectus does point to a strategy that likely will have them operating in the red, with more investment expenses than revenue for some time after the offering.

"While I still think it will initially come out strong -- it is Facebook, after all -- the risk it won't is increasing, and suggests caution," he said.

Power of Social Advertising

But new research by Catherine Tucker, associate...

Microsoft Slams Google User Data Policy in New Ads

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:51:56 -0500

Microsoft Corp. slammed search rival Google Inc. with full-page newspaper ads Wednesday, saying that recent changes at Google that allow it to internally merge the data it collects on user activity across services such as YouTube and Gmail are meant to allow advertisers to better target customers.

Google has touted the overhaul it announced last week as a simplification of detailed but obtuse policies and a way to provide a better user experience.

Microsoft offered up its own Web-based alternatives, saying for instance that users of its free email service, Hotmail, don't have to worry about the content of their emails being used to help target ads.

The attack ads appeared in newspapers including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

"Every data point Google collects and connects to you increases how valuable you are to an advertiser," Microsoft says in the ad.

In response, Google published a blog post in which it refuted what it called "myths" about its new privacy policy, saying, "Our privacy controls have not changed. Period."

The company does not dispute that it serves up ads based on words in private emails written by users of Gmail, but says such scanning is automated and is similar to how many email providers filter out spam. It has operated that way since Gmail's introduction in 2004.

Both companies offer several controls to prevent advertisers from tracking users' online activity.

Online expert Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the Web site Search Engine Land, said that Google's privacy policy simplification has turned into a public relations "nightmare," but only because it again focused attention on the kind of data that Google has collected for years.

He said Microsoft is in no position to point fingers, since it also collects a lot of user data from its search engine, Bing, and will adjust search results based...

For SMBs, Salesforce Launches Mobile Social Customer Support

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:35:22 -0500

A mobile customer service desk for small- to medium-size businesses. That's the idea behind Desk.com, a new cloud-based customer service product from Salesforce.com.

Announced Tuesday, Desk.com allows any business to interact with customers on any major social network, via a mobile device. The company said in a statement that the service is "so simple that any company, even one without an IT staff, can get up and running over a weekend."

'First-Class Citizens'

With nearly a quarter of all time spent online being spent on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Salesforce.com has become a leader in integrating social networks into its customer service offerings.

The company envisions a scenario such as a customer posting a critical comment on Facebook about its newly purchased widget. While a desktop-based customer service worker for the widget maker might be the first stop for responding to the comment, the actual resolution might be better handled by a technical service person, who could be out in the field.

With Desk.com, that ticket can then be picked up by the technical service employee, and resolved via a mobile device. The ticket can be reassigned, have its status or priority changed, or have its customer information modified.

Salesforce said that, according to its data, nearly three-quarters of small businesses use mobile applications in their daily operations. With Desk.com, SMBs can use a help desk that integrates social networks, e-mail, phone and other Web components, making social networks into what the company described as "first-class citizens along with traditional support channels."

Hourly for 'Casual' Reps

Desk.com runs on any smartphone that supports HTML 5, such as Android-based devices and Apple's iPhone. Reporting includes information on how many cases customer service agents have opened, resolved, replied to, reassigned, or reopened, and a dozen pre-built reports offer such data as handling time, time to first...

Super Bowl Advertisers Go After 'Second Screens'

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:31:02 -0500

Call it the "second-screen" Super Bowl. About two-thirds of smartphone and tablet owners use their gadgets to do things like text or post on Twitter while watching TV, according to research firm Nielsen. So, for Sunday's game, companies from Coke to Chevy are trying to reach fans on all the "second screens" they have.

Chevrolet rolled out the first Super Bowl smartphone app that allows Big Game watchers to enter a contest to win everything from pizza to a new Camaro. Kia is the first company to show its Super Bowl ad ahead of the game in movie theaters. And Coca Cola set up a Facebook page and Web site so viewers can see its animated polar bears -- one cheering for the New England Patriots and the other for the New York Giants -- reacting to the game in real time.

"The world is changing," says Pio Schunker, Coca Cola's vice president for creative excellence. "We needed to come to the party with something new and different."

Advertisers have big incentives to stand out. With more than 111 million viewers expected to tune into the game, the Super Bowl is by far the biggest stage for marketers. It's also not cheap -- NBC is charging an average of $3.5 million for a 30-second spot. And the competition is fierce: there will be more than 70 TV ads during the Super Bowl battling for attention.

To create buzz, it's no longer enough for marketers to simply get people talking at the water cooler the morning after the game. They also want to engage the people who like reacting to big events like the Super Bowl by posting on Twitter or Facebook or texting their friends, says David Berkowitz, vice president at digital marketing agency 360i.

"People are glued to their digital devices, sometimes sharing far...

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