TeamSupport Provides Collaborative Take on Customer Service

When was the last time you saw something really new and innovative in a customer service demo? If you see as many demos as I do, you know that true innovation is rare. New features in customer service apps come in waves. In 2005-2007, we saw a wave of business process-centric apps, attempting to streamline and solidify processes across disparate support groups. Then in 2006 social media exploded, and since then, we’ve seen each release of CRM and multi-channel platforms expanding into communities and social media channel support.

If you’ve attended any of my recent webcasts, you know that collaboration is a big theme for me this year. Across all TSIA members, 74% had budget for community and collaboration tools in 2012-2013. Most tech companies already have a customer community in place, and the spending now is focused on employee communities, and enabling real-time collaboration across the enterprise. My nirvana would be to see the customer community and the enterprise collaboration initiatives merging: you have a customer in a chat/screen sharing session, run into a new problem, and in real-time can pull in the developer who wrote the code and the product manager who designed it. Heck, why not bring in another customer who successfully is using that feature today? Call me crazy, but that’s ultimately where collaboration will take customer support.

I’m very pleased to highlight a new player on the market who is embracing process, social, AND collaboration in their customer service platform: TeamSupport. Whether you are shopping for a new tool or not, you should check out a demo to see the first of the next wave of customer service apps with a focus on collaboration. Not only does TeamSupport include what we now think of as ‘best of breed’ features: knowledgebase, multi-channel tools including chat, self-service, etc., as well as social tools (customer community, Facebook plugin), but it offers a few other features I find very compelling.

• Water Cooler. TeamSupport’s Water Cooler feature is an internal collaboration tool, a la Twitter, allowing you to post questions or new ideas to a group for discussion or comment. The searchable stream of conversations allows real-time collaboration, even while working with a customer.
• Wiki. Not only does TeamSupport offer a knowledgebase, it also includes a Wiki for document sharing, enabling both content management and knowledge management.
• Tag clouds. TeamSupport allows custom fields to help categorize or track different kinds of incident, but they also support tagging. In the incident’s tag field, you can enter as many tags as you want, such as “installation, Product 123, Crash 234 Error.” You can easily find all incidents with a tag or tags to help research problems or determine problem frequency.
• Screen capture. I’ve been talking for 2 years now about incorporating video into support, and TeamSupport is the first tool I’ve seen to include this as an “out of box” feature in their support platform. Employees/techs can record screen cams of a procedure to illustrate an error on an incident, or to add a video tutorial to a knowledge article, with an option to include voice narration. And, customers can record screen cams of an error or a problem process flow and imbed it in a support ticket opened via self-service. Imagine how much faster you can solve a problem when instead of a 1 line explanation in a case, you have an actual video of the problem?

TeamSupport offers integration to Salesforce, Zoho and others, as well as integrations to some support analytic platforms, like Zoho Reports. Fully hosted, pricing begins at $20 per user/per month; $35 for Enterprise Edition. Checkout the website for more info or to see a demo. There are also videos available on TeamSupport’s YouTube Channel.

I had a chance to meet TeamSupport President and CEO, Robert C. Johnson, last fall, and his energy and enthusiasm are infectious. Great to see a young CEO with new ideas and a lot of passion driving innovation and change in the industry. I wish Robert and team a lot of success! And thanks as always for reading!

Resolving Verizon/DirectTV Problem: Only Kafka Could Write This

Hopefully you are familiar with Franz Kafka, whose literary works confuse, anger and frustrate. My favorite example is The Trial, published in 1925, with a great film adaption by Orson Welles released in 1962. In The Trial, a man is summoned to court, without knowing when or where to go, and put on trial without ever being charged or accused of a crime. Kafka perfectly captured the feeling of being trapped in bureaucratic processes with no reason or explanation. Unfortunately, that was exactly how I felt all weekend trying to resolve a conflict with my Verizon DSL service and my DirectTV service.

Last Tuesday, my home land line and DSL service went down. According to Verizon it was due to the storms in NY, though I found that hard to believe since I’m 3,000 miles away. But anyway, my central office was down. It came back up on Wednesday, but my DirectTV box could not connect to the internet to download OnDemand movies–a feature I use all the time.

