February 2005 Archives

I bought a new goldfish tank today for my goldfish Skippy.

Perhaps I should offer some background. I bought Skippy nearly two years ago as a 12 cent feeder fish. He's been swimming happily on my desk at work since the spring of 2003, and has now grown rather large. Every six months or so, I need to upgrade him to a roomier tank. Version 4, the goldfish real estate equivalent of a 2,500 square-foot colonial on a full acre, arrived from Petsmart today. As the components were disassembled and I'm not a mechanical genius, I had to refer to the "user's manual."

The "user's manual" is a tiny folder with "steps 1 to 8" listed in four languages. It makes sense in none of them. Instructions for installing the filter consisted of the following: "Remove aquarium cover. Affix filter to desired location." No mention was made of how to assemble the parts, where the filter goes in relation to the water line, and where and how the dangling bits and pieces are supposed to dangle. The only helpful tip was a cramped drawing with a filter "inset" image that is, and I'm not exaggerating, less than one-eighth of an inch wide. I measured it. The most helpful part of the "user's manual" is the information that "Goldfische" is the German word for goldfish.

What the "user's manual" does contain is a toll-free number for customer help. I called it. Twice. The first time was to ask where exactly the filter is supposed to go. The second call was to ask why, when turned on, the filter was blowing out water but not creating any bubbles. Both questions could have been answered with better written instructions.

Now perhaps the aquarium company just likes to chat with other appreciators of goldfish. Maybe the company's agents are lonely. Maybe they need at least a few incoming calls to justify the purchase of call center equipment. But to my call-center-attuned mind, if every tenth customer makes only one call to the toll-free number, this costs the company about nine thousand times more than it would to simpy modify the written instructions so that consumers could actually follow them.

I figure that because the tank only cost $16.99, and I made two phone calls to the company's toll-free line, my purchase of their product actually cost them money.

Skippy is happy in his new home, oblivious to the frustrations involved in getting him in there. Because his memory retention is about six milliseconds, he now no longer remembers he ever lived anywhere else.

Just wanted to call your attention to an article on TMCnet by our E-Mail Communications columnists Marilynne Rudick and Leslie O'Flanahan:

Customer Service E-Mail in a "Do Not Call" World 

It never ceases to amaze me that, with e-commerce 10 years old, companies still do an incredibly poor job of email customer service. Marilynne and Leslie make an additional point: In an environment where it's getting harder to get people to respond to email promotions, companies need to work extra hard to communicate well with those who actually want to hear from them.

AB -- 2/18/05

According to a story on CNN today, the number of foreign visitors to the U.S. is down 10 percent since the year 2000. Considering that foreign tourism to the U.S. is worth nearly 100 million dollars per year, this is cause for concern. Apparently (and this is a big secret) we're not being very nice or accommodating to people wanting to visit the U.S., projecting an image of "Fortress America."

Now, I understand the need for border security, etc. Of course, we can't let anyone who claims to have a yen to see the Grand Canyon or the Smithsonian in without some reasonable checking to ensure he is who he says he is. It's not the procedures that the tourism industry objects to: it's the manner in which these procedures are carried out, and the fact that the U.S. government doesn't seem to see what the problem is.

This afternoon, I bought beer at the supermarket. Well, stout really. Former TMC editor Erik Lounsbury and his wife are coming over for dinner on Saturday night, and they drink Guinness. The supermarket at which I shop has a checks system in place for consumers buying alcohol: the check-yourself-out process is halted, with a polite computerized voice telling you to "Please wait for attendant assistance." The clerk behind the main system looked over at me, ascertained that I was over 21, and allowed the process to continue. If I had looked to be in my early to mid-20s (it must have been the bad lighting that made her think I didn't) she would have asked me for picture identification. It was a hassle-free process, but it accomplished what it needed to: the supermarket made sure it didn't sell beer to a minor.

According to the methods of the U.S. government with regards to foreign tourists, this is what would have happened: an alarm would have sounded, a spotlight would have descended on me, and three armed officials would have approached, at which time I would have been taken to a small room, frisked and asked brusquely why I wanted to buy the beer. Three hours would have passed, and by the time I was finished the security process I would have been ready to swap the beer for a bottle of vodka and a shot glass.

