Techronicity

Honored to be in such good company - thank you to the Nifty 50!

The Top #Nifty50 Women in Technology on Twitter for 2012

September 10, 2012

A year ago, the #Nifty50 honored 50 remarkable men andwomen on Twitter. This year, colleague Cheryl Burgess and I changed things up a bit, opening the award to nominations but focusing specifically on outstanding men and women who work for technology companies and are active on social media.

These women are executives, thought leaders, bloggers, authors and role models for younger women with an interest in technology. Not only leaders in their professional lives, nearly all these women use their social profiles to express their passions outside the workplace, which range from NASCAR, art, travel, billiards, wine and music to community service, politics and, of course, family.

Among the women profiled below, Emily Gonzales notes that “women in tech are doing really cool things,” while Padmasree Warrior is “passionate about helping women in tech.” True, and important, which is why this year’s #Nifty50 is focused on the technology field.

Ilene Kaminsky
@ilenealizah

Ilene is a “content creationist” whose background includes stints as Director of Marketing and Director of Strategic Development at IBM, Alliance Director at eGain Communications, and Managing Director at Lumina Consulting. She also writes the Techronicity blog.

 

Happy 5773 - Atone, reflect, then oy vey, eat something.

Reflecting on the holiday, I am in San Jose feeling like the lone Jewess transplanted from the place where I never knew there were people who had never SEEN a Jew and had never experienced antisemitism.  And, as with all reflection, I took a look at a letter I'd written my stepson last year for his birthday.  Please feel free to comment - it's vanity (as all is vanity and striving after wind...) but you'll get the point.  I think he did, too.  Happy New Year.  Have a little food.  Give someone a hug.

Wise (up)

Letter to you on your birthday, my special friend:

10 years old - think about what the world was like back when you were born...  One whole decade of your life makes up your history, and your future waits to unfold for you like a story in the decades still to come.   Can you imagine yourself another decade older?  20 years old, just 10 years from now.  That’s a huge leap from here if you think about how much you’ll do in the next 10 years.  

I thought back to when I turned 10.  I wished somebody would have told me some things that might happen or just stuff in general that only comes with being old like me.  So, I thought I’d write those things down for you. Some of the things are just what I wish I’d done differently, some are things I am really glad I did, and some are things that have helped me get through some tough times:

1. You are only as good as your word.  You are born with it (it’s the cry you make when you come out of your mom’s tummy) and you die with it (everyone’s got something to say before they die, and some even put it on their gravestone.)  There’s no clothing on your back when you come into the world and none when you leave it, but you scream at everyone when you’re born and whisper when you exit. So, keep your word and the world will come back to you because you’re a trusted soul.
2. Travel.  
3. Do one thing REALLY well.  Like skateboarding.  Or playing guitar.  Or even knitting.  But practice and become an expert.  I wish I had stuck with one thing long enough to be considered an “expert.”  But, there’s always time.
4. Treat others how you want to be treated, even if you don’t think they deserve it.
5. Go for long walks alone and think.
6. Write in a journal.  Look back after some time and reflect on how you felt. Quite often, the things that made us mad or happy or sad a year or two ago, don’t make use feel like that when we look back.
7. Try everything within reason - I mean food, and sports, and walking around naked in the snow, or seeing how long you can go without taking a shower (oh, right you tried that last week ;)
8. Tell people who you love how you feel.  Affection helps everyone.
9. Be sincere.
10. Love what you do for a living.  You must.  You’ll come to define yourself by what you do. So you better love it.
11. Make peace with your brother.  (I wish I did this - but you have to make peace with yourself first as to why you’re angry with him.  I wasn’t angry at my brother, I was angry at my mom and my dad for messing up our family. 
12. Hygiene matters and practice it whenever and where ever you get the opportunity because you never know what might keep you from getting that next shower or who you might meet walking down the street. And if you travel this is extra important.  Ask me about Hurricane Wilma - I didn’t get a shower for 10 days.  Ew.
13. Volunteer regularly.  Giving to people in need will make you humble.
14. Love yourself.  That’s the hardest thing to do.  You may not know what I mean now, but you will.  We do things in our life that we look back on and we don’t like the people we were when we did them.  But forgive yourself.  Because when people don’t forgive themselves they become ugly and bitter. 
15. Save your money but don’t be stingy.
16. Think about something good when you get up in the morning and it will take away any bad feelings that might ruin a perfectly good morning.
17. Allow yourself to make mistakes.
18. Allow yourself to be competitive.  Victory dances are good in moderation.
19. Learn to tell jokes.
20. Don't be racist or sexist
21. And, last but not least, to yourself be true.

