I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs recently regarding the connection between Support and Customer Development. This has been a favorite subject of mine for some time, but this was the first time I tried to do a comprehensive presentation on the topic. As I put together the presentation, I realized that there was really…
Category Archives: Management
Why do customers call you?
Call deflection has been a big thing in support for years. Get the customers to look it up themselves; give them some stuff from the knowledge-base before letting them submit a case – heck, some companies even leave customers on hold just so that some of them will go away. But why are these customers…
Silos and Collaboration
Michael Fauscette has excellent advice on fixing the silo problem and implementing collaborative workflows: Organizational fixes * Change incentive compensation plans to encourage and reward working across departments * Reward and recognize cross group collaboration efforts (and do it in big, visible ways) * Build cross functional teams to attack problems and issues. Reward their…
Better, Faster… More Friendly?
The most productive and high-performing teams I’ve seen have had a high degree of camaraderie and fun in the regular workday. Stowe writes about a recent cognition study, with implications for social tools. This suggests that work places where friendly interaction is the norm should have more focused and production workers, while settings where friendly interaction…
What good are data, anyway?
Every customer care team I see is buried in data: call durations, inbound call rates, case deflection rates, survey results, case closure time, and all sliced and diced by category, time of day, and product line. It can be overwhelming and confusing. Most of the data monitored is useful only as indicators of the health of…
Promises and Expectations
Our local Apple store is the Palo Alto store on University Avenue, known by some as “Steve’s Store”. My wife’s iPhone has lost its backlight, so I stopped in today to get it replaced or repaired. The store is packed, of course. I realize I should have made an appointment. Ah, but it’s till worth…
Steve’s HR Technology – Journal – The Conference Room Paradox
Steve Boese considers the conference room… You know you have all been there before. The big conference room paradox. Organizations drag everyone into a central location called ‘the office’, but then parcel out space in small increments of cubes and private offices, and there is hardly any space to actually interact and communicate and collaborate….
