Recently in Call Center/CRM Category

My colleague Bob Liu here at TMC alerted me to this fascinating article today by Julie Schlosser of Fortune magazine: "Cubicles: The great mistake."

Schlosser recounts the history of the office cubicle, invented by Robert Propst of Herman Miller. In 1960, the company introduced the Action Office, conceived by Propst, who was director of research. Schlosser says that eventually Propst became disillusioned by the cubicle. He originally meant the concept to benefit workers by giving them a more comfortable workspace designed to help them be more productive. In time, though, the cubicle became just a strategy for companies "to cram a lot of people into little space," according to the marketing chief who launched the Action Office.

Here's a great quote from the article:

"Reviled by workers, demonized by designers, disowned by its very creator, it still claims the largest share of office furniture sales -- $3 billion or so a year -- and has outlived every 'office of the future' meant to replace it. It is the Fidel Castro of office furniture."

The Fortune article also has a gallery of photos of vintage cubicle designs over the years.

Maybe you're not aware of it, but TMCnet has a channel devoted to Call Center Furniture, sponsored by Interior Concepts. The channel has a great article about the ergonomically-designed contact center. In the mind of some, the cubicle might seem like Fidel Castro, but my impression is that these folks know how to turn it into more of a Winston Churchill.

AB -- 3/9/06

Left Bank Solutions Inc. and Stevens Communications Inc. have just inked a deal that will allow Stevens to deliver Left Bank's Monet WFM OnDemand workforce management suite in the U.S.

Stevens, known for its expertise in delivering applications and services to the call center industry, expects to be able to help bring Monet's capabilities into the financial, call center and enterprise organizations in its customer base. According to today's announcement, Stevens has carried out workforce management (WFM) implementations for Fidelity, Dean Health Care, Federal Reserve, Kohler, Pfizer and Aon Insurance.

The relationship is designed to fill a need in the small-to-midsize market for WFM and software-as-a-service. Stevens President Steve Kaiser gives the following rationale for taking on the Monet WFM OnDemand product:

"The small to midsize call center has many of the same requirements of the big call centers but they often lack the budget and internal resources to implement a premise-based solution. By offering Monet WFM OnDemand, we can meet the functional needs of the customer with an affordable solution that requires a minimum of technical resources from them. In short, it is a perfect fit for this marketplace. Monet WFM OnDemand is on a similar track to do what Salesforce.com did to Siebel in the sales force automation arena."

Left Bank Solutions President Charles Ciarlo is TMCnet's Workforce Management columnist; in his articles he has addressed such topics as "Applying Workforce Management to Non-Call Center Environments," "Customers Are Demanding On-Demand," and "OnDemand Means Immediate ROI."

AB -- 2/28/06

TMCnet just received the announcement of Talisma's new Talisma CIM 7.0. Talisma CIM (stands for "Customer Interaction Management") integrates multi-modal customer service communications channels -- email, phone, chat and Web self-service -- with a knowledgebase and analytics. CIM 7.0 can be deployed on-site or provided on-demand.

Today's announcement says this about the capabilities the suite delivers:

"The knowledgebase integration allows a seamless escalation from Web self-service to alternate service channels and provides agents with a view of prior self-service searches and returned results. As a result of this new level of visibility and seamless cross-channel integration, service agents have immediate access to reliable and consistent information enabling more helpful and rapid responses."

The CIM 7.0 suite is built around the Talisma Customer Interaction Hub. According to the release, the hub is a central platform that "provides a common interface for seamless transfers and escalations between channels. It also houses a workflow engine supporting business rules and routing routines and provides one-click access to pertinent data stored in third party systems, such as CRM or ERP solutions."

AB -- 2/28/06

By now, industry press have extensively covered the scornful comments of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, trash-talking SAP's introduction of an on-demand CRM product. (See Susan Campbell's coverage of the mySAP CRM release and David Sims's analysis of why on-demand CRM providers aren't scared.)

But I was particularly interested to note Benioff's use of the language of innovation in this excerpt from his internal memo to employees (titled "SAP on the defense?") 'inadvertently' leaked to me by a company PR hack:

"Let's state it simply: SAP is an innovation-free company.  When reporters describe the great innovators of this industry, it's easy to identify the significant contributions of many of the leaders.  For Oracle, it's the database;  for Apple, the Mac, iPod, and iTunes; for Microsoft, the PC operating system; for Intel, the microprocessor.  But for SAP?  I struggle to think of a single innovation that SAP has contributed.  Their code is as bulky and inefficient as it is expensive and unloved by its users.

"And that is just part of the problem.  Mustering the will to turn your back on the business model that has enriched you, your employees, and your shareholders has time and again proved far more difficult than solving technological hurdles.  SAP, like Oracle and Microsoft, now risks cannibalizing its existing customer base.  Can they actually afford to convert their billions of dollars in maintenance revenue into subscriptions?  This classic innovator's dilemma engenders painful internal rifts and wastes valuable time while customers' needs languish."

