Welcome ,

Service and Support Whitepaper: Knowledge Management is NOT an Add-on!

A vendor with a knowledgebase module for sale is telling you that they think knowledge is an extra, a side dish to the CRM main course. Nothing could be further from the truth. Knowledge management must be the core of any successful service and support deployment, not an add-on module.

Knowledge is power, but only when it is deeply integrated into the customer experience, the agent experience and the enabling technology.

In this paper industry thought leaders David Kay and Tim Hines explore the astonishing power of knowledge to support every channel, speed problem resolution and drive a better customer experience.

Read the free white paper now!

CodeBaby Launches CodeBaby Studio 4.0
CodeBaby has  unveiled its latest software, CodeBaby Studio 4.0. The eLearning product allows companies to quickly and easily create engaging online training using 3D avatars. Along with the updated, easy-to-use interface, CodeBaby Studio 4.0 has two motion capture (mocap) characters available now and more available later this year. Additionally, the software reads MP3 formats and is Windows 7 compatible. With automatic lip-sync and auto-animate, users do not need animation experience to create a customized CodeBaby Conversation. Users simply choose a CodeBaby Character, upload audio, and animate to create a memorable training session.

Harris Bank Selects Enterprise Workforce Optimization Solution Provider GMT
GMT Corp., a provider of enterprise workforce management and performance optimization solutions, announced that Harris selected GMT to satisfy its branch workforce optimization requirements. GMT's Planet enterprise workforce optimization solution will provide capacity modeling and scheduling for all Harris branch employees working in the company’s branches throughout Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Survey Finds 40% of Virtual Teams Underperform
According to a study released, 80% of corporate managers work virtually at least part of the time and 63% are members of global virtual teams. The key factors that impair productivity are: cultural differences, communication styles, time-zone differences, language and a lack of face-to-face contact, according to the Virtual Teams Survey Report 2010 – The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams, conducted by RW3 CultureWizard, an intercultural training consultancy specializing in online intercultural training for global business managers.

The survey identifies three challenging areas: time zone and language difficulties, communication styles and cultural differences.

1. Time Zones and Languages: 81% indicated time zones presented the greatest general hurdle to virtual teams, followed by 64% who found language (accents and dialects) to be a barrier.
2. Communication style: 94% said the inability to read non-verbal cues is very challenging, and 90% stated the absence of face-to-face contact interfered with the ability to build a relationship (which is perceived as a challenge facing virtual teams). In addition, 81% said being virtual made it more difficult to establish trust and rapport.
3. Cultural differences: 80% said that virtual teams slowed down decision making, 77% were hampered by different leadership styles and 76% felt the method of decision-making was a challenge.

More...

Research Revelations Into the Strongest and Weakest Natural Skills of the Stars at Work
If you think you know what it takes to be a top performer in the work arena, think again. Trailblazing neuroscience investigator and bestselling business author Chuck Martin devoted two years of rigorous research to mapping core cognitive functions or :Executive Skills" of over 2,500 high-performing individuals to what they do and where they work. As he reveals in his new book, WORK YOUR STRENGTHS (AMACOM 2010), the stars in different fields and at different levels have many surprising similarities as well as differences.

• High-performing employees, managers, and executives have different strengths, but they all share a common weakness: Task Initiation, the ability to begin tasks or projects without procrastinating. More than half of senior executives are weak in this Executive Skill. More high-performing males than females are weak in it.

• High-performing males and females have different leading strengths. In high-performing males, the most commonly found strength is Metacognition, the ability to stand back and take a bird's-eye view of your actions in a situation and then make changes. In high-performing females, the most commonly found strength is Organization.

• High performers in finance share a common leading strength with high-performers in sales: Working Memory, the ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks.

• High performers in information technology (IT) share a common dominant strength with high performers in healthcare clinical departments: Planning/Prioritization. High performers in IT and healthcare clinical departments also share are common weakness: Stress Tolerance.

• IT executives are better at handling stress than IT employees.

• High performers in marketing, advertising, and promotion departments share a common leading strength with high performers in general management: Metacognition.

• Sales managers and executives frequently claim a strength that is rarely found in top performing sales employees: Metacognition.

• High performers in customer services share a common dominant strength with high performers in administrative departments: Organization.

• Of all high performers strong in this Executive Skill, 35 percent are either a CEO or CFO: Goal-Directed Persistence.