According to the U.S. travel industry, we're selling a product: American tourism. The numbers don't lie. It's a huge contribution to the U.S. economy. The industry argues that while we of course need to maintain stringent security policies, the government needs to carry out these policies in a customer-friendly (or visitor-friendly) manner. They're right.

Trying to avoid making incoming visitors wait in hours-long lines would be a first step. Embarking on a public relations campaign to lure tourists by playing up the good exchange rate for foreign visitors, hotel and airline specials, highlighting special destinations and informing visitors that security policies aren't so bad after all would be a huge help.

The Federal Government spent a measly $10 million last year to lure foreign visitors. Contrast that to the $250 per year the Australian government spends to attract visitors. See a problem here? If we continue to send a message that we don't want international visitors here, they'll be sure not to come. And shorter waiting lines on "Space Mountain" for American vacationers will be small comfort.

If you use the Internet enough to read a blog, chances are you've also been targeted by phishing scams. You know the types...e-mails from "Citibank" that demand your account number, PIN and favorite pet's name or mother's maiden name. In the early days, they were so poorly constructed that all one could do was howl in laughter at the attempt. "Please uh...click like here to update your account information, or we'll like totally deleet yur account." We all wondered, "What kind of idiot falls for something that transparent?"

If you've seen some of these scams lately, you'll know they've become more sophisticated (perhaps they've started asking someone who can actually construct sentences in the English language correctly to edit their communques before they send them out).

These e-mails are only a nuisance if they're from a company you don't use. I regularly get them from "banks" with which I've never done business: my spam filter catches them and I barely notice them. I frequently get them from "PayPal," but since the only real e-mail communication I ever get from PayPal is a confirmation after I've purchased something on eBay, it's easy to spot that the rest of the e-mails I get are spoofs, and I delete those.

Phishing becomes a problem when the e-mails are spoofed to appear to be from an organization you actually use, with which you frequently communicate via e-mail.

I recently got a home loan from Washington Mutual. Much to my dismay, shortly thereafter, I began receiving phishing e-mails from "Washington Mutual." They clearly discussed the fact that I had recently gotten a mortgage with the company. Up to that point, I had never received one these e-mails. E-mail messages to the company's spoof@wamu.com asking how such a "coincidence" could occur got me an auto-reply that stated that their systems had not been breached and that it was nothing to worry about. ("There-there...quit bothering us" was the message.) I still want to know how the scammers gained the information that I'm a new customer. Since purchasing the home, I've received an unending supply of direct mail, offering security systems, oil delivery, life insurance, window treatments, housekeeping, yard work, etc. I know they're all from the same source, because they all have my name amusingly mispelled "Trcye Schelmetie." Washington Mutual wasted no time distributing my name to all and sundry. They also had my e-mail address. Coincidence? (I promise, this is not the point where I begin discussing the men in black helicopters.)

There are warnings all over the Internet about this particular scheme: at sites such as CastleCops (formerly ComputerCops.biz), FraudWatchInternational, the AntiPhishing Working Group and more chatrooms and blogs than can be counted.

The only organization that hasn't sufficiently weighed in on the issue to me as a customer is Washington Mutual. My subsequent e-mails to their fraud department have gone unanswered. There is a page on Washington Mutual's Web site that discusses spoofing and identify theft. It gives a brief overview of how to spot spoof e-mails and issues stern instructions to not respond to them. It even includes a link to the Federal Trade Commissions's Web page concerning identity theft.

What Washington Mutal has not done is contact me via postal mail to discuss the problem. I'm convinced I'm missing some legitimate e-mails from the company, but since I now won't open anything that arrives via e-mail and purports to come from Washington Mutual, I'll never know.

Tracey Schelmetic

Today I received a news release from On-Line Technologies about their new call center software solution. The release is posted on TMCnet at:

Portland, Maine, Company Launches New Call Center Software Product

This release had some added value and interest for me, as it included this screen shot of the user interface:

One of my complaints about software marketing is that many companies don't make sufficient effort to show you what the user experience is like.