If this doesn't have a familiar ring to it, it might mean you're not familiar with "The Innovator's Dilemma," by Harvard Professor Clayton M. Christensen. Benioff is borrowing some ideas from Christensen's work (appropriately, in my opinion), in pointing out why big established companies like SAP, Microsoft, Siebel and Oracle are going to have a hard time beating the on-demand start-ups at their own game, in spite of their technical capabilities and financial resources.

Christensen's theory holds that a successful company has a built-in disadvantage when faced with a disruptive technology. The established company is embedded within a value network that requires it to please its existing customers, which a well-managed company has to do well. The established company might know about the disruptive innovation and might be technically capable of developing products based on it. But any products based on that technology will not find a market among the company's existing customers. The markets for such products are much, much smaller in the beginning and margins are lower. So the big, established, well-run, customer-focused company will never be motivated to devote enough resources to the disruptive innovation. Eventually, the disruptive technology results in products that can be sold in bigger markets more profitably, but by that time it will be too late for the big established company.

If that doesn't make sense to you but it sounds intriguing, you should read "The Innovator's Dilemma" and maybe some of Christensen's more recent work.

Anyway, Benioff is obviously trying to cast the big developers of on-premises CRM (or at least SAP) as lumbering behemoths who have already missed the on-demand boat and are no threat. Largely I think I agree with him, except maybe in the case of Microsoft -- in spite of the obstacles, they seem capable of attacking markets for disruptive technologies. Christenden thinks it is possible for an established company to do this, the best strategy being to form an independent company or unit devoted to the disruptive technology -- an organization that is completely free of the normal pressures within the company to meet the needs of its premium customers. Such a splinter organization has a shot at serving new markets by creating innovative products.

AB -- 2/2/06

Open-source provider ComPiere Inc. today released a management dashboard to add at-a-glance real-time performance indicators to its open-source business suite, ComPiere ERP & CRM.

ComPiere offers an open-source application incorporating CRM, ERP, accounting and supply chain management targeted at small and midsize companies. ComPiere makes ComPiere ER & CRM available free, but licenses partners to install and support the application.

The new dashboard taps into perforance indicators from the underlying application, presenting them in summary graphical form. The user can click to drill down for more details. Following is a sample graphic (not to scale) showing the user interface for the dashboard:

Dashboard metrics can be configured by the user and can include such factors as revenue by project or region, open invoices, shipments, call center inquiries, sales queues, and management-by-objectives data.

ComPiere promotes its product as scalable and suitable for businesses from $5 million to $500 million in revenue and for distribution and franchise networks that want to provide a unified solution for supply chain partners. ComPiere ERP & CRM is also offered through application service providers (ASPs) in hosted environments.

AB -- 1/30/06

An announcement today from CommercialWare Inc. informs us that The Vermont Country Store has selected CommercialWare's cross-channel commerce solution to integrate its retail, catalog, web and contact center operations.

The Vermont Country Store is a unique 60-year-old business with two large rustic-themed retail stores in Rockingham and Weston, Vermont, and an extensive catalog business.

CommercialWare offers a suite of cross-channel commerce applications targeted at retail operations. Its customers include Abercrombie & Fitch, Ritz Camera, Jos. A. Bank and Patagonia. CommercialWare's release today is careful not to use the term "CRM" to describe the company's suite, but the release does say that the system sold to The Vermont Country Store:

1) Provides a user interface "that easily lets the customer service representative view all customer data, link to shipping information, track customer purchases, and in real-time check inventory of a specific item";

2) Allows the call center "to improve cross-sell and up-sell opportunities to the customer based on previous purchases and requests for items";

3) Enables the company to "track customer buying habits across all its channels."

And CommercialWare's boilerplate says that they develop:

"Cross-channel commerce infrastructure solutions that allow retailers and direct marketers to optimize transactions from all customer touch points. CommercialWare's comprehensive portfolio of products seamlessly links all aspects of the transaction lifecycle through point-of-sale, back-office, order management, fulfillment, customer service, collaboration, and analytics applications."

They do use the phrase "business intelligence" in connection with their products, but to steer away from the "CRM" term altogether seems odd to me -- at least they would have to be considered a near cousin. Oh well, not worth quibbling over -- it can be hard to second-guess somebody else's thinking about positioning.

If you're ever heading up to ski country, The Vermont Country Store's Rockingham store is not far off I-91 near Bellow Falls. Take exit 6 and go west on Route 103. The store is only about a mile away on the left. It's a fun place to visit (I used to live just up the road at Brockway Mills). You can order many unique products from their web site, but actually their paper catalog is more fun -- go here to request it.

AB -- 12/19/05

This is an update on my blog entry for Nov. 22, 2005, about a new noise-canceling headset from John Deere -- see "John Deere Releases a Noise Canceling Headset."

I raised the question whether the new headset will be John Deere green. Well, I have received an answer from the public relations firm for the headset maker and, sadly, the answer is no. "They initially made it a John Deere green color," the representative tells me, "but decided that they like the way the black one looked better."

