Recently in Call Center/CRM Category

NICE Systems, provider of telephone call digital recording systems, recently made key acquisitions to expand its presence and capabilities in the contact center business performance and analytics market, buying workforce management company IEX and performance management company Performix.
 
I was interested in knowing more about NICE's strategy behind these acquisitions, so I asked Eyal Danon, VP of global marketing, to respond to some questions ….
 
 
1. Please tell us a something about recent developments at NICE and where the company is going.
 
2006 so far has been a very exciting year for our dynamic marketplaces.
 
In Q1 of 2006, the increased focus on improving business performance contributed to significant growth in demand for interactions analytics solutions. Our solution, NICE Perform continues to enjoy a growing number of new customers and also repeat orders from existing customers.
 
The latest examples include leading outsourcer Teleperformance, which recently expanded its NICE Perform implementation, and placed an order for five UK sites, in addition to the successful deployment of five sites already running in France, and another deployed in Finland -- for a total of 11 sites altogether. Another is Sitel, which last quarter we announced expanded to two new sites in India. Following on that success, this quarter Sitel placed orders for three more sites in Belgium and Germany, for a total of six.
 
The VoIP recording market has passed the pilot phase and is well into full deployment, with mass proliferation of large scale implementations.
 
VoIP based contact centers all over the world are beginning to share Insight from Interactions across different locations and across the enterprise, regardless of the agent's location, whether at headquarters, at home or offshore. 
 
Also with VoIP NICE is seeing larger and larger deals, including major multi-million dollar projects with tier-1 customers, which include the world's leading banks. These customers are selecting NICE for massive projects, with thousands of channels that span hundreds of branches.
 
This is further validation of our leadership in providing compliance and liability solutions for the banking and financial services industries, and our key role in ensuring their smooth migration to IP technology.
 
And as we announced on April 28th, to lead the trend of Contact Center Business Performance and Analytics we are acquiring IEX Corporation and Performix Technologies.
 
 
2. What are the important trends right now in call center monitoring, and how are those trends driving your product offerings?
 
The need for solutions to help organizations ensure regulatory compliance and achieve quick and effective dispute resolution is still an important trend both in call center monitoring and for call center customer interaction analytics. 
 
The grand move to IP-based communications is also still on the rise. 
 
And we are seeing that more and more organizations are turning to interaction analytics to help them understand what is really going on with their customers, to help them increase customer satisfaction and retention, to compile competitive intelligence -- that is otherwise impossible to attain, and to drive new revenue streams.
 
 
3. Why is it important for companies to give increased attention to call center monitoring?
 
One reason, of course, is compliance with regulations. By performing quality monitoring and speech analytics on 100% of the customer interactions, contact centers have unprecedented opportunity to extract insight from interactions, mitigate risk and promote premier customer service. 
 
Contact centers that have been performing random sampling understand that calls containing critical information are escaping notice. By analyzing all customer interactions for any combination of words or phrases such as: "do not call" or "this is the 3rd time I asked to remove," managers can provide immediate feedback to agents on how to improve upon their interactions with customers. The risk is further decreased with the capability of alerting a supervisor to such occurrence before the issue becomes a legal action. 
 
Without performing 100% quality monitoring along with analytics, a QA supervisor must monitor a call before it can be determined whether a violation occurred. And since QA supervisors generally monitor no more than 20% of the calls, an immediate alert to violations is critical to mitigating risk. 
 
Another is a two-fold reason -- improved agent performance, resulting in improved customer satisfaction. With precision QM that is integrated with an Agent Coaching solution supervisors, QA, and contact center managers and director now have access to real-time performance data, online. Real-time performance data is also available to agents, who can evaluate their own calls and sign-off on evaluations electronically. In the past coaching was an off-line, time consuming, one-way dialogue.
 
Behaviors that required improvement were treated slowly, prolonging customer dissatisfaction. Good evaluations often didn't reach the agents, prolonging the lack of reinforcement. But now, on-line, real-time, two-way communication empowers agents to respond with questions or request assistance, and be able to calibrate behaviors for improved customer satisfaction.
 
 
4. Your CEO Haim Shani recently said that NICE is "is providing the first truly holistic view of an organization's contact center activity." What does Shani mean by that?
 
