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Using Business Intelligence to Achieve Real Customer Experience Management

Envision Webinar
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
8:30 – 9:30 a.m. Pacific

Customer Experience Management is a lot more than a fancy concept. Today, it's reality with the new business intelligence.

Join us for a powerful session about how to get the critical customer information you need to improve your enterprise so that every experience will lead to a profitable and enduring customer relationship. Click here to register.

Monster Acquires Stake in ChinaHR.com Holdings
Monster Worldwide Inc., the parent company of the global online careers property, Monster, has announced that it has acquired a 40 percent stake in ChinaHR.com Holdings Ltd. (ChinaHR), the owner of ChinaHR.com, for U.S. $50,000,000. ChinaHR.com is one of China's most widely recognized online recruitment Web sites, with approximately 3.2 million registered users and more than 280,000 corporate clients. With operations in 10 major Chinese cities and growth plans in additional markets in the upcoming year, ChinaHR.com has a staff of 480 employees. As a result of the transaction, Monster Worldwide will initially occupy three of seven seats on ChinaHR's Board of Directors. Monster Worldwide will also have certain rights and obligations to acquire a 51% or more interest in ChinaHR in the event of an initial public offering or 3 years, whichever comes first.

Richardson Launches Web-based Service Training
Richardson, a sales training and consulting firm, has announced the release of two new Richardson QuickSkills Web-based training programs. Minimizing Transfers and Reducing Escalations are designed to help Call Center Agents minimize escalations and more effectively handle transfers to strengthen skills to improve customer satisfaction and build loyalty. Richardson created the Web-based training to provide call center agents with consultative dialogue skills to quickly and effectively identify a client's needs, resolve issues, answer questions to minimize transfers, and decrease the number of escalations.

CEO Boot Camp Focuses on Exec Failure Rate
Korn/Ferry International, The Wharton Club of New York and PrimeGenesis have joined together to create a "boot camp" for CEOs that focuses on how to generate positive results quickly in new, high-risk positions. The one-day boot camp will host its initial corps of CEOs on May 11 at the Penn Club in New York City. Included among the skills to be worked on are bridging the gap between strategy and execution, self assessment, building high-performing teams and learning how to accomplish in 100 days what might otherwise take six months or longer. To be conducted by Boot Camps Unlimited, the day will focus on value creation born out of strategies, capabilities and performance.

IRS Awards Contract to Disability Organization
The National Telecommuting Institute, Inc., a nonprofit organization that specializes in developing telework opportunities for people with disabilities, and Alpine Access Inc., a provider of call center solutions using home-based agents, announced that they have been chosen by the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide call center services for citizens requesting IRS tax forms and publications by phone. The agents are trained and in position to handle the heavy load of 2004 tax return calls which begins this month and runs through April, 2005. Using the Javits Wagner O'Day (JWOD) Act, the IRS has set aside Forms and Publications Order operator jobs to be filled by people with disabilities who need to work from their homes. NTI coordinates with local state vocational rehabilitation centers to recruit home-based employees with disabilities, while technology made available by Alpine Access enables callers to the IRS' toll free number to be connected to the next available agent — the job travels, not the individual with the disability.

Sabre Provides Airport Staffing Suite for Thai Airways
Sabre Airline Solutions, in partnership with Thailand-based information technology contractor Songkhla Finishing Co., has announced it has been selected to provide Thai International Airways with the technology to deliver a complete airport resource management solution. Songkhla has selected the Sabre Streamline Resource Management Suite from Sabre Airline Solutions to provide Thai Airways with advanced resource management technology. The Streamline suite was selected to enable Thai Airways to improve its staff planning, rostering, administration and utilization. By utilizing the Streamline suite, Thai Airways will realize operational staff efficiencies and optimal use of its airport ground staff through more effective demand planning, shifting, employee administration and cross-utilization decisions.

TruStar Announces Recruiting Efficiency Service
TruStar Solutions, a provider creating compliance and diversity hiring strategies, announced the release of an new recruiting efficiency service. Harvest is a technology-based service that helps government contractors comply with federal job posting regulations, and helps companies stay on top of their diversity posting efforts. The service automatically imports job postings from a corporate career site and posts them to America’s Job Bank and other diversity job boards. Harvest targets government contractors required to post to America’s Job Bank, and companies that post open positions to diversity-driven boards to help round out a thorough and proactive affirmative action plan. When in place, Harvest automatically posts open positions every day.

