Join Me at The Call Centre & Customer Management Expo in The United Kingdom

I am proud to announce that I will be representing RightNow Technologies at the United Kingdom Call Centre and Customer Management Expo on October 11th, through October 12th.  I will be personally at the RightNow Booth speaking to customers and prospects about their Customer Experience challenges, and discussing best practices for servicing customers across the Contact Center, Web, and Social channels.

If you are planning to attend, let's be sure to meet so we can discuss Customer Experience Best Practices.  Below are the details of the event, and a LinkedIn Group on this site for the event.  If you would like to meet or speak, please be sure to email me directly and I will make sure we have the opportunity.

Website: Call Centre & Customer Management Expo
LinkedIn Group:  Call Centre & Customer Management Expo LinkedIn Group
Date & Time: Tuesday 11 October, 9am - 5:00pm, Wednesday 12 October, 9am - 4:30pm
Location: National Hall Olympia, London
Map:


View Larger Map

3 Affordable Customer Support Solutions for Your Small Business

As a small business owner, I personally know that the task of servicing my customers and prospects online becomes far more difficult as you grow your business. Smaller business' rely on email, and phone support to handle incoming inquiries that can easily be resolved online. If your a small business with a website, you may have already considered using the web to service customers. A google for the term "web self service and customer support" yields an extensive list of links to some Enterprise solutions like RightNow Technologies CX Platform, Inquira, eGain, or Salesforce's Service Cloud. These companies offer everything from Knowledge Base capabilities, Community, to Live Chat and Social solutions to support customers online. They are absolutely great platforms that I have personally worked with, but the problem is they are expensive. For a small business owner like myself with less than 5 people on staff, I couldn't afford 1 month of any of these products. With the exception of Salesforce, these companies don't target the SMB market. Their markets are focused on large B2B or B2C businesses for their Web Self Service products instead. So I compiled a quick list of affordable but powerful Web Based Customer Support applications that can help power your Online Web Self Service strategy for your small business. Tell me about your preferred applications for powering your small business' web self service.

Zoho Support

Zoho has built some serious applications in the CRM space that are competing fiercly with Salesforce.Com, and they now are focusing on Customer Support offering a Customer Support suite that offers robust features like an internal and customer facing knowledge base, ticket management, and a Customer Support Portal that enables you to create a help site that is automatically integrated with the suite. For business's looking for a quick way to get a knowledge base and support portal up and running, this is by far one of the quickest ways to get one up and running with robust capabilities. The sign up process is entirely online, you can start with a Free Account, and for businesses that need Sales & Marketing CRM - Zoho offers a pretty robust solution that seamlessly integrates with Zoho Support. If you are already a Zoho CRM user, then this is an ideal platform for your needs. One of my areas of concern is that the capabilities don't address Social Media support and response and the limited capabilities of the Free Edition. Smaller business are often relying on Social Media to support and engage with customers and these capabilities are missing from the suite. Some concerns with the FREE Edition are that it only enables a company to service 25 requests per day, and does not offer Customer Portal which enables you to turn on a knowledge base for your customers online. If you want those features, you will have to opt for the Professional Edition at $12 per user per month which I would recommend if you have a need for online web self service.

Omnistar Live

OmniStar Live is the one solution that surprised me the most. They offer some great capabilities that some of the Enterprise players in this space offer in one package. Features such as Ticket Management, Knowledge Base, Live Chat, Customer Feedback, and the ability to create online troubleshooting wizards come shipped with the software and are all configurable in a easy to use interface. These features alone make it a great value for customers looking for more multichannel and service capabilities. Their hosted solution starts at $27 per month for up to 3 users, and they offer an Unlimited Staff offering where you install the application on your server for a $297 one time fee. I recommend this solution for companies servicing a high tech product that often requires updates to the knowledge base and complex troubleshooting wizards. This application does require some configuration and offers some robust tools for customizing the online support experience in terms of the user interface. They have a WYSIWYG Editor to customize the Customer Support Portal experience to change the look/feel of your site and tailor it to your company logo/brand. If you choose the Hosted solution you may not be able to customize the domain where your customer portal sits so that you have a URL like http://yourcompanyname.com/help. Go with the higher end installable $297 solution for companies who want to host it with their own domain. Omnistar offers free installation for those who don't have an IT Department to install the product on the hosted server. What sets this solution apart from the rest is it's Live Chat, Online Troubleshooter, and Instant Customer Feedback offering that is often not found in even some of the larger Enterprise Solutions for Web Self Service. The Online troubleshooter will save a company lots of time in PHP or HTML development required to walk customers through logic based scenarios to solve complex problems online. For companies with a complex technical product, this maybe an ideal platform to power your web self service.

