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OK contact center managers and execs, here's a winner of a tip to make money and not leave it on the table: clean up your automated voice a.k.a. IVR self-service and quit treating it as the back of the bus for all those 80 percent of non-elite customers who generate the 20 percent of revenues.

Because if you don't you're going to lose that 20 percent who can easily go elsewhere. And they may not come back when they do qualify to speak promptly to a live agent.

Don't believe me? Then check out this new report from Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, The Cost of Poor Customer Service. It estimates that lousy treatment of those who put money in the hands of businesses ding the U.S. economy to the tune of $83 billion. Where is this coming from? 71 percent of consumers have ended a relationship due to a poor customer service experience.

What is the impact to enterprises? How about an average value of $289 in one year of each customer relationship lost to a competitor or abandoned. Add those up and we're talking serious money.

So why do customers leave? The Genesys reports points to having them repeat themselves, being trapped in automated self-service, forced to wait too long for service, contact centers that don't their history and value and an ability to switch channels easily.

Which is the most problematic channel? You got it. Automated voice self-service, where 33 percent of respondents cited it as the most challenging mode. Moreover 38 percent said "it is critical to improve voice self-service to make it more intelligently integrated with human assisted service."

One reason is the nightmares of busy consumers trying to get out of automated Hades to reach live agents. The Genesys report revealed that spent more than 9.5 minutes trying to reach a person.

"As a result, even paper mail is preferred to poorly implemented voice self-service," says the paper. "Consumers say the biggest issues are that voice self-service does not recognize the value of the consumer, lacks context, and needs to recognize customer needs and intent better. Another consumer said: "I don't mind automated systems but...I hate it when I am unable to reach a human, and the automated voice continues to make me repeat over and over, and when I finally get close to being connected to a human, I am disconnected and have to start over again."

In contrast while not surprisingly most people are happy with live agents, more were satisfied with Web self-service than not. If anything they were neutral.

So what gives, folks? Why can't you make automated voice self-service as pleasing or at best not as offensive as web self-service?

The solutions are there. They include 'trimming the menu trees' and making it easy for customers to zero out: throwing obstacles in their way is only going to make them consider tossing your business into the recycle bin so don't be stupid. They also include going to user-friendly speech rec. Microsoft has an increasingly sophisticated and affordable array of premises-installed and hosted (via its Tellme subsidiary) speech products.

So what are you waiting for? Your competitors to take the money off your table?

Image via Wikipedia

In the piece, titled 'The sad illusion of happy customers' Mr. Lazarus takes a sharp look at electronics retailer Best Buy's new nationwide marketing campaign 'They'll be happy, you'll be happy, we'll be happy.'

"What they're saying is that the company will bend over backward to help you shop for gifts this holiday season and will do whatever it takes to ensure that gift recipients are pleased with what they get. This, in turn, will warm the hearts of Best Buy shareholders.

"Happy customers is a long-term strategy for us," Best Buy's chief marketing officer, Barry Judge, told me. "If they're happy, they'll want to buy more."

"That's the idea anyway. But after visiting a couple of Best Buy stores and chatting with customers, I'd say the company still has some work to do on the happiness front.

"The trade-off is that you get the selection and square footage, but you have to hunt to find someone to help you," said Glendale resident Howard Erickson after buying a mini-fridge at the Best Buy in Los Feliz.

So how'd he do?

"I had to hunt to find someone to help me."

"I had a similar experience in the computer section until I finally spotted a salesguy and asked if he could show me a computer for under $500. He steered me toward a Hewlett-Packard model. I asked if there was anything else. The salesguy pointed me toward a Dell model for about the same price. I asked which was better.

"I don't know," the salesguy replied. "I guess they're about the same."

"Not that I'm picking on Best Buy, even though this week's TV and print ads all but dare consumers to judge the company by the quality of their shopping experience.

Customer support, says Mr. Lazarus" makes you feel like an uninvited dinner guest. A general indifference among employees as to whether you'll ever shop there again. Sometimes it feels like companies are determined to chase us away, rather than do everything in their power -- especially at times like these -- to build customer loyalty."

"Customer satisfaction has always been a major concern for most companies," Lars Perner, an assistant professor of marketing at USC's Marshall School of Business told the L-A Times journo. "But it's fairly difficult to implement. It's pretty labor intensive."

"He said that as long as low-low-low prices remain consumers' main priority, and as long as turnover remains relatively high among workers at service-oriented businesses, most companies just can't afford to keep sufficient numbers of well-trained staff on hand to meet customers' needs," reported Lazarus.

Columnist Lazarus and Prof. Perner got that right. Great customer-retaining service is nice to have but not if it means having high prices.

The message for contact centers and their parent or contractor organizations are really very simple. Your customers care first about price, second about products/service, and third about service. Therefore orient your business strategies and investments accordingly.

For contact centers that means more automation, and home agents (let the creepy-crawlies take over millstone bricks-and-mortar centers), on finding ways with analytics to reduce headcount, and less on customer loyalty, retention, and satisfaction programs. When it comes to hiring and training worry less about smarts and filling them with knowledge--you won't keep let alone attract them into all but the high-paying tech support centers anyway--but who can smile, sell, and do more than speak a.k.a. multitask.

Also focus your CRM initiatives on tracking customer interactions by channel to avoid pouring away money on asking customers to repeat themselves, and on cutting sales and service costs. Customers don't want except for the most sensitive products relatiobnships with your company. You are only as good as your last pricepoint.

Forget total customer lifetime value. With the way many businesses are going--the slow upturn is going to unlock mergers and consolidations to grow by acquisition rather than the more expensive and financially shakier approach of growing organically--the customers are going to outlive them.

Image via Wikipedia

The most moving words that have written about those who fought and died in war, and who continue to do so is arguably the poem 'In Flanders Fields'. It was written, reports Wikipedia by a Canadian military physician, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae on May 3, 1915 during the infamous 'War to End All Wars' i.e. the First World War, after he had watched his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, only 22 years old, die in battle the day before in Belgium.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

--Lt.-Col. John McCrae

The poem is all the more moving in that the same grounds would see some battle 25 years later, underlining the often senselessness of war. It underscores one of the most brilliant, sensitive, and respectful remarks I've heard, read, and witnessed on the issue of sending men and women into battle whose ultimate sacrifice which we remember today.