On Thursday, I called DirectTV who trouble shot it for me and scheduled a repair person to be onsite between 8am-noon on Friday. I was pleased with the fast appointment and friendly techs at DirectTV, who always take good care of me. When the tech arrived on Friday, he walked in, looked at my Verizon D-Link DSL modem/wireless router, and said, “I’ve seen this at least a dozen times, that modem has port problems.”

At this point, I started to feel Kafka slipping in. I consider myself more technical than the average person, but when the DirectTV tech started explaining to me what was wrong, it sounded like the teacher talking in a Peanuts cartoon:  blah blah blah, blah blah-blah. None of it made sense. Home networking has now become far too complex for anyone but a network engineer.

The crux of the problem is that when the Verizon central office went down and came back up, they used a default configuration that included blocking the port the D-Link modem needed to connect to DirectTV. There was also an issue with the way this modem refreshes IP addresses. While the DirectTV tech was still there, I called Verizon tech support and asked their help in resolving the issue. They immediately said it wasn’t their problem and there was nothing they could do. I handed the phone to the DirectTV tech, who explained the problem in terms beyond my comprehension…unfortunately also beyond the comprehension of this tech support guy in India. The phone call lasted over 2 hours. The Verizon tech didn’t kn0w how to configure ports, and was using a public website for instructions, which was years out of date (it gave procedures for DirectTV using a software version number that hadn’t been supported for 5 years).

The DirectTV guy apologized, said there was nothing else he could do (he replaced my box, the cables, and everything else just to be sure), and finally left when the Verizon tech hung up on us. I called Verizon back, and was told I needed to talk to Level 3 support and would have to pay for that. Then I hung up in disgust.

The DirectTV guy told me to buy another DSL modem and the problem would go away. I didn’t want to do that since I’ve already paid Verizon for the D-Link modem/router, and Verizon refused to send me a different model.  But Saturday I broke down and went to Best Buy and bought the only DSL modem they had, from Actiontec.

Sunday morning it took 3 hours to setup the new modem, requiring another 1+ hour call to Verizon India. Once the new modem was finally connected, DirectTV instantly connected and began downloading OnDemand movies. The Verizon tech even said himself that the Actiontec was a much better modem than the D-Link and had no connectivity problems with other company’s equipment.

So the problem that started on Tuesday was finally resolved by lunchtime on Sunday, after probably 8 total hours on the phone to tech support, a few smart agents, and a few clueless agents with little or no English skills. While I’m glad the problem is fixed, I’m frustrated as hell that I buy my Verizon and DirectTV service bundled through Verizon, yet Verizon provides modems that don’t support DirectTV, and seem clueless and uninterested in fixing the problem. And to charge extra for level 3 support to fix your own equipment problem is totally unacceptable.

So, in my spare time this week, I’m shopping for a new internet provider. Verizon is the only “traditional” carrier here in the mountains where I live, but there are some satellite companies offering service I need to investigate. In fact, DirectTV is going to begin offering phone and internet via satellite in my area soon, which I may have to wait for.  When you drag a customer through a process that can only be described at Kafka-esque, you have to expect a lot of customer churn. And I’ve reached my limit with Verizon.

Thanks for reading.

Lessons Unlearned Radio Tour: Customer Service is a Hot Topic Coast to Coast

This week I completed my Lessons Unlearned radio tour of North America. Over the last few weeks, I’ve done 14 interviews with large and small radio stations in such diverse locations as Boston, Virginia Beach, Colorado Springs, Des Moines, Detroit, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. Some of the interviews were syndicated, broadcast all over the c0untry. While some of the shows were business oriented, and we talked about topics like enterprise CRM, tech trends, why most startups fail, etc., the majority of the interviews were with morning “drive time” DJs who just wanted to entertain.