Indeed, the combination of NICE Perform with IEX's and Performix's solutions provides the first truly holistic, i.e., most comprehensive view of the contact center, which addresses, for the first time, all contact center and enterprise stakeholders -- including customers, agents, supervisors, managers and decision makers in the enterprise.
 
This powerful combination constitutes both the broadest offering available today and the only one that includes the leading solution in each market segment. 
 
NICE Perform provides the leading solutions in interaction analytics, Voice over IP and TDM recording, coaching, and quality monitoring. IEX is the leading vendor in workforce management, strategic planning and performance management solutions for the contact center market. The Performix set of tools will provide the umbrella that will combine the business information that is generated by these best-of-breed solutions.
 
In addition it will also allow our customers, who have other vendor solutions to be fully integrated under the Performix suite.
 
The contact center industry is very complex. It needs to combine operational efficiencies, whose natural goal is to minimize resources and expenses, with the need to provide the organization access to its customers, understand its market, and react quickly to new and changing competitive environments. 
 
Here's a real life example: A new sales campaign is out. Significant call volume increases, and the call center manager that receives thousands of calls an hour needs to understand what's happening with his business; he needs to correlate actual sales results from one system with planning for his workforce, understanding why customers are calling and in what context, and needs to make cross-references between these different data points to plan ahead. 
 
 
5. How have your recent acquisitions increased NICE's capabilities?
 
The recent acquisitions complement NICE's organic growth, and extend our global reach, expand our technology and solution portfolio, broaden our customer base, and increase the distribution channels. 
 
With the acquisition of Dictaphone's CRS business we expanded our services organization to be the largest in the industry, as well as our customer base -- also, the largest in the industry.
 
Now with the acquisitions of IEX and Performix we are offering an extended solution that enables the contact center managers to have on their dashboard unified reports that will help them address the different issues and take immediate actions. They will also be able to compare actual results to Key Performance Indicators such as customer satisfactions, sales targets, handling time of customers and more.
 
Through this essential correlation decision makers at every level can extract ever more wide-reaching and valuable insights to better understand what's going in on the contact center and enterprise and correlate them to their operational and business goals, such as upsell and cross-sell opportunities, customer churn, business intelligence, operational efficiency, and even compliance and fraud.
 
 
6. How is your company going about integrating IEX and Performix into the company? How is NICE trying to make the best use of the acquired companies' people, products, business processes and other capabilities so as to benefit the larger organization?
 
The integration process of IEX and Performix is already on its way.
 
We have a strong track record of successfully integrating acquired companies. Our teams around the world are now working with the IEX and Performix teams to ensure very smooth integration and immediate move into business after closing.  
 
Together with IEX and Performix we are truly the undisputed leader, with a uniquely holistic approach that is based on the broadest, most advanced solutions, the largest services organization and customer base, and of-course the strongest financial standing. In addition to this new and exciting offering, the acquisitions bring significant and immediate commercial benefits to NICE.
 
First, we are bringing approximately 1000 new IEX customers, who will join the NICE customer community, already the largest in the industry.
 
These hundreds of new customers in many verticals, such as financial services, telecommunications and more -- are going to be a great asset for NICE, as we will introduce them to NICE Perform as well as to our combined solutions.
 
IEX and Performix will now have access to NICE's large customer base and will enjoy a major upside on the international front.
 
NICE partners will have the broadest set of best-of-class solutions and I believe this will strengthen our relationship with many of them, and especially with our strategic global partners such as AVAYA, SAS and CISCO.
 
And finally, IEX is a clear market leader in its space with a very attractive financial model, which will contribute to our financial performance in 2006 and beyond.
 
 
7. What's the most exciting thing about what's going on at NICE right now?
 
We are excited about the expansion of Insight from Interactions, which we are seeing in each of our markets, and about creating the market of contact center business performance and analytics. We are proud to head these new paradigm shifts in the way organizations make critical business decisions and improve performance. 
 
AB -- 5/23/06
 
Contactual, which provides hosted contact center solutions, recently announced an upgrade to its product, OnDemand Contact Center, giving it the capability to support over 500 simultaneous agents per customer (for details, see Mae Kowalke's article, "Contactual Makes Hosted Contact Centers Friendly for Enterprises").
 
