How to Migrate Customers to Paid Support Boston, June 26

If you're still giving away tech support, it's time to make a change.

This one-day workshop, produced by the Association of Support Professionals (ASP), will give you a detailed roadmap for turning post-sale support and services into a true profit center. Topics include how to reduce service delivery costs, design flexible maintenance plans and add-on services, reduce price resistance, identify customer pain points, and generate internal buy-in.

Registration, $475.

Google Searches for Staffing Answers
Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm. The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit. Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.

Envision Telephony Launches InteractionIQ to Capture, Search and Analyze Contact Center Speech Data
Envision Telephony, Inc., a provider of workforce optimization (WFO) solutions for the contact center and enterprise, announced the availability of Envision InteractionIQ, a right-sized speech analytics solution that simplifies the processing, search and reporting of speech data from within audio recordings. With Envision InteractionIQ, contact center and enterprise management can now affordably and simply incorporate speech data into the WFO analysis equation to more effectively meet specific agent, center and business performance objectives.

Thirty Percent of Workers Whose Companies Have Experienced Layoffs Reported They are Burned Out
Workers who have survived layoffs within their organizations are facing new challenges in the forms of increased workloads and heightened stress, according to CareerBuilder's latest survey of more than 4,400 workers nationwide. Forty-seven percent of workers reported they have taken on more responsibility because of a layoff within their organization. Thirty-seven percent said they are handling the work of two people. Thirty percent feel burned out.

To accommodate growing TO DO lists, 34 percent of workers who kept their jobs after a layoff reported they are spending more time at the office. Seventeen percent are putting in at least 10 hours per day. Twenty-two percent are working more weekends.

CareerBuilder recommends the following tips to keep stress levels in check:

1. Don't over-promise.  If two or more projects come up at the same time, work with your supervisor to identify which takes precedence and establish reasonable timelines.

2. Take time to recharge.  Go for a walk on your lunch break.  Take a  personal day.  Get eight hours of sleep.  Ultimately, recharging your battery will serve you and the company better.

3. Cut the e-leash.  Unless needed, turn off electronic devices at a certain time of the day to designate the end of that workday and avoid getting caught up in discussions that can wait until the morning.

4. Explore flexible work arrangements.  Cutting your commute one or two days a week can help shorten your workday.  More employers today are open to offering telecommuting and other options that may help to provide a better work/life balance.

5. Don't get caught up in the rumor mill.  Forty-two percent of workers reported they are fearful of layoffs within their organization.  Ignore speculation and focus on the task at hand.

http://www.careerbuilder.com

Survey Shows Executives Staying More Connected With the Office During Vacations
Out of sight doesn't necessarily mean out of mind for vacationing executives, a new survey shows. Sixty-one percent of marketing and advertising executives polled recently said they check in with work at least once a day while on break. This compares to 47 percent of executives in 2006 and 38 percent in 2001.

The national study was developed by The Creative Group, a specialized staffing service providing creative, advertising, marketing and web professionals on a project and full-time basis, and conducted by an independent research firm. Advertising and marketing executives were asked, "How often do you check in with work while on vacation?" Their responses:

The Creative Group offers these tips to help professionals make a clean break from the office:
 

• Put someone on point. Managers should select someone whose judgment they trust to make decisions in their absence. It's important to give the point person the responsibility and authority to make judgment calls.

• Establish ground rules. If you need to check in, set specific times
  when you'll be checking in, rather than having people contact you throughout the day.

• Don't leave them hanging. Use out-of-office functions to let your clients and customers know when you're away, and provide the names and contact information of colleagues to contact in your absence.

• Let it go. Delegate projects that must continue in your absence. Be sure to let coworkers know where to find key materials.

• Bring in reinforcements. Hiring temporary or freelance professionals to bridge gaps can help projects stay on course while you're gone.

• Consider remote locales. If you have a hard time breaking away from the office, consider vacationing in a spot that doesn't have cell phone or Internet access.

More...