Shopping towards Bethlehem

After re-reading a few sections of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" circa 1998, its relevancy  describes one of the daily challenges facing software scientists, developers, and programmers as well as the companies that love them.  They know all too well that the addition of people to a problem in writing code only expands the problem and timeline exponentially.  If we suppose for a moment this still holds true, what then becomes of our economy and our workforce when cloud-based, crowd-sourced (to a greater or lesser degree) application and software development (if we can still call it software) using open source code takes over the world?  

The delivery of software by the box being replaced with software by the drink, a drop at a time, and the economy based on an "end" of a project or the delivery of a "version" will sound like a dial tone to those born after 2000 - never heard it before.  What does that spreadsheet look like if the platform must not operate with an OS but with browser-like shells to take what we need and leave what we don't.  It's not how money is made today.  

As we watch with horror as another retailer closes all or some of its doors, we witness the very underpinnings of our economy begin to shape shift.  The movement from large to small, many to one - perhaps towards outlets and kiosks as a replacement for big brick and mortar establishments .  We may be witnessing the beginning of the end: the decline of the mall and big box stores.  Even now our "shopping" experience including the ever shifting act of browsing goes wider and farther than ever and the store is just the place you might touch and feel something but you don't buy it there necessarily.  The trend towards picking up locally your new or used goods after a browse around the web will become one of the ways to get your wares.  Big hardware stores better become customer service centers really quickly or they will become extinct, too. Anyone look for wallpaper paste lately?

 Maybe you stumble upon the beloved item that will soothe the vestigial "immediate gratification" craving - filling you with joy and flooding your body with endorphins, which expire upon the weak strain of the unhappy let down that comes after you unwrap your goodie, as though you're laying on the carpet of a party of which the guests have left and only the streamers and ribbon and booze-stench remain…ah shopping. But I digress.

So, assuming the economics shift what happens to the distribution of wealth?  Perhaps Engels correctly, communistically blurted - from each according to his skill, to each according to his need, or something close to that.  Now combine the global pressures placed on the distribution of population to the small percentage of people with and the sliver of distributed wealth.  Now ask where technology gets "manufactured"  and where development of the skilled workers takes place today.  Maybe not though.

 Let's for a moment take a page from Louis C.K.'s distribution of comedy, pardon my weak pun, which allowed him complete creative control mind you when he produced then distributed via his website a $5.00 DRM-free download of a live one hour show.  It took him roughly six weeks start to finish and it would have taken at least six months to work with HBO or ComedyCentral to do much of the same, and they'd have ultimate power over his personal IP.  While he took in, purportedly over a million dollars, to say that perhaps he is onto something - the convergence of the diametrically opposed classic distribution model to the initial stated problem of crowd-contributed software development at the edge by, egads...the madding crowds, the unwashed masses... 

 Then it's fair for everyone perhaps to say that:

1.  Not everyone will develop software because they lack the skills, and those who can will.

2.  The feared skill diaspora risk factors will cause the wealth to gather the skills where ever they exist.

3.  Consumption, like water, will take on the form of the container it's given, and in this case it's bigger and more expansive and full of choices influenced by individuals (socially influenced.)