That triples OnDemand's capabilities, which sounds like quite a sizable upgrade. I was curious about the background story on this upgrade, and I was interested to know how the cost of a hosted contact center would compare to an on-premises solution. To find out a little more, I asked Mansour Salame, President of Contactual. to respond to some questions. Here's our dialogue in question-and-answer format.
 
 
1. Please tell me something about Contactual's services and what makes them unique.
 
The Contactual OnDemand Contact Center is easy to implement; with only a web browser and a telephone line a customer can be provisioned and up and running in as little as 4 hours; it's flexible -- multiple channels (voice, email, chat, voice mail) are all supported in with the same queuing mechanism; out-of-the-box integrations with popular OnDemand CRM systems (Salesforce.com, Netsuite, etc.) are available as well as APIs for integration to legacy systems; and it's valuable, allowing underserved call centers in large and small companies to get “big company” features at low monthly prices.
 
Contactual’s application is unique because it was built from the ground up to be a multi-tenant hosted application, as opposed to trying to host an enterprise-designed application. Contactual has taken a complete software approach and is completely standards based, including SIP. When paired with a VoIP carrier, this means that Contactual does not require any DSP (voice processing) cards for its implementation, allowing faster scaling of the application.
 
 
2. Please explain the recent upgrade in your services and how that changes the picture for Contactual and its customers.
 
Upgrades to the Contactual OnDemand Contact Center allow customers to scale up to 500 agents per tenant (tripling the previous version’s capacity), provide enhanced VoIP capabilities, and grant users unprecedented level of control over the application. Such scalability gives Contactual an opportunity to target larger companies with complex call center needs. At the same time, smaller firms can rely on Contactual to accommodate their contact center's future growth demands.
 
Version 5.0 saves call center supervisors’ time by providing agent setup template capability, including queues, assignments and access rights for each user group, thus eliminating redundant data entry. Enhanced SIP phone support gives call centers greater flexibility in choosing their phone device options. Upgraded email management capability allows call center managers and supervisors to handle emails that cannot be automatically routed to an appropriate agent based on keywords. 5.0 gives call center administrators the ability to make changes to or delete unneeded schedules, CRM records and call monitoring files without submitting such requests to Contactual. Finally, the robust back-up functionality seamlessly propagates changes made in the system to the Contactual Backup Tenant, eliminating the need for manual updates and increasing the reliability of Contactual’s disaster recovery procedures.
 
 
3. What makes the on-demand model attractive to your customers?
 
Our OnDemand application requires only a web browser and a phone for a call center to be fully operational. Agents can log into the application any time from anywhere in the world. The OnDemand model allows remote and local agents to function as a unified call center entity with supervisors having access to the same reporting mechanisms as if they were running a physical call center – without the on-premise investment. The flexibility and simplicity of such an approach, along with valuable cost-savings, is what is making the OnDemand model attractive to our customers.
 
 
4. What can you tell me about the cost comparisons between an on-premises system versus on-demand? Just in terms of the cost of doing business in the long term, wouldn't it be better for a company to have its own on-premises contact center system?
 
Contactual’s low monthly fee structure covers everything the customer needs except their PCs, network connections and phone bills. Eliminated over the traditional on-premise approach are capital costs of purchasing the equipment, integration of the PBX with CTI (with our application, we can simply dial any number you support through the PBX), ongoing costs of an on-premise support person on the customer’s IT staff, and fees paid to the on-premise vendor for adds, moves and changes.
 
A company implementing a 50-seat call center in North America can realize over $350,000 in savings during the first year by adopting the OnDemand Contact Center solution, and about $80,000 on a yearly basis after that.  First year savings are derived mainly from the removal of hardware and software expenditures. Additionally, Contactual’s dynamic four-hour JumpStart approach to integration and training drastically lowers costs associated with adoption of the application by call center personnel. On a yearly basis the OnDemand Contact Center provides savings by relieving the client from the necessity of devoting full-time IT resources to maintenance and service of the call center.
 
In addition to the on-going yearly savings, the OnDemand model grants the call center owner the benefit of always being on the cutting edge of contact center technology. Every version upgrade is seamlessly passed on to the client. Unlike the on-premise hassle of cost-effectively deploying major system upgrades that often threaten the call center’s uptime, the OnDemand approach does not call for any action on behalf of the owner -- Contactual takes care of all technical details and ensures that the call center is never taken off-line.
 
