First Coffee for 18 January, 2006

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

First Coffee for 18 January, 2006

By David Sims

[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is… well, let’s bring up iTunes, click on Library, hit “Shuffle” and see what we get… okay, play… ah, it’s Lou Reed’s “Intro/Sweet Jane” masterpiece from Rock’n’Roll Animal. Nice start to the day:

First CoffeeSM’s unofficial position as chronicler of bad customer relationship experiences with online vendor Caiman.com is becoming known around the blogosphere, as “Mark” writes in to say:

I had a similar experience with this dishonest vendor (caiman.com). I bought a CD from them via Amazon.com and it has been 6 months now and I have still not received it! Worse, they are not responding to emails. I get sick thinking about how much $$ they are making by not sending the product that people have ordered.

I am taking this up with Amazon and expect a full refund. They made the business decision to partner with this vendor and they should follow up when the vendor does not.

Amen. It’s one thing to get ripped off by a vendor, which happens, unfortunately, in the online world. It’s another thing for reputable online vendors to partner with vendors who have so many complaints about such behavior, because here’s the business point: Customer experiences will always reflect on the company whose name is on the door. In this case that’s Amazon.com.

The absolute lamest excuse possible in business is “That’s not my issue, that’s my partner’s problem.” Wrong answer, go to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

If Dave’s Mart is selling Fritz’s Cookies, and customers come to Dave saying “These cookies you’re selling have Asian bird flu and three of my kids have died,” Dave does not say “Gee, sounds terrible, but that’s not my problem, here’s Fritz’s number, thanks for your business, see you back at your usual shopping time.” If Dave ever wants to see aforesaid customer again he apologizes, makes it right and tells Fritz no more cookies for me, thanks. Go sell somewhere else.

This is CRM, people: Keeping customers by doing what it takes to ensure the quality of the customer experience. Therefore “It’s not my problem, it’s a supplier issue, thank you, next please” is not CRM, it’s kicking your customer in the butt a second time.

Read what Mark says above, paying special attention to the second paragraph. Companies who don’t do something about bad suppliers soon become indistinguishable from the supplier.

CallMiner, a developer of speech analytics software has announced the award of a five-year GSA contract, GS-35F-0131R. CallMiner sells software and applications which let agencies mine intelligence from all recorded interactions.

CallMiner’s inclusion on the GSA schedule was enabled by an agreement with Carahsoft Technology, a government IT firm based in Reston, Va.

The CallMiner Suite uses patent-pending speech recognition technology that converts recorded calls to minable data. The CallMiner Analytics Suite uses data mining and trend mining techniques to analyze recorded interactions that uncover both content and intent embedded in the recordings. This lets call center supervisors mine call content in real time, and hopefully identify call trends and opportunities that, until now, were too costly and time consuming to analyze.

Calypso Wireless, Inc. has announced that it has received a purchase order for $23.3 million from Centconet SA for the delivery of the Calypso C1250i Dual Mode WiFi-GSM-GPRS VoIP cellular phone, which runs on Intel PXA series application processor and Microsoft WinCE 5.0 operating system and the Calypso C750 WiFi phone.

“Centconet has decided to launch the Calypso Wireless C1250i dual mode cellular phones and C750 WiFi phones. We have placed a purchase order with Calypso Wireless for $23.3 million to purchase 35,000 Calypso C1250i WiFi-GSM-GPRS VoIP cellular phones and 45,000 Calypso C750 WiFi phones,” confirmed J. Poincot, General Manager of Centconet SA.

Poincot said Centconet will be using Cisco Systems Aironet WiFi Access Point and gateway controllers and Nokia routers. Mobile users will be able to switch from a conventional cellular tower to a WiFi Access Point “and save money when making a VoIP call using Skype,” he claimed.

“With an estimated 800 millions cellular phones to be sold world-wide in 2005, this order is an forward step of Calypso entering the mobile market with the ASNAP patented technology U.S. Patent #6,680,923.” says Alfredo Sarrazin, Vice President of Sales of Calypso Wireless Inc., who probably doesn’t talk like that in real life.

Genco today announced it has formed an alliance with KeyTone Technologies to provide hands-on RFID training in a real supply chain environment.

With many analysts predicting a shortage of RFID professionals, the alliance combines supply chain management experience of Genco and RFID application development and deployment experience of KeyTone to form one comprehensive training program. The training program will be marketed as RFIDApplied2U, in another example of the Princefication of our language.

Attendees will undergo a workshop on how to develop an execution plan, set up a pilot environment based on the execution plan and test a sample application. They’ll be asked to provide up to five cases of their own product for enabling with RFID.

“This is a unique offering that is not being offered at any other RFID training facilities. By tagging their own product, participants will begin to see immediate results, which are relevant to their respective businesses,” claims Cary Cameron, Genco’s Vice President of Strategic Technologies.

Initially, there will be two courses offered, RFID for Managers and RFID Operations and Project Management, followed by RFID Application Development and Integration and RFID Networking & Troubleshooting later in the year. The first course will be held on February 7, 2006.

Zi Corporation has launched six new language databases for its predictive text products. Zi’s eZiText for one-touch entry prediction and eZiTap for intelligent multi-tap entry are now available in four new languages for the Indian wireless market and two new languages for the African wireless market.

The new products allow subscribers in these emerging wireless markets can now enter text more quickly and customize their mobile phones through the use of personal language. Zi now supports 54 language databases, enough for more than two thirds of the world’s population.

“With mobile subscribers in both Africa and India growing at a rapid pace, these low penetration, high growth markets have specific language needs,” said Milos Djokovic, chief technical officer and chief operating officer, Zi Corporation.

Research firm Gartner predicts that the Indian cellular services market will reach $24 billion by the end of 2009, and other sources point to India as one of the fastest growing markets in the world, adding nearly 2 million new subscribers each month.

In the Indian subcontinent, added to its existing language offering of Hindi, which has 340 million speakers, and Urdu, with more than 10 million, Zi is now supporting predictive text messaging technology for 227 million Bengali speakers, 66 million Tamil speakers, 50 million Punjabi speakers and 46 million Gujarati speakers.

In Africa, Gartner predicts wireless subscribers to grow from 92 million in 2005 to nearly 154 million by 2010. Zi’s new African language databases will enable service to over 50 million Swahili speakers and 6.4 million Afrikaans speakers.

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