4.  Those who possess non-technical skills will use the tools those cleverer than us developed and perhaps even ask for new tools to distribute wares more effectively - LCK may not be funny to everyone but he's putting the business of content distribution where it needs to be, at least I believe so.

5. And finally, as always, it's the economy, stupid. Or as Navin R. Johnson said in The Jerk, "ah, it's a profit deal!"

 

Arranged marriage or one made in heaven?

The days of  courting  your customers' hand in marriage and earning long term loyalty are over. We must work harder to gain the life long commitment of our beloved customer.  Fickle, they can be anywhere and want to see us any time and so we must go no matter where our betrothed may be .  They don't seek us out like they used to. The customer doesn't go to the store to browse much anymore... the store must go to the customer.  

We must travel to a place where  standard measurements turned upsidedown as a result of the tectonic shift that changed the landscape where consumerism rules.  And the rules and standards are not, well, standard yet. So how does a company derive the return on investment made by listening to the cacophony of  conversations happening in the unpredictable, truly mobile, increasingly social world we find ourselves struggling to navigate and gain traction in when we hardly recognize the territory?

The good news for some is that marketers’ value jumped significantly as enterprises recognized investments in the web and e-commerce broadened consumer spending power and simultaneously  amplified consumer vocal power.  The voice of the customer echoed through the halls of marketing departments, the same department that set the strategy and spent the budgets for those very programs that got the customer to come to them in the first place.  Nice closed loop siloed away from the contact center.  The very same formerly central function, aside from sales, where the customer speaks to the company about their experience.  

The joining of care and marketing: customer experience.  

What could be more intimate: I am walking the aisles of a store, with a company through it’s live agent who is ready to procure my size shoe, my flavor ice cream, my prescription, my insurance policy. That’s the moment we must learn to seize in the online world too.  Instant, satisfying, personal, and human.  

To that end, real-time conversations begin well before a customer makes that ever important decision to choose a particular brand in a specific location.   At home or anywhere for that matter a consumer is connected and collecting information, price shopping, interacting in conversations about product and service benefits and complaints.

It was consumers who dragged marketers into the contact center.  However, it wasn't social media that began the call to action into the contact center. Retail provides us a blueprint into the new consumer ecosystem.  Consumers retail buying habits evolved, transformed by the convenience of e-commerce and mobile/ smartphone applications and secured a place in nearly every market and throughout every buying cycle.

Consequently, customer service has taken on an additional role in the information gathering and purchase stages of the buying cycle. Agents now shop with their new-found friends in both virtual and brick and mortar outlets using chat, multi-browse, and intelligent content delivery. For the most part, marketing does not participate in this part of the conversation.  Stove-piped from operational decisions in the past, the costs associated with marketing became the opportunities lost in the new value chain, created by the web and reinforced by mobility.

Romeo and Juliet, we know their fate...but this story needn’t be tragic.  

No company can risk their customer’s satisfaction when you can make smarter cross functional decisions.  Real time customer feedback and inputs can come from many channels.  In fact  customer care departments participation increases the value of marketing activities exponentially. Conversely, contact center data collection and interactions become more valuable when marketing can utilize it before creating the next programs or promotions.  

Investments in customer satisfaction and intimacy can be leveraged to support measurement tools used by Customer Experience and Contact Centers to deliver insight to their end users.  So you can measure the conversations that transpire in any channel, with holistic rather than stove piped approaches. Make your wealth of knowledge relevant, dynamic, and available anywhere, anytime.  At the very least you’ll deliver better customer service and learn something about what our customers want.  

 

 

 

 

Can you get too personal? Contact centers evolve...