 
5. In using an on-demand contact center provider, what issues might arise as a result of latency, as opposed to on-premises? How does Contactual address this concern?
 
If the provider uses multiple gateways, codec, conversions, and other processing to manipulate the voice part of the call stream, latency can be introduced and will appear as echoes and delays during the call. At Contactual, voice quality is an important criterion. Therefore, the application is designed to reduce conversions by using SIP from end to end in our processing center. Contactual carefully selects qualified carriers for call quality, including routes with a minimum number of “hops” needed to complete the call. When paired with our VoIP providers, the application eliminates all gateways and, therefore, conversions.
 
 
6. What's the most exciting thing about what's going on at Contactual right now?
 
Actually, there are several!
 
1) We are actively pursuing development of relationships with our overseas OEM partners -- NEC Australia and Vitstage (Japan). And more partnerships are coming.

2) We are planning to open a European office to capture the EMEA market.

4) And of course, the release of the Version 5.0!
 
AB -- 5/23/06
 
Earlier today, I reported on the release of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for the first quarter of 2006, which found that customer satisfaction that quarter registered its largest increase since 2003 -- see "U.S. Customer Satisfaction Registers Big Jump."
 
I was curious about the rationale behind the index and its potential role as an economic indicator, so I arranged an interview with University of Michigan Professor Claes Fornell, head of ACSI and director of the National Quality Research Center. Following are his comments to me in question-and-answer format.
 
 
1. Please explain something about the American Customer Satisfaction Index and what it measures.
 
When introduced in 1994, the major objectives of the ACSI were to gauge the quality of economic output, as experienced by the users of that output, to contribute to a more comprehensive picture of the economy, to indicate how well (or poorly) our markets behave and to be a leading indicator of economic profits. The empirical evidence suggests that ACSI has lived up to these objectives and more. For example, not only is it a leading indicator of consumer spending and subsequent economic growth, it is also a leading indicator for profits and share prices.
 
To achieve these objectives, ACSI annually measures customer satisfaction with more than 200 companies in 45 industries and 10 economic sectors. In total, the ACSI collects about 80,000 interviews each year, asking these respondents about their satisfaction with the product and services they have consumed. Although the number of measured companies and industries varies slightly from year to year as a result of acquisitions, mergers, and new entries, the ACSI includes essentially the same group of companies with revenues totaling about 40% of the GDP.
 
 
2. Where does customer satisfaction fit into the economy as an economic indicator?
 
Consumer utility, or customer satisfaction, is an important standard for economic growth and a prime driver of demand. ACSI is a complement to productivity. Productivity measures the quantity of economic output; ACSI measures the quality of economic output. A major purpose behind the development of ACSI was to make it possible to better balance quantity and quality. Clearly, economic growth would not be sustainable if we produced more quantity at a deteriorating level of quality. 
 
ACSI is used to predict consumer spending and GDP growth at the macro level. It is also used to predict stock performance for individual companies at the micro level.
 
 
3. Who should be paying attention to ACSI and what should they be doing with this information?
 
Investors: They need to know the relationship between a firm’s current condition and its future capacity to produce wealth. The health of a firm’s customer base, as indicated by how satisfied customers are, says a great deal about the “current condition.”
 
Managers: They need to know how to improve the firm’s current condition by allocating scarce resources such that the strength of customer relationships is maximized.
 
Government: It needs to know how to best encourage economic growth, consumer utility, and living standards for its citizens.
 
Consumers: They should have a voice in measures that reflect their material living standards.
 
 
4. What can you tell me about the survey methodology? How are the ACSI scores developed? What does it really mean that a company gets a score of XX?
 
The ACSI combines two interrelated stages to arrive at ACSI scores: customer interviewing and econometric modeling.
 
The first stage in the process is customer interviewing. Customers are selected randomly from samples of U.S households. To be eligible for interview, a prospective respondent must qualify as the purchaser of specific products or services within defined time periods. Thus the definition of “customer” in the American Customer Satisfaction Index is an individual chosen randomly from a large universe of potential buyers who qualifies by recent experience as a purchaser/user of products or services of specific companies that supply household consumers in the U.S. Once identified, these customers are asked about various aspects of their experience with the identified product or service -- such as perceptions of quality and value, and repurchase intention -- as well as their satisfaction with the product or service.
 
