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One would think that in a marketplace that is being buffeted by the nastiest economic downturn in years and by a shift in customers' attitudes from passive respondents to becoming active, empowered, participants that companies would step up their marketing and backed by strong customer service.

Yet there is unfortunately evidence to the contrary. And companies that fail to get the word out, and deliver effective service risk failing, period.

"The most amazing statement I have heard in my career - and I am hearing it frequently these days is - we are waiting for sales to pick up so we can start marketing, " wrote TMC Group Publisher Rich Tehrani in his blog. "This is the equivalent of going to the fireplace and telling it you are waiting for it to produce heat before you put a log in. This is obviously lunacy... Marketing to your potential customers is what allows your sales to begin with. You can't increase sales without increased PR and/or marketing."

Alas a new report by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council reveals that a majority of senior marketers admit their companies are failing to take decisive, company-wide action to integrate customer voice and experience into key business and marketing processes.

The study, "Giving Customer Voice More Volume," reported that 56 percent of over 400 executives surveyed said their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers. In addition, only 30 percent said their companies rate highly in their ability handle and resolve customer problems or complaints. A surprising 59 percent of said their firms do not compensate employees or executives based on customer loyalty, satisfaction improvements or analytics.

The report, sponsored by Satmetrix, also revealed that two-thirds of companies do not have Voice of Customer programs in place and that only 12.9 percent of companies have deployed real-time systems to collect, analyze and distribute customer feedback. While 74.6 percent say they receive customer feedback via e-mail, only 23 percent say they track and measure the volume and nature of these messages.

The issue isn't that the CMOs don't get it. Most do. Over 80 percent of respondents said positive customer experiences and word of mouth have helped their brands and businesses grow. 45.8 percent admitted that high-profile negative customer experiences had at some time compromised their brands.

Yet their execution of customer strategies leaves sometimes something to be desired. Nor does it appear that they frequently made convincing cases for strategies to improve the customers' experiences at the C-level.

I contacted the CMO Council and asked its executive director, Donovan Neale-May:

* Why companies are failing to take decisive, company-wide action to integrate customer voice and experience into key business and marketing processes?

* What is stopping them?

* What the council's recommendations to CMOs to get senior management buy-in?

Here is his reply:

"Many chief marketing officers have the title, but not always the territory. Too few have embraced the web (for surveillance and conversational tracking) or teamed with IT to deploy sophisticated real-time listening and feedback systems. They lack the visibility into customer experience at multiple touch points (call centers, point of sale, help desks, eCommerce transactions, account management, field sales, channel, etc.) due to data being siloed, functionally isolated and not fully integrated. Nor do they always have the authority to make business policy, pricing, process, or product changes.

"Without ownership and accountability for both customer voice and experience across the enterprise, CMOs will continue to struggle for influence and effectiveness. They need a CEO mandate and consistent commitment to creating customer-centric cultures with organizational and operational alignment to achieve this state of being.

"The best way to get senior management buy-in is to conduct pilots with web-centric communities, feedback systems, loyalty programs, and user groups. This can evidence value and show where better listening, learning and leveling can improve customer retention, loyalty, advocacy and lifetime value."

If there is any hopeful upside in Microsoft's recent announcement that it is laying off 5,000 people is that the harsh economic and marketplace realities correctly identified by TMC Group Publisher Rich Tehrani in his recent blog will at last force this software behemoth: the 'General Motors of Tech' to focus on delivering quality products that customers want than have to buy. For the risk that Microsoft may find itself in similar straits as GM is today is all too real.

Empires collapse because they fail to deliver the goods: prosperity, reasonable order, and security that those who buy into them expect. Microsoft has had too many adventures away from its core business and consumer applications, and it has failed to make too many of them, such as the atrocious Windows ME as well as the much-maligned Vista perform right. My wife, an ex-senior IT manager, had experienced so many nightmares with the former she junked the computer, and she is scratching her head with the quirks from the latter on her latest box.

