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Member since Jun 11, 2009, follows 0 people, 0 public groups, 30 public bookmarks (30 total).

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  • Outsourcing’s Impact on Customer Satisfaction: It’s Not Good | Interviews | ITBusinessEdge.com on 2009-06-29
    • First, the company can make sure that the provider has access to complete customer information. If the provider does not have access to complete customer information, the customer may be dissatisfied when the provider does not have the necessary information to understand the customer or the customer’s issue. Second, the company can make sure that the provider has adequate decision-making authority to properly address customer issues.  If the provider does not have adequate authority, the customer may be dissatisfied when a provider cannot resolve an issue and needs to transfer the customer to another location.
  • CRM Daily | Outsourcing on the Home Front on 2009-06-29

    • Angie Seiden, chief executive of Miramar, Florida-based Arise, whose home-based agents work as independent contractors, says half of new potential clients are re-evaluating their commitment to India. Of 47 current clients, six have pulled back from outsourcing their call center work to India, most in the past year, Selden says.


      Selden says rising unemployment in the U.S. has been a boon to her workforce. In 2007, 62,000 people made inquiries into working at home as call agents; in 2008, that number was 110,000.

    • Eighty-seven percent of Alpine Access' agents are women whose average age is 41, the company says.
  • CRM News: Vendors: Outsource or Keep It Home? Have It Your Way: Q&A With Alpine Access CEO Chris Carrington on 2009-06-29
    • With several years of operations under its belt,
      Alpine Access could arguably be the poster child for that movement. Now, the company is pushing the model even further: It has just begun to provide consulting services, as well as employee training, for companies that want to set up their own agent networks.
    • A lot of companies still don't want to outsource customer care for whatever reason -- some figures say it is 65 percent of the market. So they want to do it themselves, but they also want to take advantage of the cost efficiencies of the home-based model. We just launched it, and already we have our first two engagements under way -- so, yes, there is a lot of interest.
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  • Businesses use Twitter to communicate with customers - USATODAY.com on 2009-06-29

    • As more companies effectively use social-media tools for customer care, it also is becoming easier to shift customer-relations resources to the U.S. and feed into the fledgling "homeshoring" trend. Home-based workers have become de rigueur among employers to take advantage of better technology, gain productivity from employees no longer tied to long commutes and leverage the expertise of local workers.


      There are about 200,000 so-called homeshored jobs — most of them in the U.S. — and more than 300,000 are expected by 2012, says Stephen Loynd, program manager for contact center services research at market researcher IDC.


      "The competitive landscape for customer care is subtly changing because of technology like Twitter," Loynd says.

    • Several companies with vast call-center operations overseas plan to shift some jobs back to U.S. soil because of advances in technology, says LiveOps President Wes Hayden. LiveOps manages home-based contract workers who staff virtual call centers. The remote workforce approach is similar to eBay's army of specialized sellers — most of whom work at home and are graded on their performance. Among its customers are Kodak and Colonial Penn Life Insurance.
  • Gmail on 2009-06-29
  • The Old New Thing : Blow the dust out of the connector on 2009-06-20

    • Sometimes you're on the phone with somebody and you suspect that
      the problem is something as simple as forgetting to plug it in,
      or that the cable was plugged into the wrong port.
      This is
      easy to do with those PS/2 connectors that fit both a keyboard
      and a mouse plug, or with network cables that can fit both into
      the upstream and downstream ports on a router.



      Here's the trick:
      Don't ask "Are you sure it's plugged in correctly?"



      If you do this, they will get all insulted and say
      indignantly, "Of course it is! Do I look like an idiot?"
      without actually checking.



      Instead, say "Okay, sometimes the connection gets
      a little dusty and the connection gets weak.
      Could you unplug the connector, blow into it to get
      the dust out, then plug it back in?"



      They will then crawl under the desk, find that they
      forgot to plug it in (or plugged it into the wrong port),
      blow out the dust, plug it in,
      and reply, "Um, yeah, that fixed it, thanks."



      (Or if the problem was that it was plugged into the wrong
      port, then the act of unplugging it and blowing into the
      connector takes their eyes off the port.
      Then when they go to plug it in, they will look carefully
      and get it right the second time because they're paying
      attention.)

  • Seven steps to remarkable customer service - Joel on Software on 2009-06-20
    • Seven steps to remarkable customer service
    • ne: it’s crucial that tech support have access to the
      development team. This means that you can’t outsource tech support: they have
      to be right there at the same street address as the developers, with a way to
      get things fixed. Many software companies still think that it’s “economical” to
      run tech support in Bangalore or the Philippines, or to outsource it to another
      company altogether. Yes, the cost of a single incident might be $10 instead of
      $50, but you’re going to have to pay $10 again and again.
  • Health and Well-Being Content on 2009-06-19
    • Large, long-term studies show that coffee doesn’t promote cancer and may even protect against some types. It’s safe for the heart—so safe that the American Heart Association says it’s OK for heart attack survivors to have a cup or two a day even as they recover in the coronary care unit. Results from the long-running Health Professionals Follow-Up and Nurses’ Health studies show that drinking coffee cuts the risk of dying early from a heart attack or stroke. Coffee also appears to offer some small protection against Type 2 diabetes, gallstones, and Parkinson’s disease.
  • When Contracts Destroy Trust - HBR.org on 2009-06-19
    • Parties to a contract often overestimate the level of certainty in the
      environment and underestimate the likelihood of a future divergence in perspectives.
      As a result, they include fewer contingencies than they should and are eager to
      finalize terms even when it would be wiser to postpone settling some matters. In this
      case, the partners should have waited to assign at least a portion of the equity until
      after their roles and contributions were clarified. Instead, even as the company’s
      strategy evolved and the value each brought to the venture changed, the contract
      provided no scope for a smooth adjustment of equity—eroding trust and goodwill. Wisely
      structured contracts postpone agreement on terms that would be more effectively
      handled after more information is available, and they include contingencies
      commensurate with the current level of uncertainty.
  • Typing-Expansion Software - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com on 2009-06-19

    • Typing-Expansion Software


      <!-- By line -->

      <!-- Summary -->

      <!-- The Content -->

      Update | 9:16 a.m. Adding information about TapIt4Me.


      Here’s my little secret: I write only about half of my material.


      Or, rather, I *type* only about half of my material.

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