CRM and ERP News

Sharing with you has been a blast!  I’m blessed to share my thoughts to a wide range of readers.  Different opinions from all walks of life have made this blog soar to new heights.

With the advice column, my posts were geared towards the audience.  It was gratifying to quench your thirst for knowledge; as basic as what a call center agent is all about, voice management which is critical to an agent’s job, expectations of an airline customer representative, passing recruitment interviews and assessments, improving agent attendance and call handling skills.

The stories and jokes that have been emailed are what we need in this industry.  A little laughter along the way has helped thousands of people to cope with the stressful environment, along with the challenges in the day to day tasks.

As always, we learn something new everyday.  Finding out call centers are expanding to nations like Bhutan, prison inmates are agents, a prayer request is just a call away, looking at CSAT in telemarketing plus new innovations in recruitment.

 

The list hasn’t ended yet.  If you haven’t read most of the posts yet, here are more to gobble up before the year ends.

Outsourcing has always been a topic that is both political in nature and will strike in everyone’s chord.  It has always been tied to complaints due to a heavy accent and the acceptance of what English should be.  Training organizations opened and flourished, trying to convince businesses they have the best solution to offer and improve English communication skills.  If it succeeds, does it help customer satisfaction?

 

A humble beginning with intense passion for quality and writing, this year has given me the chance to write and share my thoughts to my readers around the globe.  It’s been a fulfilling year here in Know More Media.  Here are the most prolific topics that have been written and discussed.

A never-ending discussion on utilizing scripts, seeing both sides of the coin, the community had different perspectives on how this works.  Home based jobs was a hot topic for working students, single mom and dads, retired businessmen and even whose personality couldn’t take the corporate environment.

A myriad of agent topics, focusing on coaching from a call monitoring perspective to scorecards, understanding the differences in cultures and managing performance to ensure 0% attrition by boosting morale of the workforce.

Continue on to more favorite and interesting posts...

 

Krissy of BPO Tiger discusses virtual representatives being the biggest threat to the outsourcing industry.  Companies have started this a few years back and now one of the largest call centers, Convergys will be utilizing a mix of human interaction and virtual representatives.

Should we start worrying? NO.

The concept is sound but with the current trend of “delighting” customers (and believe me it’s not going to change anytime soon), this concept will not affect the industry nor will it be a popular choice.  Yes, it helps the businesses cut costs and it “avoids” outsourcing more work, but it will not help companies retain their clients.

I read a post by Dr Catriona Wallace speaking of her experience when she visited a call center in Changi Women’s Prison, Singapore.  Having to learn of a nation called Bhutan was something to rejoice about; realizing that we expanded to other countries, but this is a first for me. It was to much my surprise that there was even one that existed.

I admit that negativity set in as soon as I finished reading.  This explains the questions that lingered in my thoughts.  How is it being managed?  What are the precautions?  What calls are they handling?  What type of recruitment or assessment does each candidate go through?  Are they being monitored like any other center?  How are they being trained?

HighOrbit wants to turn seat-of-the-pants management of everyday office tasks into standard computerized processes that can be tracked from end to end. The company, based out of Kevin LaFata's Oakville, Mo., home, makes software that automates the flow of work through a business, from the time a customer calls in an order until the product is shipped. It also can be used in hiring, tracking customer service calls, accounting and purchasing and sales and marketing.

(Posted by Guest Blogger, and ardent shopaholic, Ian Turvill.)

It's that time of year again, when we're supposed to make predictions about what the New Year will bring us. And apparently, I'm not alone in that belief, since Susan Reda, Executive Editor of The National Retail Federation's "Stores" magazine has compiled a list of seven things she predicts 2007 has "in store" for us.

Alongside greater use of mobile marketing technology, "fast fashion" (you'll have to read the article to see what that is - it's just too much to explain), greater emphasis on green issues, a difficult economy, and pressure on supermarket formats, she highlights two specific trends that appear to have direct relevance to our EDM blog.

First, Susan Reda says that demographics will assume greater power

"Immigration, aging Boomers and a host of other demographic shifts will be shaping and reshaping the retail landscape for years to come. Retailers who set their sights on micro-merchandising and micro-marketing will triumph; those who run with the herd may find themselves getting trampled."

Another win for Enterprise Decision Management, then! EDM's capability to find trends and to apply them at a highly granular level makes it ideally suited to address this particular challenge. If you know of any retailers who are not regular readers of this blog, I recommend pointing them here so that they are best equipped to deal with the challenges of 2007.