I can also attest to the value prop of WinXP-based netbooks Rich talked about. I was checking out an Acer unit at my local BestBuy for use on the road; the screens and keyboards on BlackBerries and other smartphones are not feasible for the heavy-duty e-mailing and surfing I do as an editor/writer. The machine happened to be the cheapest, and the one the sales rep recommended. I'll take another look at it just before I need to do some serious travelling by which time the prices of it--and for the telco data plan I'll need to sign my life away for--should drop even further to make the device even more affordable.

Which brings the discussion back to Microsoft. Small, rugged, and cheap works. That's why Netbooks are becoming popular. They can be the ideal solutions for contact centers because there is no need for all those guts for what are essentially dumb terminal applications, which also minimizes security risks. So go with the flow: keep XP for them and then design Win7 as an ultrareliable, bug-free, easily migrateable solution for use on larger machines.

Microsoft actually has it right in one key but undermarketed area and that is speech rec. This is one of the potential company's killer apps as its offering is well-written, priced right, and has proven itself with demanding firms such as JetBlue at a time when firms are looking for a speech solution that will enable them to cut costs quickly while retaining customers but without huge outlays and horrendous lead times.

Configured and formulated correctly, Microsoft's speech tool also has the power to revolutionize voicemail by enabling time-saving/convenience-providing/cost savings interactions for both consumers and businesses alike. No more answering services or getting back to those with simple inquiries.

Microsoft has its traditional delivery model i.e. premises installation plus it has the excellent and successful Tellme vehicle for hosting. It does need to position speech rec clearly as integrated buyer choices: on your server or ours...

Convenience, choice as well as quality and pricing, yes it is a brave new world, but that's the environment we're in, and only those companies that offer all four features have the best chances of surviving and prospering.

Microsoft had these attributes, which is it became enormously successful, overwhelming competitors who produces technically superior offerings (yes, I used and loved Apple's machines in the early part of my career but they were and are too expensive) but which failed to deliver the other three. It can regain that edge once again by doing all four right.

One of the signature features of Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, owned by Alcatel-Lucent, and why it is highly respected is its ability to execute thoroughly: whether in devising and enhancing new software or buying other industry firms.

A case in point is Genesys' announcements today of two acquisitions: Conseros, which provides software that enables dynamically prioritizing work task distribution, and SDE the creators of the Genesys Customer Interaction Portal (GCIP). The two moves are very timely because these firms bring to Genesys, and to its customers and prospects solutions that can help them increase their productivity and reduce costs.

The Conseros acquisition adds to the Genesys intelligent Workload Distribution (iWD) solution the ability to extend and route calls to outside of contact centers, such as bank tellers, field techs, retail clerks, and back office staff based on skills-based routing and availability.

This functionality, says Genesys, saves on facilities, equipment, and headcount costs. Rather than hire and outfit, say, 10 new agents in the contact center, they can leverage a small portion of 100 back office employees. 

There is growing anecdotal evidence to support the effectiveness of iWD. One Genesys customer, involved in leveraging the back office to support customer service, reported an 18 percent productivity improvement.

The SDE purchase 'patriates' the GCIP, which, amongst its distinguishing features allows hosters/service providers to upgrade and customize their offerings to their clients in near-real time, or close to the amount of time it takes to upgrade/customize on-premises versions of the same types of software. That functionality addresses this issue: customization and speed which has been one of the key stumbling blocks to hosted solutions.

Genesys plans to enhance GCIP and has already done so such as by giving it better multi-tenant capabilities.  Think of GCIP as a portal front-end for customer service applications, but it is primarily built with Genesys as the back end.  Genesys has direct integration with Siebel, SAP CRM, Microsoft CRM, RightNow, SalesForce, and other SaaS or premise-based applications. GCP is also optimized for the entire Genesys product line (CIM) including IVR and voice (Genesys Voice Platform).