Here's a preview of what the new headset will look like (notice the company logo):

Actually, now that I use my imagination a little, picturing myself driving around on a Deere-green tractor with Deere-green headphones, I realize that might look a little dorky. Black probably is better.

AB -- 11/28/05

Call center managers realize the value of a customer and the danger of letting a customer hang up while still angry or frustrated. So they are interested in processes and technologies that can help them identify calls that are about to go bad and escalate them before it's too late.

NICE Systems is one of the companies that make technology for this purpose. I received a pitch from their public-relations folks, and it makes a great stand-alone rationale for this kind of technology. So I thought it was worth quoting most of the pitch right here verbatim:

"Next time you call your bank, cable or phone company and lose your cool, a manager on the other end will know about it before your anger hits its peak.  And your call will be not only recorded, but saved for training purposes and corporate analysis.  Emotion detection is the latest technology from NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE), the world leader in telephone call digital recording systems, serving 67 of the Fortune 100, including 10 of the top 10 banks, capturing 50 million customer calls per day.  (Anytime you hear "This call is being recorded for quality assurance purposes," chances are NICE is recording that call.)

"When your voice hits a certain decibel level or if you use harsh or foul language (or the name of a competitor), NICE's call monitoring system will issue an alert to call center managers that there's a problem.  This can bring speedier intervention by a manager -- and swifter resolution of your issue.  Why?  Companies spend a fortune to acquire customers, and they'll do everything they can to hold onto them.

"Like all recorded calls, your angry call will be digitized and stored on a server, where it can be batched with other angry calls, searched by keyword and emailed as a sound file among company managers.  The idea?  Find out what makes callers angry -- and address it systemwide."

AB -- 11/28/05

Today Left Bank Solutions announced that Michael Bateman has joined its board of directors. Left Bank Solutions is a provider of workforce management (WFM) software; its product Monet is used in call centers for efficient deployment and management of workers.

Michael Bateman brings to Left Bank over 40 years of technology and call center experience. He was previously chairman, president and COO of Blue Pumpkin Software, and has served in management at Tandem Computers, International Data Sciences, Arthur Andersen, ADL Systems and Honeywell EDP.

Bateman cites Left Bank's "massive potential" as the key motivator for his joining the board. He says that Monet WFM OnDemand "is strongly positioned to capture significant market share in the small and midrange call center markets." Monet WFM OnDemand was launched in July 2005 as a hosted WFM product for companies that want to try out WFM without a large up-front investment.

Charles Ciarlo, CEO and founder of Left Bank Solutions, serves as TMCnet's Workforce Management columnist. His most recent contributions are "Customers Are Demanding On-Demand" and "On-Demand Means Immediate ROI."

AB -- 11/22/05

This announcement from design firm Outside the Box Inc. came across the TMCnet news feeds a little while ago:

Increase Safety And Comfort With New John Deere Noise Canceling Headset; Outside the Box, Inc. Designed a New Headset for Blocking Ambient Equipment Noise

This is of interest to us here at TMCnet, as we cover the call center industry, where the headset is a key piece of equipment -- see our Headsets, Wireless Headsets and VoIP Headsets channels. Headsets are also of interest to us because we cover consumer electronics and many of us own iPods and other digital audio players.

The interesting twist here is that this new product is being marketed by John Deere (appears to be a private-label product designed by Outside the Box), a maker of lawn care and farming equipment. If I understand correctly, the John Deer Noise Canceling Headset doubles for audio listening and ear protection. During my younger years, I served for awhile as safety officer for a construction firm and wrote on safety issues for construction trade journals. Ear protection is an important safety issue in many industries, as machinery noise can cause permanent hearing loss. (For that matter, so can loud music -- so a headset can mean the salvation of your hearing or its destruction.) So a hearing-protection product has a natural tie-in as an accessory to be sold by John Deere.

When I review product announcements like this, I like to look beyond the pure technical content of the release and consider the marketing effectiveness of the communications as well. I noticed a few things that concern me about this headset announcement:

+ The release doesn't specifically come right out and say that the John Deere Noise Canceling Headset is an audio product -- in other words, they don't actually say you can use it to listen to music! Rather, the focus is on the product as a device to protect the user from equipment noise. I would think the release would function better as a marketing vehicle if it was more explicit in saying that this headset has a dual purpose. The copywriter shouldn't assume that the reader will understand that.

+ The release refers the reader to www.johndeeregifts.com, but the product is not available on the site. Looks as if the product does not actually go on sale until January 2006. It would be great to be able to see a picture of the product now, but I don't see any way to find one. (Will the headset be colored 'John Deere Green'? Hope so!) I do see that ProTravelGear.com sells noise canceling headsets from Outside the Box, so maybe the product will look something like the ones on that site, e.g.:

+ I also notice that Outside the Box has no web site itself other than a home page with a logo at outsidetheboxgroup.com. Too bad. It would be interesting to know more about this company.

AB -- 11/22/05