On Rad's Radar? - organizations Archives

Social Media Channel Integration

2012-02-07T22:38:51Z

An ITEXPO panel on Wed. discussed social media integration in the contact center. Sanjay Popli of LiveOps, Manuel Ramirez of Avaya, and Alex Quilici of YouMail spent 45 minutes talking about social media and call centers.

There are five steps a company needs to take to implement social media strategy in a contact center.

Monitor social channels
Decide on Relevance
Assign employees to tasks
Establish Policies
Design procedure for interacting with the rest of the Org

The contact center could be monitoring for leads, complaints or opportunities on social media platforms. These platforms can include twitter, Facebook, Google+, Yahoo groups, forums, LinkedIn or any of the other thousands of online communities and networks that exist.

It is a way for call center to move from a cost center to a revenue center. Not just by following up on sales leads, but by preserving the brand and reputation of the company.

One item that all panelists agreed upon was that the time for response from a company has shrunk from a day to an hour. It's about speed now.

Another reminder from the panel is that conversations about your service and brand ARE indeeed taking place online (like on DSLReports and GetSatisfaction.com). Ignore it at your own peril.

Monitoring or Listening also includes finding out where your customers are hanging out online. Go where they are.

A final note was that previously most online commenters were anonymous. Today, about 70% are very traceable. That means you can identify them and interact with them. There are many books written about creating raving fans out of disgruntled customers. It is possible online as well.

The Future of Media

2011-09-30T15:29:16Z

The buzz is that email is dead. Oh, voice is dying also. And if you believe all the hype, sell your airline stocks since video conferencing and tele-presence will replace travel.

"A company's corporate website is the top source of new sales leads--second only to personal connections and referrals, and more than seven times more effective than social media, according to a 2011 Demandbase National Marketing and Sales Study released today by marketing technology company Demandbase and online business network Focus, according to an article in the Tech Journal South. Yet the buzz says it's all social media.

Voice isn't dead either. If it was the contact center space would be folding up tents. Granted robo-calling is annoying, but it still won't end any time soon. (It just may get more challenging to reach humans instead of voicemail.)

Email is still my number one communication platform. Project management, clients, prospecting and more all happen via email. Notifications end up in email. When companies talk about unified messaging, it's about one inbox - the email tray.

Everyone has their preferred method of communicating: email, voice, text, chat, FB, twitter, and more. It is getting more baffling for people to keep track of conversation threads as they bounce from one medium to another - text to email to FB. But it all comes back to email - maybe mainly due to the inbox and inbox organization that we are used to. Texts, chats, notifications and more can all come back to an email inbox to be stored, organized and searched. That's why email will be around a while longer. Longer than you think anyway.

The future of media will be fractious at best.

Want an interesting look at new media?

How does the Verizon Strike Affect Agents

2011-08-08T21:56:53Z

From notices from both Netwolves and Microcorp about the Verizon workers strike.

Effective yesterday, two unions - the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - representing 45,000 workers at Verizon announced an immediate strike. The strike involves Verizon field technicians and call center employees from Massachusetts to Virginia/DC. This strike will cause delays in both Installations and Repair in the Northeast.

This will also affect Install and Repair for CLEC's operating in this region on all copper (UNE) related services

There will be immediate impact to your business and customers. Please notify ALL customers that have pending installs in the areas where Verizon is the local LEC that they will most likely experience some delays.

Verizon has advised that Repair orientated tasks will be covered by non-union management. In Tampa, employees were shipped to the Northeast to work the vacated union jobs -- but the workers are frightened and are not especially trained (just a few days last week) in these jobs.

Provisioning of new orders will be delayed until an agreement is reached. And Provisioning escalations will NOT be accepted at this time, unless the order is for Public Safety, Medical, E911 or Out of Service situations.

States impacted by the strike are: Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Maryland, Massachusetts, NJ, NY, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and West Virginia.

UPDATE: Verizon strike update: how it is affecting DID porting: http://icont.ac/9JEC from VoIP Innovations. TWT told me that FOC dates are now 12/30/2011!!

Channel versus Direct

2011-07-20T22:26:22Z

When I speak to carriers about the Channel, it's usually through gritted teeth. Most carriers have a love-hate relationship with the Channel.