And unlike many software industry deals that often involve months of integrating product lines and devising new resulting applications, the benefits to companies and likely buyers from these two Genesys acquisitions are available immediately.

iWD represents the new branding around the existing Genesys offerings and the Conseros Global Task List manager as Conseros was designed specifically for Genesys. SDE (as part of VoicInt, Telecommunications, which is its former parent) was Genesys' technology partner in creating GCIP.

Avaya's new In-Store Connect and Video Assist solutions are the latest tools that are incrementally enabling the long-promised but slowly being delivered integration of the retail channels: in-person, contact center, and the web.

This movement promises to deliver high quality customer-retaining/attracting service, better knowledge of customers to provide services in accordance with their value while lowering costs i.e. true retail CRM: which is what the retail sector desperately needs in this tough economy.

Just as customers switch between communications channels, choosing the ones that meets their needs at the time, they flip between sales channels for that reason. Companies must be there to provide effective service efficiently.

Unfortunately there has been, and still is, gaps in the linkages. For example, customers should be able to seamlessly find out whether their local store has an item in stock by going online or through a speech/IVR application, just as they can obtain that information when shopping on and through the website.

Inventory is inventory. If that outlet has the goods they seek then they should buy it online, the sales credited to the store, and the sales staff alerted that the customer will be picking it up. Returns can be handled the same way. No more wasting money on postage.

Such applications can save a lot of aggravation, fuel, and emissions through no more scurrying from store to store or making phone calls to harried sales staff to buy hot items. They can therefore help to guarantee smiles while minimizing frowns.

At the same time retailers need to integrate their contact centers with their stores by using presence-based routing tools and multimodal workforce management solutions to obtain increased efficiency from both workforces. Calls and contacts would go to floor and counter sales staff if contact center agents were not available.

There is both a certain amount of predictability and randomness in both contact center customer service and order entry, and in store visits that can be reasonably planned for and employee teams optimized to meet needs. Retailers can ill-afford to have idle staff in either environment.

Yes, finding the dollars and time in enabling such tools and practices may be hard in this economy. Then again, losing customers, sales, and the opportunities for saving may be harder.

Canada's Toronto Star newspaper recently ran an excellent article by its consumer affairs columnist, Ellen Roseman, on several firms that have responded well when faced with consumer complaints or incidents. These companies are Molson, Staples, GM, and Future Shop.

"'I'm not looking for thanks when I send consumer complaints to large companies,' "she wrote. " 'But I'm always impressed when they respond with gratitude. Smart companies know it's cheaper to retain customers than to find new ones. Each complaint I send gives them a chance to head off defectors and turn their anger into applause. "

It is commendable that these outfits acted promptly and effectively. Yet the cases she cited was where people were treated with respect '"once the media got involved.' "

This is the 'gotcha': 'Working over the consumer' stories are in every urban/large paper reporter's stock in trade. Someone always has a legitimate beef about a company that they've done business or otherwise interacted with and when they do not get satisfaction they call the media. (Rural/small city papers, and people tend to be nicer in up front because everyone knows each other, but behind the scenes, well, that's a different story...)

The question that lingers is that why does it have to take the media to get involved for companies to do the right thing? Why can't otherwise intelligent firms put in place solid procedures to resolve the issues in the first place that is far cheaper and less image-damaging than getting the press involved, and forking over cash in PR expenses?

And it isn't just the media anymore that is there to spread the bad news. This is the age of the empowered individual, folks. Thanks to countless social networking sites a company's reputation--and sales--can plummet like a stone in clear water if annoy their purchasers.

To make sure you don't become the story or the subject of online punches take some time to review and if need be improve your customer service strategies, including ensuring that your staff: contact center agents, retail salespeople, and supervisors, are with the program. Your business depends on it. With a tough economy where buyers are becoming scarce you can't afford to lose a single one.

Contact center services are providing one of the few bright employment spots in a dismal economic climate, what with retail bankruptcies and closures and manufacturing shutdowns.

