For the Best-in-Class, the focus remains on improving efficiency and resolution rates while promoting the use and awareness of non-traditional service and support channels.

• Continue to share information across the organization. In search of a differentiated customer experience across all touch-points, the Best-in-Class need to share service and customer information with other functional units within the business. A third of the Best-in-Class are looking to improve data sharing and collaboration in the next 12 months. Organizations that were already sharing information across their organization were much more likely to improve loyalty (46% more likely) and satisfaction (30% more likely) over the previous 12 months.

• Continue to expand non-traditional channel usage. While 39% of the Best-in-Class indicate their customers are using more channels of support compared to 12 months ago, 50% would like their customers to continue to expand their use of multiple channels in the next 12 months. This can be accomplished by: Spreading knowledge of non-traditional channels via marketing / outreach programs; this capability is being prioritized by a third of the Best-in-Class.

A move to more proactive information delivery across service and support channels; while newer service channels offer a more cost-efficient medium to deliver service and support, they also offer more opportunities to capture and annex customer attention around proactive service and support information. A strategic shift around the use of community-based and social channels for proactive information delivery will not only enable greater channel adoption and adherence, but can also support proactive service issue resolution.

Nearly all the organizations polled by Aberdeen for this research project deliver service on multiple channels to meet and support their customer’ information needs. The Best-in-Class are further down the path in using newer service delivery media such as chat, social, and e-service, but continue to focus on the delivery of effective and valid service experiences, regardless of channel.

Moving forward, organizations are looking to invest in more real-time support delivery methods to enhance their core email and call center capabilities. As organizations investigate these new tools, they should consider the following rules:

• Consistency of information and experience across channels is key.

• The benefit of supporting a new channel should not be solely based on cost savings.

• Channel adoption should support a proactive and even predictive service strategy.

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While the Industry Average are seeing reasonable success in retaining customers, they still need to make significant strides to match the Best-in-Class in improving resolution rates at lower overall service costs. As a result, they need to:

• Make service a stand-alone business unit. Compared to 41% of the Best-in-Class, only 29% of Industry Average organizations have a stand-alone service business unit. Most of the Industry Average have service reporting directly to operations. Industry Average organizations with an independent service business unit saw better customer retention (87% vs. 80%) and cost management (1% decrease in 12 months vs. 1% increase) results compared to those where service reported to operations or other business functions. An autonomous business unit, with profit and loss responsibility, will look to understand and improve cost, operational and customer-focused performance with its strategic initiatives.

• Develop a single knowledge base for use by all service channels. While Industry Average organizations are further down the path of leveraging social, chat and other self-service support models than Laggards, these organizations trail the Best-in-Class in providing support agents with a single knowledge base to aid resolution. As a result, these organizations trail the Best-in-Class in resolution rates across voice (70% vs. 87% for the Best-in-Class), email (62% vs. 86% for the Best-in-Class), chat (64% vs. 67% for the Best-in-Class) and self-service channels (58% vs. 60% for the Best-in-Class). In the next 12 months, 43% of these organizations are looking to invest in a single knowledgebase for all support channels.

• Don’t discount training programs in the new multi-channel support model. Training of service agents around diagnostic, resolution, and escalation practices in a single channel environment such as the call center is vital, as seen in Aberdeen’s May 2011 Contact Center research, wherein leading organizations were 29% more likely than all others to have a periodic training regime. In a multi-channel environment, training can become even more vital to ensure the consistency of service experience and identify the best resolution path if multiple channels are required. Compared to 67% of the Best-in-Class, only 55% of Industry Average organizations focus on frequent and consistent training programs for their service agents.

• Focus on customer feedback management. Soliciting customer feedback after a service session may seem reactive, but really can boost a proactive service culture by revealing changes that must be made to improve service request handling. Best-in-Class organizations are 39% more likely (64% vs. 46%) than Industry Average firms to seek feedback after a service session. In addition, Best-in-Class organizations are 47% more likely than their Average counterparts to monitor customer sentiment and feedback proactively across the web.

Organizations with disciplined customer feedback programs were much more likely to improve customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty year-over-year, compared to those with ad-hoc feedback programs.