Carriers: Agents aren't exclusive. They aren't pitching us first and foremost.

Me: DUH! They aren't employees. They are brokers working with Customers to find the best solution. And by the way, most carriers don't explain their value proposition very well (if at all).

Carriers: Those recurring commission are ridiculous!

Me: Really? We get no salary or benefits. We pay our own rent, broadband, cell phone and travel. We only get paid when we get a contract signed and a service not just installed but paid for by the customer. And then we have to make sure that the carrier (or any of its numerous employees) don't do something to stop that commission stream.

Me: And as the carrier, your gaggle of lawyers and accountants decided what the commissions were going to be. If the numbers aren't working out, it's likely because those same folks aren't as good at their job as Agents are at their job. (Or carriers wouldn't have enormous pension liability and would have healthy profits and less debt.)

Carrier: It's easy being an Agent.

Me: What? We don't have a database of leads that carrier reps have. (For ILEC's that database is called BOCRIS). We have to wait 6 months or longer to get paid on a deal - a deal that we had to hunt and land ourselves.

Carrier: Yourselves? Look at all the support you get!

Me: You mean the over-worked Channel Manager who gets rotated almost as regularly as your account reps? Personally, I only need help quoting and answering specific details about the service.

Me: I do my own paperwork - and I don't want the customer to be contacted at all by the carrier. I want it all through me.

Carrier: Channel support is costly.

Me: Really? And your sales team isn't? Office space, utilities, broadband, cell phones, travel, benefits, salary, training, and W-2 liabilities. Your sales team needs at least as much support as the Channel. Maybe more. No performance reviews or Human Resources needed with Agents.

I'm sure there is more, but these are the basic ones. If it was just simple math it would be one thing, but it is a control issue as well. And now it is a Wall Street problem.

Dimension Data Makes a Move

2011-06-30T17:31:45Z

I learned about Dimension Data a VoiceCon event. They had an interesting booth. They are a South African company doing more than $4B in revenue as a global VAR for Cisco, Microsoft, McAfee, TEM, HP, EMC, VMWare, Blue Coat and more. I didn't know that NTT bought the company outright in 2010 for GBP 2.1B. Today, Dimension Data announced that they purchased OpSource, an enterprise cloud company out of Santa Clara, California. DD already owns a few data centers around the world, including Brazil. And NTT owns a few. NTT has had a relationship with OpSource since 2008. It's the worldwide focus on Cloud that is igniting some of the M&A.

Yesterday, TDS bought OneNeck IT to add to its collection of VISI and TEAM. TWCable bought Navisite. Windstream bought Hosting Solutions. CenturyTel bought Savvis. Verizon bought Terremark. All of this is that the network operators don't want to just be a dump pipe selling Layer 1-3. The real money -- and the stickiness - is in Apps (Layer 7 of OSI), the Cloud, servers, data, storage. If you have their data, well, you have their attention.

Even the distributors like Tech Data, SYNNEX and Ingram know that just selling gear is a highway that will end. Somewhere down that road the bridge is out. Businesses aren't buying the same number of servers, laptops, desktops, and related gear like switches and routers. Instead smartphones, tablets, VMware and SAAS are being purchased. That shift is causing the distributors to also shift to Cloud. This will be a painful play. It's an entire shift in the whole business model. Instead of being a distributor for manufacturers, you now try to become a back-office and marketing company for Cloud providers. Ouch! But everything is going Cloud, so jump on that magic carpet now.

Sprint/C-Link Talk

2011-06-22T22:41:56Z

There have been a bunch of rumors about Sprint being a perfect target for CenturyLink, especially after the T-T merger, when Sprint will become the the Danica Patrick of cellular (pretty, media savvy, but not a real contender).

CenturyLink is currently rolling out VZW products to small business and residential customers, according to news reports. Qwest, recently absorbed by CenturyLink, was partnered with Sprint then switched to being a VZW authorized agent. Since both carriers went with VZW, I don't see them rushing in to buy Sprint.

One reason: why give such a sales boost to VZW to then have to swap everyone over (if you even can get them to switch).