Separately, Susan emphasizes the impact of numerous new technologies on the retail industry, including business intelligence, RFID, contactless payment, and biometrics, as well as predictive analytics. I'm very surprised that Susan did not make more of an explicit link between between the issue of the demographics and the application of predictive analytics. However, she does quite aptly state:

"Retail success is about finding the sweet spot. Doing so requires business intelligence -- predictive analytics that allow you to distill key customer information from a sea of data, capture missed opportunities and smooth out sales anomalies."

Of course, I think James and I would probably extend that further and say that what is required is "actionable business intelligence" and the capacity to apply those insights as a core part of all transaction streams and customer interactions. Susan seems to conflate the ideas of BI and predictive analytics, and as regular readers of this blog all know, there are many reasons why BI and EDM are not the same thing. But we'll certainly accept Susan's point, nevertheless.

I predict that James and I will be blogging a whole lot more about the applications of Enterprise Decision Management in the retail industry the New Year. It seems to be an area that is ripe for some good ol' decision automation!

Here's an insightful article by Allison Kaplan that originally appeared in The Minneapolis-St. Paul Pioneer Press:

It's that time of year when we reflect on what really matters, like being able to find a salesperson when we're ready to pay.

Better customer service never seems to come in Santa's bag, so the following list of retail resolutions is intended to inspire salespeople, store owners and producers of objects of all kinds to make improvements. Because no matter what differences exist between us, fundamentally, we all want the same thing: To shop without pulling out our hair.

You've got to dream big.

Dear retailers:

• Unless you'd like to go out on a date, don't ask for our phone numbers at the register. Being pumped for personal information makes a shopper think twice about buying.
• When a customer presents a gift receipt to return merchandise, don't ask for the original receipt. Obviously, she doesn't have it. As the term 'gift receipt' suggests, the item was a gift.
• On the subject of receipts, why do they seem to get longer with each trip to the checkout counter? All we need is a record of the purchase A A- not an unwieldy scroll of advertisements, store information and coupons for the very items just purchased. Inevitably, the coupons will expire before these goods are used up.
• Also on the subject of receipts, set the cash register to print out the copy that needs signing first. Then, we'll have something to do while the customer copy is printing, rather than standing there jiggling our car keys, as so often seems to be the case. It's all about empowering the guest.
• Scan the credit card for us until your store can streamline the self-scanner situation. That machine is always covered in tape, or it is positioned too close to the counter to make a complete swipe or it simply doesn't work. We're annoyed.
• Don't think you're fooling us with the buy one, get one half off sale. The only people who need two are twins.
• Keep a few sweaters and jackets and mittens and boots in the store at least through February. It's a long winter, and we're apt to lose stuff.
• Stop basing shipping fees on the price of the item (Macy's). It should not cost more to mail a dress than a new piece of luggage because the little slip of a dress happens to be a designer garment. Base the fees on weight, just like they do at the post office.
• Offer a broader range of sizes in stores, not just online. Whether tall, petite or curvy, we'd all like the opportunity to try things on before buying.
• If you're going to sell pants that are a mile long, include free alterations A A- even when the merchandise is on sale.
• If you're going to 'support a cause' with sales from designated merchandise, have the integrity to disclose how much is actually being donated and where the money is going.
• Lots of us appreciate fashion even though we lack the means to drop $200 on a simple cotton top. If boutique owners want to steal our business away from the mall, they need to seek out more affordable but still stylish lines. High prices are not the only way to distinguish a specialty shop.
• Memo to shopping centers: Get some new stores. We're bored. Bored with seeing the same chain stores everywhere. Bored with not knowing if we're in Woodbury or Maple Grove A A- and not caring. Bored, bored, bored.
• While it would seem to go without saying, this clearly needs to be said once again: Get off the phone, stop chitchatting with co-workers, remain within eyesight of the cash register. Acknowledge us and offer assistance, but don't hover. And we, in turn, will be appreciative and less grumpy.
• And stop claiming this is the last chance to save. We know there will be another sale tomorrow.

Managed enterprise software solutions provider USinternetworking Inc. has announced its creation of a service-oriented architecture to integrate disparate applications and automate application provisioning throughout its enterprise with Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle Fusion Middleware product used by USi included Oracle Access...