Mazda Drives Away with Envision Click2Coach
Envision Telephony, Inc., a provider of business solutions for the contact center and the enterprise, has announced that Mazda North America chose the Envision Click2Coach solution in order to develop agent skills, increase agent efficiency and empower agents to deliver top-quality customer service. The Envision Click2Coach solution includes Envision Quality Monitoring and Envision eLearning and is a complete set of training, quality monitoring and evaluation tools to coach agents for success. With Click2Coach, Mazda intends to conduct quality evaluations of its customer service representatives with its primary focus on enhancing their proactive coaching and training efforts. Envision’s Click2Coach solution will help Mazda’s supervisors and trainers coach agents more frequently by sending personalized training to the desktop without affecting service levels.

Roadblocks To Broader Telework Adoption
CDW Government Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of CDW Corp. and provider of IT solutions to governments and educators, has announced the findings of its first annual CDW•G Federal Telework Survey. The report reveals a gap between Federal workers' interest in teleworking and the Agency policies and technology infrastructure necessary to support an effective telework environment. A full 87 percent of Federal workers indicate interest in teleworking, but only 19 percent said that they do telework. In addition, the report clearly underlines IT security as a structural roadblock to broad telework adoption.

Benefits of telework include reducing traffic congestion and pollution, improving Federal employee recruitment and retention, increasing productivity and reducing the need for office space. Allowing Federal employees to telework has the potential to save U.S. taxpayers a substantial amount of money in real estate costs for the Federal government, in addition to reducing transportation infrastructure requirements.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005 includes a provision to withhold $5 million from agencies within the Departments of Commerce, Justice and State, as well as the Small Business Administration, that do not have acceptable teleworking policies in place. These agencies must report on compliance with this, and other existing telework legislation, by February 8, 2005.

Despite the significant benefits of teleworking, widespread uncertainty regarding the necessary IT security infrastructure continues to delay progress. Federal IT professionals cite information security as their top concern related to telework, especially given that two-thirds of Federal employees telework using a personal — versus a government-issued — computer. Moreover, 56 percent of the IT professionals surveyed were unsure of the best technology tools to meet telework security requirements.

The report also highlights potential policy conflicts between legislative mandates for telework and Federal information security requirements. Public Law 106-346 requires that 100 percent of the eligible Federal workforce must be able to participate in telecommuting to the maximum extent possible without diminished employee performance by 2005. At the same time, the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) mandates certification and accreditation of every system that has access to Federal information. Yet, 65 percent of Federal IT professionals are unsure of telework's impact on meeting FISMA requirements.

Other findings:

• 49 percent of the Federal workforce is either ineligible to telework or unsure if they are eligible.

• 45 percent of Federal employees report that their managers generally view telework favorably.

• Federal employees cite the elimination of their commute (74 percent) and an improvement in work flexibility (60 percent) as the primary reasons for preferring telework.

• Of the 13 percent of Federal employees who would not telework if given the option, 53 percent say isolation is the primary deterrent, followed by 42 percent who believe that they would have reduced productivity.

• 41 percent of Federal employees connect from home offices using a dial-up connection, with cable modems outpacing DSL connections among broadband users by a two-to-one margin.

• Only 24 percent of Federal IT professionals are aware of the agency fines included in the FY2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act.

• Authentication and PKI/Encryption devices top the purchase list of Federal IT professionals looking to meet telework security requirements.

More...

Employee Retirement Priorities for 2005
As many employees continue to underutilize their 401(k) plans, companies are becoming increasingly concerned that their employees aren’t up to the challenge of assuming responsibility for their own retirement savings, according to a new survey by Hewitt Associates, a global human resources services firm. To address these concerns, employers are stepping up their efforts in 2005 to educate and make it easier for employees to effectively participate in their 401(k) plans.

Hewitt’s survey of nearly 200 large companies reveals that only 18 percent feel confident that their employees will retire with sufficient retirement assets. Even less (12 percent) feel confident that their employees even understand their retirement benefits and are taking responsibility for their retirement future.