Learn more at Bella Mobile Field Service Management

Learn more at Bella Mobile Field Service Management

Before planning an all-out channel expansion strategy, Laggard organizations need to shore up resolution times and first-touch fix rates across the channels in which they operate. These organizations trail their Industry Average counterparts by a significant amount in areas of efficiency, cost, productivity, and customer retention, and can take the following steps to improve their performance:

• Capture and store service information at the point-of-service. Effective knowledge sharing can only begin once customer and service information is captured, managed and made available to all stakeholders. Currently, only 45% of Laggards capture and store service results at the point-of-service, compared to 62% of Industry Average organizations. Outdated information can lead to inconsistent customer request handling by service agents, thereby harming resolution rates and customer satisfaction.

• Develop standardized escalation procedures. Standardized escalation protocols can have a significant impact on resolution, productivity and cost metrics. Yet only 43% of Laggards, compared to 71% of Industry Average organizations, have these protocols in place. Laggards with standardized protocols in place have seen an advantage in cost management over the previous 12-months (4% increase in total cost) in comparison to those that don’t have them in place (6% increase in total service cost).

• Consider providing self-service scenarios to customers. As Laggards struggle to keep their service costs under control (5% increase over previous 12 months vs. no change for the Industry Average) they should consider increasing the amount of self-service information available to their customers. Currently, 52% of Laggards leverage self-service portals, in comparison to 62% of the Industry Average. Self-service information, while not applicable to all kinds of service requests, can minimize the burden on voice and email-based support channels.

• Dedicate a team to monitoring information available across all channels. Compared to 66% of the Industry Average, only 48% of Laggards have a dedicated team to ensure the accuracy and consistency of information across all channels. Those that have such a team see improved resolution / deflection rates especially across their e-service (38% vs. 33% for those without a dedicated team) and live chat channels (31% vs. 25% for those without a dedicated team).

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Many businesses today are not well designed to manage internet marketing strategies in an efficient way. A lot of them have a tendency to ignore how they can handle or handle direct advertising prospects. Creating an expensive and unique direct advertising campaign will all be worthless if you can’t handle direct marketing prospects. There are employees who are at times unable to respond to general enquiries made on their websites.

In case you do not handle direct marketing prospects, issues could happen in the workplace. Errors such as unable to brief staff on how calls must be answered, not understanding that they are running out of products, and so on can be a outcome of not knowing how to manage direct advertising prospects.

One with the few things you might do to handle direct advertising prospects is to make sure that the mailing has a response system that works well and is also simple to discover. Also assure that all other response systems like telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc is incorporated on the mailer.

If you are to handle direct advertising leads, prior to the direct advertising or article marketing campaign, brief your employees about how exactly they should deal with enquiries especially when they are on the switchboard. Callers shouldn’t be passed on from extension to extension as they may get easily irritated and result in a loss of a lead. Ensure that the staff knows all of the specifics of the products provided, and so on.

Manage direct marketing prospects by always keeping track of the electronic enquiry techniques including email addresses, and so on. Have a backup plan to implement when a mail bounces back. Having too many contacts could disrupt how you handle direct marketing prospects. Using contact management software could help you store the needed info. This will be useful when trying to get in touch with individual prospects offering you sufficient time to focus on the most essential prospects first.

By Phil Wainewright | December 27, 2011 | ZDNet

Looking back on 2011, what stands out most of all is that the cloud became mainstream. Cloud computing even got its own Gartner hype cycle, and while some aspects of the technology are still deemed to be in the early wave of the cycle, others are far beyond any hype. Indeed, SaaS is so well established today that Gartner positions it firmly on the ’slope of enlightment’, well on the way to achieving productive enterprise adoption. No wonder Oracle rushed to purchase RightNow as the year drew to a close, swiftly followed by SAP’s acquisition of Successfactors.

The Year in Review, the Year Ahead It’s extraordinary to look back at the predictions I made at the turn of the year to see just how far we’ve come. With hindsight, it seems self-evident that mobile and social would become core to enterprise software strategies, and yet a year ago, it was still a novelty to suggest either. The need to serve itinerant clients and tap into social information and activity streams has only served to reinforce the need for highly connected, cloud-centric computing stacks that are transforming the nature of enterprise software. It’s all part of what I’m now calling the move from fixed to frictionless enterprise — the cloud in its widest sense is becoming a platform for the evolution of new, highly interactive, hyper-connected business models.