Some people would wonder why this is so important -- if that's their frame of mind, their business could be in trouble.

On the other hand, some people would be astonished that a company would try to sell a product without letting the customer know what it is like to use it. But believe me, this element is indeed missing from marketing materials from many companies.

AB -- 2/16/05

I have to wonder whether this kind of marketing message really helps:

Salesforce.com Leads On-Demand Market with Nearly Eight Times as Many Subscribers as Siebel CRM OnDemand

In fact, I almost wonder whether it could backfire. I already know the Salesforce.com brand name pretty well, but this announcement has just reminded me that Siebel is in the on-demand space as well.

Al Bredenberg

This news item appeared today:

S1 Enterprise Delivers Complete Solution for Transforming Banking Call Centers into Relationship Centers

I picked out this quote from the release -- seems to reflect an important truth in financial services:

"The call center was once a cost center to most financial institutions, but it is now seen as potentially a major profit center and as the point where service representatives have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction and retention."
-- Ross McKay, vice president of product management for retail banking at S1

Effective CRM in a banking operation seems especially critical to me. For one thing, you need to have pretty strong security measures because of the sensitivity of the information you are dealing with. Also, because you are handling peoples' money, the operation is at high risk for screwing up peoples' lives through bonehead errors.

AB -- 2/7/05

If I put 1,000 business people into a room together, and asked them all what the most significant cost of doing business is, my guess is 999 of them would answer "labor." (Perhaps the one lone dissenter works in the Underworld, where "firing employees" literally involves the use of a flamethrower.)

Why is labor so expensive? It's not just the salaries, of course, though those are a large part...it's the turnover. From the moment an employee departs, the process of hiring a replacement involves a cash and resource outlay every step of the way. First, you've lost company human capital in that trained employee who has just departed. You've lost his or her memories, experiences, personal and business relationships and contacts, methodologies, knowledge and educational anecdotes. Considering the rise of software designed to turn employees' casual knowledge into company capital, these factors are not inconsiderable.

Next, you need to tap into your human resource department's time and budget: advertising the position, preparing paperwork for both the departing employee and the new hire, time to select resumes and interview, time to write rejection letters for the non-hires, and time to put together a job offer.

Finally, when the new employee starts, you need to embark on the expensive process of training.

Many companies, though resigned to the fact that labor, including hiring new employees, will always be their biggest expense, have discovered that streamlining the process of employee searching, hiring and training is an opportunity to save significant amounts of cash. We accept the adage that it costs more to find a new customer than keep an existing customer happy...it's time to apply the same concept to employees.

Connecticut-based Dictaphone, a company that has been around since workforce management involved chiselling marks onto stone walls with rudimentary hand tools, has announced the debut of some new features for the company's really spot-on ContactPoint Workforce Management solution.

"Workforce management" used to involve only keeping track of existing workers. But why stop there...why not apply the same principles to potential employees, and use a better process from the pre-hire process?

The full release is below.

Customer-Driven Features Enhance Dictaphone’s Workforce Relationship Management Solution
For Optimizing Contact Center Performance

DALLAS, TX, and STRATFORD, Conn., Feb. 1, 2005 – Dictaphone Corporation's Communications Recording Systems (CRS) group today announced significant feature enhancements to its ContactPoint Workforce Relationship Management solution for contact centers. The announcement was made at the Call Center Demo & Conference Dallas 2005.

Dictaphone's ContactPoint Workforce Relationship Management solution provides a fully-integrated solution for optimizing agent performance, focusing on three major functions: recruiting, training and assessments. The ContactPoint software suite is comprised of three modules – Recruiter, Trainer, and Assessor – that are linked together through a common competency model detailing the skills, knowledge and abilities agents need to be successful. Once identified and captured in ContactPoint, this competency model can be applied to the contact center's hiring, training, and assessment programs to increase agent effectiveness and improve customer service.

"As the first solution to address agent performance from a total life-cycle standpoint, ContactPoint is already revolutionizing the way that contact centers hire, train, assess and motivate their agent workforce," commented John Kaiser, vice president of global marketing for Dictaphone CRS. "Now, ContactPoint's new features give contact center managers even better tools for optimizing performance, such as enhanced tracking of coaching and training activities, and more flexible, automated reporting capabilities."

