Please feel free to use these Banners that our friends over at KMSM.CA (@kmsmca on Twitter) developed for us to show your support for Canadian Hero Fund (www.herofund.ca).
I was honoured to learn I received an invitation to attend the TEDxTO Conference (tedxto.com) that takes place September 10, 2009 in Toronto. There is going to be an amazing and diverse group of speakers at the conference (see http://www.tedxto.com/?q=node/2). If these speakers are of interest to you there are going to be venues setup across the city that will be broadcasting the conference- see website for more details.
A great video showing the functionality of the One Lap Top Per Child Computers:
charity: water – an amazing charity and a great marketing video:
Excerpt:
Charity is big business in this country. Canada has 84,771 registered charities that together reported donations of $10-billion in the last 12-month period for which statistics are available. This is five times the revenue of Tim Hortons
. More than 23 million people, or 84 per cent of the Canadian population over the age of 15, made personal donations to charities (and other non-profit organizations) and were apparently ready to give more – provided they could be persuaded that their money would be used productively. In one 2008 survey, 80 per cent of people cited a need for more information about charities; in another, 33 per cent cited a lack of confidence in them.
The question is: Can one of the tools of capitalism – professional scrutiny by investment analysts – give wary donors the information they need to make sound donations?
Article Continued At The Globe & Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/charity-industry-gets-some-needed-scrutiny/article1249026/
How To Increase Your Business Profits By Using Call Centers
If you are looking for a way to increase your profits by taking your business to another level, you can do so easily by outsourcing some of your work to call centers. Outsourcing today makes more sense than ever for businesses who want to provide the best customer support as well as increase sales.
Paying someone to answer your phone and make sales calls can be expensive for your business. You have to pay insurance costs such as workers compensation when you hire employees for your company. These costs can be substantial. There are also the insurance costs that need to be considered when you have anyone working on your premises.
In addition, having someone to answer questions around the clock can be even more expensive. But most customers today are used to services such as live chat support and 24 hour customer care. When they call a business for a quote on anything and get a recording, they will most likely hang up and try another business that at least has an answering service. If your business relies on sales, appointments, someone answering the phone to give quotes or deals in any way with customer service, you could be losing a substantial amount of money by employing people who work regular business hours and depend on a recording when they go out to lunch.
You will find that you not only save money by using outsourced customer service and calling centers, but that your business will grow. You will never have to worry about losing a customer again because someone in your office was not there to answer the phone. In addition, if you offer email support and live chat support, your customers will have peace of mind knowing that they can get the help they need whenever they need it.
Recently, I have read that Twitter of all things is apparently the cause of significant call center layoffs. It was stated that more people than ever are taking advantage of corporate Twitter sites to ask customer service questions, which means less traditional phone call inquiries (you can read the article here ).
And what is this I am hearing about ‘super users’? -people that enjoy products so much that they surf the web and online corporate communities, jumping at the chance to help their fellow users by answering customer service questions. From a recent tmcnet.com article:
Since last summer, Verizon has transferred much of the responsibility in certain divisions that require high levels of customer service to volunteers – people who have a passion for the wireless, Internet and TV technologies that Verizon peddles, and who like to feel useful. Sound strange? It is. But it’s also true. They’re called “super-users,” and they work through online forums that are gradually developing into self-sustaining databases where customers can go to answer all their questions.
Does this all mean that the end of the traditional customer service call center is near?
I don’t think so.
Don’t get me wrong, there are great self-service companies out there like Bazaarvoice and Lithium, and they have a place in this ecosystem, but I think people are forgetting to examine the other side of the spectrum and companies like Zappos.com – the reigning King of the customer service experience.
How does one explain Zappos.com’s success in this new self-help world? For gosh sakes they don’t even set limits for how long their agents can talk to callers, and I believe the longest service call they ever had was over 5 hours…..
My current thought is that there is a middle ground, and that appropriate and tempered call deflection is the key to success.
What I mean by this is:
Companies should take advantage of these new technologies, incorporating items like robust self-help sections to their websites, and they should also use communication channels like Twitter, live chat and email (which are usually more cost effective than voice support to deploy because of concurrency). But as is the case with Zappos, there is no replacement for the service that can be achieved through voice support. The experience is unparalleled, and for more complicated support issues it is the only viable channel that can be used to adequately understand and address a customers needs.
Although a lot of startups are finding the initial cost savings of self-service tools appealing, as these companies mature, if they hope to develop a long term and re-occurring customer base they are going to have to invest in multi-channel customer service which is anchored by traditional phone support. Simply put, customer’s expectations are higher than ever, and consumers expect a multitude of contact options so they can interact with a company in the way they feel most comfortable.
To conclude, I think self-service is here to stay, and I think it works amazingly well for simple customer services issues. In these challenging economic times, the technologies discussed will also help businesses to reduce their overall customer service expenditures. With that being said, call deflection can only be taken so far. For companies that care about their brand and their overall customer experience, there will always be a need and a role for the kind and caring customer service representative who is available to speak with consumers by phone.
Tim Peters
A blogging entry over at Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/lindsey-pollak/next-generation-career-advice/are-you-gen-y-considering-entrepreneurship-first-s