Once these interviews are completed, the second, econometric modeling stage of the process is completed. The ACSI uses a model with measures of an index of satisfaction (ACSI) and related indices (i.e. quality, value, loyalty). These measures come from the manifest variables (survey questions) that are input into the model. Satisfaction (ACSI) is the hub of the econometric model. Because any one concrete measure of satisfaction, such as a single survey question, is at best a proxy for latent satisfaction, the ACSI uses several proxies that reflect overall consumption experience. These proxies are combined into an index on a 0 to 100 scale; a company’s ACSI score is thus a weighted average of the underlying survey variables that comprise the satisfaction latent.
 
 
5. On the surface, it looks as if the range of scores is not really that great. (I believe the lowest score is 60, highest is 86.) Why isn't the Index constructed so as to yield a greater range? For example, the difference between T-Mobile at 69 and Sprint Nextel at 63 doesn't seem that great. But is this a deceptive appearance? Do customers of the two companies in fact have much different levels of satisfaction?
 
We have found that a 100-point scale works well. It offers both enough discrimination and stability. Your point is well taken, though, and most other customer satisfaction scales are on a 2 point scale (satisfied, not satisfied) or 5-7 point scales. The difference between 69 and 63 is significant, both statistically and substantively. On the average, 1% increase in the ACSI score is associated with a 4.5% increase in the market value of equity. For most firms, that is a very large number.
 
 
6. What stands out from this year's study as the biggest, most exciting insight?
 
ACSI is reported quarterly. There are many interesting results from the first quarter and we would direct you to the commentary (www.theacsi.org) on that. See for example, the commentary on Microsoft, cable TV, fast food, and for the economy at large.
 
AB -- 5/16/06
 
 

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) in Q1 2006 registered its largest increase since 2003, according to University of Michigan Professor Claes Fornell, ACSI head and director of the National Quality Research Center. An announcement from the ACSI says the index rose by 0.8% to 74.1 for the quarter.

Fornell points out that this increase in customer satisfaction comes at the same time as a fast growth rate in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Fornell says rising customer satisfaction as measured by the ACSI is correlated with greater inclination to spend on the part of consumers. Fornell comments in the ACSI announcement:

"Even with climbing energy prices, higher interest rates, a soft dollar, a low approval ratings for the President, satisfied American consumers will likely continue to spend only if they can find the money to do so, and that is certainly unclear. But as consumers feel a bigger economic pinch, companies will be competing for fewer and fewer dollars, making customer satisfaction increasingly important."

The ACSI measures relative levels of customer satisfaction among major companies within sectors. The first-quarter ACSI measured five sectors: Transportation, Information, Utilities, Health Care, and Accommodation & Food Services.

Of particular interest to the TMCnet audience are the figures for Fixed Line Telephone Service, Wireless Telephone Service, and Cable & Satellite TV, all included under the Information sector. Here are the figures for those industries:

Fixed Line Telephone Service

Cox Communications, Inc. -- 76
All Others -- 71
AT&T Inc. -- 71
BellSouth Corporation -- 71
Qwest Communications International Inc. -- 70
Comcast Corporation -- 69
Verizon Communications Inc. -- 69
Sprint Nextel Corporation -- 64

Wireless Telephone Service

T-Mobile USA, Inc. -- 69
Verizon Wireless (Cellco Partnership) -- 69
All Others -- 68
Cingular Wireless LLC (BellSouth Corporation, SBC Communications Inc.) -- 63
Sprint Nextel Corporation -- 63

Cable & Satellite TV

The DIRECTV Group, Inc. -- 71
EchoStar Communications Corporation -- 68
All Others -- 63
Cox Communications, Inc. -- 63
Time Warner Cable Inc. -- 61
Comcast Corporation -- 60
Charter Communications, Inc. -- 55

AB -- 5/11/06

Build a Skype IVR With Angel.com

April 27, 2006 5:55 PM | 0 Comments

One of the most interesting news items from today appears on TMCnet's IVR Channel:

Angel.com and Skype Bring IVR Solutions to More Than 94 Million Skype Users Worldwide

Skype has been making important moves into the business market, and this partnership with Angel.com adds an exciting component. Angel.com's Site Builder provides an easy way to build voice applications, and now you will be able to add a sophisticated IVR system attached to your Skype account.