Included among the new ContactPoint features are:

An Assessment Workflow Tracking Engine
ContactPoint's new assessment workflow tracking engine helps contact center managers more effectively identify and track specific problem areas for agents, all the way through to their resolution, to ensure proper steps are being taken to improve agent performance. Specifically, it allows managers to:

- Flag items on agent assessment forms to indicate specific performance issues

- Determine the appropriate action steps for improving agent performance
(e.g., coaching, training, or some other user-definable follow up category)

- Track and report on these follow up activities from start to finish

A Report Scheduler For Flexible, Automated Reporting
While conducting agent assessments is important, having the ability to derive meaningful information from the assessments is equally important. ContactPoint's automated report scheduler provides contact center managers with timely, meaningful information while improving productivity and saving valuable time. Specifically, it enables managers to:

- Create report "templates" by specifying various report criteria:

-- Time frames, data elements, and roll-up categories (e.g., based on specific assessment questions, agents, campaigns, centers, etc.)

- Generate customized reports to fit individual contact centers needs

-- More than 1,700 customized reports can be created

- Run reports automatically based on pre-specified schedules (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)

- Automate the distribution of selected reports to specified recipients (by e-mail)

- Generate reports using data available through each of the three ContactPoint modules

ContactPoint Trainer Enhancements
Using ContactPoint Trainer, contact centers can import SCORM-compliant training material and deliver that material directly to agents' desktops. New enhancements to Dictaphone's ContactPoint Trainer module save contact center managers time, by automatically tracking the training status of every agent, relative to individual learning modules. The system keeps track of which learning modules agents have been assigned, which ones have been started or completed, the agent's progress (percent of modules completed), and the agent's actual results or test scores.

Other new Trainer features include a "randomized question capability" which randomizes the order of questions in a specific learning module to prevent duplication of tests administered between agents, and the ability to create timed tests, which require an agent to complete a test within a specific time period.

The new version of ContactPoint also includes other new features, such as an enhancement to the incentive management system, which allows contact centers to link agent assessments with merits and incentives so agents can be rewarded for exceptional call handling. Additionally, it gives managers the ability to create multi-dimensional assessment forms by specifying conditional questions. For example, as a supervisor is completing an assessment, if the score on one assessment question indicates a particular problem area for the agent, the system will automatically lead the supervisor to a different set of assessment criteria/questions that enable the manager to have a clearer understanding of the nature and cause of the problem and implement appropriate action.

"Since its launch in August 2003, ContactPoint has been installed in contact centers employing more than 18,000 agent positions," added Kaiser. “With the addition of these new customer-driven features, we’re looking forward to another banner year."

The new ContactPoint software release is available immediately.

About Dictaphone Corporation's Communications Recording Systems (CRS) Group
With thousands of installed customers worldwide, Dictaphone Corporation's Communications Recording Systems (CRS) Group is a leading provider of recording and monitoring systems for contact centers and Workforce Relationship Managementä solutions designed to optimize agent performance. Dictaphone CRS is a division of the Stratford, Connecticut-based Dictaphone Corporation.

Dictaphone's ContactPoint Workforce Relationship Management solution helps optimize agent performance by helping contact centers hire and retain the best agents, assess them fairly and consistently, and empower them with the right training and rewards. The centerpiece of ContactPoint is a competency model that enables the creation of job profiles that outline the skills, knowledge and abilities that agents need to be successful. Once identified, these skills, knowledge and abilities can then be systematically applied to the contact center's hiring, training, and assessment programs using ContactPoint, to help increase agent effectiveness and improve customer service.

The ContactPoint solution was designed to work in combination with Dictaphone's Freedom Enterprise system. Freedom Enterprise records customer/agent interactions, using standard voice recording or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) recording. The agent's desktop screen activity can also be captured. Other features supported by ContactPoint and Freedom Enterprise include: remote playback via Web access; Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) for data capture, service observe, and advanced analytics; and integration to legacy HR systems to capture recruitment, assessment and training data. For more information, call (800-886-4908), or visit www.dictaphone.com.