Recently in Call Center CRM Category

The time has come (the Walrus said), for a little self-regulation. This is the message that the American Teleservices Association (ATA) is offering to any company that does outbound communications. The conventional wisdom is that if outbound organizations don't regulate themselves, the government will, and the results will be much stricter than guidelines crafted by the industry.

This is the message that will be shared at the annual ATA Washington Summit in late April, which is accepting registration now.

To find out how you can help with crafting the legislation (and not just responding to it, as the ATA says), visit the event's Web site.

TES

In doing a little research today for a potential article I'm mulling over, I ran across this piece by Michael Tiemann on the Open Source Initiative's Web site (click here to see entry). The piece points out that many solutions on the market today, many of those in the CRM arena, that claim to be open-source are not, in fact, and that the term "open source" has become an abused buzzword by corporate marketing departments.

True open-source, he points out, should be defined by the open-source community, not by marketers. In fact, true open-source should be approved by the Open Source Initiative, as the organization was the one to initially define the term.

He indicates that Microsoft has been more honest in their approach by using the term "shared source" for some of its solutions.

It's true that the term is increasingly used without question under the enterprise business trade umbrella, and perhaps we all have to take a little more care that we're not using terms without fully understanding what they mean and recognize that this can harm the real thing.

TES

What is Quantcast? It's essentially a team of Web analytics experts who work to help companies understand their U.S.-based Web audiences for the purpose of marketing and advertising. Why is this important? Because a Quantcast study has revealed that when it comes to call center content, TMCnet not only reaches more call center prospects than any other site, but has 23 times more reach than the next 10 call center sites combined.

You heard right. 23 times more.

TMCnet's monthly U.S. Visitors was measured at 870,019.
The next 10 sites combined totaled 37,275.

These next 10 sites include SearchCRM.com, DestinationCRM.com, CallCenterMagazine.com, crm.ittoolbox.com and others.

In fact, TMC blog sites alone reach nearly four times the prospects of any other call center/communications site.

For all the call center news and analysis that can help you run your customer-facing business to its full potential, bookmark TMCnet.

For a comparison of how TMCnet dominates in IP communications, visit Rich Tehrani's blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/ip-communications/quantcast-update-0108.html

TES

The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) this week announced publication of its newest title, "The Power of Direct Marketing: ROI, Sales, Expenditures, and Employment in the US." The book was written to provide readers with comprehensive analyses and forecasts from the DMA/Global Insight economic model on the impact of direct marketing across all industries and sectors of the economy. It's a helpful read for companies looking to position their products, develop product marketing strategies and allocate budgets.

For more info, visit www.the-dma.org/bookstore.

TES

Teleperformance USA today revealed that its very first client, a major U.S. telecom provider, has renegotiated its original contract with the company, in an impressive show of loyalty to the company, for an additional three-year period.

Teleperformance USA will continue offering customer care, technical support and customer growth for the (unidentified) customer.

For more info about Teleperformance, visit its Web site at www.teleperformance.com.

I pay most of my bills online. It's convenient, fast and saves a stamp. I'm pleased that many companies finally started seeing the light in that online bill payment benefits them. Up until very recently, many companies fixed a surcharge on online bill payments/electronic funds transfer (EFT). Basically, penalizing you for taking advantage of a service that is convenient for both customer and company. Corporate Darwinism finally did away with that idiocy.

But my gripe lately is that with many companies, their online bill payment system is down so often. For several of my utilities, the sites are down more often than they are up. Perhaps I'm unusual in this respect. But if I'm not, I wonder why these companies put such low priority on a system that is probably responsible for bringing in a large chunk of their revenue.

Are companies today still suffering from "customer e-mail disease," the baffling affliction that makes them think it's perfectly OK to not answer the vast majority of customer e-mails or other online requests?

Hopefully, Corporate Darwinism will ultimately prevail.

TES

A new study done by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) revealed some eyebrow-raising stats on the success (or lack thereof) of IT services projects.

According to TCS’ first annual survey on IT services delivery:

• 62 percent of organizations experienced IT projects that failed to meet their schedules;
• 49 percent suffered from budget overruns;
• 47 percent had higher-than-expected maintenance costs; and
• 41 percent failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI.

The most depressing stat was that, "43 percent of IT managers say that their organizations’ business managers and the board simply accept problems as a necessary evil."

I smell opportunities for forward-thinking IT service delivery providers.

Check out the full summary on TCS's Web site: http://www.tcs.com/AboutUs/Research_survey.html

TES

According to a new study called Reaching the US Hispanic Market: Consumer Attitudes and Buying Behavior commissioned by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association), the U.S. has the fifth-largest Spanish speaking population in the world.

The report also highlights some interesting facts about this potential market:

• Major cities in the Southern U.S. have seen the most dramatic Hispanic population growth;
• Over one-third of Hispanic households earn over $50,000 per year; and
• Hispanic-American's purchasing power currently exceeds $700 billion and is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2008.

It's starting to become apparent that if you (as a call center) are not catering to your Spanish-speaking customers just as well as you are catering to your English-speaking customers (and keep in mind the two populaces may have different needs and preferences), you are killing a great deal of sales potential for your organization.

You can find out more about the new report at www.the-dma.org/bookstore

TES

The Federal Trade Commission today announced its decision to keep the five-year-old federal do-not-call registry intact. When the Registry was created, the FTC had originally adopted a five-year re-registration mechanism before essentially "starting over," requiring people who had been on the list (now 145 million numbers) to re-register to ensure that the list is up to date.

The decision was made today to retain the list as is.

According to the FTC, "The Registry has been implemented successfully for five years and has included a scrubbing program that has removed disconnected and reassigned numbers each month. Finally, “[T]he Registry has enjoyed unprecedented popularity and helped enhance the privacy of the American public in a tangible way.”

You can read the full release here on the FTC's Web site: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/10/dnctestimony.shtm

TES

There's an article on MSNBC today about airports turning to Disney for tips on customer service:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21225028/

It's worth the read. If you've ever been to a Disney park and you know a thing or two about customer service, you're likely to observe that nobody does it better than Disney. Crowd control and queue management have been turned into art forms by Disney, and the company also does very well with one-on-one customer service.

I once personally observed a customer service miracle at Disneyworld: my then three-year-old niece was eating a Mickey-shaped ice cream off a stick. It was a hot day, and as ice creams do in hot weather, the ice cream fell off the stick, dropping onto the pavement. My niece's eyes bulged. Her face turned red. But before she could get the mouth fully open to start yelling, a Disney employee was at her side offering a new ice cream. It was unwrapped and back in her mouth before she fully realized what had happened. The Disney employee then quickly cleaned up the fallen ice cream, eliminating evidence of its existence, and basically melted back into the shrubbery.

At the time, I was tempted to run after the employee and check to see if he had actually been human or was some sort of ultra-efficient courtesy robot Disney had quietly invented on the sly.

Disney takes a lot of knocks for a variety of reasons. But love them or hate them, one thing you must admit is that what they do, they do very, very well.

TES