Here are some screen shots giving you an idea of the user experience for building Angel.com voice apps:

AB -- 4/27/06

 

Susan Campbell has a good article on TMCnet about the abuse suffered by agents working in call centers in India: see "Indian Call Center Agents Suffering Health Problems Due to Caller Abuse." According to a recent survey, Susan writes, "25 percent of call center agents identified hate calls as the main reason for workplace stress."

This calls to mind an article from David Sims from last year, "Call Center Workers Allowed to Hang Up." That article commented on a trend in Indian call centers toward giving agents more options in dealing with abusive callers. David quoted one Indian software industry expert who said, "Indians are by nature courteous towards foreigners, but there can be too much of a good thing and companies increasingly provide assertiveness training. If people felt in the past they had to be polite in the face of brazen rudeness, now they say, 'I don't think I do.'"

An article directed at call center agents in India, "How to handle abusive BPO customers," gives 10 tips from call center trainer Nasha Fitter of Fitter Solutions:

  1. Learn to count to 10.
  2. Speak calmly.
  3. Politely ask the caller to speak slowly and clearly and to lower his voice.
  4. Put the caller on hold for a few seconds if you need to recover your composure.
  5. Keep a picture that helps you to stay calm in front of you -- a peaceful scene or a photo of a loved one.
  6. If a call continues to get worse, escalate it to your supervisor.
  7. Ask the caller to refrain from using abusive language, if that's permitted.
  8. De-stress after a rough phone call -- Fitter suggests yoga or breathing techniques.
  9. "Press the mute button and swear back," while using "your sweetest tone" when actually speaking with the caller.
  10. Talk with your supervisor or group leader after a stressful day with difficult callers.

AB -- 4/20/06

The Merchant Risk Council (MRC) is reporting that online fraud rates for merchants in its study are decreasing and are approaching the fraud rates experienced in "card-present" brick-and-mortar retail environments. The association does a yearly survey of online merchants and says fraud rates have been dropping although they are still a concern. 48% of the retailers surveyed said that their fraudulent chargeback rates were less than 0.1%.

Today's announcement from the council quotes co-chair Julie Fergerson commenting on one important security concern: "As fraud prevention tools gain widespread use, their effectiveness declines, and fraudsters are always looking for ways to 'beat the system.'"

The survey found that the use of Address Verification Systems (AVS) rose from 70% to 83% since 2001 but their effectiveness at preventing fraud actually declined from 70% to 25%. Card Verification Codes (CVC) also dropped in effectiveness, though not as dramatically. Use of CVC increased from 38% to 73% since 2001 but the effectiveness of this measure dropped from 49% to 31%.

This confirms the saying I've used in the past about security: 'We build a higher wall and the bad guys build a taller ladder.' Security is a process of continual escalation as data thieves develop greater sophistication.

AB -- 4/18/06

Jenzabar announced enhancements this week to the CRM portion of its Total Campus Management (TCM) suite targeted at the high-education market. The enhancements particularly have to do with giving faculty and students better functionality for advisement, course selection, degree and course requirements, financial aid, grades and similar processes having to do with the logistics of higher ed.

When Jenzabar uses the acronym "CRM" they mean it to refer to Constituent Relationship Management, rather than "Customer," as commonly used in the business world. Having worked in the education field, I understand that the use of the word "customer" can go contrary to sensibilities and organizational models. And in a college or university, the crucial relationships go far beyond that with the customer, that is, the student. You need to consider parents, faculty and staff, alumni, donors, community, referring schools and institutions, regulators, accreditation agencies and others, so "constituent" is an entirely appropriate term.

Even when you just consider just the primary customer, the student, I have thought for a long time that CRM has many exciting applications in higher education. Think about how long the customer relationship might be between an institution and a student. Consider this possible progression of the relationship:

1. Age 16 -- A high school student learns about the college from a high-school counselor and receives a brochure. Touch-point: marketing.

2. Age 17 -- Time to apply. The applicant fills out an online admissions form or fills out a hard copy and sends it in. Touch-point: admissions.

3. Age 17 -- Campus visit to learn about the school and experience the atmosphere. Touch-point: admissions, student services, faculty, others.

4. Age 18 -- Acceptance and orientation. Touch-points: student services, registrar, financial aid, academics.

5. Ages 18-22 -- Student years. Touch-points: Faculty, student services, registrar, financial aid, housing, food service, finance and accounting, others.