Based on what I heard in these 14 interviews, customer service is a very hot discussion topic. In fact, my contract was only for 10 interviews, but so many stations replied to the interview request because they loved the topic that I ended up doing 14. Thinking back over all these interviews, which ranged from 5 minutes to 25 minutes, there were 3 themes I heard over and over again:

• Certain brands have a terrible public perception for service, deserved or not. Bizarrely, three consumer companies came up in almost every interview, with DJ’s asking, “Why does this company hate customers?” These three are AT&T wireless, DirectTV, and Best Buy. There are definitely some brands on my “black hole of customer service” list (read the book to find out who!), but personally I have a great relationship with all three of these companies. I’ve been an AT&T customer since my first dorm room phone line in 1982, and an AT&T wireless customer since my first cell phone in 1997. DirectTV is the only satellite provider in my remote mountain area, and I love them. And Best Buy has bent over backwards to fix any problem I’ve ever had. I love shopping at Best Buy. But clearly these companies have some brand building to do.
• Phone support is painful. Another complaint I heard on almost every interview is about the endless wait times for phone support, the infuriating voice menus that never have the option you want, and the worst: the non-stop recording saying “Thank you for holding; your call is important to us.” Clearly, if the call were that important, the company would have more phone agents available. Other complaints included recordings saying, “Please listen to all options, menus have changed” when the menu hasn’t changed in 5 years, agents with poor English skills, and in general, bored,uninterested support employees. It pains me to hear these complaints with so much focus on the customer experience. Clearly, companies need to make some major investments in quality monitoring technology.
• Customers would rather churn than complain. I have a section in my book with advice for consumers when they encounter customer service problems. Nothing surprising really:  take a deep breath, speak with a supervisor, and if all else fails, write a registered letter to the CEO. But what I heard in these interviews is that no one is interested in fixing the problem, they seem on the edge of an explosion at any time, and would prefer to make a scene, trash the company on social media, and start shopping elsewhere. When I suggested that complaining was the only way to let the company know they had an employee needing additional training or mentoring, the reaction was usually the same: “Not my problem.”

While the New York Times has yet to call to say my book made it to their best seller list (I’m still waiting!!!), the timing of the book seems perfect. Customers have had it with bad service and poor experiences, and both patience and tempers are in short supply. Perhaps the most infuriating piece is how easy most of these problems are to fix: better training, CSAT tracking, linking customer experience to performance reviews, doing basic quality monitoring, and for heavens sake, dial in to your own voice system periodically to see how painful it is for customers. And as I say repeatedly in the book, if you truly love the customers, most of these problems evaporate.

All Channels Should Be (Somewhat) Equal–Even Social

We had a startup give an interesting demo at our Spring TSIA Vision Award contest, showing that a customer had a long hold time reaching service using the 1-800 number, so they Tweeted about it and got instant help. I wasn’t overly kind to the CEO when I gave my comments on his demo. Since then, I’ve seen 2 or 3 demos from multichannel vendors expanding more into social channels, and they show the very same use case:  a customer unhappy with service in one channel complains via a social channel and then the issue is instantly resolved.

It finally occurred to me why these demos irritate me so much, and here it is:  all channels should be created equal. My position on adding new customer support channels is that opening up a new channel is like dynamiting a hole in the side of your corporate headquarters:  you’ve just opened a new door for customers. You already have multiple doorways open for customers, and from a customer’s point of view, they should have identical treatment from you regardless of which “hole in the side of the building” they decide to enter. If you are giving amazing service by one channel, and horrible service by another channel, you either need to fix the broken channel or start bricking that hole up.

Social media SHOULD NOT BE the route customers can take when you mistreat them by traditional channels. To suggest there’s a secret back door to get around your policies and procedures…and your hold queue…only creates mistrust with customers, who will be convinced they can always do an end run around your policies.

The Service Revolutions demo that stuck in my craw was the perfect example. In the demo scenario, the customer was told there was a 20 minute hold time for a phone agent, but apparently there were plenty of social media agents sitting twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do because they immediately resolved the issue via Twitter. Let me be clear. When I’m running a call center, and phone hold times are up to 20 minutes, EVERY WARM BODY IN THAT CENTER will be taking calls, managers included…myself included.

Social media/social service providers, there are so many great use cases for interacting with customers via social channels, why do you keep showing customers using social service to avoid traditional service? That isn’t helping companies understand how to use the tools, and it immediately implies a hierarchy that cool, social savvy customers deserve faster service than your moribund phone-centric customers. This is not the message I want to send to any of my customers. Ever.