Firms are opening new facilities, such as IBM in Iowa that is reported that will employ 1,300 people, plus a delivery center in Michigan that will employ about 100. There are the home agent additions that seldom get reported but which are spreading across the U.S. and in Canada, and which will be the future of contact centers because they provide maximum performance and productivity at least costs with optimal flexibility and business continuity.

Group Publisher Rich Tehrani in his blog points out that there will always be a need for live agents to handle calls. For that reason, economic development agencies (EDAs) need to start looking at contact centers again as a growth area. They can fill in the growing dark spots at malls and in power centers that will help surviving merchants with near-captive markets.

Rich is right. Even in a recession people need to obtain service and buy products and services. There is also a growing need for contact center agents to collect on past-due accounts.

At the same time contact centers need to get their acts together to be courted by EDAs. They must beef up their screening, supervision, and management to cut turnover, which is still appallingly high despite high pay, even though the economy is weak. Many outfits also need to polish their images by moving their smoking areas to the rear of buildings. Having gaggles of butt-chuffers on the street-facing sides of buildings looks real good.

Contact centers need to show more community commitment. EDAs have been burned in the past by some teleservices companies that have taken hard-earned tax dollar-financed incentives like tax breaks and new buildings and ran. I've heard the names at site selection conferences and in chats with EDA officials and I won't repeat them; the guilty know who they are and so do the agencies, and they talk amongst themselves.

Contact centers have earned a bad rap in many host communities for such reasons to the point where they rank close to the bottom of the scale of outfits that they want in their towns. Such practices do not exactly make senior government level legislators inclined to back off on laws and measures to tax and restrict inbound and outbound teleservices, so let's cut the nonsense, folks.

That's why the ATA's SRO program is so helpful, and timely. Bringing contact centers to high standards can help grow the industry and enhance its reputation that will enable creation of more jobs at formal contact centers and at homes.

President-Elect Barack Obama is likely to direct up to $40 billion in grants and loans toward improving broadband availability and speeds as part of broader economic stimulus efforts, according to UBS analysts.

And that's great news, because the nation needs a countrywide and affordable broadband network to connect in the 21st century just as it needed roads in the 20th and railroads in the 19th.

Only broadband can provide access to work (e.g. work at home contact center agents) and services from anywhere; only broadband can make a sufficient and realizable dent in harmful commuting. And only broadband can (and did) permit the nation to survive an enemy attack and other such disasters through distributed communications and computing.

The Telework Coalition (TelCoa) has welcomed the President-elect's moves. To take advantage of this expanded broadband network, TelCoa also wants to see the new President's program followed up with federal incentives to encourage more businesses to adopt telework. While there are tax deductions for parking and for employee transit programs there are none for telework.
 
Telework tax incentives will pay for themselves, says TelCoa, by driving down costs, reducing costly emissions and traffic congestion, creating competitive advantages, and providing local economic opportunities for people to live and work in one place. They will help create what it calls a 'climate of security' from adverse events, whether a pandemic, weather or other natural disasters, or international or domestic terrorism. Telework, by reducing the need to drive, especially in suburb-to-suburb and rural-to-suburb commutes where transit is not feasible or cost-effective, will also curb foreign energy dependence.
 
"Broadband telecommunications and on-line educational programs are most effective when there is a telework job available at the home end of the line," said TelCoa President and CEO Chuck Wilsker (News - Alert). "With broadband and telework, we no longer need to apply physical transportation 'solutions' to address economic/employment, energy, or environmental issues.  Mainstreaming comprehensive telework opportunities is the quickest, most effective means to provide employment opportunities to a great number of people without forcing them to daily leave their communities."

Yet at the same time, President-elect Obama's program has raised some legitimate concerns over the need and wisdom during these tough times to subsidize high-speed access. People have survived without it; there is no shortage of private providers.