6. Age 22 and beyond -- Even after graduation, the student is likely to maintain a relationship with the school based on loyalty, relationships with faculty, and benefits offered to alumni. Touch-points: alumni services, faculty, institutional advancement.

7. Death: Estate planning can result in a bequest to a beloved institution that has maintained a strong relationship with a former student over the years. Touch-points: alumni services, institutional advancement.

Jenzabar's offerings extend far beyond its CRM modules, encompassing administrative and financial modules, ERP, data marts and a learning management system. Everything is delivered through a web-based portal call Jenzabar's Internet Campus Solution (JICS). This kind of unified, integrated suite is a strong selling point, obviating the need to 'manage multiple connections to various constituencies' through "deployment of dissimilar and disconnected portals," says Jenzabar. JICS is built on the Microsoft .NET platform.

Good clear screen shots are hard to come by on the Jenzabar web site, a common fault in the world of CRM marketing (and in software marketing generally for that matter). However, I did find a good example in this screen shot of a faculty access page:

Jenzabar is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. Its solutions are operating in 700 campuses globally.

AB -- 3/23/06

Preventing Credit Fraud

March 21, 2006 11:57 AM | 0 Comments

Recently I had a chance to interview Joellyn Sargent, marketing vice president for Alerts and Notifications Solutions at Premiere Global Services. Premiere Global provides business communications and data solutions, including conferencing, document management and marketing automation, as well as the alerts and notifications service line.

I got in touch with Joellyn because I heard she was speaking on the topic of "The Fight Against Fraud" at the National Collections and Credit Risk conference last week. I thought it would be interesting to get her to speak to some top-of-mind issues around the mitigation of data vulnerabilities. In addition, I was curious to find out how Premiere Global's alerts and notifications services tie in with companies' efforts to fight fraud.

Q: How has the information technology boom contributed to an increase in credit fraud?
     
A. The information technology boom created advances in business processes never seen before, but at the same time the wealth of information available to anyone with Internet access provided opportunity for negative uses.  For instance, greater access to online credit information, as well as better technology to hack into systems and steal information has greatly increased credit fraud. A simple customer list with email addresses even provides thieves with enough information to “phish” for personal information.  These “spoofed” emails ask for financial data and personal background, sufficient to supply the means necessary to steal identities.  And fraud victims feel comfortable in giving out their information because these emails hyperlink them to similar sites operated by legitimate companies.

More importantly, geography is not an issue with the Internet. According to a 2005 Dove Consulting study, “Fraudsters in foreign countries can send fake e-mails, collect card (and debit PIN) information, produce counterfeit cards and then use these cards to make unauthorized purchases or ATM cash withdrawals in their home countries.”

But the Internet is not the only outlet for credit fraud.  Criminals are using all means available to them.  Even cell phone cameras are used by fraudsters to photograph credit cards at the point of sale, and then use those card numbers for phone and/or Internet purchases.

Finally, an explosion of websites in an attempt to remain as secure as possible for their customers has contributed to a proliferation of password requirements.  This has made people lazy in selecting difficult and varied passwords for each site.  Therefore stealing one password is usually all a culprit needs to access other sites visited by a victim, creating another viable method for fraud.

Q: What are the biggest vulnerabilities, from the point of view of a company in the business of granting credit or collections?

A. Probably dealing with customers who are victims of fraud or identity theft, determining if a debt is real or the result of fraud, as well as dealing with increasingly sophisticated technologies used to perpetrate fraud. Companies need to be aggressive about combating fraud, but they need to balance increased security with customer-friendly methods so that customers feel protected. If fraud prevention technologies and policies are not implemented appropriately, customers can be frustrated – or worse yet, feel they are being treated like criminals themselves. Finding the balance between security and customer satisfaction is a real challenge.

Q: What are the best strategies for safeguarding and authenticating data?
     
A. Employee screening and monitoring their access to and use of data.  A 2000 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey states that “insiders pose as significant a threat as outsiders. It is common to think of security in terms of protecting network perimeters from hostile outsiders attempting to gain access. But inappropriate insider behavior can be a bigger threat, both more common and often causing greater financial losses than outsider attacks.”