For when former Canadian federal Liberal party leader Stephane Dion was asked whether he supported the Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan he replied: "the best way to support the troops is to make sure you have properly thought out why you are sending them, to risk their lives for their country."

Sound words indeed to consider...and remember.

About a dozen years ago I heard a comment ascribed to a longtime CEO of a leading global teleservices firm who reputedly said: "I don't care where in the world you go, self-service will always be cheaper."

Well thanks to technologies such as electronic order entry, improved IVR, speech recognition but more importantly web self-service and more recently outbound notifications there is a growing realization that automation could doom many jobs, such as in contact centers, even in India, long the land of low-cost offshore outsourcing.

A blog entry that appeared in the New York Times last week by Vikas Bajaj says that India too is worried about where the jobs will come from in future (thanks Rich for the tip) 
 

S. Gopalakrishnan, the chief executive of Infosys, told the Times blogger that "he worried that over the next 20 years to 30 years, smarter computers and increased automation could do away with many of the back-office jobs that companies have moved to his country to take advantage of lower labor costs and greater economies of scale.

"He recalled the example of an outsourcing deal his company took on to enter orders into an electronic system for a customer. When the contract started, Infosys put 300 people on the job, but after a short while it dropped that to just 100 people, even though the workers were processing more orders, faster and more efficiently.

"What happened? I asked.

 
"He said that a greater percentage of the orders were now being submitted electronically by the customer's customers. In other cases previously separate computer systems were connected to each other, so more orders were flowing electronically with no human intervention. And finally, he said, Infosys itself had found ways to streamline its processes so that it needed fewer people to complete the work."

What makes Indian contact centers offshoring especially vulnerable are two factors. One, India is moving up the IT food chain, with better paying and higher skilled jobs such as in programming. Two, offshoring-serving contact centers' hours are deeply and understandably unpopular with employees because they must work unsociable (and unsafe) graveyard shifts to match the corresponding daytime hours in North America. That is on top of the typical contact center stresses from demanding and sometimes obnoxious customers while meeting stringent performance targets in very confining spaces at low pay.
 

Does this mean that offshoring will end? Well...no. As India's companies and employees become more expert and proficient with technology, expect them to develop and refine automated solutions...at less cost than their North American counterparts.

Ask anyone who works in the service sector: contact centers, hospitality, retail, and transportation especially, the one thing besides lousy supervisors and managers that drives them up the wall and that is wild scheduling--days, times, even locations worked changed on a moment's notice--resulting in fewer hours and less income.

Too often employees apply for and are hired for jobs that employers tell them will pay X for a given number of hours: 20-30-40/week. What happens though is that many of these 'hours' become 'on call' i.e. they have to be 'Janey or Jimmy on the spot' but they don't get paid.

These practices, often undertaken (you guessed it, by incompetent supervisors and managers) wreak havoc on workers' lives, especially in today's tough economy where both pay, and the money for job-related clothing and transportation, and for child care expenses are tight.

Staff can't afford to waste these outlays to go in for an eight-hour shift only to be told to go home after four or even two hours. They have little leeway, being at the bottom of society's pecking order, to get doctor's appointments changed or find alternative child care when their boss suddenly calls them in. Yet because they are poorly paid they have little choice except to pull their hairs out and pray.

So why should contact centers and other employers care? After all it is a difficult economy, business is scarce, and costs have to be tightly managed, which means only having workers on the clock when they need them.

Here's why: turnover and quality. It costs money to hire and train staff and productivity is lost--and customer retention and revenues can drop--until the newcomers are brought up to speed, when they can deliver the same if not better performance compared with those who have left.

More seriously, employers could be risking long and annoying queues and rushed service that really drives scarce customers--and their spending--elsewhere.

Why because what is happening on the employees' side is that the workers are taking on multiple jobs to make ends meet. If their 'principal' boss calls them in because a colleague is 'out sick' (like applying for another job) and they're not home, and no one else can come in, the roster falls short. The employees' reactions when they see the voicemails or texts is "tough tomatoes, pal."

Here's another consequence: any actual or perceived violation of laws and regulations--be fudging on payroll, blocked exits or loose wires, mouse droppings in the cafeteria, racial and/or sexual harassment--and your outfit will have a series of unwelcome visitors. When someone feels their back is against the wall and they may be going down, what is to stop them from taking they believe is responsible with them?

Employees aren't worried anymore about references. HR departments don't require them because they know their absence or presence on applications means nothing because people b.s. and of what goes on good and bad in workplaces. More seriously someone/some outfit can get sued for negative comments, and who needs to justify spending for lawyers for such HR matters? All employers are allowed to say therefore are the equivalents of 'name, rank, and serial number'.

And when the economy truly bounces back with new jobs well, it doesn't take a seasoned observer to predict what is going to happen next. Especially in contact centers where staff churn is rampant even slowdowns because of the job stress and the confining lab-rat-like/monitored-up-the tailfeathers environment.

Is there a solution? Yes. And that is for employers to pay for the hours promised. Suck it up. No on-call. No cutbacks. No 'we've decided to make this job temporary'. No games with benefits.

You hire someone for 20 hours a week at $10/hour you allocate for that. Period. Can't afford to do that? Then you don't know how to forecast and budget and therefore you shouldn't be in business.

Employees are like any other expense. If you don't pay the bills you won't get the service. No money? No voice/data, power, roof, or the people under them.

Having said that, and on the positive said there are a good many companies, including contact centers that do treat their people well. They get the message that in the service business your employees are your principal investment because it is they that interfaces with the end-customers i.e. the one who give you money. And, not surprisingly, these outfits have strong balance sheets, enabled by productivity-and-revenue enhancing loyalty.

The choice is clear: emulate these outfits and succeed. Toy with the people who work for you and fail.