Many enterprises struggle with this new need to operate in a connected world, and so it’s no surprise there have been many instances of cloud failure during the year. I predicted that many of these failures would be down to enterprises implementing the cloud badly, and there have certainly been few better illustrations of how not to run a cloud service than the example set by Sony. What has become obvious in the course of the year is that every enterprise has to be a public cloud provider in its dealings with customers, partners and employees (and indeed that Every SaaS provider runs a private cloud). If an enterprise is not prepared to rely on third-party infrastructure, then it has to invest in the skills and resources to do it well for itself.

There was a time when people used the term private cloud to describe IT infrastructure that follows cloud principles but is isolated from connections to the public Web. I believe that idea has been thoroughly discredited by now. As we learned earlier this year when it became known that RSA’s security keys were thought to have been compromised, the security of what’s inside your firewall is dependent on what goes on inside other people’s firewalls. We are all interdependent, and it’s not an option to cut yourself off entirely, because how then are you going to do business? The world is connected and burrowing through those connections comes software, as Marc Andreessen succinctly puts it, eating the world. If you’re not connected, you’re history.

As we move forward into 2012, that recognition of the pervasive nature of cloud technologies will engender a more mature attitude to cloud in the enterprise, one that aims to harness and manage both private and public cloud resources within a hybrid environment that leverages the best strengths of both. Cloud is no longer something ethereal and remote, but instead it touches and envelops every existing IT asset. Cloud has landed and must interact effectively with what’s on the ground — and vice-versa.
Which brings me to the one unfulfilled prediction I made last year that ‘IT management gets wired to the cloud’. If enterprises are to adopt cloud successfully, then having reliable tools for cloud governance is essential.

Learn about field service in the cloud at Bella Mobile Field Service Management

After some general information on the iPad, almost all of us decide to get one. But what really iPad?. wikipedia mention that ipad is tablet Pc that create by apple, for internet connection, game and other computer support.

ipad is not use stylus like any other gadget but use fingertip. IPad have multifunction of smartphone and laptops for mobile activities.

This series of products have an impact on other work IPAD while in use. The main different are :
1. There are three types of memories, which are 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB
2. Wifi, the whole world knows the importance of this feature wireless Internet access.
3. Specification 3G, what is 3G? 3 Generation is a family of standards for mobile communications with the specifications of the International Telecommunication Union, 3G allows simultaneous use of voice and data services and higher data rates

 Choosing an iPad
So, how will decide what is best for us, the other specification also affect the price. We can answer what the most iPad function for us, for internet connection and other Internet activities as a laptop, a movie or music player or as a “Kindle” that allow us to bring all our books in the library everywhere we like or as a GPS while traveling or find a good restaurant or destination. difficult to answer?

So the best choice we can all use this function optimally, without spending much money.
Apple ipad 32 GB wifi is enough for widespread use and optimize all iPad functions on daily activities for our live support and style, while 16 GB iPad,  will limitation soon after became a favorite gadget for us. Ipad 64 gb wifi  will optimize all function in long term.

By James Kendrick | December 15, 2011 | ZDNet

It is no secret I need a good keyboard on every computer I use, even if it is paired to the “consumption device”, iPad 2. I write several thousand words daily, and more of them each passing day on the iPad 2 with one keyboard or another. Today I am using the Logitech Fold-up Keyboard with the iPad 2, which may be the most portable full-sized keyboard available.
A full-sized keyboard is wider than the iPad 2 in landscape orientation, so most keyboards are slightly narrower than “full” keyboards. While the smaller keyboards can still be good for fast typists, there is no substitute for models with normal sized keys with proper spacing between them.

Use your iPad with Bella’s Mobile Field Service Software

The Logitech Fold-up keyboard uses a unique method to fit the wider keyboard in the integrated iPad 2 case. The keyboard is split down the middle and with a touch of a button the iPad 2 raises up on the integrated stand and slides the two keyboard halves out and inward until they form one full keyboard. The process is surprisingly easy and fluid, and while it takes two hands to properly open/close the keyboard, it is an elegant solution to expand the keyboard to full size.

