Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
A frontline measure of how government meets the needs of its customers is how successful it is in answering its telephones promptly, accurately and courteously – so states the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) in its August 2000 report on customer service. The report found that federal agencies need clear goals and committed managers.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Revenues Determine Rating ASPs Have Their Own Top 10 List – David Letterman popularized the Top 10 list. Now the ASP world is mature enough to have its own. IDC, the Framingham, Massachusetts global market advisory firm, decided to compile this list, which ranks the ASP providers by revenue in calendar 2000. This is the first time IDC has prepared this list ranking the burgeoning ASP market. ASPs have finally reached a maturity level with meaningful revenues, explains Meredith Whalen, vice president, ASP and Internet services for IDC. IDC analysts attempted to put together this list last year but the revenue numbers were too insignificant to be relevant.
Chris Pryer, Business Writer
Customer service is a term that rolls easily off the tongue of almost every corporate mogul you hear interviewed or quoted these days. They talk about the fierce competition they face in their chosen industry and that the distinguishing factor that separates the leaders in their field from the also-rans is how they service their customers after the sale. In the remote environment of eCommerce, it can be particularly difficult to maintain a satisfying relationship between the buyer and seller, whether it’s B2C or B2B. This has spawned a whole new generation of companies that specialize in helping other companies manage interaction with their customers over the Internet. Ziptone is such a company.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Even a Fortune 500 company can fail. All it takes is a decision to invest dollars, time and people in the latest and greatest technological wonder. Sure, an Internet-driven world demands that executives quickly take advantage of innovations that technology promises will give them a competitive edge. But they can reap the benefits without incurring the risks or investment.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Striving to be competitive involves tremendous risks. The timing must be right, and the resources must be available. It’s costly, and the return on investment might be low. In fact, the entire effort might fail. And someone will be held accountable.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
People are doing wireless today without having thought about it first, and now they have some real problems, states John Stehman, principal analyst with the Robert Frances Group. They can’t even support all the devices they have out there. They have five to seven different devices and the help desk doesn’t even know what some of them are. Wireless technologies are still experimental, and Thomas Tunstall, Ph.D. with KPMG Consulting, believes it’s difficult to know which applications will catch on and which providers will be successful. Wireless technology is changing, coverage is changing, and providers and pricing are changing. Users are trying to decide if applications will have value. To enter this world requires a strategy built on flexibility and minimizing risk; both are best accomplished by outsourcing.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Current communication providers will need to revamp their system to handle billing processes for wireless services. Thomas Tunstall, Ph.D., at KPMG Consulting LLC, explains that the revenue streams that have come from voice will increasingly shift to data. Traffic from applications data traveling through the Internet will be usage based, rather than minutes based.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Without a doubt, today’s competitive forces have pushed the role and importance of customer relationship management up to the top rung of the ladder to success for organizations. As it is so vital, it has become a specialized area and an industry in itself. Thomson Consumer Electronics, which manufactures electronic products for the well-known brands of RCA, GE and Proscan, came to understand in the mid 1990s that customer care is a separate skill and a trade apart from manufacturing. We are in the manufacturing business. We wanted to develop a partnership with a company that had expertise in managing a customer care center and call center, recalls Scott Medawar, Manager of Customer Care Operations for Thomson. They began outsourcing these strategic functions to Spherion in 1997. Prior to their agreement, Thomson had operated its own call center and had a relationship with Norell to staff the center (Norell later became Spherion).
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
The I Love You virus did very unloving things to the computers of email readers who couldn’t resist opening the infected note. The malicious message did billions of dollars of damage. And an avalanche of email messages brought down Yahoo in a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. These high profile events made companies realize the Internet is full of lurkers and some of them are evil people.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
New vendors around every corner. Mega deals. Dead dotcoms. And even some fallout from Y2K. They littered the year 2000 battlegrounds in the outsourcing arena. Gartner Dataquest’s Bruce Caldwell, senior analyst-outsourcing, recently completed reports and forecasts from his company’s surveys of end user wants and needs in the world of IT. He says the turmoil in the IT services marketplace this past year was a factor in a dip in the IT services revenue that had been forecasted for 2000.
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