According to Hewitt’s survey, the majority of employers do not plan to make significant changes to their defined benefit plans in 2005. However, about one in four (27 percent) employers say they will consider amending their plan to exclude new employees from participation, and one in five (20 percent) are considering a shift to provide defined contribution plans only.

While more than half (55 percent) of companies offering hybrid pension plans (cash balance or pension equity) do not anticipate a plan design change in 2005, about three out of 10 companies intend to make some type of change to them if legal and regulatory issues are not resolved. The most common intended change is to terminate or freeze the cash balance plan and provide all future retirement benefits under a defined contribution plan.

With responsibility for retirement savings shifting more to employees, employers are focusing more of their time on educating employees about the value of 401(k) plans. According to Hewitt’s survey, almost 90 percent of employers plan to focus on making sure their employees understand how their 401(k) plan works, the value of it and how to access it. They also plan to take steps to promote personal responsibility for retirement planning and initiate actions designed to increase 401(k) plan participation. Seven out of 10 employers (70 percent) report they will focus on offering additional support to employees to manage the diversification of their 401(k) plan.

Almost half of companies (47 percent) say they are also likely to automate certain features in their 401(k) plan as a way to increase participation and quality of participation. Key areas of focus for those companies include automatic enrollment, automatic contribution rate increase features and automatic rebalancing.

Other findings

• About a quarter of employers (24 percent) are likely to make changes to their 401(k) contributions in 2005. Most are either seeking to increase the company matching contribution or change the structure of the match.

• About one in three (35 percent) employers may add a Roth 401(k) account to their defined contribution plan when permissible on January 1, 2006.

• Twenty-seven percent of companies say they are likely to implement automatic rollover to an IRA or individual retirement annuity provider, while about one in 10 (11 percent) will allow these accounts to remain in the plan by reducing the plan force-out limit to $1,000. More than half of employers (63 percent) are still undecided.

• Only about one-quarter (28 percent) of employers say they are somewhat or very likely to develop a phased retirement program in 2005. Employers cite several barriers, including that phased retirement is inconsistent with their workforce strategy.

• The majority of employers (85 percent) are planning to educate employees about the costs of retiree medical.

More...

Permanent Technology Employment Predicted to Increase
National recruiters with Lucas Group report that candidates who are searching for employment in the Technology sector have reason to be optimistic for 2005. Lucas Group reports a substantial increase in IT job openings during the past six months, and does not see a decline in the quality or quantity of openings to continue through the next year. Candidates should also be optimistic in employment being permanent these days, opposed to the past few years when many candidates in the Technology industry had to rely on contract work.

Employers in the Technology industry are currently looking for candidates who possess the ability to combine both current technical skills with functional expertise in specific verticals that include healthcare, financial services and media/entertainment. The executive search firm also notes that candidates looking for employment can get employers’ attention through particular certifications, such as MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer).
More...

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Are You Being Coached?
Close your eyes and envision a perfect future. Are you rich? Are you fulfilled? What you won't imagine, no matter how hard you try, is that the path to perfection might involve a Dr. Phil wannabe delving into the most personal aspects of your life — and you don't even get to be on TV. As people seek better lives for themselves, either personally, professionally, or both, they're more likely to find outside help to get them there: a professional coach. The practice is more popular than ever; the International Coach Federation, the most widely recognized organization that offers bona fide certifications, boasts about 8,000 members, up from approximately 1,500 in 1998.

With coaching all around, we wouldn't blame you for wondering, Is it time for me to get a coach? People seek out coaches for two common reasons: navigating some transition in their lives or careers, or having some inkling that they're jerks, and that antisocial behavior is holding them back.
Full Article...

Q&A: Minority IT Pros Face Glass Ceiling
Robert D. Blackwell Sr. has seen a lot of progress by African-American IT professionals since he first joined the industry nearly 40 years ago. After graduating from Wichita State University, Blackwell started his career in 1966 at IBM, where he designed applications for hospitals and universities. In 1992, after working his way up the management ranks at the company over more than 25 years, he started Blackwell Consulting Services Inc., an IT consulting firm in Chicago. With nearly 300 consultants and an estimated $36 million in revenue last year, Blackwell's firm has become one of the largest minority-owned management and IT firms in the U.S. Late last month, the company announced a merger with another Chicago-based IT consulting firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. In this Q&A, Blackwell, 67, talks about the merger, the state of the IT consulting market and the challenges of being a black IT professional.
Full Article...

