KANA 10: Service Experience Management Platform Released

Back in the late 90s, I was working in product design for a software vendor. The product marketing/product management team was way ahead of the curve with object oriented design, and I was tasked with rolling out a new business object-based design tool to the rest of the team.  I loved the concept of modeling use cases and building out attribution lists for business objects, and it really made the product design process much faster and easier.  The problem came, of course, when the final design was turned over to our not-even-close-to-object oriented developers, who had no idea what to do with the cool business objects since they were still coding in C++.

This background was perfect preparation for a big “ah-ha moment” I had recently when KANA gave me a demo of their new KANA 10 release, which debuted yesterday.  When I saw them dragging and dropping objects to create complex business flows and support processes, it was amazing to see that object oriented design has made it through development and is now in the hands of business users.

When KANA first announced they were rearchitecting their popular customer management suite to take advantage of IBM’s service oriented architecture (SOA) and Information Management foundation (see this post for background) early last year, the big question was how long would it take? As any company who has done such a rewrite knows, you risk losing visibility during that time because companies are weary of investing in a platform that is about to be replaced.  In hindsight, the timing was pretty good. Who knew in March 2008 how much economic gloom and doom lay ahead?  Turns out, it wasn’t a bad time to take a breather.

nGenera CIM Launches nGen CIM Suite Version 8.3

I had a chat today with Christopher Musico, Assistant Editor at CRM Magazine about yesterday’s announcement that nGenera CIM, formerly known as Talisma, has released version 8.3 of their Customer Interaction Management suite. I had a deep dive with the nGen CIM gang back in February about their short and long term product roadmap (something few software vendors are willing to discuss in detail with analysts), and it is good to see them delivering on that vision.

For me there are three key elements in version 8.3:

Announcing the Fall 2009 Recognized Innovator Award Categories

Fall 2009 AFSMI, SSPA, TPSA Recognized Innovator Awards

I am happy to announce the categories for the Fall 2009 Recognized Innovator Awards, which will be held in conjunction with our upcoming Technology Services World conference in Las Vegas, October 19-21 at the Mirage Hotel and Event Center. Awards are presented to association partners, and judged by a panel of association members and industry insiders.

In time for the conference, JB Wood, CEO of the AFSMI, SSPA and TPSA, will publish a new book detailing the immense challenges – and opportunities — facing the technology service and support industry. To support this theme, the Fall 2009 Recognized Innovator Awards will focus on categories that are key components of the book, illustrating how association partners enable member success by providing innovative technology and services to help companies survive the complexity onslaught– and even prosper. The fall categories are:

Web Collaboration: Hottest Support Technology for 2009

I promised to come back with more details from my 2009 Member Technology Survey, and this post is focusing on the #1 area of spend this year:  Web Collaboration.  Since I announced the survey results at TSW last month, I’ve had several emails and calls asking what exactly it means, and what is the value for service.  I’ll try to address those questions here.

The 2009 Member Technology Survey was open to corporate and community members of the AFSMI, SSPA and TPSA.  There were over 300 responses from SSPA members–the most ever for this annual survey.  Thanks to everyone who participated–I’ve sent early copies of the reports to all respondents.

It is no surprise that overall spending was down this year, with technology budgets averaging about half of last year. But, and this is a big but, unlike other areas of the enterprise who are cut-cut-cutting, our survey showed that technology companies continue to make investments in core support technology and infrastructure, particularly in areas with strong ROI and big impacts to the customer experience. This chart shows the percent of members with approved budget in 2009 f0r new technology in the top spend categories.

The Trouble with Twitter: Where’s the Business Use Case?

One of the challenges of being a technology analyst is most people assume you are ripe to jump on every technology bandwagon that comes along. And I admit, I’m often ready to jump on board and go for a ride. So at the risk of being labeled a Luddite, I’m going to ‘come out of the closet’ with an unpopular opinion:

I am not a fan of Twitter, and have yet to find any viable business case for a Twitter integration for customer service and support beyond brand monitoring.

I was suspicious about Twitter from the beginning, when the main people I knew adopting Twitter were ego maniacs who assumed everyone was dying to know what they had for breakfast, how long they waited in line at Starbucks, the price of gas from their latest fill up, and how hard they laughed at Dilbert that morning. (The same people whose Facebook status shows what song is currently playing on their Internet radio station.) Sure, maybe there was an insightful message now and then, but:

1. Tweets are 1-way. Yes, you can reply, but I don’t think anyone wants to argue that Twitter is an excellent 2-way communicator. It is primarily outbound.
2. Tweets are out of context for the reader. Sure, they are in context for the sender, but the stream of consciousness blather doesn’t come at convenient times for the reader, and they are unlikely to remember important information when they do need it days or weeks later.
3. Fads don’t last. First everyone battled to see who had the most MySpace friends. Then MySpace became déclassé, so the same group started trying to win the most friends battle on Facebook. And now that even your parents are on Facebook, the contest turns to who has the most followers on Twitter. By next Spring, some new channel will have emerged and Twitter’s impact will fade as well.

Bottom line: With the amount of information I have to consume to do my job growing exponentially, this is not a thread of content on my priority list.

Then, multiple service and support vendors starting talking about Twitter integration.

How do you compensate for CSAT? Please weigh in!

We receive a lot of inquiries from SSPA members regarding incentives and rewards for customer satisfaction scores. This information is not currently in our SSPA Benchmark, so I would love your participation in this polling question:

Please take a moment and vote!  I will recap the findings in a later post.  Thanks for participating!

