Announcing Finalists for TSIA TechBest in Adoption: Citrix, Compuware, Coveo

Each Spring I launch the TSIA Member Technology Survey, which tracks adoption, satisfaction, and planned spending across 24 categories of tools and services common within service operations. The survey reveals which solutions are most popular with TSIA members, and it is interesting to find out which vendors see growing adoption. One thing is certain: When the percent of members using a particular solution sharply rises, it indicates that provider has the right messaging, the right tools, and the right price for technology service organizations. Proven success within the TSIA membership means the solution meets the business needs of users, is delivering value, and doesn’t require extensive implementation or customization to be effective.

Comparing the results from 2012 and 2013, the three TSIA partners that saw the largest increase in member adoption are Citrix, Compuware, and Coveo. These three firms represent the finalists in the 2013 TechBEST Best in Adoption Award and will be interviewed in the TechBEST Showcase that opens Technology Services World today in the EXPO Theater. The partner with the highest year-over-year gain in adoption will be named the winner during the closing Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, October 23.

• Citrix is transforming how people, businesses, and IT work and collaborate in the cloud era. The Citrix GoTo cloud services portfolio powers mobile workstyles allowing companies to work with anyone from any-where. With GoToAssist, companies are able to deliver amazing support experiences and maintain maximum uptime of people, their devices, and apps. GoToAssist seamlessly integrates web collaboration with technical support and remote monitoring tools to remove support complexities, drive efficiencies, and reduce costs. Using all three capabilities together makes it simple for support professionals to identify, ticket, and quickly resolve issues. Citrix also offers other services purpose-built for collaboration and remote access that include GoToMeeting, GoToTraining, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC, Podio, and ShareFile. Learn more at www.citrix.com.
• Compuware Changepoint allows organizations to maximize professional services profitability and maintain a focus on effective product decisions and delivery. Changepoint’s PSA solution includes powerful business analytics and mobility, providing total operational visibility and control over the services portfolio. Services organizations can manage every aspect of their business with Changepoint, from customer acquisition, to services delivery, through to project financial control. Changepoint customers achieve strong margins, manage projects and resources with greater efficiency, deliver a competitive product and services mix, and maintain top-line revenues and bottom-line profitability. Examples of Changepoint customers include Altum, Circle Software, Innovaost, Kana, Patheon, Priocept, Sage, Steria, and Ziggo. Learn more at www.compuware.com.
• Coveo makes companies more relevant and responsive to their customers by providing technology that delivers, in real time, the most relevant, context-aware information for every employee and every customer. Coveo’s revolutionary Search & Relevance technology takes knowledge management to a new, more relevant level by securely connecting with and harnessing an organization’s big, fragmented data from any combination of cloud, social, and on-premise systems. For example, with Coveo for Salesforce, case-relevant knowledge from anywhere (social, on-premise and cloud-based systems) is presented directly into the agent’s context, related to the case at hand: solutions to similar cases, knowledge articles, relevant communications, even experts who can help. Technology companies including Deltek, EXFO, Tokyo Electron America, and SunGard use Coveo to inject more relevant knowledge into customer service interactions, personalize online experiences, and radically boost knowledge management initiatives. Learn more at www.coveo.com.

I’ll be intereviewing the finalists today at 11:30 in the Expo. Hope to see you there! And as always, thanks for reading!

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Announcing TSIA TechBEST Finalists: Citrix, DB Kay & Associates, MARKETii

According to the TSIA Benchmark, customer satisfaction with enterprise software averages 4.2 on a five-point scale (with 1 representing very unsatisfied and 5 representing very satisfied). It is troubling, then, that the satisfaction scores for the 24 categories covered in the TSIA Member Technology Survey range from a low of 3.29 to a high of 3.96—all are under the industry average of 4.2. However, if you look at individual satisfaction scores by vendor, multiple bright spots emerge. In fact, multiple partners received scores above 4.0, with one partner scoring an average of 4.44, well above the industry average of 4.2. The three partners with the highest satisfaction scores are named finalists in the TechBEST Best in Satisfaction Award.