Tapping the Power of Your People
What if you could shave hundreds of thousands of dollars of contact center operational costs and drive an equal amount of incremental revenues while improving customer satisfaction — all without having to make a massive financial investment? No need to do a major overhaul of your IVR system. No need to embark on a huge enterprise data warehouse project taking years to fully implement. This may be hard to believe, but it can be done.

It is accomplished by having leaders set the tone and direction, giving people the skills and tools to make improvements in what they do every day, engaging everyone down to the front line, and making successes visible and tangible to the rest of the company. In other words: creating an environment that encourages total participation and continuous improvement.
Full Article...

Meeting with Your CFO
Call centers are a familiar part of many U.S. hospitals. Some have been delivering community-based services for decades, while others are still in their infancy. For both, funding is a tremendous strategic issue. Between employing qualified clinical and non-clinical staff and using the latest technology, call centers are often viewed as “cost centers” that make little or no contribution to the financial security of the organization. Those working within a call center know the kind of value that it adds to patients and the entire organization. However, in today’s economic climate, you should expect that your call center will be asked to prove its value to the CFO in real numbers. So, how can you demonstrate the value of your call center, the revenue it generates, and prove the worth of all of your efforts?
Full Article...

Keeping Your Staff Happy
There are many ways to motivate your team. Sometimes it’s the little things that matter and a small or spontaneous reward can be a great motivator. But before sticking your foot in HR's mouth, you must consider other factors.

Not too long ago IT professionals were offered great salaries, promising stock options and many perks such as onsite dry cleaning pickup. Although it seems we are verging on a rebound in technology jobs, many IT staffs are still stuck with low raises and small, if any, bonuses. For most of us the back of those stock options turned into nice scratch paper for our kids crayons. And the on-site services like dry cleaning were considered a management ploy to entice longer unpaid overtime hours. Before implementing any rewards program, you have to take a long look at the culture of your organization, the personalities on your team and the your desired results.
Full Article...

Management Ethics
by Norman E. Bowie and Patricia H. Werhane

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant never had to opine about the labor practices of Wal-Mart and Circuit City, nor the pricing decisions of the Coca-Cola Company in Brazil. But it’s fair to say he knew a thing or two about ethics. This book serves as a challenging yet worthwhile guide that draws to a great extent on Kant’s teachings as a way to help managers navigate modern-day ethical dilemmas. Management Ethics examines myriad examples of ethical dilemmas, looking at theory as well as practicalities in everything from supply chain practices to customer service. Also covered are sweatshops, vulnerable customers (the poor and/or elderly), the Tylenol recall, the Ford Explorer rollovers, and many other potentially hazardous ethical situations.

For more information, or to order your copy...

More books can be found in the RecognizeServiceExcellence.com Required Reading section: http://www.recognizeserviceexcellence.com/

Hosted CRM vs. In-House: Which Direction Should Your Company Take?
One of the most animated arguments over the last couple of years has centered on the “where” of CRM: whether to deploy the technologies in-house or “rent” them, outsourcing their implementation to an application service provider. It’s a case, the arguments go, of cost vs. customization, time to productivity vs. control, accessibility vs. security, on-tap vs. on-premise, and so on. Businesses, it seems, have more choices than ever before and — thanks to better planning, more options, reasonable expectations, and experience — better odds of succeeding.

Read the full white paper:
http://www.crmindustry.com/whitepaper04/index.htm

CRM Solution Center
CRMindustry.com and KnowledgeStorm have joined forces to offer you access to the CRM Solution Center, a fast, intuitive way to locate, research and qualify potential CRM and IT solutions. The CRM Solution Center provides you unlimited access to white papers, case studies, detailed product information and more. Registration is quick and easy -- in 30 seconds or less, you will be on your way to accessing this valuable resource. Click here to start searching!
http://knowledgestorm.crmindustry.com

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