If you want to route some interactions differently, such as sending your premiere customers to the head of the queue, knock yourself out. Use telephony to recognize the customer and route the call, email or chat record differently. Use rules to set all incidents from a premiere customer at a higher priority. But don’t arbitrarily prioritize an entire channel over another. You are setting a bad precedent.

How to Stream Training and Support Videos to Any Device? Ooyala to the Rescue!

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking with Caitlin Spaan, VP of Marketing for Ooyala, a very cool company enabling streaming video content delivered to iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Facebook, YouTube and more. I’ve published a lot of research over the last 2 years on mobility and video in service, and I’m starting to receive more questions from TSIA members about how to get started in this area.

Streaming video has several use cases for service. For education services, shifting from classroom training to OnDemand video training requires a lot of work not only to create the video content, but figure out how to deliver it to customers when they want, on the device they want, with high quality and consumption tracking. For support services, tutorials and “how to” videos are an excellent way of increasing self-service success–let’s face it, Gen Y customers are unlikely to search your knowledgebase or read your FAQ list. The mobile aspect of this is important, because early adopters created some fun online video sites using Flash, which of course isn’t consumable on popular mobile devices. Whatever content you decide to make available to customers must be accessible across all the flavors of mobile devices. There is no faster way of alienating a customer than to say, “Here’s all this great online content, but you can’t view it because you have a droid.”

Ooyala to the rescue. This Silicon Valley-based company enables content management and streaming of online video solutions for multiple audiences, including media companies (ESPN, Miramax, US magazine) and brand companies (Sephora, Victoria Secret, REI, Dell). On the brand side, Ooyala is working with companies to deliver training and support content, including makeup tips and “how to” videos for Sephora (who needs RuPaul’s Drag U?), video tutorials from REI on everything from fixing a flat bicycle tire to getting started kayaking, and Dell, who is using Ooyala as a video solution for sales (product overviews and feature demos) as well as support tutorials:

We are seeing companies get started with service videos on YouTube (including HP’s stellar YouTube channel, which I mentioned in my book, Lessons Unlearned), and that is a great place to get your feet wet. But when you want more control over the video streaming, including charging for content (key for education services) and/or inserting paid ads into content, a solution like Ooyala is required. Just to show how dedicated Ooyala is to customer success, their Senior Vice President of Customer Success is none other than longtime SSPA/TSIA board member, Dave Hare, a Silicon Valley service legend, who ran service operations for PeopleSoft, Oracle and Symantec before joining Ooyala.

If you are ready to take your service video strategy to the next level, check out Ooyala. With the broadcasters, publishers and consumer brands already using the service, this company knows all the ins and outs of successfully leveraging video, and they can help you define and execute your cross-device video strategy.

And as always, thanks for reading!

Dealing with Difficult Managers: Applying the 4 Employee Types to Managers

Yesterday I did a webcast about my new book, Lessons Unlearned. In the book I talk about the four personality types common in support, and how to manage and motivate each type. When I covered this material in the webcast, someone in the audience asked this question: do you have advice about working with different manager personalities? What a great question!

I’ve had some amazing managers over the years. Judy Walden, who believed in me more than I believed in myself, and Dean Wortham, who paid me a huge compliment by saying I had one of the biggest funnels (ability to process multiple streams of content and tasks) he had ever seen. But I’ve also had my fair share of horrible managers. Nitpicking, condescending, mean spirited, hysterical…I’ve worked for some real jerks.

Let’s take the 4 personalities from the book, and see how they would apply to managers.

