The Customer Experience

How Useful are Comments?

2015-10-09T12:00:00.003-04:00

There is an active dialog and changing tide regarding posting of comments after blog entries or online articles. Recently, many sites are removing the longstanding tradition of having a comments section following a post. I think the Executive Editor of Reuters

Do we understand RISK as it relates to delivering technology?

2015-03-13T00:36:00.000-04:00

Risk- the chance that things won't turn out well, or uncertainty that they will. We commit to economic activity if we have a rational expectation of a positive outcome - the product of the effort will have financial value that exceeds its cost by some multiple. Build a plan, weigh the risk, make the decision, Drive. Many of us are strongly driven to make things happen once that

Why do the villains have the coolest UI's?

2015-01-06T00:40:00.001-05:00

My kids hate it that I can't put systems development out of my mind when we watch an entertaining movie. I say something like "Do you think the bad guys took the time to make a cool holographic interface for each WMD and prioritized usability when they built their

The Emotional Context of a Business Transaction

2014-07-02T08:08:00.000-04:00

Years ago, my MBA program had a course on the history of business management. The work of Frederick Taylor featured prominently as the late 19th/early 20th century originator of the Scientific Management movement. My summary of Scientific Management: business profit is optimized by breaking down work into its smallest, atomic tasks, and hiring and training individuals who are

Does more data = better insight?

2011-03-26T03:38:00.003-04:00

Sometimes companies wonder how, with all their data, they still sail off course. In the field of customer service analytics, vendors play a game of trying to “out-data” the other guy. There is a better approach – more effective and more efficient than sitting through endless vendor presentations involving over-mining of an underwhelming but voluminous set of base data. There

The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

2010-12-16T16:45:00.002-05:00

Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6" Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology The squeaky wheel gets the greaseOnce upon a time in America, we had hundreds of little newspapers dotting the colonies to give leverage to the voice of the individual - they called it muckraking, and some of the blunt criticism contained in them regarding public officials makes today's media seem tame,

Citizens are customers too, and more!

2010-02-24T12:33:00.000-05:00

OK, while this blog is typically about how to improve the customer experience, I am writing this week about some news I came across citing estimates that spending on this year's political campaigns will set a new record high for mid-term elections. http://209.190.229.100/news/2010/02/midterm-elections-will-cost-at.html Ok, boys and girls, "R" doesn't stand for "Recession" any more, "R"

The Champion and The Challenger

2010-02-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power." - David Brin The way any company currently operates has a momentum that can drive its eventual downfall, unless it evolves due to the intercession of a proactive management team. It is the rare, yet healthy organization that, as an

Where does your customer's emotional trail lead?

2009-11-23T15:03:00.000-05:00

I was reading a recent article in Speech Technology Magazine, the subject matter was speech-to-text software for recorded calls, and this passage caught my attention:Many people live and work under the false assumption that speech analytics is a form of plug-and-play technology; in reality the applications require a significant amount of work and resources to make them function properly. Users

Why do Sharks Keep Swimming?

2009-11-10T09:14:00.000-05:00

So they don't die, is the short answer (OK, that sentence had a distinctly Yoda-speak structure, didn't it?!). Sharks keep swimming and companies keep selling for the same reason: so they don't die.I think that is why many of our projects lately keep getting pulled toward sales issues, even when they start out looking at some other aspect of the customer interaction. Times are tough,

Swim teams and quality management

2009-06-23T22:16:00.000-04:00

My kids are on a swim team this summer, their first experience with that, and we all find the meets to be lots of fun. One of the best things is the next day practice, when they hand out ribbons. There is one ribbon in particular that stands out in my mind, its the personal best ribbon when a swimmer improves their recorded time for a particular event. Its a colorful ribbon, and the kids

The truth about support costs vs. customer satisfaction

2009-06-03T15:08:00.000-04:00

As Jack Nicholson said, “You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!” The truth is, we need to understand customer interactions, at the ground level, in order to improve customer interactions, and improving customer interactions not only retains and grows the customer base, but it has this interesting side effect of actually reducing support costs. I know this because the company I work

Agents are part of the value equation

2009-05-22T13:34:00.000-04:00

Many stakeholders must combine and interact to make a successful company. These includes employees, management, customers, vendors, business partners, and investors. So, when we look at contact center agents, whose actions affect many of these stakeholders, we are not just looking at the cost of the calls they handle, but also the value (or cost) of the interactions they have within the