Are contact center agents, which are still known as 'operators' in the answering service world going the way of elevator operators? For every contact center opening and expansion heralded there have been the understandably less trumpeted closures and cutbacks thanks to automation.

The automated trend is logical and seemingly inevitable. It costs less than $1 for a Web or IVR/speech-rec-handle transaction or outbound notification call versus $5 or more for that taken care or made by a live agent. While a home agent strategy can slice a guesstimated 50 to 75 cents or so from that sum and offshoring may chop that to say $4, with repeat and longer calls offsetting labor savings, they still do not effectively outbalance the savings from automatic tools.

The automated trend had been masked during the 'Ponzi boom' when companies added contact center staff and sites as demand and call volume bubbled. Yet these firms have also been slicing the rise with agentless solutions. Hiding the movement too have been downturn-driven call volumes resulting from financial and healthcare insurance worries, prompting these organizations to divert more calls into self-service and notifications.

Not surprisingly even live agent-designed contact center solutions are being aimed at and used to shrink headcount. For example presence/UC tools are being marketed to enable organizations tap idle 'available' counter and front desk staff to take calls, which avoids having separate agents and facilities to handle them.

There are many new self-service tools coming onto the market. One example is avatars which personalize and enable interactions with computers, which self service actually is. At the same time hosted offerings cut product capital costs and install times while permitting greater flexibility.

This trend most recently came to light at the tail end of a Globe and Mail article on Telus (full disclosure, I am a Telus wireless customer), which is one of Canada's largest communications firms on its plans to reduce wireless charges so it can remain competitive. An airwave auction in 2008 is letting more wireless carriers into the Canadian market.

"Two ways Telus plans to support [profit] margins is moving customers to electronic billing and bolstering its online customer support centre so that fewer subscribers need to contact a call centre, he [Joseph Natale, executive vice-president and president of consumer solutions at Telus] said."

Yes, there is no substitute for having individuals handle calls. One can argue that having them take care of customer care and purchases helps organizations stay competitive in today's and tomorrow's no-growth/slow-growth milieu. Yet with reliance on knowledge bases, tight scripting to comply with regulations, and a reluctance to empower and pay for agents who can think and act out of the software box, is there that much difference between live and automated service?

Telus has one of the sharpest contact center operations there is, employing speech rec and home agents. Its staff are well-trained and managed judging from the prompt excellent service I receive from them. If it can't justify keeping the level of live agents presently employed who can?

In today's environment price is equally if not more important as service. As long as the quality is liveable compared to similar offerings, most customers will put up with tolerable if not ideal care--if the sticker amounts match what they think the items are worth and can afford. The airlines, hardware/software firms, retailers, and yes communications including wireless firms have demonstrated proof of that. And if one or more firms can drive more customers to self-service and still maintain if not grow market share and profits others will quickly follow suit.

Does this mean that contact centers and staff will disappear? Not altogether. Only where there is a need for human intelligence, whose contacts can make or break customer relationships with benefits or losses that substantially outweigh the costs, then there will be, and the justification for, people to handle them.

How do environment and climate change issues impact business functions like contact centers? Easily and painfully. For if harmful substances are pumped and dumped into the environment: air, on the ground, and in the water your health and finances, that of your family, your employees and their families, and your customers will suffer.

These impacts also includes higher healthcare costs that shift spending away from other items (like yours), decreased productivity via absenteeism hikes and resulting increased staffing/training expenses, growing disaster risks, and losses.

Here is just one example of how environmental damage hits home. The Canadian Medical Association issued a groundbreaking report last year, No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution which reports that by 2031 almost 90,000 people will have died from the acute effects of air pollution while some 710,000 will die due to long-term exposure to air pollution. The economic costs: healthcare expenses, loss of productivity and destruction of quality of life resulting from air pollution will have topped $8 billion in 2008. By 2031, they will have accumulated to over $250 billion.

To put that in American terms (Canada's population is 34 million compared with 305 million in the U.S.) the corresponding figures are approximately 720,000 deaths from acute air pollution, 5.7 million from long term exposure at costs of $64 billion in 2008 and $2 trillion by 2031. Who is going to pay the ultimate and financial prices? The same person that always does: the one in the mirror.

Even seemingly benign activities like building a house or an office or buying or leasing one that beautiful piece of land does serious and costly harm.

--The David Suzuki Foundation quantified per hectare/year losses: in erosion control, wildlife habitat, water quality from sprawl: from $12,000 for farmland to $30,000 for wetlands

--The Fiscal Cost of Sprawl: How Sprawl Contributes to Local Governments' Budget Woes by the Environment Colorado Research and Policy Center, Colorado State University, reports that $1 in revenues from sprawl is outweighed by $1.65 in additional service expenditures

That is why the environment, including climate change matters, even to contact centers and their owning or client customers. This isn't a 'free lunch', folks. Crap up our surroundings i.e. our nest, and we all foot the bill.

On climate change the consequences, reports a Wikipedia article, citing UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data, could include more extreme weather e.g. droughts, torrential rains, fewer but more intense storms that pose increase direct and indirect (such as transportation network blockages) disaster risks. Droughts, combined with snowpack retreats may mean water shortages that prompt stringent and expense conservation measures.

Other consequences are more insidious and longer-term, like the rise of sea levels that threaten to inundate coastal communities, reduced agricultural yields and other food chain disruptions, and more diseases. These impacts may be partially offset by milder winters and longer growing seasons in some parts of the world, such as in northern Canada.

The climate change impacts are being quantified, which also illustrates how much damage it is causing to each of us financially directly and indirectly. Says the Wikipedia entry: "The IPCC reports the aggregate net economic costs of damages from climate change globally (discounted to the specified year). In 2005, the average social cost of carbon from 100 peer-reviewed estimates is US$12 per [metric] tonne of CO2, but range -$3 to $95/tCO2.

The IPCC's gives these cost estimates with the caveats, "Aggregate estimates of costs mask significant differences in impacts across sectors, regions and populations and very likely underestimate damage costs because they cannot include many non-quantifiable impacts."