“Hello!  It’s fantastic to hear that you rolling out your new offshore call center. I’ve been thinking about our discussion last week, and the high touch model talked about really coincides nicely into my next Nuance blog post…”

I launched into an email to an old business associate who works on the cutting edge of outsourcing and often seeks to get inputs and vet his ideas – now via his social network where we reconnected recently on LinkedIn. His current venture in outsourced customer service for technical support creates value through applying something radically new, yet suspiciously old. This direction may reflect the direction many customer service contact centers may need to head towards – with fewer, highly trained, empowered specialists. My friend just launched a contact center focused on, “smaller projects, which are low volume but need a high-touch approach.”

This model, while seemingly expensive and not very profitable at first glance, is a model contact centers not prevalent today, may insure the future of your customers experience with your brand as the calls that do get to an agent become fewer but more complex. Evolving contact centers will at first augment the current business processes including home agents, as well as other channels available to your customers such as mobility.

The current economic and technologic climates require this move towards one to one care. For most enterprises 2/3 to a full 3/4 of people who interact with banks, airlines, telcos, mobile carriers, eTailers, work with them over the web. Additionally, mobile and web payments are becoming more and more distributed to the edge where the individuals sit and data is distributed channels across individual networks (see iPhone apps like eTerminal...) Consumers simply need this high touch, high specialized agent that everyone would have thought only good for Zappos.com about 18 months ago.

But in the end, companies that don't adapt and evolve more quickly can risk losing an opportunity or change. And change they shall, because overall experience matters more than ever.

 

Originally Posted on http://community.nuance.com/blogs/expertsblog/default.aspx

Virgin America vs. Southwest: Experience the Difference

Most likely you’ve flown Southwest Air, and if you anything like me, I LUV them because of price and convenience of scheduling on flights under 500 miles. I like Southwest, and indeed sometimes I love them because the get me home on nights when sometimes I never expected to sleep in my own bed because they’re flexible. Okay. They also do the cattle call boarding style which sometimes I don’t mind, but sometimes I really do – like when I’ve been on the road, and I’ve run to the airport and I am kind of starving from the whole day and they have…lanes of numbers and peanuts. I’ll be fine…oh; I forgot to send that email to the client. Now I am forced to make a personal decision:  to choose between getting home and sending that important email.

If given a choice I want to get a glimpse of that violet hued mood lighting on sleek, cool but warm and friendly Virgin America. I would take great seats and cool colors, and good food (at least for purchase) and WiFi any day over brown and orange colors, and relatively unsexy uniforms and cattle call lines – because I got all of what I needed (price and route) and lots of what I wanted (such as something to eat after a long day) from Virgin America.

Virgin wooed weary travelers in the US market with the promise of entertainment and atypical libations like Absinthe. I, like any self-proclaimed hipster, would fly the same route for the same or lower price to get a feel of that Virgin touch. Or even the curious first time flyer that chose the flight because they were price conscious. What a perfect opportunity to start getting Southwest Air out of the first class cabin and into stowage: Virgin flew both brand aware and brand curious and those that just thought Richard Branson their hero or massive hot air balloon (I am pretty sure Virgin has those, too, by the way – that is hot air balloons). Virgin America flew people to their destinations beginning to end, with great experiences and great brand expectations met.

Virgin does very well across channels, too: online, offline, on the mobile handset, in the air - you can connect to satellite Internet. They sell consistently branded, highly market aware customer happiness and that allows them to come in and hoard a demographic away from a huge incumbent. Yes, granted they have very highly recognizable brand, but they don't rest their reputation in that it is also a source of customer expectations. 

And sure, as we watched their books and record stores shut down, it saddened me to lose them and those great books they’d get into the music stores and the café and the great coffee. However I had another great brand who were picking up the slack nicely across two sectors - music (Apple’s iTunes) and books (Amazon.com).  And I don’t miss Virgin for that any more, something new and better came and took my attentions away with a better experience.

