The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass." It's one of those classic albums that's almost great. Probably the best record any ex-Beatle ever did, it has a couple too many dead spots - "Isn't It a Pity" versions 1 and 2, "Awaiting On You All" as Exhibits A and B, for beatification.
"Hey look," you say, "it's a double album, buddy. Don't "Exile on Main Street," "Blonde On Blonde" and, for that matter, "The White Album" themselves have a dud here and there?" Sure do - but "All Things Must Pass" doesn't hit the high points those three albums do. "Lacunae" is permissible if you bestir yourself to recording a "Tumbling Dice" or "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" as well:
BroadSoft, a vendor of Voice over Internet Protocol application software, has announced its 10-year anniversary.
Founded in 1998 - but hey, you've already figured that out - company officials say in the last five years, BroadSoft's annual revenue has grown more than 1,000 percent and the number of employees has increased from 84 to almost 300.
Company officials attribute the growth and success to what they call the firm's "forward-thinking vision of IP convergence, product innovation and ability to secure top-tier customers around the world."
Highlights of the past ten years for the firm:
August 1999 - Unveils architecture for the delivery of telephony services.
December 2000 - Introduces first software-based VoIP media server.
September 2001 - Partners with Siemens to be first to test SIP interoperability.
October 2003 - Hosts first VoIP industry conference, BroadSoft Connections, for senior executives from telcos around the world.
January 2004 - Brings enhanced telephony to the residential market.
October 2008 - Partners with Microsoft for Hosted Unified Communications.
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EGain Communications, which sells customer service and knowledge management software on-premise or on-demand, has published its 2008 international benchmarking report for the retail sector.
The report benchmarks and compares e-mail customer service and Web self-service offered by retail companies in North America and the United Kingdom. The research found that North American retailers performed worse than the United Kingdom in e-mail response quality, but better in Web self-service and speed of e-mail response.
However, the research shows that there is significant room for improvement in both these areas. As if we had to be the ones to tell you that.
EGain used a "mystery shopping" approach to evaluate customer service performance. Posing as prospective buyers of high-value products and services, eGain researchers contacted retail businesses through e-mail, showing an obvious intent to buy, and also evaluated the self-service capabilities offered by these businesses.
The objectives were to assess the responsiveness and quality of e-mail customer service, the range of "Web self-service" options offered, and the ability to escalate to agent-assisted service.
Interestingly, only the North America research included such aspects of customer service as interaction channels offered, and multichannel and multi-agent service consistency.
In North America 25 percent of the companies failed to respond to customer e-mails, 65 percent responded to e-mails within 24 hours, but 55 percent of the responses were "poor" or "below average" in quality.
Forty-five percent scored "above average" or "exceptional" in Web self-service, but 55 percent received "poor" or "below average."
Which, considering that "average" is midpoint and "poor" is below that, would be about what you'd expect.
Sixty-five percent of the North America sample responded to e-mails within 24 hours, compared to only 36 percent in the United Kingdom, and 25 percent of the North America sample completely failed to respond to customer e-mails, compared to 35 percent in the United Kingdom.
This report consolidates the findings of the "2008 State of Customer Service in North America" and the "2007 State of Customer Service in the United Kingdom" research studies. The combined sample consisted of over 240 companies, with $250 million or more total annual revenue, and included 50 retailers.
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Tealeaf, which sells Customer Experience Management software, has announced Tealeaf CX Mobile Experience Manager, described by company officials as a "mobile session replay."
The visibility mobile session replay affords is being marketed as important by the vendor, "given the variability of mobile devices," since it "allows companies to understand mobile customer engagement, discover ongoing behavior patterns, and compare success and failure of mobile users alongside the experiences of traditional desktop users."
Tealeaf has also announced several additional updates to the Tealeaf CX products, including enhanced Robot (bot) traffic reporting to improve organic search rankings and affiliate marketing efforts, and new user community-driven event and analysis templates with best practices included.
Mobile Experience Manager's actual function is to capture interactions of mobile users without dependence on JavaScript or other mechanisms "that can miss mobile interactions," company officials say, explaining that the module can replay an exact browser-level recording of each session, taking into account mobile variables including specific device capabilities, screen sizes, and other limitations - such as not supporting JavaScript.
The product also provides reports on usage statistics and patterns, including ad-hoc segments based on mobile attributes.
Forrester Research recommends that companies be prepared for mobile and its implications in the October 2008 report "How Shoppers Evolve Online." According to the report, "as mobile commerce initiatives gain traction with the increased penetration of smartphones, retailers will need to incorporate mobile projects into their plans. The history of category growth in the online shopping world is likely to be replicated in mobile shopping."
Founded in 1999, Tealeaf is headquartered in San Francisco and is privately held.
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Globo, a vendor of e-business products and an SaaS products provider, has announced that its CitronGO cloud software will be available with Mood Settings, allowing users to choose a "Business" setting to filter through work e-mails and client phone calls, or a "Personal" setting to receive calls from family and friends, along with social networking updates on their existing handset.
This is part of CitronGO!'s offering. Company officials say it's designed to "eliminate the need for people to have two phones - one for business and one for personal use." Users can set their Business account as active from Monday to Friday - and from nine until five - and then the Personal account will automatically come into effect the rest of the time, for example.
One of the product's advantages, company officials say, is that it synchronizes - via push technology - data over the air on almost all mobile handsets, with hundreds of services such as e-mail, calendars, contacts, instant messaging, folders and more. Users have the flexibility to activate and de-activate Business or Personal settings whenever they choose as well, so that only communication deemed relevant to that setting will be pushed to their mobile device.
In the words of Costis Papadimitrakopoulos, CEO, Founder of Globo and a guy who never has to spell his name over the phone, research shows that employers "will pay a significant amount of money to make their employees truly mobile. But for all of us there are times when we need to ensure that we preserve the space between our personal life and our professional life."
Founded by Papadimitrakopoulos, the company is headquartered in Athens.
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EchoSign, a vendor of electronic signatures and signature automation has announced the availability of EchoSign 4.0.
The demand for e-contracting has accelerated dramatically over the past 12 months, company officials believe, saying "businesses of all sizes are shifting to doing business primarily on the Web and in the cloud."
By keeping the contract and deal electronic, digital, and in the cloud, "EchoSign prevents the contract cycle from going off-line and having to revert to manual or traditional ways of getting a signature," company officials explain.
The product builds real-time reports showing the percent of agreements signed, average "time to sign" and user and group performance over time. Benchmarking capabilities set thresholds that allow organizations to compare their "time to sign" and " percent signed" performance with that of hundreds of industry peers in SaaS, Telecom, Media and Inside Sales.
On average, 55 percent of EchoSign contracts are signed electronically in under two hours and 37 percent of written contracts are signed in just under 24 hours.
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