Naturally there are industries that would be harmed by crackdowns on environmental damage like the industries (and vehicle manufacturers) that have dragged their feet on emissions standards, developers who fight against measures to protect open space, and the coal and oil/gas producers on global warming and fouling land and water resources through blowing up mountains and tailing ponds.

And when companies' bottom lines are affected one of the first weapons that come out of their arsenal is junk science backed by misleading and expensive PR campaigns, a technique used for decades by the tobacco lobby and asbestos producers.

That profit-protecting disinformation has long been underway with climate change. As reported in the Green Tech blog, James Hoggan, a Canadian PR executive, has made that charge in his book "Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming" And if his book is to be believed it casts doubt on the validity of the arguments and the basis of them that such man-made destruction is not underway.

Hoggan cited in a story carried last week by Canwest News Service a recent letter-writing campaign, supposedly from various seniors and community organizations protesting the potential increase in energy costs from new U.S. climate-change legislation but which was funded by a coal industry association and managed by Bonner and Associates. A Congressional panel has launched an investigation after discovering the letters were not authentic.

"It's not even so much about climate change for me," said Hoggan, who chairs the desmogblog.com climate-change website. "It's more about the deception and the PR. It was just taken too far."

The industries that benefit i.e. the energy sector especially from sticking the bills to others are not going to suddenly change their ways to become good corporate citizens. They need stiff prodding by governments who need an overwhelming force of harmed citizens and employers to give them the backbone they need to deal with their lobbyists.

These companies also require users to become less so, hurting them where it really counts. Fortunately there are at the contact centers disposal a vast range of solutions to enable them to do just that. They include:

* Switching from premise-working to home-working, from onsite to hosted solutions powered from ultraefficient data centers that cuts energy demand, and environmental damage from transportation and power generation, and e-waste

* Using audio/data/video/web conferencing rather than travel, and cycling, walking, taking mass transit, buses, rail, and in coastal areas walk aboard ferries rather than driving and flying

* Making homes, must-need facilities and remaining offices energy-efficient

* Locating facilities (and homes) on transit routes, in existing buildings and brownfield sites rather than on sprawl developments

* Going paperless

* Switching to more efficient rail and marine from less efficient truck and air for freight

Environmental action is more than 'thinking globally/acting locally'. It is about acting in our true best interests.

I came across this excellent, insightful study of what I term 'cowardly callers' conducted by solutions firm Corizon and YouGov of abusive U.K. callers--the press release says " Contact Centre Rage: Corizon Survey Finds Scots, Men and the under-30s to Be the Worst Offenders" and it got me to thinking: has there been /can there be a similar study in the U.S. and Canada?

The closest that comes to mind was a great New York Times story 10 years ago 'When New York Is On The Line' that reports on how time-pressed/stressed out/cut-the-b.s. New Yorkers react to telemarketing and market survey calls. Anyone who lives/has lived in New York City knows the answer...the article reveals that one outfit gives staff 'danger pay' i.e. supplements when they dial New York numbers.

In fairness to callers, their frustration does have some basis, which also extends here. The Corizon/YouGov surveys "also revealed plenty of frustration with contact centre technology, at both ends of the telephone line. Levels of frustration are directly related to the number of software applications an agent needs to use which causes delays in answering customer queries.

"Nearly 75% of contact centre managers said their agents use an average of five different software applications in a typical working day, with one claiming to use as many as 18. Thirty percent said the problem of 'too many applications' had worsened recently. For their part, 83% of the consumers surveyed said their biggest frustration was long waiting times."

To ward off similar cowardly callers here how about these two sets of solutions and practices:

* Simplify the tools and cut the queues, including employing automated 'step out/step back in if need be' and callback options

* Empower agents to flick the nasties to IVR, deny them the zero-out options, and/or record, trace and sternly follow up with abusers by way of warning e-mails and letters. This method could prove amazingly effective if the abusing calls or e-mails came from the perps' workplaces or on their employer-provided (and monitored) landline or wireless devices

Here is the summary of the Corizon report on U.K.'s 'cowardly callers':

* Scots are the most likely to use inappropriate language (15%), followed by Londoners (12%)

* Welsh people are most likely to hang up on an agent (51%), followed by Easterners (49%)

* Midlanders and Southerners are most likely to hang up before speaking to an agent (61% each)

* Men are more likely than women to use inappropriate language (12% compared with 7%)

* Women are more likely than men to hang up before speaking to an agent (60% compared with 57%)

* 18-30 year-olds are the most likely age group to use inappropriate language

(Some regional pride here: nothing in these results at least indicts Northerners. My family is from Lancashire, in Britain's northwest. We are nice people, though our sense of humor is very black, which keeps up grinning no matter what b.s. we have to put up with. Then again it is our part of the world that was the first to be brutally industrialized (read George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier)

"We may react differently depending on our age, gender and where we live, but one thing's for sure - a great many of our interactions with contact centres are frustrating," said Emma Chablo, marketing director, Corizon. "Consumers might be interested to know that agents find lengthy calls just as annoying, and a lot of the problem is down to the technology they have at their disposal. There's no doubt about it: fewer software applications equal happier agents and happier - and more polite - customers."

My black journalist's heart loves contrarian stuff. And what is darker and more contrarian than this quite correct observation/report from Christopher Null's The Working Guy blog 'Why user reviews are worthless'.

This is one more IED in the social networking field that could blow customer service/marketing/ strategies up in enterprises' faces. It joins firms using social networking (including reviews) to plump their products and diss their competitors.

Mr. Null points out that consumer ratings on websites are next to useless (which doesn't help companies who rely on them to help gauge customer satisfaction), because people are kinder when they put their words to the world. He cited work by the Wall Street Journal that found the average rating for anything online, as judged by the teeming masses, is 4.3 stars out of 5. The goes contrary to the common viewpoint for the web being a cesspit of anonymous anger and hate.

"Why is everyone so effusive about, well, everything?, " he writes. " Chalk it up to human nature, says one marketing research firm, which debunks the myth that people are more likely to offer a negative opinion than a positive one. (The old rule of thumb was that you get 10 times the hate from an angry customer than you get in love from a happy one.) In fact, according to Keller Fay Group's research, 65 percent of word-of-mouth is positive and only 8 percent is negative, quite the opposite of the conventional wisdom.