Originally posted on http://community.nuance.com/blogs/expertsblog/default.aspx

Zappos.com and the "WOW" Customer Experience

In preparation for an in-depth analysis of Customer Experience and its connection to customer loyalty and satisfaction, the Nuance Creative Services team decided to take a look at online-based or "non-brick and mortar" companies that:

• Consistently rank high in customer satisfaction surveys
• Provide top-notch customer service and customer experience
• Deliver brand attributes effectively across multiple communication channels
• Participate in social media and value its contribution to their business

Zappos.com met these criteria. "We're a service company that just happens to sell shoes," is ubiquitously stated on their main web site, micro sites, blogs, Twitters, and corporate communications.

Now, I love shoes, and the selection on Zappos.com rates very highly with women (size 8.5, black) shoe lovers like me.  Using better judgment during my workday, I ordered the Zappos.com 2008 Culture Book to gain insight to understand what Zappos culture has to do with their "WOW"-erful customer experience.   What happened next is a true story.

Three copies of the book were left in inventory and I snapped them up. I received tracking data via email immediately.  The next day when we opened the well-branded Zappos.com box - but only one copy of the book arrived.  A problem turned into an excellent opportunity to live their brand promise.

I called Zappos.com and I heard real human voices.  The IVR personas were actual customer-care employees.  Two happy employees offered their names, declared it a great day at Zappos, and then tag-teamed the readout of the four IVR options. (When I called back to check on my order later in the week there were two different employees' voices recorded for the IVR.)  Participation in all aspects of care allows CSR's a sense of ownership - happy, empowered people translates to cost avoidance in the contact center and beyond. 

Critical to note - no store fronts usually equate to no human interaction unless I have a problem - the more human a company without walls, the more it can "WOW" it's customers.

Opting to speak to an agent, I was immediately connected to Giovanna. She was extremely courteous and genuine.  Once I was identified by name and email address (easy to remember) she acknowledged that I've been a long-term customer and that I must really love them because I had ordered the Zappos.com Customer Culture book.

She then proceeded to upgrade me to "VIP Customer" status to make up for my inconvenience.  The VIP program gives me free overnight shipping for life and a special number to call for customer care. While I was on the phone with her, she had me log on to the exclusive site.  Bookmark it, she advised me, and bookmark it I did.

This example of data flow and channel consistency gave me confidence in Zappos.com to deliver. Free overnight shipping for life? Shoes, glorious shoes..."WOW" experience now equates to another loyal customer.

She physically went go over to their internal supplies department to get two copies of the book and sent them to me at no charge...no second guessing, no blame game, no hassles. I realized the Zappos.com Customer Loyalty Team is not scripted, and not monitored. They're empowered to serve me as a human being.

 "WOW" Customer Experience. The human need to be acknowledged and heard really matters to Zappos.com.

I do not suggest that every company can scale this level of care.  The best practices and lessons learned can drive creative thinking throughout your communications channels and "WOW" your customers...driving up sales, reducing operational costs, reducing churn, even getting your brand highlighted for it's outstanding customer care.  It's all in the Experience.

P.S. - Zappos.com was purchased by Amazon.com as I write this post. In February of 2009, BusinessWeek published its annual report ranking the "Customer Service Champs:" Amazon ranked #1 and Zappos.com #7.   

Stay tuned for my next post:  The Changing Voice of the Phone Bank:  the trends in mobility and online self service, and how financial institutions can re-imagine the Voice Channel Experience to meet and exceed their customers' expectations.

 

Originally posted on http://community.nuance.com/blogs/expertsblog/default.aspx

Social Branding: Farmers, Farmville and Facebook

Today, very few of us can deny that social media has broad based influence on brand awareness.  Specifically, social gaming really has impacted enterprise customer experience - evidence Farmville. Facebook, the number one social networking site on the internet, most certainly influences consumer brand experience through targeted and "personalized" ads based on a user's "likes" as well as other criteria. Therefore, as the most popular application across most operating systems, according to The Nielsen Company, Facebook's multimodal and multichannel ubiquity indeed provide enterprises a very enticing advertising platform.   