Another reason: Sprint has a convoluted relationship with Clearwire, cablecos and PCS affiliates. It's not plain nor easy. It would make for an added headache for any company to take that one while also trying to viw for federal, Fortune 5000, cloud, wireline, TV and the rest. It's just too many marbles on the floor for someone to fall on.

But then that's just my best guess.

Thoughts on Deploying Cloud

2011-03-07T23:08:23Z

In this 13 minute interview with Dale Frohman of The Frohman Group , we discuss Cloud Deployment in the business.

Deployment of Cloud services is much easier in the small business space (under 100 employees), because typically this is not a complex network infrastructure. The first hurdle to Cloud Deployment is the complexity of the network environment.

Some systems just can not be moved to a cloud platform. Medium businesses (100-500 employees) may have legacy systems (like COBOL) that may take more work than is cost effective to shift to either IAAS or PAAS. Other application systems may be tied to other databases, which may mean moving one will require moving two or more applications or databases. It may be like pulling a string on a sweater.

Jim Meltzer of Ashton Metzler & Associates, says, "In order to successfully deploy Cloud-based services, Communications Service Providers need to develop a detailed business plan, a data center architecture and a management strategy."

Steven Taylor of Webtorials adds, "As we move toward cloud-based solutions, one of the most difficult tasks is defining how the network services that are used to access the cloud-based service and the cloud-based service itself interact. This is especially important and challenging in the definition of an appropriate Service Level Agreement."

Dale Frohman says the first question to ask is "Is it Critical or not?" Decide that before you ask "Can it go to the Cloud?" Your business SLA (service level agreement) may be more stringent than what the Cloud Provider will offer. That could prove disasterous.

I think most strategies will be Hybrid Cloud (like they are now), just because of network architectures, regulations, control issues and proprietary issues.

Speaking of issues, something that can fog up a Cloud deployment is Corporate Culture. As Frohman explains, as an MSP (managed service provider), he saw where employees who were unwilling to change had forces a company to move back to PC's from a Virtual Desktop rollout. Employees have to buy in to this Change in business. You can't gain on productivity when your workforce is blocking it. The future of the office environment will morph, but there are hurdles to how fast that it will happen in every business.

CEO Moment

2010-09-13T14:09:52Z

Football season started this weekend. The General Manager's job of an NFL team is to build a winning team. Let's assume that the team has a developing quarterback and a good running back. The GM's job during the draft and trade is to get the best blocking line that he can.

The quarterback needs protection and the running back needs a hole to run through.

This is no different in sales. Your sales team needs help.

They need a game plan. They need someone to remove corporate hurdles that stymie their performance. They need coaching. They need training - on your products and services, on the corporate systems, and on selling.

We are in a new world here. What worked 10 years ago won't work today. TDM was yesterday. IP Communications is today.

BTW, it's not just your direct sales team that needs help with blocking and protection. Your Indirect Channel is filled with Agents that want to sell your services if you just remove some obstacles.

Why Not COMPTEL?

2009-09-14T16:28:41Z

A piece of news hit me that just adds to the bad taste that COMPTEL leaves in my mouth. Here's an organization that is mainly composed of CLEC's. Since MCI and AT&T were acquired by RBOC's all teeth have left the building. I can't think of a single COMPTEL FCC or court victory. The big one was supposed to be Brand-X, but that turned out to be a huge loss.

This morning a CLEC client pointed out all the benefits that he gets from NRTC Coop and I am astounded.

So the news item was about VON. "will host a CTO Summit at which leading competitive service providers will develop a road map for creating a nationwide IP-based peering fabric that will bypass the legacy PSTN and support advanced services such as HD voice.....Committed to attending so far are Alteva, Telesphere, Simple Signal, Callis Communications, ISN Telcom, Broadcore, Global IP Solutions and Consolidated Technologies" as well as Broadsoft and Polycom, vendors for most of those attending.

This isn't really ground breaking because there are IP Peers like Arbinet and Stealth's VPF. But it's the first time that the ITSP's decided to start their own. And I have to wonder why COMPTEL wasn't behind this a couple of years ago. COMPTEL needs to start thinking of ways to add value to its membership, instead of just ways to make it really expensive to network with each other.

What Are You Selling?