Assistly

Assistly offers the most Social offering of all the other applications. With Assistly you get the ability to ticket and respond to customers over Facebook, Twitter, Email, and Live Chat integrated into 1 package. In addition, you get a Customer Portal that you can publish to your customers with FAQs, Online Search, and an online Community Q&A section. The suite offers you very basic content authoring and knowledge base capability. You can't categorize knowledge categorized by product, and search seems to be very dependent on key words contained within an article. This will work for a business with a very simple product portfolio, but businesses with larger offerings of products - the knowledge base won't cut it. Sign up and getting started is extremely simple, and at $39 per agent per month, you get a robust online solution for servicing your customers online. For businesses who have a high need for supporting customers across Social Media, and on a realtime basis, this is an ideal solution. Assistly recently partnered with Get Satisfaction to extend their suite to the the popular community platform. Further integrations with traditional CRM vendors will be ideal for this application's future success.

Whitepaper: KPIs for Social Media (Survey Results)

Kpi social media response survey results1

View more documents from jperezpgi.

Excellent insight into what over 435 executives thought about Social Media in their organization. Interesting findings like the fact that only 60% of companies reported less than 1000 followers in their social communities.

customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

RightNow MultiChannel Contact Center Report

Right now multi channel contact center benchmark report

View more documents from jperezpgi.

Excellent benchmark data for those professionals managing a mulitchannel customer support operations. Highlights include:

On Knowledge Management & Web Self Service
· Most companies reported in this survey indicated that they only have 1 person who works on content.
· No more than 1 - 2 employees contribute to knowledge in their knowledge base.
· A Majority of the customers surveyed reported that they deflect less than 20% of all calls to their web self service channel.

Phone Channel
· Customers who responded to this survey indicated that their average cost per call is $6 or less.
· 70% of the customers surveyed DO NOT offshore their call center support.
· 70% of respondents to this survey state their contact center agents handle 9 or less calls per hour.
· 60% of customers reported an AHT of 4 and 9 minutes per call.

Email Channel
· Email Response Time is less than 12 hours on average for their customers.

Chat Channel
· On average less than 10% of calls into the contact center are deflected via Chat.
· A Majority of customers indicated their agents handle 1 - 3 chats at one time.

Future Predictions mentioned in this case study:
· Email Response time expectations are increasing. Customers are now demanding less than 2 hour response times.
· Chat is replacing email in High Tech industries that provide support on complex issues.


customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Video: The Facebook & Microsoft Outlook Social Connector

Great overview of what Microsoft has recently launched!
customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Slideshare: 2010 Social CRM Gartner Magic Quadrant

Gartner 2010-mq-social-crm

View more documents from jperezpgi.

customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Slides: Four Social Media Trends for Business in 2010

Social Media Trends for 2010

View more presentations from Jeremiah Owyang.

Another great set of slides on Social Media from Jeremiah Owyang.

customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Download: 6 Steps to Creating a Social Media Roadmap for Business

Service Push Discovery Framework

View more documents from jperezpgi.

2009 was a phenomenal year for social media, with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube becoming part and parcel of everyday life. Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. LinkedIn finally announced it's demographics and reported that 49% of its network are decision makers, and 53% of it's network make 100k+ per year.

So what what can your company or it's customers do to make Social Media work in business? Attached is the Service Push Social Media Framework that enables your company, it's customers, and your peers to rapidly deploy a Social Media Roadmap for Business in just 6 steps!! Following this framework enables your organization or it's customers to do the following:

• Assess what Return On Investment you will get by investing in Social Media for your business.


• Determine what Tools & Processes your Organization Needs To Succeed.


• Create a 3 Year Road map for your company to follow in the areas of Social Media Strategy for your business.

Learn more about how Service Push can help your company to grow it's business. Enjoy the complimentary framework!!