Gartner's top end user predictions for 2010 states very clearly a statistic that cannot be ignored by any B2C company:  "Facebook-already the largest social network community-is expected to rocket to more than a billion (active users) by the end of 2010. More than 15,000 websites, devices and applications have implemented the Facebook Connect APIs and protocols to interface with Facebook. This interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites."

The impact of Facebook cannot be ignored by enterprises. Social advertising and branding has reached new, and at times, strange heights. Thousands of new advertising schemes and ploys hit social sites every day. Some brands' cobbled together "social media strategy" does little more than leave a consumer going "huh?" One might relate the social advertising phenomenon to the recent days when iPhone apps sprouted like weeds and enterprises considered an iPhone app a good enough representation for their organization's "mobile strategy." It wasn't as most found out. They required a well thought out, long term approach to mobility and application development. We'll see the same in the coming months as the social gaming advertising market takes off. One promotion or even a fan page does not equate to a strategy. 

On the brighter side, an example of a well executed, targeted social networking-based brand promotion and advertising comes from Farmer's Insurance. On Facebook while playing Farmville (approximately 80M active users - giving advertisers more eyeballs than the Super Bowl), we virtual agriculturalists were given a gift of a Farmer's insurance branded dirigible to float above our Farmville spreads. The blimp's presence provided insurance for my crops: no withering of un-harvested plots for about two weeks. Of course, we all took the blimp. We spend our hard earned Farmville coins and cash to sow our seeds, and Farmer's could insure that we'd be able to reap what we sowed.

Simultaneously, Farmer's Facebook Fan page touted a contest for Facebook fans to win a ride on the Farmer's blimp (now Farmer's have my name and email address and me as a "fan"). Just after signing up for the promotion, Farmer's sent me an invitation to get an immediate quote from one of their agents (now Farmer's knows where I live or at least my zip code). Pretty slick for Farmer's - a fairly staid brand in my demographic of females age 35-45. Now, imagine the impact on customer care for Facebook or Farmer's or Zynga (the company that produces Farmville) if the no-wither feature they promised doesn't work. Now, you've got a bad brand experience and potentially a bunch of complaining, and vocal consumers.  

Well, of course I forgot that my crops would begin to wither again after the two week period had elapsed. I'd not received an email reminder from Farmer's or Farmville or Facebook alerting me to the fact that I should remember that the insurance policy for my crops was about to expire. They could have offered me a chance to perhaps "buy" the high flying protection again, and I'd have been fairly happy. However, I instead received an email that my crops had dried up. Of course, Farmer's allowed me to keep the flying billboard as decoration for my acreage. I got rid of the blimp post haste.

More evidence of this phenomenon comes from a mobile broadband provider, 3UK a service provider with about 1 million customers today. 3UK is experiencing substantial traffic increases which the company directly correlates to Facebook, and specifically Farmville. "With gaming on Zynga and Facebook the profile is very different [from the traditional profile of a 25-35, console-buying male], and much more female and over 35s," said Charlotte Blanchard of 3UK in an interview with The Guardian. However, 3UK like many Service Providers, have no immediate plans to provide support to customers who want to jump into the social gaming space. 

So, who get's the call when my crops wither and die?  Zynga? The Service Provider? Facebook? Or do I get frustrated and blame Farmer's for not living up to their promise? Farmer's in this case would suffer the most damage to its new crop of potential customers, and they're the least able to support the consumer in this ecosystem. I for one am looking forward to more interesting and brand aware social gaming.  I especially am eager for the day when consumers won't wither in the face of bad promotions or poor experience, but rather flourish in the fertile ground of our new multimodal and multichannel experiences.  

Originally posted on http://community.nuance.com/blogs/expertsblog/default.aspx

Complex Content Networks: The Imminent Customer Care Storm

 

 While you’re reading this: another consumer bought a new wireless handheld device. Perhaps she made a call to her sister to test out the voice commands on the headset she bought online to go with her “phone”  - and to tell her about her new car. While on the call used her multifunctional device to snap a photo and sent the MMS to her sister. Before her drive home she paired the device via Bluetooth with her car.  As she drove, she asked the GPS system in her vehicle to locate the nearest bakery.  She listened as the voice over the car’s speakers read out four bakeries in the area. She then said, "call Abigail’s”… RING….