2009-06-26T14:15:12Z

While speaking at the FISPA meeting this week, I kind of focused on sales and marketing. Why? Mainly the E-Myth. Most of the ISP owners are technical but are very uncomfortable talking about business, marketing and especially sales. One point that is important is that ISP's are NOT selling Internet Access. ISP's are selling reliable, dependable high-speed access to Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the websites and Web Apps that people desire to use. SAAS and VoIP means that ISP's need to be cognizant of the fact that if you keep selling Internet Access you will relegated to a dumb pipe. Instead, you should be offering not just the access but also some of those Apps. (That's what the RBOC's want to do).

ITSP's are NOT selling replacement phone service. They are selling business productivity and efficiency through a new, reliable and redundant platform for voice service. It's NOT about saving someone 10% -- it is about understanding how the business uses the phone (and other communications services) to interact with prospects, customers, and employees.

Google Voice is now going public. Luckily, for some providers Google announced that it will charge for enterprise and premium users. At the FISPA meeting, IKANO (Disclaimer: I rep IKANO's Google Apps for ISP's) presented the concept of ISP's moving their email service to Google. This was at the tail end of a CLEC session where the discussion centered around becoming a CLEC is about controlling your destiny and your services. Well, outsourcing your email - still the killer app for users - for an ISP is tantamount to losing control. And the fact that Google - IKANO's partner for email - is launching Google Voice is just one more reason that the ISP's will say No to Google Apps. They see Google as the new AT&T.

How the Mighty Fall

2009-06-23T14:41:58Z

When I look at the fall of Nortel (and Alcatel-Lucent) as well as banking giants, Circuit City, GM, and more, I have to ask, "What happened?" In his new book, How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins writes about how once great companies have declined. Collins goes over the summary in Business Week where he identifies five stages of decline. Nortel came to mind as I was reading it but so did Lucent.

The whole situation is best exemplified by the music industry and newspapers. They didn't want to change - couldn't see the writing on the wall. Each was stuck in a revenue model that was supposed to work forever - and never bothered to examine a Plan B. Are you certain that you are not doing that?

In his book, Marketing Outrageously, Jon Spoelstra asks, "What business are you in?" Specifically, he talks about both railroads and Smith Corona. Railroads didn't realize they were in the people transport business, so missed out on becoming the airlines. Smith Corona thought they were in the typewriter business, when actually they were in the word publishing business. They missed the PC age. NCR and the cash register business was another one that came to mind.

Do you think you are in the VOIP, UC, or SAAS business? Think again. You are in the Reliable Application Delivery game or the Reliable Communications Platform moreso. And you better not forget it or fail.

Xerox is the example that Collins cites in the Business Week article of a company that was in a death spiral, but the CEO pulled them out. Kodak is another. Don't you see comparisons to Qwest, Level3, Global Crossing and XO in these stories? I do. It's not about pipe size or bytes or telecom. It's about the ability for a business to reliably get information, database access, and connect and interact with partners, employees, customers and prospects. It's like a car: no one cares how it works, just that it does when the ignition is turned on.

The Future for COMPTEL

2009-03-05T19:28:59Z

The CLEC show, COMPTEL, is in Dallas this week. Stupidly, COMPTEL had their show overlap the Channel Partners Expo. Hello! Same exhibitors and people can't be in 2 places at once. But it's this exact kind of planning that has led to the troubles that the CLEC's are experiencing.

Has COMPTEL ever won a major battle at the FCC? Nope.

Yet COMPTEL is a lobbying organization. And its insulated. Where's the outreach?

Anyway... COMPTEL never pushed their members to cooperate in the marketplace even after the TRRO ruling went against them. By now, CLEC's should primarily buying transport and transit from other CLEC's. There should be a COMPTEL database of lit buildings, of fiber routes, and of central office collocation, so that members can easily propose solutions and wholesale to other CLEC's.

At the fall 2009 show, Verizon, Level3 and XO didn't exhibit. (I didn't attend but this is what I was told). That means that two of your vendors don't care that much about you - Level3 who many buy transit from and VZ who with AT&T and Qwest make up the bulk of the cost of services to COMPTEL.

As Tara Seals writes here, lines are moving to VoIP and cellular. While CLEC's are moving to SIP trunking, the majority have no cellular component. Why hasn't that been a priority for COMPTEL? Did they think that cellular was a fad that would fade?