• The Slammer. This manager seeks results, and sometimes cuts corners to get there. With his eye on the prize, he tends to minimize the effort involved in some tasks, and overlook details along the way. On the positive side, this type of manager should have an open communication style (some may say blunt), so you always know where you stand, and have very clear goals and directives. Under pressure, this manager will tend to steamroll to get the results he wants. If you have a Slammer for a manager, look to him or her for priorities, and if you happen to be a very analytic person, you may bump heads when you want to analyze more details before acting. Learn to commit, make a decision and go for it, and if you are wrong, the good news is The Slammer tends to view failure as a learning step along the way, not a career ender.
• The Geek. This manager loves technology, is enamored by complexity, and in extreme cases, can get stuck in analysis paralysis before making a decision. The Geek is a great management type in technology companies because they are eager to share their learnings and expertise. However, they may not be incredibly patient with people who take longer to process new information than they do, and they may clash with “Slammers” who value results over process. If you work for a Geek, take the opportunity to hone your technical skills, but try to find an area to specialize in that isn’t a pet area of your manager–you may end up in competition to show who is smarter.
• The Socialite. Socialite managers are fun, as they are great communicators, treat employees as people first, and work at having positive team dynamics. But just like support tech Socialites who may spend too much time on the phone with customers, Socialite managers may over communicate, sometimes wasting employee’s time…especially extreme Socialites who over-share personal details and spend too much time gossiping (a fun manager to have, but not so great for getting the job done). The Socialite manager may value satisfaction way more than productivity, which can be irritating for Slammer employees. With their strong interpersonal skills, your Socialite manager probably has a wide circle of friends or acquaintances across the company, so look at this as an opportunity to meet lots of people outside of your own organization and begin to raise your own visibility across the enterprise.
• The Creative. Let’s be clear–with the Creative’s pushback on policy and questioning of every procedure, you don’t see a lot of Creatives move into management roles, they typically pursue a technical path. However, if you work at an early stage startup, you are likely to have a group of Creatives running things–they tend to be innovative founders of cool technology companies. Working for a creative has pros and cons. On the positive side, every day is adventure, if you are able to roll with the punches and you thrive on change, having a Creative for a boss is terrific. However, if you are a Geek or Slammer and like clear direction and defined processes, the “seat of your pants” approach may make you insane. If your Creative boss makes you crazy, establish a special project or topic area that you have full ownership for, so at least one area of your job has consistency and measurable results.

The key here is that all of us–employees and managers–need to become comfortable working with different personality types. There will always be co-workers and managers who push your buttons, but if you try to understand the cause of the conflict, you can learn to live with the discomfort. As a self-professed Slammer (you have to read the book to find out how I was diagnosed as a Slammer), I have been driven nuts over the years by managers with analysis paralysis who couldn’t make a decision, and by creative types who want to discuss options instead of take action. Both types taught me more self-control and patience, and projects tended to flow more easily when I put a bit more thought up front instead of plowing ahead. The sad truth is, the person at work who frustrates you the most is probably the person from whom you can learn the most.

Thanks for reading!

My First Book, Lessons Unlearned, Is Officially Launched!

This week I get to put a big check mark next to an item on my bucket list: become a published author.  This has been a dream of mine since childhood, and even though I’ve been publishing 300-400 pages of research reports every year since 2001, a book is different. And this week that dream came true.

My first book, Lessons Unlearned, was launched this week at our Technology Services World Conference in Santa Clara, and this morning I gave a keynote highlighting sections of the book for TSW attendees. Monday and Tuesday evenings I spent on the Expo Solution Stage, signing copies and answer questions. It has been a lot of fun.

I’ve been calling Lessons Unlearned a “memoir-based tell-all book” about my 25 years in customer service. It is definitely a memoir, and it is definitely filled with gossip from Silicon Valley and the world of service. But I’m hoping many of you will see it as a resource, especially for customer service professionals. God knows I have screwed up many, many times over the years, and hopefully by reading this book, you can learn what I’ve learned without having to screw something up to glean the knowledge. There are a million books out there on how to be a sale person, or a developer. But you don’t see much on the subject of how to be a high performing service technician or service manager. Well, now there is a book on the subject, describing my approach to customer management and employee management, with tips on hiring, coaching, motivating, and writing reviews for employees.

Though clearly the book is written as a business book for the service industry, but it is also written for customers. I believe if customers understood how support works, the metrics that drive us and the cost associated with giving good service, they would not only have more appreciation for the service professionals they encounter, but also better understand the support process and maybe even help it move along more efficiently. If nothing else, I hope consumers who read the book take this point away: good service is worth paying for.

Lessons Unlearned talks about more than customer support. From my years working for high tech firms, I have chapters on knowledege management, and how to select and implement enterprise technology. I also have a chapter called “advice for startups,” with a list of challenges I see small companies struggle with on their way to becoming big companies. In my 12 years of being an analyst, I have worked with some of the most messed up companies ever created… but I’ve also worked with some incredbly successful firms…and quite a few who didn’t succeed financially but were filled with brilliant people and ideas. I tried to capture the best approaches for all of these experiences and include them in the book.

