Friday, August 31, 2007

Issue Resolution Key to Customer Satisfaction and Retention

Customer loyalty. Positive word of mouth. Return on investment. All these words, so crucial to the success of any organization, cannot be achieved without a high level of customer satisfaction. Today’s contact centers often play the critical role in interfacing with the customer and heavily influencing their level of satisfaction.

According to the recently released Call Center Satisfaction Index by the CFI Group, issue resolution is the key issue driving customers' satisfaction and therefore their loyalty and likelihood to recommend a product or service. Across all industries measured, almost a fifth of all callers hung up with their issue unresolved. Of those customers who didn’t have their issue resolved, 68% are at risk of defection (43% said they would definitely defect, and 25% aren’t sure). That's a substantial percentage of callers who are at risk of defection based on their interaction with the call center alone.

Smart companies are already measuring several things in their contact center, one of which is first contact resolution rate. If your numbers indicate too low a percentage, it is time to figure out the cause of this. For instance, the same study previously mentioned reported that agents with poor communication skills are able to solve customer issues only 45% of the time, compared to 88% of the time when reps speak clearly.

These days customers are harder to keep than ever. Having a thorough understanding of your first call resolution rate and its impact on overall customer satisfaction is one step forward in the never ending battle of maintaining customer loyalty.

More information can be found at www.SupportIndustry.com.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Employees’ Use of Personal Equipment and Services at Work Can Create Problems

In the past couple of years, you have probably seen an increase in employees in your organization bringing their own laptops, software, cellphones, etc. to work. Or maybe you are even guilty of it. The reason? The personally owned equipment or service helps make the employee feel more productive. This trend is called consumerization, and is defined as the adoption of consumer technologies in the corporate environment.

A recent Yankee Group Report said that nearly 50% of employees feel more empowered than IT to control their personal IT environment. However, this consumerization trend is a nightmare for IT departments because it creates major maintenance and support problems that can swiftly overwhelm IT resources. In addition, if enterprise IT tries to ignore the adoption of these technologies in the workplace, it will potentially lead to a hazardous mix of secured and unsecured applications in the enterprise.

Research from the Gartner Group has similar findings, reporting that consumerization will be the most significant trend affecting IT during the next 10 years, as employees expect to use more of their personal equipment and services at work, and enterprises adopt more consumer technologies in business operations. However, consumerization also represents one the most significant threats to enterprise security, and security managers must prepare for, and manage, the security risks.

The bottom line is that companies need to be proactive in setting policies, as well as communicating and enforcing them. Remember, Christmas is coming – think of all the new laptops and IPhones that could be making their way into your organization!

More information can be found at www.SupportIndustry.com