Sound familiar?

Which company, as described in the scenario above, does a customer call should her directions not get delivered to her immediately? The device manufacturer or the content provider? Now, more than ever, enterprises need to re-think customer experience before they’re drowning in complaints and questions that may not pertain to their products or services. 

Our mobile-enabled lives permit us access and to content using a multitude of devices with data flowing over many broadband connections from the PAN, LAN, WAN and over global networks. As our customers enter increasingly complex technologies and the ecosystems that allow for the scenario above, the term “customer experience” became just an overused sentiment headlining advertisements and spam emails. Bad timing. “Customer experience” no longer holds the promise of new customer centric approaches. The promise of truly evolved enterprise care departments and the implementation of dynamic self-service applications should not fade into the noisy network.

A tidal wave hit our shores, and water wings won’t cut it. Here's a snapshot in time of the oncoming tsunami as illustrated by a tour of my own household network topology. 17: the number of networked devices on our home LAN today. That’s 17 simultaneously computing machines with 17 IP addresses, 17 connections to a single wireless router, and any number of video, audio, and gaming applications on those devices... 

Drinking down gallons of media on that LAN: six laptops, two Apple TV’s, two Wii game consoles, two iPhones, two iPads, a multi-terabyte server, and two Sony PSPs. All of these access the world over one pipe – a bargain at a mere $75.00 USD per month thanks to our local Cable provider. AT&T provides wireless services for about $150.00 USD per phone per month and we subscribe to three services – Gamefly , Netflix and Hulu Plus each month. We also pay by the drink for content including e-book, video and audio from iTunes, Amazon and others. That’s more companies providing more services into one household than we’d ever considered.

Consumers, creatures of habit and brand aware as they are, will first try to get help from AT&T or Apple when the video doesn't reach the intended handheld screen. We know these companies; therefore it’s also more likely that as a consumer we’ll call one or two of them when our ability to get instant content gratification fails. If the consumer's confused, then what about customer care organizations? They need to know way more than they used to know - and they need to supply support on and off the phone.  Personalized the way a consumer wants when they want it. 

My wireless service provider may not be the company I need to call if an application on my phone isn’t working - but I call them anyway. As a frustrated consumer, I don’t want to hear finger pointing - I want answers. Service providers of today should look to customer care as their beacon to save them from becoming relegated to just the dumb pipes business with too many consumers calling for reasons and increased customer care operating expenses. All those unhappy customers and associated expenses of getting poor care or increasing handle times for services where margins are thin enough. Instead of drowning in a sea of problems, why not see this as a call to action? Perhaps the service providers can answer this call as all the fledgling, flailing companies out there struggle to understand customer care by taking lessons learned and best practices and new experiences and add this to their own offerings. 

Consider a look at Best Buy’s Geek Squad or Apple’s in-store Genius Bars. 1:1 personal care.  Face to face may be great, but this isn’t the only answer. Of course, we don’t staff our home with an IT department.  But the complexity of our household network represents an early view of the big red flag warning of the hurricane approaching as it waves over our roof waiting for someone to say, "How can I help you?"  

 

Originally posted on http://community.nuance.com/blogs/expertsblog/default.aspx

Make Me Change: Fostering market adoption | Lumina Consulting Group

via luminacg.com

Blog post on consumer adoption and behavioral shifts.

What a Loser! Learning from lost sales. | Lumina Consulting Group

via luminacg.com

Blog post on how to analyse and learn from your business losses.

Airplane Travel Tips - 100 Words or Less - Gadling - StumbleUpon

Airplane Travel Tips - 100 Words or Less - Gadling - StumbleUpon