"Why? As I see it, people have been taught since birth to be nice. You know the rule: If you don't have something good to say, don't say anything at all. It often takes years of toiling as a professional critic before you can really dig your teeth into something."

The same remarks go for social networks. Which are no different than in-person networking, and get togethers. After all, who wants to say something negative in front of others? You step outside for that for those wonderful, secluded, index-fingers-in-the-armpits/toes-just-barely-touching-the- ground kind of chit-chats.

Does this mean disregarding consumer reviews and social networks as means to get readings from customers? No. But you have to apply a modification of the 'bad-news-travels-10X the speed of good' theorem in that for every positive comment review 3X have the same warm and cuddly feeling...but for every negative review assume that 10X more people want to stuff the product, solution, or service back down the proprietors' throats or worse yet make them use it.

And you have to check the validity of such comments/reviews. Figure out what common language is being used to sniff for 'rent a commentators'. I told Donna Fluss of DMG Consulting when she suggested that contact centers should be managing social networking that to do this requires serious political acumen. I hinted that the average contact center person--unless they have political experience (and there are teleservices firms that specialize in political work--hello, this is an opportunity)--are out of their depth here.

Social networking is not a field of buttercups and daisies for marketers. No more than all candidates' and town hall meetings are teacup exchanges of viewpoints. This is warfare for the wallets, folks, and these are desperate times. Competitors will be happy to steer you into an IED-laden field. You therefore, like a sharp soldier, need to know where they are. The consequences of not being so aware, and how to respond for your company could be as dark if not darker as my reporter's soul.

When I was growing up we had a family friend who when she drove had the nerve-wracking habit of turning to you when she spoke. Fortunately this dear individual lived to early 90s.

I also grew up in an era where drunken driving was frowned upon but it was still not uncommon to get behind the wheel bombed out of your skull. My father once weaved 45 miles from an office party to our home. When my mother saw him stagger through the door I thought she was going to murder him. He lived--he's in his 80s now.

Unfortunately all too many people are not as lucky as our friend and my father. And that especially includes the victims: those riding with them and who were out on the road that day. Years later I made my living from these avoidable tragedies: as a newspaper reporter covering horrendous accidents, including one where a brandy bottle had been thrown clear of the scene into a snowbank. I also married a wonderful lady whose son is a paramedic...

It has taken years of a combination of education and tough laws to limit impaired driving, changing the culture from tolerance to disgust. Watch an episode of 'Mad Men' to see what I mean. With the vast increases in motor vehicle use since my youth I'd hate to see what the death tolls and injury stats would have been like if these measures weren't taken. How many more accidents I would had to make sense of for others. Or lives my son would have had to try and save.

So I ask this industry: when are you going to wise up and take a leadership role and get with it on ending driver distraction by technology i.e. to ban and punish harshly those who 'telecommunicate' (phone, text, video, etc.) when operating a motor vehicle? Like the Province of Ontario's new law (yes I used to be an Ontario resident and motorist with a clean driving record and I supported its legislation) that comes into effect Oct.26.

The province cited a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study that examined a driver's risk of being involved in a "safety critical event" (a crash or near-crash) when using hand-held device. Researchers compared the performance of passenger car drivers and drivers of heavier vehicles such as transport trucks.

Key findings included:

* Dialing and texting is associated with the highest degree of risk of all cell-phone-related activities among car drivers -- increasing their risk of being in a safety critical event by 2.8 times than if they had been focused on the road. Among truck drivers, dialing a cell phone resulted in a 5.9 times greater risk, and text messaging resulted in a 23.2-times greater risk.

* Talking or listening had a lesser impact on car drivers, increasing a driver's risk by 1.3 times and had no impact on truck drivers.

* Reaching for a hand-held electronic device increases crash or near-crash risk among both types of drivers, increasing the risk by 1.4 times among car drivers and 6.7 times among truck drivers.

Nuance recently put out a press release that supports a ban on texting while calling for "In-Car Systems, Devices and Mobile Phones Powered by Speech Technology to Minimize Visual and Manual Driver Distractions " (I wonder which firm makes such technology...)

Nuance correctly points out that texting's "obvious distractions pose a serious danger to drivers, their passengers and others on the road. The practice of texting while driving takes drivers' eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel, which has lead to a number of highly-publicized accidents."

Yet "Nuance also advocates for a federal initiative that drives the increased deployment of these systems, enabling a safer mobile environment via hands-free interfaces requiring limited to no visual confirmation."

Nuance--and other tech firms who promote hands-free tools--miss the point. It is the inattention by sight, sound, and touch to driving the vehicle (like our family friend) that can (and does) kill and injure, not this or that solution. Like the guy who was on his precious device who then ended up in a multivehicle fatality on a recent episode of 'Trauma'.

An opinion piece by journalist John Lorinc that appeared in Canada's Globe and Mail Monday Oct.5 made this point. It contrasted the denial of the tech industry to that of the liquor business. The former is in denial. The latter has, to use its advice 'behaved responsibly'.

"But in the country that invented the BlackBerry, such attention raises a question about corporate responsibility: What is Canada's wireless sector - and leading firms, including Research in Motion, Rogers and Bell - doing to educate its customers about the risks?

"Answer: as little as possible.

"By comparison to the liquor industry's highly visible public education campaigns about the hazards of drunk driving (TV, radio, billboards, print, Internet), the smart-phone sector is disturbingly uncommunicative about the skeletons in its closet."

There is no excuse for 'telecommunicating'. It is risky, dangerous, and deadly. The only device is one that should be allowed or on is a message alert in the form of a flashing indicator (which goes off after five seconds) that is at the peripheral field of vision.

Moreover the injuries and deaths from 'telecommunicating' adds to healthcare and emergency services costs. At a time when the U.S. in particular is focused on health expenses, does it make sense not to crack down on this practice--which, like drunk driving--only increases them? Those of us who make and have made our living in blood and guts sincerely want to see less of them.

