Let us know if this sounds familiar: A company decides to adopt Customer Experience Management, they get all kinds of feedback, sit back and think “Okay, now what?” What to actually, you know, do with all this?

As a good recent blog post from NICE put it, “there is a long road between the first step of the CEM journey and the end goal of world class practice.” In fact, almost nobody gets there without some help along the way. If you can, well, our hat’s off to you. Consider yourself part of the real one percent.

NICE offers help for the rest of us in the 99 percent, with Fizzback. This can offer what company officials describe as “a turbo boost, propelling you toward that elusive end point and the big wins of CEM.”

As in what? Glad you asked. NICE identifies the single most important thing in CEM as closing the loop on the voice of the customer, what they explain as “the process of aligning the fundamentals of your business to promote continuous improvement driven by voice of the customer.”

Read more here.

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The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner's Office, tasked with watching over British data protection, is getting serious. One ndustry observer recently noted that text message spam is now being scrutinized; particularly what officials refer to as “an increasing wave of insurance industry and accident compensation-related spam.”

According to a survey of 1,014 people by the ICO, Kirk noted, “681 said they had received a text that had caused them concern. More than 200 said they were troubled by text spam and wondered how their details were obtained.”

The office has conducted one raid, Kirk reported, adding that they plan more raids “targeting operations that collect sales leads by illegally sending unsolicited text messages.”

What makes this a SIM issue is that the messages in question are often sent from SIM servers or banks, “or a hardware devices in which dozens of SIM cards can be inserted and used with automated software to dial hundreds of phones” citing ICO sources.

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Ah, Christmas – that time of year when thoughts turn to visions of sugar plums, flying reindeer, mistletoe and virtual contact centers.

According to industry journal Hindu Business Line, job portal Naukri.com recently reported that hiring activities have “surged across all sectors in November due to a seasonal spike in recruitment.”

No doubt virtual contact centers are driving much of this growth. Long a prime location for call centers, India has benefited from the ability of a virtual contact center to quickly ramp up – and down – as needed for seasonal fluctuations.

Virtual contact centers are used year-round by companies looking to avoid such problems as on-site disasters or poor weather conditions, or just for efficiency. My Twinn, a high-end doll manufacturer, switched to using virtual contact centers years ago, and company officials reported that in the first year, 2000, “30 percent more inquiry calls were converted to orders, employee turnover decreased 88 percent and 90 percent fewer calls had to be escalated compared to 1999.”

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If you’re looking for a good way to publish SLA reports to customers, you might want to consider a unified performance management solution such as APG.

APG is a performance and service level monitoring product allowing “effective management of the overall business performance,” according to officials of Watch4Net, who explain that “by consolidating both business and technology metrics, APG allows contractual SLA measurement and reporting.”

Here’s how it works: Once a service level report is created, users are able to monitor business compliance in real-time. SLA reports show the information needed to anticipate SLA achievement and prioritize efforts.

As an example of the available indicators included, there’s Best Case, which returns the value that will be reached at the end of the month if the resource remains up, and the slightly less encouraging Worst Case, which shows the value that will be reached at the end of the month if, from this day forward, the resource is down.

Read more here.