The hard fact is that government subsidies have been required for rural and accessible infrastructure and services such as for roads, and rural electrification, and more recently, intercity rail and mass transit. Broadband is no different, as any rural resident struggling to get satellite DSL or family needed to get online to reach broadband-optimized websites can tell you.

One can make the same counterarguments for paved roads and for the Interstate highway system, especially in rural areas. People and the economy survived without them too. There were railroads and interurban lines, and, prior to the Interstates, federally-supported and state paved roads, modern-day turnpikes, and parkways.

One point has been made that roads are essential to national security, which differentiates them from broadband. Yes, it was poor roads planted the seeds in the mind of young U.S. Army officer by the name of Dwight Eisenhower of better highways to more quickly transport troops and materiel (the Interstates were originally known as the Interstate Defense Highway System that he signed into law). Yet the lack of them did not impede the U.S. in moving fast amounts of personnel and equipment during World War II and to a lesser extent in the Korean 'conflict'.

The Internet, and by extension, broadband has national security applications. While it was originally intended for scientific purposes that it could tie in distributed computers that would enable the U.S. to retaliate after a first strike made it appealing to the Pentagon. And on 9-11-01 the Internet did just that; it enabled the U.S. to survive an enemy attack.

I saw this up front and personal. I had witnessed the bombings of the World Trade Center on my commute to Call Center Magazine's midtown Manhattan editorial office. I along with my colleagues evacuated the building. I ended up at a friend's house in New Jersey (I could not get to my-then home on Staten Island). While many of the phone lines and cell towers were down I was still able to log in over a broadband connection to receive--and send--'Are You OK' e-mails...

So the question then becomes: does an IP-supporting broadband network merit the same standing as a key infrastructure like roads, and transit? The arguments clearly point that way...

It couldn't happen to a nicer, more deserving, and innovative firm.

Interactive Intelligence has been rated, according to Datamonitor, the top unified communications (UC) vendor by North American contact centers who chose it as the one "they most trust to deliver a UC solution."

Datamonitor's "Business Trends: Contact Center Investments in Developed Markets (Customer Focus)" report, which released the finding, also showed Interactive Intelligence as the favored UC vendor by larger enterprises worldwide and as the highest rated UC vendor for delivering solutions to the communications vertical. The study cited among the top characteristics enterprises look for in a UC vendor are an 'all-in-one' contact center solution, a strong combination of technology and services, and "best-in-class" IM.

Information for the Datamonitor "Business Trends" report was collected via phone surveys of 150 contact center managers from companies throughout North America and Western Europe. Contact center manager respondents represented companies within the financial services, communications, travel and transport, and retail verticals  Interactive Intelligence did not sponsor the report and had no input in the questions asked, or the selection of the companies surveyed.

"Interactive Intelligence is well known as an all-in-one contact center solutions provider in North America and has been able to use that to its advantage in gaining mindshare among respondents," says Datamonitor associate analyst and report author, Aphrodite Brinsmead. "The company has a number of deployments with major companies like Eli Lilly, Fujitsu, Oracle and RIM and continues to demonstrate growth on an annual basis."
 
Keep up the great work!

There is no longer any sound reason to open and keep formal contact centers; the same also goes for most office-type work from administration to finance, marketing/sales and yes to media/PR that no longer requires face-to-face interactions to perform. Instead these functions should be sent home.

There are no benefits to be gained from expending scarce capital and operating dollars on such overhead that does not contribute to and one can argue detracts from production, and profits. Overhead which is also responsible for causing transportation demand leading to traffic congestion, air pollution, and harm from emissions and accidents, and high individual and corporate taxes.

There is also never been a better time than now to shift contact centers, and other functions from formal offices to home offices. The benefits: such as savings of $10,000 per worker/year, reductions in healthcare costs and lost output by avoiding illness spread and commuting-related accidents, and higher productivity have become even more salient and necessary to achieve in a tough economy. Even if one cannot vacate the premises it can still make sense to shut the lights off and go home.

