Weekend Max Effgen, March 14, 2009 Looks like a wet, some say typical, weekend in Seattle. Likely take in some St Patrick’s Day festivities and get tickets for the Mariner’s Opening Day. Stay dry. Continue Reading
Doing more with less Max Effgen, March 12, 2009 Increases in customers means increases in customer support. An effective tactic when starting a self-service initiative is to reassure Customer Support that the organization has to do more with less. Not less people, more support with the same number of people. During the bubble, it was because businesses would not… Continue Reading
More on Self-Service Max Effgen, March 11, 2009 If there is one constant driver for customer service, it is contact reduction. Every customer service group wants less contacts. Rarely is the solution obvious and customer service representatives (CSR) in good times and bad always seem fearful of their jobs. The idea or notion of self-service to improve the… Continue Reading
Self-Service Success? Max Effgen, March 11, 2009 Many years ago, a client had recently deployed a self-service initiative that was hearlded as a great success. The project that I was working on was going to be held to that standard. I decided that I need to talk to a few CSRs at the client to understand what… Continue Reading
Self-Serivce Max Effgen, March 9, 2009 Growth Through Self-Service Online self-service portals can become high-performance growth engines amid challenging economic times. This post on self-service in CRM has me reflecting on my past experiences with self-service. Too much for a single post, so this week will be dedicated to CRM self-service opportunities and challenges. Continue Reading
Happy Daylight Savings Max Effgen, March 7, 2009 With the rollover to daylight savings, I plan on taking advantage of the extra daylight to work on my photography. My portfolio site and this Google Gadget can be found at http://www.salmonbay.net. Snow is forecast for the weekend which normally means rain. This winter has been a much different story…. Continue Reading
Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner Podcast Max Effgen, March 6, 2009 This series from Stanford University (the wife’s alma mater) is excellent. In this recent podcast, Tony Perkins, Tim Draper and Michael Moe discuss the current market and its potential. Much needed positive views. Worth checking out and subscribing via iTunes. Continue Reading
Recent Reads Max Effgen, March 5, 2009 Three recent business books that I have read, enjoyed and recommend. The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr Summary: Carr argues that computing, no longer personal, is going the way of a power utility. Why I liked it: The historical perspective matches the current… Continue Reading
Thoughts on Project Success Max Effgen, March 4, 2009 I had a conversation recently with a friend and former colleague on the state of IT. A common theme was that for all the advances in technology, projects still fail at an alarming rate. This got me to think about two clients of mine. Both were large enterprise software companies… Continue Reading
Enterprise computing channels Max Effgen, March 3, 2009 The reality of enterprise computing today is not just the migration to the cloud. Rather, it is a range of IT options: First is within the enterprise’s data center, second is in a partner hosting data center, and third is in the cloud. What option is best? Not to sound… Continue Reading