For unless you are a professional driver, with a commercial license (and insurance) and using communications device for work and/or you're in a in a life-and-death job (fire/police/first responder, M.D. etc.) on a call, you have no real good reason to drive and communicate at the same time. There is nothing that you do that is so important to the existence of others and to the grand scheme of things that it can't wait for you to pull over to chit-chat when not doing so could have tragic consequences.

Like speeding. When I'm driving at the normal (safe/legal) rate of flow and some moron flashes their lights behind me and I don't see a flashing light on top or on their dashboard my attitude is that they can get lost...and I love it when they get pulled over by the flashing lights.

What Nuance and other tech firms should be doing instead is to take a leadership position in educating the public and pressing for tough and readily enforced regs against distracted driving, and be in it for the long haul. What each of you who are reading this should do is pull over when called or to make a call or contact.

For the hard reality is that very few of you have the skills to do both. And when you combine that with weather, rough road surfaces, and the other idiots that are out there the odds increase astronomically

Do you really want to be the next person to kill and hurt others or be killed or hurt yourself?

One last note--there is no sound like the thump of a human being hit by a vehicle. No sight like watching someone--and their child--bleed to death on the asphalt. No feeling as helpless as not being able to do anything more than what you have already done.

Do you want to be the cause of this because you were on your wireless device?

Image via Wikipedia

I hope so. None of the current devices really cut it for serious to use the rock band Tubes song title: "keyboard kids." Take it from this longtime (yeah 20+ years) heavy duty portable computing device user: Apple should borrow/swipe/steal as much as it could from Kyocera i.e. Radio Shack, the makers of the TRS-80 T100s and T200s. In fact Apple should lift the entire line for its own tablets and netbooks. Shrink them down, build out the screens, update the guts, but still keep intact two amazing machines.

My first computer was a T200, the clamshell model with 24 KB RAM and that now-so-quaint DTMF tone dialing for the internal modem for the Manchester Union-Leader. If it could take my fat-fingered pounding for cranking out deadline daily news--from boring planning board meetings to multiple pile-ups on I-93--it could withstand anything...

Here's more and why. Says Wikipedia: "The computer is silent when it operates. The keyboard is superior to most others currently on the market.[citation needed] It runs for 20 hours on 4 readily available and easily replaceable AA batteries. Data is protected by a built-in rechargeable battery. There is no boot up routine; the Model 100 operates as soon as the switch is flipped and an application selected. There are several simple programs available on the Internet for transferring Model 100 files to a modern personal computer.

"The Model 100 was also used in industrial applications as a programming terminal for configuration of control systems and instruments.Third-party peripherals for the Model 100 extended its battery life and file storage capacity. Software was designed, and is still available, to extend the display capabilities and to provide more advanced word-processing or calculation software than the supplied programs. To this day, hobbyists continue to design games, applications, and hardware for this device.

"With few exceptions, no modern portable computer has the appearance, or some would argue utility, of the Model 100 line. Modern portable computers (laptops) are larger, heavier, and have much shorter battery life than the Model 100. The closest modern successors include the Alphasmart Dana and the Quickpad Pro. These similar modern "slabtop" units typically are targeted at the education market, although they are often used by writers and mobile professionals.

"Although much larger, the Model 100 actually bears a close resemblance to modern PDAs. Its TEXT program is similar to the Memo program found on PalmOne products, and ADDRSS and SCHEDL are essentially simplified versions of Contacts, Tasks and Calendar. The Model 100 has the additional advantage of a full size keyboard, a built-in modem and BASIC programming language. By including BASIC, the Model 100's designers made it possible for users to design additional applications."

Sticking your head into the mouth of a lion is usually not recommended unless you've conjured a way to make it appear that your life is really in danger...like putting easily-removed false teeth into the feline or other such tricks.

Why else would Avaya--a very smart company--ask Canada's minority Conservative government to have its $915 million purchase of Nortel reviewed, as reported by TMCnet, unless it is very confident of the outcome?

Here is the wording from yesterday's announcement:

OTTAWA, Ontario, September 24, 2009 -- Today, the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, issued the following statement regarding the acquisition of Nortel Networks Corporation's Enterprise Solutions Division by Avaya Inc.:

"Avaya filed an application for review under the Investment Canada Act (ICA) of its proposed acquisition of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions Division...."

--

Here's another strange dimension to this deal: no release of the enterprise division's book value compared with the $149 million for the wireless units. Why hasn't this figure made the light of day? Unless someone can enlighten me--given the sales declines experienced by this sector--does it make sense for the enterprise division to be worth more bookwise than wireless?

What is being counted: excess inventory that no one wants to buy, especially now? The value of the precious metals in the unwanted boxes that would have to be recycled? When the Province of Ontario launched its aggressive e-waste program did it realize that some of that junk would be originating from its back yard?

At least Ericsson is taking advantage of Nortel's technology in a leading edge field and is hiring the best and brightest to work for a company that has long had an R&D presence in Canada. In contrast Avaya is buying a division in a 'mature' i.e. slow growth area that is undergoing a technology shift i.e. TDM to IP that favors its pure-play IP rivals i.e. Cisco, ShoreTel, a unit whose value appears to mainly lie in the customer base and distribution channels. That spells for the Nortel enterprise unit's Canadian workers just two words: Employment Insurance.

Unless there has been backroom assurances and promises that haven't yet seen the light of day, seeking the review is a gutsy move by Avaya to quell the negative press over rumored layoffs--and the reports of Nortel customers going to competitors--aimed at stanching what the cynical would regard the rapidly bleeding value of its costly purchase.

If the Canadian government can close its jaws quickly and Avaya emerges unscathed, the enterprise sale (and Avaya) would have been spared a political haranguing on the job losses and the pensions issue that would make the hassle over the Ericsson purchase of Nortel's wireless assets like a friendly disagreement. Parliament is back in session and the Opposition Liberals under its leader Michael Ignatieff is beginning to think it has an issue with Nortel that it can beat the Conservatives with.

If there is one thing that the Conservatives are good at--which is the secret of their nearly four years of minority governance--and that is behind the scenes as well as up front managing the political show.