Adapted from WORK YOUR STRENGTHS: A Scientific Process to Identify Your Skills and Match Them to the Best Career for You by Chuck Martin, Richard Guare, Ph.D., and Peg Dawson, Ed.D. (AMACOM 2010).

Learn How to Win the Service Trifecta: Happy Customers, Lower Cost and Improved Visibility
Many service organizations are required to quickly 'triage' a customer's issue, request or question and either resolve it on first contact or escalate it blindly to back-office resources. By focusing on what's important to your customer, such as speed and accuracy, you can drive operational efficiencies and increase customer satisfaction. This SupportIndustry.com webinar presents the business case for creating a customer-centric service delivery model.

View this webinar to:

• Learn how you can optimize and automate your service delivery
  capabilities, best practices and business processes.
• Realize the benefits for a dynamic workload distribution intelligently routing any issue or request to the most qualified, available resource.
• Learn how with greater visibility you can now balance daily workload, resource allocation and SLA performance relative to established targets.

View the webinar today!

Why CIOs Are Last Among Equals
Chief information officers are more important than ever to the success of their companies, given the crucial role information technology has come to play in every aspect of business. But in most companies, the CIO still isn't viewed as a peer by other senior executives, who tend to see CIOs as specialists lacking the full set of broad management skills. Very few CIOs have become CEOs, especially outside the high-tech industry. What's holding CIOs back?
Full Article...

Superstars Can Hurt Your Contact Center
Superstars are great, and you wish you had more of them. Their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are at the top of the charts. You'd clone them if you could.  Superstars make you look good to your boss.  You fear losing any one of them.  They almost always “max out” on your incentive programs.  Despite this good news, a poorly designed incentive program creates a negative effect on your non-superstars that will cost you dearly.
Full Article...

How To Ask for Help at Work
One thing we at the Handel Group have frequently found in our work with senior leaders is how difficult it is for them to ask for help, especially among their co-workers, whether subordinates or superiors. When faced with something they don't know how to do or handle, or something they need in order to do their job, it is as if someone told them never to ask for help. However, you will be a better leader for it and will show those under you that it's O.K. to ask for help.
Full Article...

The Customer Knows Best
An increasing number of companies are embracing a customer-knows-best approach. While each follows a slightly different model, they all fall under the umbrella of crowdsourcing, a term coined in 2006 by Jeff Howe, author of the book Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. The term is loosely defined as taking a problem usually handled by a specific person (typically an employee) and presenting it to a broad, undefined group of people, or the crowd. The best-known example of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia, the free, user-contributed online encyclopedia. But you don't have to base your business's entire product or service on crowdsourcing to benefit from the wisdom of the masses and develop a stronger connection with your client base.
Full Article...

Five Ways to Motivate Employees with Meaning
Employees need to be motivated to perform. Although a pat on the back or monetary recognition can go a long way to demonstrate appreciation for a job well done, these actions alone are not enough. People need to know that their efforts have meaning and effect, i.e., that they are not in vain. This can have the biggest impact of all on motivating behavior because people inherently want to be productive human beings and desire for their life to have some ultimate significance.
Full Article...

Work Your Strengths: A Scientific Process to Identify Your Skills and Match Them to the Best Career for You
by Chuck Martin

Ever feel like you're in the wrong job, maybe even the wrong career? You may be right. But before you make another move, consider this: your brain is hardwired with a unique combination of 12 different Executive Skills -the cognitive strengths that determine how well you will perform in a particular role. Your strongest and weakest Executive Skills can make the difference between big-time career success and years of disappointment and failure. "Work Your Strengths" helps you avoid 'trial-and-error' career moves by matching your strengths to the jobs that call on those skills specifically.

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

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

White Paper: Best Practices for Coaching Your Support Team to Handle Anything

This white paper provides a step-by-step game plan for solving your support agents' worst nightmares, based on the author's experience in successfully "turning around" support performance, as well as current research in the psychology of how we communicate with people. In the process, you will learn how specific, procedural skills -- both for how your agents respond to customers, and how you coach your team -- can change everything about how your interact with customers, in a way that will impact both your support metrics and your bottom line.

Get the full white paper here!

Manage Your e.Newsletter Subscription
Log-on to the member's only page and you can to change newsletter formats, remove yourself from the list, or update your member profile.

Editorial suggestions, feedback & comments:
Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@recognizeserviceexcellence.com

Advertising Information:
adinfo@recognizeserviceexcellence.com

Thank you for reading RecognizeServiceExcellence.com's weekly newsletter!

Copyright © 2008, RecognizeServiceExcellence.com