CRM Insight Podcast: The Business Case for Self-Service

I recently recorded a podcast with the always fun and insightful Laura Hoyt of SearchCRM.com. Here is a link to listen to the podcast; registration is required. I thought I would pass along some highlights from our interview.

Q: Is self-service a strong investment in today’s economy? Do you expect this market to grow over the next few years?

A:  Absolutely. Even in a down economy I’m seeing strong spending for knowledgebase tools and self-service technology, because of the bullet-proof ROI. According to my 2009 technology survey of over 300 technology companies, technology budgets allocated to KB, self-service and multi-channels tools represents 30% of the total budget, compared to 22% last year. And, even though spending has slowed, we still are seeing companies investing in 2009 and 2010 in KB and self-service. It’s not just about call deflection, today it is about being competitive and offering an exceptional customer experience.

Q: What’s the best way to get upper management on board with a self-service initiative?

A: I recommend three steps.

1. Build the business case. Check out my report from last year, “The ROI of Knowledge Management: Building a Business Case for KM Investments.”
2. Analyze customer demographics. There are lots of studies out there, including some of my own, showing channel preferences by demographic. If you still think phone is everyone’s preferred channel, you are hopelessly outdated. If customers are demanding self-service, you have to offer it.
3. Survey survey survey. The Voice of the Customer can be very compelling for executives. Ask customers what they like and don’t like about your self-service site, and what features they would like to see.

TSW Day 3: Awards and Top Attended Sessions

Our Technology Services World Conference ended yesterday, and we are so thrilled at the turnout (550+!!!), the excellent content, and the spirit of collaboration among the members of our three associations (SSPA, TPSA, AFSMI).  I was booked solid with member 1:1 meetings and heard some new challenges (like how to introduce a culture of selling) as well as many companies struggling with some age-old problems that never go away (like how to increase KB effectiveness).

The conference ended with an awards luncheon, recognizing SSPA Star Award winners, TPSA Industry Leadership Awards, and the inaugural winners of the new Services Innovation Awards (presented to collaborations between education and industry).

SRII CEO JB Wood presents the Services Innovation Award cash prize to Israel's Technion

Here were some of the top attended sessions yesterday:

TSW Day 2: Top Attended Sessions

I always think you can learn a lot from seeing what the top attended sessions are for our conferences.  They show you what business problems people are trying to solve, and what topics they are most interested in in general.  Here were some of the top attended breakout sessions yesterday:

It was standing room only for “Service Operations – Easy Money: Support Communities and ROI,” presented by long time SSPA partner Francoise Tourniaire, Owner, FT Works; and top rated member speaker Tarik Mahmoud, E-Support and Service Technology Senior Manager, Cisco-Linksys. If you don’t know Tarik, he is brilliant, knows this industry cold, and has a really wonderful sense of humor to boot. I suspect any session with Francoise and Tarik would be popular, but add the sexy and elusive topic of community ROI (see Bill Odell’s comment on a previous post) and the session was a huge draw.

Many of our top attended sessions are usually in the “Innovative Service Technology” track, and this event is no exception.  Add to that a panel discussion–always a big draw–and a KM topic, and you have a very hot session:  ”Measuring the Self Service Experience,” with the following panelists: Christopher Hall, Vice President, Marketing, InQuira; Bradford T. Smith, Senior Director/Architect of Online Support Strategy, Symantec Corporation; Judy Quinn, Processes and Tools Program Manager, Verisign; Chuck Flood, Senior Manager, Customer Service & Support Infrastructure, Blue Coat Systems; Nav Chakravarti, Vice President Solutions, InQuira.

Customer satisfaction is another topic that always draws a crowd, and another top attended session was “Consumer Services – High Customer Satisfaction with Outsourced Support Vendors – Impossible?” with Manish Sinha, General Manager, Microsoft Corporation. With several hundred analysts looking out how to outsource both cost effectively and with high quality, Microsoft speaks about this topic with a great deal of gravitas.

The last top attended session I will highlight from yesterday is another panel discussion, “Software as a Service – The Consume Stage In The SaaS Cycle – Realizing The Value,” with Luca Sartori, Manager, PRTM; Stephen Smith, Executive Director, SSPA; Krista Anderson, Senior Vice President, Global Support and Customer Success, salesforce.com; Paul Lake, Director of Siebel CRM OnDemand Global Customer Support, Oracle; John Blakeman, Vice President of Customer Support, Taleo; Patrick Saeger, Vice President, Customer Care, SuccessFactors.  SaaS continues to prove a disruptive innovation in the enterprise software market, but it does bring some unique challenges to the support organization.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a recap of today’s events and top attended sessions. Thanks for reading!

TSW Day 2 Recap: Technology Spending Trends

Today is the final day of Technology Services World (TSW) Santa Clara. I’m amazed at the huge amount and high quality of the content in breakout sessions, and the positive buzz has been terrific. This post will provide a brief recap of what I was up to yesterday.

I gave my keynote address yesterday morning, providing details from my 2009 Member Technology Survey about technology budgets, adoption and spending. It is no surprise that technology spending is down, and we saw a pretty big decrease in average budget to maintain and acquire technology in the last year. But there remain some bright spots, with members having budget for spending in several areas. Overall, comparing 2008 to 2009 technology budgets, the following trends can be identified:

SSPA Member Technology Spending by Product Category