Today at the Technology Services World Conference, I interviewed the TechBEST Best in Satisfaction finalists in the Santa Clara Convention Center theatre to kickoff Technology Services World:

• Citrix. Citrix is transforming how people, businesses, and IT work and collaborate in the cloud era. The Citrix GoTo cloud services portfolio powers mobile workstyles, allowing companies to work with anyone from anywhere. Its GoToTraining product is an easy-to-use online training service that allows you to move your live instructor-led training programs online. Reach more learners, collect real-time feedback, record and store your training sessions and more—all while slashing travel costs. With GoToAssist, companies are able to deliver amazing support experiences and maintain maximum uptime of people, their devices, and apps. GoToAssist seamlessly integrates web collaboration with technical support and remote monitoring tools to remove support complexities, drive efficiencies, and reduce costs. Using all three capabilities together makes it simple for support professionals to identify, ticket, and quickly resolve issues. Citrix also offers other services purpose-built for collaboration and remote access that include GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC, Podio, and ShareFile. Learn more at http://www.citrixonline.com.
• DB Kay & Associates. DB Kay & Associates, Inc., helps support organizations create sustainable knowledge programs. The firm consults and trains to drive best practices and sway internal stakeholders, reducing risk and accelerating success. DB Kay provides measurement frameworks that help organizations develop their team members and show value to their executives. They tailor their services to their customers’ specific needs, offering everything from short strategy sessions to hands-on program management. Whatever the engagement, they know they’ve been successful when they’ve transferred knowledge effectively enough that their customers no longer need them! DB Kay customers include Sage, IBM, Carestream, Riverbed, Microsoft, and NetApp. For more information, go to http://www.dbkay.com.
• MARKETii. MARKETii specializes in end-to-end customer satisfaction and service quality assessment and reporting solutions covering event-based and business relationship surveys via telephone and web surveys, along with mystery calling. MARKETii operates in over 25 native languages to over 85 countries. Reporting is via multilayer, real-time web portal and proactive summaries, action items, and recommendations. Advanced reporting comes with the aid of call recording, culture indices, NPS, Strategic Priority Analysis, Service Correlations, and tech support call-reduction analysis. MARKETii works with companies such as Hitachi Data Systems, Ricoh, HP, Extreme Networks, Agilent, and many more. The company has never lost a client since its inception! For more information, go to http://www.MARKETii.com.

Congratulations to each of our finalists, each of whom is clearly doing a great job in meeting and exceeding customer expectations, and creating excellent customer experiences. I will announce the winner of TechBEST Best in Satisfaction during the awards ceremony at Service Revolutions on Wednesday. Stay tuned for details. Thanks for reading!

Bringing TSIA’s Social Media Message to Asia Pacific

Next week I am doing a webcast for Asia/Pacific on leveraging social media for support. The event is sponsored by TSIA Partner Citrix Online and callcentres.net, a research, consulting, analyst and online publishing company dedicated to the Australian and Asia Pacific contact center and outsourcing industries. I hope all of my readers and our TSIA corporate and community members in Asia/Pac take this opportunity to tune in to a webcast in your timezone–Thursday, 2 September at 2:00 PM Australian EST (9pm PST on Wednesday September 1).

This webcast will cover the results our TSIA Social Media Survey, and much of the information has not been previously published. This is a fascinating, and as far as I can tell, completely unique data set, so definitely worth your time to attend. During the webcast I will cover survey data as well as the top FAQ’s for social media, including:

• Adoption growth of discussion forums 2007-2010
• Which department owns social media efforts within companies?
• What social support channels are most companies using, across discussion forums, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• How do you select the social media channels to support?
• What staffing is required for social support?
• Social media interaction volumes
• Basic support processes for handling social media channels

The moderator for the event is a leading voice in support practices in the Asia Pacific region, Dr Catriona Wallace, Managing Director of callcentres.net Pty Ltd and ACA Research. Dr Wallace is an expert in Customer Engagement and Employee Engagement and advises companies on service and employee strategies, with particular emphasis on contact center service channels. Dr Wallace has a PhD in Organisational Behaviour, which gives her great insight into consumer behavior and the impact of social media on the workplace. She is also funny as hell, so it should be an educational and entertaining webcast.

To register for the webcast, click here.

Hope to see you all online next week!