Data security policies and good standard procedures that are mandated throughout the organization are instrumental in putting safeguards in place for a company to protect itself against employee theft. 

Q: What is it that brings Premiere Global Services into this discussion? (How do your services touch on these issues?)
     
A. Communicating with customers – proactively to stop potential fraud and reactively to let them know what the company is doing about it.

A great example is a personal one for me – my checking account number was stolen, and if I had not discovered it myself through my online banking tool, it could have gone on for more than a month before my paper statement came. If my credit union had detected unusual patterns in my account (in this case, the check numbers were in a different sequence) they could have alerted me to come in to verify some transactions. I’ve also had my credit card company do this, but they did it with a live person, which is time consuming and expensive. We provide our customers with an automated process, which authenticates recipients and provides updates – such as “the money has been returned to your account!”

Q: Anything else you think we need to know about this topic?
     
A. The way a company deals with fraud can make or break a customer relationship. Having solid communications and crisis plans in place are essential to demonstrating a company’s commitment to integrity, transparency and quick resolution to fraud. 

Financial Institutions are required by laws in 23 states to inform customers on the violation of their privacy rights in the event a breach occurs.  Whether or not these notifications are required by law, being proactive in issuing fraud alerts gives customers the sense of being protected and cared for, which goes miles towards creating loyalty. Not only customers but employees, business partners, suppliers and regulators should be notified as well of breaches to an organization’s security.

Premiere Global Services sends these proactive communications via an alerts and notifications system, providing all parties with the necessary information through a variety of delivery options such as SMS, voice, fax or email.  The rapid response system results in maintaining positive relations with our customers.

The Alerts and Notifications process includes:

• Augmenting existing incident response process with customized notification processes utilizing company templates in line with regulations.
• Ongoing maintenance and assessment of templates, process improvement, and handling of Personally Identifiable Information.
• If an event occurs, process actual notifications based on usage and chosen communication method.

AB -- 3/21/06

Yesterday, March 15, 2006, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) announced that it has fined Merrill Lynch (ML) $5 million in connection with the brokerage firm's Financial Advisory Center (FAC), a call center operation housed in Hopewell, N.J., and Jacksonville, Fla.

The fine centered around practices within the call center operation in 2001-2004 that gave incentives for representatives to convince customers to switch mutual funds and invest in ML's proprietary products, even if those switches were to the customer's detriment. ML was charged with "supervisory failures" that allowed sales contests with non-cash awards such as tickets to rock concerts and sports events.

The FAC was originally set up as a channel to provide investment services for customers with lower assets (accounts of $100,000 or less) or with lower transaction volumes, so advisors in ML's full-service branch offices could focus on more lucrative clients. ML transferred over a million clients to FAC between March 2001 and August 2002. NASD says FAC was managing $20 billion in 1.3 million accounts at its peak in 2002.

NASD has released an Investor Alert, "Customer Advisory Centers: Not Your Typical Securities Firm Call Center," containing warnings and tips for dealing with sales-oriented investment call centers.

The $5 million fine appears to be a harsh penalty, but to put it in perspective, the FAC's gross revenue was about $210 million just for 2002. The greater damage here might be to Merrill Lynch's reputation and its credibility as a provider of investment services.

And I would even go a step further and say that the damage might easily be extended to the financial services industry in general. Consumers and small investors aren't stupid, at least fewer of them are these days, and they are sick of seeing hard-earned savings go down the drain when a big company goes belly-up because of executive dishonesty or when the bottom drops out of the stock market. And they're not likely to be happy to find that their money ended up in a costly or low-performing fund when something better was easily available.

These days consumers are much more likely to be on guard when communicating with anyone calling himself an investment or financial advisor, consultant or counselor, because often such representatives have a hidden sales agenda and an incentive to push the customer toward certain products. Savvy investors are able to pick up on the nuances. And the less savvy become more savvy after getting burned the first time. All this contributes to an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism.

A scandal like this over abusive sales practices adds to the atmosphere of distrust in the consumer market for financial services and can contribute to pressures on government for stronger regulation. NASD, which describes itself as a "private-sector provider of financial regulatory services," is an example of the value of industry self-regulation. This kind of self-regulation is essential and probably needs to be even stronger to forestall greater consumer backlash and more restrictive legislation and government enforcement.

AB -- 3/16/06

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