Regards,

John M. Perez

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/john.perez
Social CRM Tools: http://www.socialcrmtools.com
Service-Push: http://www.service-push.com
Blog: http://www.johnmperez.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JohnMPerez
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnperez

Video: Jeremiah Owyang Talks Social CRM, Social Media, and More with Robert Scoble

A Great must see video here by 3 of the best Industry experts on web strategy. Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wong are two of the best analysts in the tech industry who meet with Robert Scoble to discuss several topics in the Social CRM, Social Media, and Mobile Application space.

customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

2009 Global Consumer Channel Preferences (Whitepaper By Accenture)

This is probably one of the best Services and Customer reads I have reviewed this year and I think it certainly worth reading when you have a chance. Accenture surveyed global consumers on Customer Experience and Consumer Satisfaction. There are some interesting data points in the study. There is also a lot of Online insight.

Here are the highlights:

• 68% of consumers cancelled/switched to another product due to Customer Service Reasons. The study illustrates that the online experience is just as important as the Phone experience.

When You Seek Customer Service, how do you go about getting assistance?
In 2009, here were the results (multiple mentions):

• 85% prefer calling for assistance.
• 65% prefer sending email
• 46% of respondents indicated they search the internet for information.
• 42% utilize a company's website
• 20% prefer Online Chat.
• 10% rely on Blogs and social Networks.

Regarding Consumers Posting Negative Comments Online:

Globally, 25% of all consumers will post negative comments online about a bad brand or service experience online. This trend is up and they point out in the survey that Brazil and China are more likely to do this than other countries. CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SURVEY.


customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Video: CDC's Social Media Revolution

The Centers for Disease Control recently created a new unit called the National Center for Health Marketing. Like all marketing organizations, its mandate is to change consumer behavior and it has organized an incredibly savvy social media department to do just that. Its first comprhensive national campaign is for the H1N1 Swine Flu outbreak and tightly coordinates its message across virually every kind of social media. The effort is one that many other marketers might do well to study.

customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Slides: Social CRM Slides By Deloitte

Social CRM

View more documents from whatidiscover.

Great summary of slides outlining the evolution of CRM into the Social CRM space.

customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Video: Using Twitter Effectively for Marketing and Sales

Can Twitter really help you achieve your marketing and sales goals, or is it just a distraction? Join us to learn how leading brands are using Twitter as part of their marketing mix and to see new tools from salesforce.com that can help you integrate Twitter with your sales and marketing efforts.

Video: Hands-On: Knockin Knowledge out of the Park

Another great session on Knowledge Management at Dreamforce 2009. Knowledge is the foundation of all support channels. In this hands-on training session, youll learn how to take advantage of all the latest Salesforce CRM knowledge base features to improve your organization from the ground up.

Video: The Next Step in Customer Care: Customer Collaboration

More Dreamforce videos. This one specifically focused on Customer Care. As leaders in their respective industries, Cisco and salesforce.com are pushing customer care to the next level by combining Unified Customer Contact solutions with the Service Cloud. Join this session to look at customer collaboration, the business drivers, and how social media can impact the way companies provide customer care.

Video: How Salesforce.com Uses the Service Cloud: Reinventing Self-Service

Salesforce.com's in-house customer support organization is taking advantage of the Service Cloud to reinvent the online customer experience. The secret to the sauce—personalized, consistent, and quick access to knowledge, help, training, and community. See how you can leverage our unique model to make self-service your customers preferred support channel.

Video: Salesforce Chatter

Finally got around to post Salesforce.Com's Chatter. Facebook like Enterprise Collaboration.

Video: How to Tap into Social Media to Drive Sales Results

You can harness social intelligence natively within Salesforce CRM to increase your sales productivity and accelerate sales cycles. Learn how successful sales leaders from innovative cloud-computing companies such as SuccessFactors and IntraLinks are bringing social selling into their sales organizations to improve prospecting effectiveness and close rates - all with solutions from InsideView.

Video: Using the Service Cloud for the Enterprise

Another video from Dreamforce specific to the Service Cloud concept. Looking to improve complex and mature external call centers, internal IT help desks, customer portals, or other customer service centers? This session features tactical information on how the Service Cloud can transform your enterprise call centers and other service solutions. The Service Cloud is up and running in the enterprise, and youll hear from the folks who are making it happen!

Video: Social CRM Tools for Salesforce.Com - Account View

Social CRM Tools is an application available for Salesforce.Com that seamlessly integrates the world of Social Media with your Accounts, Leads, Contacts, and Support Cases within Salesforce.Com. This demo shows you how to get Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter information from your Accounts. Realtime Twitter Monitoring on your accounts, Google Map integration, and more. Track what account activity is happening on the web, and much more. Download for Free at http://www.socialcrmtools.com. Also available on App Exchange.