For all your technology marketing folks, you should definitely give the chapter on “working with industry analysts” a read. In it, I discuss the realities of “pay for play” in the analyst world, as well as give advice on working effectively with analysts, how to get a briefing scheduled, and how to shape that briefing for the maximum benefit of all involved. I’ve never seen a book address this topic, and am already getting feedback from our partners who have read the book along the lines of, “Thanks for confirming my worst fears.”

The hardcover and electronic versions of Lessons Unlearned are available on Amazon. For multiple copies you can receive volume discounts by purchasing through TSIA.

I’d like to thank the TSIA team for all the help in making Lessons Unlearned a reality, in particular, our tireless editors Suzanne Hite and Suzanne LaBounty, who gave up many nights and weekends to meet editing deadlines for the book.

Thanks for all the kind feedback. I look forward to answering all your questions about Lessons Unlearned!

TSW Best Practices Opens with my Innovation Tour!

TSIA’s Technology Services World Best Practice Conference kicked off today at the Santa Clara Conference Center. The conference opened at 12:45 with my Innovation Tour. The tour is a presentation of all the finalists in the Spring 2012 Recognized Innovator Awards, which are presented to partners of TSIA at our Spring and Fall conferences. Partners submit applications for consideration, and case studies documenting business results are required. Winners are selected by a panel of TSIA members and industry experts.

The content for TSW 2012 Best Practices focused on “Defend, Optimize and Innovate,” allowing member companies to improve core operations while looking for new approaches to streamline operations and generate incremental revenue. Technology firms cannot accomplish these initiatives alone, and the Recognized Innovator Awards showcase the role TSIA partners play in enabling the success of today’s global service organizations.

Following are the award categories and finalists:

Innovation in Products: Innovative products that enable service operations to better compete through means such as increased productivity, cost reductions, increased revenues, improved customer satisfaction, or improvements to other key performance or financial metrics. The Finalists are:

• Clarabridge, whose innovative text and sentiment analytics allow companies to accurately analyze customer feedback
• Coveo, whose Insight Solutions for Customer Service turn disparate data from all content sources into actionable insight about your customers

Innovation in Services: Innovative services that help companies to meet and exceed business goals for service operation by allowing partners to manage specific areas of the business. The Finalists are:

• ServiceSource, whose suite of cloud applications and managed services better connect and automate clients’ recurring revenue ecosystems.
• SYKES, whose new Sales Assist offering blends proven support program excellence with sales program goals to create a new revenue stream for clients.

Innovation in Consulting: Innovative consulting services that help technology firms meet and exceed business goals. The Finalists are:

• Value and Pricing Partners, whose TPS Pricing RapidAct™ provides PS leaders with guidance on their rates position relative to peers, and how to immediately improve rates performance to drive bottom line results.
• Verghis Group, who designed a new approach to metrics, based on research from fields as diverse as aquaculture, championship weightlifting, traffic engineering and firefighting.

The winners will be announced on Wednesday during the closing awards ceremony. Hope to see you there!

Social Dynamx Launches: Social Customer Service Designed for Large Enterprises

I was lucky to get a pre-brief of one of the most exciting new company launches I’ve seen for some time, Social Dynamx. Based in Austin, with leadership whose background includes executive roles at Siebel/OracleCRM  and Sigma Dynamics (one of the best offer management platforms ever invented, acquired by Oracle in 2006), this company has built a social customer service platform designed for large enterprises. The company officially launched this week! Here’s a link to the press release.

There are some very innovative features in the Social Dynamx platform, including:

• Role-Based User Interface. Role-specific UIs designed for agents, supervisors and managers, giving each the features and access levels they need for their individual responsibilities.
• Automated Prioritization and Matching. Social Dynamx’s proprietary algorithms score posts for relevancy and actionability. Then posts are matched in real time and auto-assigned to the most appropriate skill group. Agents can quickly identify and respond to high-priority issues first and fast.
• 100% cloud based. The platform’s open architecture means it’s easy to integrate with your existing investments in CRM, knowledge management, social listeners, peer-to-peer support communities and business intelligence systems.
• Advanced Conversation Management. Go beyond posts and start having conversations. Social Dynamx supports advanced conversation management so agents can respond, thread, split, de-dupe and unify conversations so customers receive the attention they deserve and expect.
• SLA-Based Metrics. Stop treating social media interactions lack second class conversations. Social Dynamx delivers comprehensive real-time metrics across agent and workgroups so managers and supervisors have immediate insight into KPIs. Use out-of-the-box metrics, or export and build your owns.
• Enterprise-Grade Workflow. TSIA members are very process oriented, and I was thrilled to see that the platform delivers customized workflows so you can assign, re-prioritize, flush, re-assign, audit and report on every post and conversation.
• And more…

Congratulations to Social Dynamx on the launch! The company is already engaged with multiple TSIA members, and I look forward to sharing customer case study examples as they emerge.

For those of you attending Technology Services World, I’m pleased to announce that Social Dynamx will be participating in our Service Revolutions showcase on May 9th, in which the audience watches live demos of bleeding-edge tools for service and votes for their favorite. I’m looking forward to everyone seeing Social Dynamx in action!

Thanks for reading!

Christmas comes early: Lessons Unlearned has arrived!

Yesterday I had an opportunity to do something few people ever have the opportunity to do, and you only get to do it once in your life: I opened a big cardboard box to lay my hands on the hard cover edition of my first book, Lessons Unlearned. After 18 months of writing, editing, rewriting, reviewing and editing, and rewriting some more, then the endless tedious reviews and tweaks for layout, to finally hold the actual book in my hands was incredibly rewarding. I was down in our corporate HQ in San Diego for internal meetings, and there were boxes of books everywhere in preparation for the official book launch at Technology Services World on May 7th. I signed a few hundred books to be sent to press, industry gurus and partners, and while my penmanship may leave a lot to be desired, I loved it.

John Ragsdale and Cindy McComb, TSIA's Sr. Director of Marketing, open the first box of Lessons Ulearned.

Lessons Unlearned follows my career from my early days at JCPenney, through my years working for Silicon Valley CRM and KM vendors, to the last decade-plus as a technology analyst. The book documents the lessons I learned along the way, and hopefully these lessons will save some of you from having to make all the mistakes I made trying to figure everything out! My intent was to make the book broad enough to appeal to an audience larger than just customer support techs and managers.

• For consumers, i.e., the general public, understanding how customer service operates and the metrics service operations use to determine success can help you understand how to resolve issues in your favor. I have a section on what customers should do when they encounter poor service, and clearly that’s advice every one of us can use.
• For customer support, I’m hoping the first 3 chapters of the book can serve as a new employee manual, and/or a guide for new support supervisors or managers. These chapters outline all the key metrics used in support, and how to balance cost, quality and operational metrics. I also have chapters on stewardship towards customers, and common employee types and how to manage and motivate each type (something I seriously wish I had understood in my early days of management).
• For technology buyers, I have chapters on how to select technology–without using an RFP–and the importance of process over technology when it comes to project success. I include 2 examples of companies (names removed to protect the guilty, of course) I’ve done projects with whose processes were so broken you will shake your head in disbelief.
• For technology vendors, I do a deep dive on working with industry analysts, including how to get the briefing, how to structure the briefing, and an inside look at how analysts operate. I include a very frank discussion about the reality of “pay for play” in the analyst world, and I even have some fun lists of pet peeves from analysts about vendors, and pet peeves from vendors about analysts.
• For knowledge workers, I have a chapter on the importance of knowledge management (including a TSIA member case study), and discuss the reasons why knowledge management projects fail, and how to prevent becoming a failure statistic.

In addition to this, you will find lots of personal stories and behind-the-scenes gossip from Silicon Valley. While I hope to educate consumers about customer support, and help service organizations increase service levels, I also want to entertain the readers of Lessons Unlearned, so hopefully there are plenty of things to give you a chuckle along the way.

I hope to see all of you at the Santa Clara Convention Center May 7-9 for TSW. All attendees will receive a copy of the book–they will be available at all the partner booths in the Expo. I’ll be on the Solutions Stage during Expo hours Monday and Tuesday evening to answer questions and sign your copies of Lessons Unlearned. Hope to see you there!