There isn't much reason for the CLEC's to start screaming SIP because in the majority of cases, SIP Trunking is just a PRI replacement - and while the marketing is about cost savings, there is any cost savings to the CLEC. Net sum is that SIP Trunking means less revenue and lower margin.

The MVNO model has proven itself to a road to failure. Maybe Verizon's Wholesale Partner plan for Mobility will work. (But I wouldn't bet on it).

Landline replacement to cellular has been increasing with the market dip. That will likely continue, especially with T-Mobile's new $50 plan as well as the Sprint Everything Plan at $99. Garrett Smith thinks this will kill VoIP. WIthout fiber and without cellular, CLEC's are stuck as a NxT1 pipe pusher.

Where's the innovation? CableLabs and AT&T Labs pumped out some good stuff like DOCSIS, cablecard and DSL. Where's the COMPTEL Lab or at least the COMPTEL Think Tank?

Is Integrated T1 it? Now to be replaced with SIP Trunk? Wow! Unified communications didn't come out of the CLEC world either. Re-invent or die.

IT Folks Chatting About Communications

2008-12-09T15:33:39Z

During a discussion online, some interesting items popped up.

Companies ban Instant Message. One IT Security Consultant looks at the irony of it here. Tele-Presence is all about improved efficiency in communicating -- no more phone tag, less voicemail, that kind of thing -- but how will that be implemented in a corporate environment that locks it down?

Social networking like LinkedIn and Twitter are becoming commonplace among the marketing set. Maybe instead of banning these things in a corporate environment, you embrace it and set policy. Here's an article from CIO.com on LinkedIn etiquette.

It boils down to tools. Will you give people the tools that they can use to be effective at their position? If you are that worried about security, do an audit and train your people. Manage by walking around. Most theft is internal or social engineered. You can train against the social engineering, but if someone wants something bad enough they will figure out how to get it. It's just a shame that can't get that passionate and creative about the job.

Are You The Next Sue Crawford?

2008-11-23T14:09:11Z

If you can't get a position at the FCC, perhaps you can put your talents to use at the other governmental telecom agency, which is looking for a few intelligient people like Sue Crawford help shape the broadband policy of the US:

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is seeking nominations of individuals to represent the business community, public interest groups, and other appropriate groups interested in serving on the NTIA Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) for a single fifteen (15) month term to commence in January 2009. At the conclusion of the working group's term, the OSTWG will provide a report to the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator and to Congress on ways to promote and to preserve a safe environment for children using the Internet.

DATES: Nominations must be postmarked or electronically transmitted on or before December 12, 2008.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On October 10, 2008, the President signed into law the ''Broadband Data Improvement Act'' (the Act), Pub. L. No. 110-385. Section 214 of that Act directs NTIA to establish the OSTWG to review and evaluate: READ here...

Who is Sue Crawford? Read her bio here. Besides being a law professor, she is on the board of ICANN. Her writings are very articulate and logical - until the ramblings you read from me. I understand that she is part of the Obama transition team, but I can't confirm that.

Creating Telecom Union

2008-09-05T19:09:36Z

A handful of telecom agents got together in Vegas in Feb. at the Channel Partner Expo to discuss the formation of an association by and for agents. Little did we know the trouble we would cause. You see, there are already three agent associations. All of the For-Profit. Ours, the Technology Channel Association, is non-profit, which is the first big differentiator.

I'm not picking on for-profit. I'm just saying that the goals are different. For-profit has to earn money. Our goal at TCA is to support the agent. It will be and for agents in the channel (telecom and beyond). TCA is a 503(c)6, which means we have to devote 35% of our effort at member education. We are working on a Code of Ethics. There is a committee forming to establish a Best Practices guideline. Another committee is working on how to institute a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for agents.

These are not things AA, TAG, iAgent or TAA do. (Of if they do, I had no idea and I have been an active agent for 9 years). AA is a buying consortium for the largest master agents. TAA is a portal for carriers to advertise to agents about promotions and such. No idea what TAG or iAgent do. Herein lies the problem. If you are an agent, where do you get help? My new answer: TCA.