Going home can also be a lifesaver for employees. Teleworking can save them $4,000 to $5,000/year through avoiding commuting, apparel/cosmetics, and transportation costs, plus it can garner them workspace-in-the-home tax deductions if the work full time. These benefits can make the difference in keeping their homes, and foreclosures, even if they are asked to take company/department-saving compensation cuts in exchange for working from home.

The technology is there. There are vast amounts of information on this and on best practices, such as via TMC's vast array of articles, whitepapers, and Webinars and on the The Telework Coalition's website. I wrote a book five years ago, Home Workplace, that contains still-salient how-to advice.

So what is preventing what should be an even faster shift to telework? And why are outfits still opening formal contact centers which in this tough climate they may be forced to close anyway?

The answer lies in the mirrors of especially mid-managers and executives. These are the individuals who feel they must 'see' people or know that they can 'see' their charges to be 'assured' that they are working.

How Victorian. Have they never heard of the telephone? E-mail? Instant messaging? Or the concept of managing by performance rather than by counting butts on seats?

Or is the real reason for this reluctance job security? Teleworkers outperform formal office workers, thereby requiring fewer supervisors. A teleworked contact center can have agent-to-supervisor ratios as high as 22:1 if not higher compared with 8:1 or 12:1.

If a manager or executive cannot manage or lead without having to have people being seen then they or their superiors should take a hard look at whether they should be holding those jobs. If they cannot set and enforce performance expectations, have trust in their employees, and hire and promote people in those roles to meet those goals then are they really suitable for those positions?

There can be some real cost savings and output gains by collapsing the tiers, eliminating such roles, letting go those staff, and only having those individuals on board who can manage by performance---ideally from their homes. Lean, flexible, and more responsive companies are the order of the day: those that are less encumbered by offices, and office-holders.

Organizations are in no position to miss out on cost savings and on productivity gains. Society, and taxpayers can ill-afford spending scarcer public dollars on unnecessary transportation, environmental cleanup, and healthcare costs.

Time to take a hard look, as pop singer Michael Jackson once crooned, at the persons "in the mirror" and make some much needed changes in how to do and manage business, and organizations.

The Canadian communications regulator acted finally right if tragically late by requiring technology to be put in place enabling 9-1-1 dispatchers to trace calls from cellphones by 2010. Had Canada followed the U.S. lead of a few years ago several lives, including that of a British Columbia man who froze to death last week, could have been saved. Yet the U.S. actions only occurred also after probably avoidable tragedies.

The media, namely the Globe and Mail newspaper, played a big role in making this change. Its focus was sharp enough to penetrate the clubby world of corporations and bureaucrats in Canada, so closed and so typically Canadian and small town that it would make D.C.'s K Street open by comparison.

What makes this matter so odious is that Canada's wireless firms have been collecting from their customers 9-1-1 access fees. And for what, pray tell?

What is needed next is for IP carriers to be required to have some means of coordinating the IP addresses with the callers' actual locations such as through their billing or electric utility addresses for 9-1-1 dispatch operators. Such a solution could have prevented the death of a Calgary child; the carrier, who deeply regretted what had happened, has done so following the newspaper investigation.

In fairness to the carriers though, 9-1-1 tools should not be financially their responsibility. No more than they should pay for law enforcement of crimes committed via their services. 9-1-1, like police, fire, and EMS are public responsibilities, it has become part of the basic infrastructure that keep societies like ours functional.

The federal governments in both countries have been clearly at fault by being asleep at the switch, Canada longer than the Americans, more worrying about who is to pay than in getting on with the jobs of preventing needless suffering. They should therefore treat 9-1-1 with the priority, respect, and financing, including of enabling technologies that it deserves.

With all the money going into defending freedom these days--Canada's new fleet of C-17 jet transports make regular takeoffs and landings to and from Afghanistan-- why not take a few pennies of that wad to ensure that the citizens can enjoy that freedom?