When you're on your way out, in more ways than one, and you want to wreak revenge on those you truly despise you leave them a poisoned chalice, one fortified with nutrients but laced with a cocktail of deadly agents, one that they have little choice to drink.

For a disgruntled employee that can be the computer virus from Hades. For a head of household that can include a business or property that the heirs can ill-afford to manage. For a political kingpin that can be scandals that will be unearthed, forever embroiling and tainting the new chiefs and their rivals when the old boss is put to earth.

This may well be the case, intentional or more likely unintentional but with the same effect with the sale of Nortel's enterprise division to Avaya

If the Ottawa (Ontario Canada) Citizen newspaper story and competitors' reaction to the sale as reported by TMC are to be believed, Nortel's archrival and half-cousin Avaya--both firms are derived from the same Bell heritage--and which Nortel had tried to buy, should soon feel the toxins coursing its system.

The seemingly rosy $2.4 billion Nortel's enterprise division earned in 2008 has quickly been eroded to only $860 million in business in the first six months of 2009, down 34 per cent from a year earlier. It lost $209 million compared to an operating profit of $168 million a year earlier.

The arsenics and strychnines are not just the severe downturn but a lack of faith by many resellers and customers in the enterprise division's offerings caused by Nortel's lousy finances and poor top management. As soon as this comm/tech giant announced that it was in financial trouble last year it was doomed like the whiff of almonds that are the telltales of cyanide--from a firm that had reportedly been detoxified from past mismanagement and scandal. 'Here we go again?' came the fear. Understandably channel, prospects, and existing customers seeking replacements or upgrades started going elsewhere. Who can trust Nortel again? Who wants to risk being stuck with end of life goods?

Here's the nub. If resellers and customers picked Nortel over Avaya why should they buy/stay with Nortel now that it will become Avaya? Will Avaya really continue to support Nortel's product lines? The one scenario there is Avaya may act like a spider; after paralyzing and cocooning its prey it sucks out the juices created by special enzymes that liquify the organs--until there is nothing left.

Nortel has been the walking dead, its heroic and dedicated engineers like the still-vital organs struggling with weakening condition to produce and support IP-oriented quality products as they were drained with layoffs. Little wonder that in the contact center field at least, reported Interactive Intelligence's Joe Staples--whose firm has seen competitors like the 'old' Aspect, Davox, Rockwell et al disappear and many others fade into insignificance--Nortel's product line was aging with little new to get these buyers excited.

Then again IP-from-the-ground-up companies like Aastra, Cisco, Fonality, Interactive Intelligence, and ShoreTel, to name but a few, didn't have the legacy TDM/PSTN baggage to lug with them. For these companies there is no need to 'migrate' customers to IP; they are already there.

The substance that stops the heart may be the technology shift from PSTN/TDM to IP. What is happening is another lesson that firms that were based in the new technologies are typically but not always more successful than those that been formed from and made their mark in the old ones. When the core technologies change the old outfits are left behind.

A great example to illustrate this is railroads. Which is why if you've seen or ridden on a commuter or Amtrak or in Canada VIA Rail train they are pulled or pushed by diesel or electric locomotives built by outfits that had started out making them, not by firms that had made their mark constructing steam engines.

Those companies: Alco, Baldwin, Lima and their Canadian licensees CLC and MLW, failed to make the transition when the railroads switched from steam to diesel in the 1940s and 1950s. They had tried build diesels, in an attempt to capitalize on the loyalty of the customers that had relied on them for their 'legacy' steam engines, but their diesel products failed to match the quality and features of the steam builders' 'non-legacy' competition. The steam firms had allied with electrical gear makers GE (Alco-GE) and Westinghouse with Baldwin--most railroad locomotives are diesel-electric with motors driving the axles--but they fell apart. In GE's case it emerged as a competitor to Alco and supplanted it.

In a lesson for technology as well sometimes new entrants don't fare as well if their solutions are not suited for particular markets though these tools may be proven elsewhere. Fairbanks Morse, which made marine diesel engines, entered the steam-to-diesel fray in the late '40s but exited 10 years later. While its technology, opposed-piston engines, offered an appealing much higher horsepower in the same space than its competitors, could not hack the very different environment of railroads. It is one thing to have the engine blocks being battered and rattled by depth charges and hurricanes. It is another for them to be violently jerked front and back and side to side in a moving train.

Nortel has also left for its enemies a set of legal and political nightmares, like its powerful customer Verizon who wants its pound of flesh. Then there are the workers who may in likelihood will need to find new jobs sooner than later despite the $15 million employee-retention plan and promises to retain 60 percent of Nortel's North American staff by Avaya.

Job-keeping programs are merely ways to enable staff to find other careers or pare down their expenses so they can live on much less when they are ultimately let go. Canada is teetering on an election which may take place this fall but the latest will be next spring. The Official Opposition Liberals have made it known that its attack will include on how the Conservative government has handled the Nortel debacle, including the treatment of its pensioners and long-term disabled former employees.

Besides who is kidding whom here? Does anyone truly believe that Avaya will actually retain Nortel's North American staff, in particular those in now 'foreign' Canada, whose offices are but a 90 minute flight or 9 hour scenic in the spring/summer/fall but dangerous-in-the-winter drive from its New Jersey HQ? American firms have more often than not when they buy Canadian outfits shift their operations to home base to save money and gain greater control. Why should Avaya, which isn't exactly flush with cash, behave any differently? Especially with the high Canadian dollar?

The question is can Avaya or more accurately its owner Silver Lake Partners can afford to sustain the Nortel 'legacy' in what appears to be a slow recovery amidst a marketplace that is fast-moving to pure IP, where voice is another set of data to be managed? And where the savvy outfits are having the routing hosted rather than using scarce capital resources to buy hardware and licenses for boxes and servers stuck in some closet, money that will be spent more effectively not on infrastructure but on R&D, production, and marketing? Is it willing to be a political punching bag in Canada and the target of legal attacks and having its government customer base eroded in the U.S?

