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
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
Integration requirements for CRM, Challenges and opportunities Max Effgen, March 2, 2009 Challenges and opportunities Integration outside the enterprise firewall needs to encompass the capabilities of the organization. Larger enterprises have investments in SOA and ESB providing them with new capabilities that can be utilized. Many organizations without these capabilities will find that standard point to point integration will more than meet… Continue Reading
Thoughts on the enterprise cloud Max Effgen, February 24, 2009 Computing is moving to the cloud. The names may change and the technology may be different; however, this idea is not new. See Martin Greenberger’s Essay dated 1964. Recall mainframe timeshares, application service providers, “on demand” or more recently the “as a Service” marketing tags. The current iteration, Cloud Computing… Continue Reading