Workaholics now working 2-6 hours a week in bed
Over a quarter of UK employees are so work obsessed they can't resist using a mobile device such as a laptop in bed before they go to sleep according to a survey released by CREDANT Technologies. The survey discovered that of those people who do work in bed, 57% do so for between 2 and 6 hours every week, little wonder that the survey also found that the majority of their bed companions found their partners' obsession with their mobiles "a very annoying habit". A staggering 8% of people admitted that they spend more time on their mobile devices during the evening than talking to their partners!

The survey into "Laptop use in bed and the security implications" was conducted amongst 300 city workers who were interviewed to determine whether the UK has become a nation of work obsessed, laptop dependent, key tappers and to highlight the security implications of unsecured mobile devices. Almost half the respondents (44%) admitted they are holding important work documents on their mobile devices of which 54% were not adequately secured with encryption. This will sound alarm bells for the many in-house IT departments who are tasked with trying to secure an ever increasing mobile workforce who are using data on the move and consequently losing more unsecured data than ever before.

Additionally snooping neighbors or even malicious infiltrators could hack into the devices that are being used in bed, as a fifth of people are not using a secure wireless network as they busily tap away under their duvets.

The most favored way to connect to the Internet, and subsequently back to the office, whilst lying in bed is via a wireless network (87%). Disturbingly, almost a fifth of people spoken to are using a wireless network that they know is insecure, with 56% down/uploading company information.

When staying in hotels, people are happy to connect to the hotel's wireless network, expecting the hotel to ensure it's secure. 47% admit that they do so without even considering the security implications.

When asked "What is the last thing you do before going to sleep" it is reassuring to learn that, for 96% of the people questioned, it is kiss their partners goodnight. For the other 4%, (71% of which are male), who confess to completing work and checking their emails it would be advisable for them to take a long hard look at their gadget obsessed lives.
More...

FREE White Paper: 10 Reasons to Get Your Support Software as a Service

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Leading at the Speed of Thought
Never before have leaders experienced the scale and complexity of change that they face now. Consider for example, the competition businesses face in a flatter world; the impact of global issues like terrorism, pirating, climate change, and pandemic disease; social forces shaping the work environment, including changing employee expectations, an aging workforce, and changes in how individuals communicate; and the influence of inexorable, rapid technological advancements.  In this high-stakes game of survival, the most successful leaders will demonstrate the ability to simultaneously monitor these forces, measure their impact, and create new opportunities rather than wait for them to appear.
Full Article...

Building Talent in a Time of Layoffs
In today's economy, many corporate leaders are rethinking their overall strategy with respect to target customers, capital sources, product portfolios, pricing, investments, and cost structures. But to implement these changes, they'll need to have the right talent in the right roles. Workforce reductions -- those that companies have already conducted and those still to come --  must not only deliver sustainable cost savings right now, they must also leave skilled and motivated people in critical positions to maximize the enterprise's present and future success.
Full Article...

Change Your Mind Before You Change Your Company
Your organization has likely been charting a new course to get through today's economic turmoil. But is your new direction getting you there? History shows that change initiatives--realignment, restructuring, re-engineering and the rest--succeed only one time out of every four. Why so much failure? Because senior leaders blame their organizational problems on faulty structures, systems and processes, and those are the things they try to fix. They are partly right, but there is usually another, more powerful, factor at work too: the company's culture.
Full Article...

The IT Leader's Hero Quest
Think you could be CIO? Jim Barton is a savvy manager but an IT newbie when he's promoted into the hot seat as chief information officer in The Adventures of an IT Leader, a novel by HBS professors Robert D. Austin and Richard L. Nolan and coauthor Shannon O'Donnell. Can Barton navigate his strange new world quickly enough? this article provides Q&A with the authors, and book excerpt.
Full Article...

Can your staff think?
Often times I find the staff of businesses don't know how to think beyond pre-described processes. When they get a question outside the norm, they just seem to shut off their brain, resulting in either no sales where there could have been one, or elongating the buying process if they could just think. Are you making it difficult for your customers to buy what they want to buy because your systems and non-thinking employees are preventing customers from parting with their money?
Full Article...

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
by Matthew B. Crawford

Shop Class as Soulcraft brings alive an experience that was once quite common, but now seems to be receding from society -- the experience of making and fixing things with our hands. Those of us who sit in an office often feel a lack of connection to the material world, a sense of loss, and find it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For anyone who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing.

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.

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