Then again did Avaya have any choice but to drink from the cup? If it had declined to sip it may have met a crueler and more likely fate at the hands of Cisco et al. Avaya may well have a strong constitution and corporate antidotes to cope with the poisons laced with the strength from the beverage but could it continue to take the battering from such powerful, flexible, and younger opponents?

Nortel's toxic chalice has with Avaya drinking from it also wounded its other rivals, e.g. Iwatsu, Mitel, Siemens Enterprise, and Toshiba. The deal has made Avaya number one at Siemens' expense that gives it a powerful position, but is Avaya strong enough to capitalize on this new position?

The only cure for this poison is for Avaya backer Silver Lake Partners to suck it up and lay out the cash now to devise and launch a strategy to weaken and destroy, and buy at dimes to dollars the other legacy TDM-based vendors to create one outfit that has one foot in the TDM past that will swing then those customers into IP with an integrated mix of flexible open and hosted as well as premises solutions. If Silver Lake does not do this or hesitates it may be too late for Avaya, Silver Lake, its investors, and Avaya (and Nortel) employees.

Last week at IT EXPO West I had the privilege of moderating an excellent session on open source, Leveraging Open Source for Contact Center ROI, with Steve Kaiser from OrecX, Corey McFadden of Infradapt, and Vijesh Mehta of CallFire.

In the discussion of why open source came one excellent benefit: security against the product being phased out and/or the supplier going out of business. With open source you have access to the software kernel--it isn't proprietary--so you can continue to support, adapt, and grow the application to meet your needs regardless of vendor.

The impending demise of Nortel's enterprise division--which it will be unless it is won at the ironically dated/located September 11 auction in New York City by a bidder that is willing to keep it as an independent corporate entity, and that appears unlikely---is a stark reminder of that open source virtue. Anyone who owns Nortel proprietary software, and hardware, will have to plan for end of life, and buying replacement products.

Does anyone really think that the purchaser, which in all likelihood will be a competitor, is going to commit to supporting Nortel's product lines any longer than it takes to migrate at full speed Nortel's customer base to its lines? Especially since they will have to not only eat the winning bid costs--which will be much higher than Avaya's stalking horse auction paddle of $475 million--and the huge costs involved with integrating the unit with theirs including supporting legacy namely TDM products?

While the enterprise piece did pull in $2 billion in revenues, the net profits are obviously less. And while the economy is beginning to recover and order books are starting to open, will that mean magically good times? Not when there are many other similarly good and native IP-based solutions out there from eager competitors.

Nortel's collapse serves also a reason why business communications and contact center applications should go software, not hardware, and ideally hosted. Who can afford to get stuck with infrastructure? The products are sufficiently the same across the suppliers so as far the organizations' customers are concerned--the people who truly matter-- it doesn't matter which outfit makes the routing as long as the contacts are routed promptly, with no drop outs, to the right people.

If Nortel had made their enterprise products software, fully open source, and hosted with CPE as the alternative then we could be seeing one of its competitors being dismembered instead of this once-proud company.

Bring money and mortality together and you have an unstable mix. The more important these values and issues are in a society the greater the likelihood the discussions and debates blow up in the smoke and fire of self-interest.

That is the sad sum and outcome of the United States' healthcare 'debate'. A conversation over proposals aimed at helping the less fortunate has become twisted by those who profit from the status quo who have abetted ideological warfare alongside the true believers in the long and dishonorable tradition of willful ignorance. Much like what has happened to peace plans in other troubled parts of the world. That millions suffer through being uninsured or underinsured in the U.S. and poverty in others is just collateral damage.

Unfortunately the refrain from the business community--the one constituency that could bang heads to work this out--has been 'we don't want any pay more either in premiums or taxes or put up with what we fear is more red tape'. Yet is this attitude and approach really in their best interests, let alone the nation's?

Have businesses especially really taken a hard look of what the total costs of the healthcare crisis inflicts on their bottom lines? How can their books benefit when staff comes in injured or sick to work when they can't afford to get adequate treatment? When staff benefit-shop: jumping from company to company to stay alive and well? When individuals leave flexible part-time jobs or independent contractor work for benefit-paying full time employment?

Is it in the employers' best interests to collectively pay huge sums for administration, back office, and overhead, including marketing, customer care, and billing/collections contact centers and their underlying technologies? Dollars shelled out by them and their employees that could have gone instead to keeping employees and families well and keeping their costs down? Shouldn't they be demanding streamlining of the present bloated industry?

Shouldn't businesses also be demanding increased effectiveness of medical services delivery by demanding a nationwide standardized intermediate caregiver level, between MDs and RNs, who can make diagnoses and prescribe and administer treatments now carried out ad hoc by PAs, nurse practicioners, and in emergencies, by highly-trained paramedics? Would this not save huge sums while providing more immediate and widespread higher quality of care?

Moreover shouldn't those also who underwrite health costs be asking where is the bottom-line value in having huge resources going into prolonging the lives of those terminally ill by another six to eight months to live, in subsidizing doctors and their attendant infrastructure? When those resources can be used more effectively with more caring and less suffering through palliative care and in enabling others to get well better, quicker, back to work, happy, and productive? As The World According to Garp author John Irving put it: "we are all terminal cases."

Contact centers, and contact-center-dependent organizations especially ought to take a hard look at whether the existing system works for them. They are the ones who get hit the most on turnover, sick days, and high healthcare costs.

Not that the United States is alone in facing healthcare issues. Other countries have been debating how to manage rising costs amidst aging populations, with matters such as physician shortages and wait times. There is ongoing fighting between established medical interests and with other spending and fiscal priorities, with no quick fixes. There too the business communities have washed their hands even though their firms as a whole are impacted.

There needs to leadership in both the U.S. and in other countries to triage such debates, to look beyond their constrictively-defined self-interests to where their goods and society's meet, and engage in truly rational discussions about what is best for their societies. In this process there needs to be second and third opinions, and compromises and consensus.

Only in this fashion will there be courses of treatment fashioned for the healthcare systems that may not be ideal and will require some effort on the patients' parts but which are best prescriptions for their, and society's long-term survivability.