The iPad 2 pops in the plastic tray easily, with the screen exposed. This would be a deal-breaker, but the Logitech Fold-up Keyboard can be used with the iPad Smart Cover to protect the display. When the unit is open for typing the cover is simply opened and dropped down the back of the Keyboard/Case/Stand.

The keyboard uses Bluetooth to connect wirelessly to the iPad 2. Once paired, the duo becomes a single unit that automatically connects as soon as the keyboard is opened. It turns off to save battery when closed for transport. The keyboard is very responsive and key travel is good. There are special keys for controlling iPad functions in conjunction with the Fn key, much like keyboards on laptops. The standard Mac Control/ Option/ CMD keys are present and can be used for many functions like copy and paste.

Use your iPad with Bella’s Mobile Field Service Software

A Connect button located to the side of the iPad when opened is used to pair the tablet and keyboard. There are three small LED lights beneath this button to indicate charge status, Bluetooth connectivity, and Caps lock status.

The iPad is easily popped out of the case for use as a tablet, which is a good thing as the tablet/case together is too heavy (~3 lbs.) for comfortable use as a tablet. Closed, the case is thicker than other keyboards which is logical given the folding/unfolding operation.

The Logitech Fold-up Keyboard is $130 and turns the iPad 2 into a laptop equivalent with its unique transformer keyboard. The unit is very sturdily constructed and serves as a stand for the display at a comfortable angle. It is the best choice for those who need a full-sized keyboard without compromise.

Use your iPad with Bella’s Mobile Field Service Software

Mobile card processing is the latest addition to the always evolving credit card industry, because these days, a lot of people are too busy and impatient about check transactions and they are already cautious about paying in cash, with wireless credit card transactions, customers can make payments anytime and anywhere they want to do so.Mobile card processing has fairly low processing charges and does not require a separate phone line for it to work, which saves a lot on overhead costs on the part of the business owner.Using mobile card processing during public exhibitions or events is also a good idea instead of accepting checks that might bounce when you cash it in.This technology is also great for customers who have already run out of cash but would still like to make purchases from your booth or stall.Lightweight and portable, these wireless and mobile card processing machines are very useful in helping the business increase its sales and revenue because it would be very difficult to miss out any business or sale opportunities when you can close the transactions by accepting payments on the spot.Also, customers would be more comfortable about the transaction as their information would n o longer have to be written down, which makes it vulnerable to thieves or might get lost.Whether you own a small business that is aiming to cut down on costs and take advantage of every sales opportunity as possible, or you own a big business that requires you to be updated of the modern ways to receive payments and accommodate the needs and demands of your clients, mobile card processing is, no doubt, the best option that you have for your business.

This is possible because the processing firm used is not one of the regular ones but one that is based on the Web, such as PayPal. All the business has to do is to connect the swiping tool, access the website of the processing firm and enter information by simply swiping the card. Actually, it is possible to enter the information through the computer keyboard but this will require a much longer time to do as compared to swiping the credit card in less than a second. Therefore, by swiping with the help of the portable Credit Card Reader, more payments could be processed within a specific period of time because each transaction is pretty quick. This is a great advantage when you are in a certain place other than your store or office because oftentimes your time is limited. Moreover, credit card numbers are quite long and it is easy to understand that manually typing the information into the computer is prone to error. Just a mistake in one digit will cause a problem in the prompt release of the payment to the merchant, which is certainly not good for business because it can severely affect cash flow.

Business people who often market their services and products in flea markets, trade shows and similar events may realize the importance of this device, especially those who have already experienced entering card information using the computer keyboard. The convenience of Card Processing with a simple swipe of the credit card is quite obvious when you compare the time it takes to accomplish the task, not to mention the much higher accuracy. Meanwhile, because the processing is through the assistance of web-based firms like PayPal, the fees to be paid by the merchant may in fact be lower compared to those charged by the standard processing companies. And there is no need to worry because customers do not need to sign up with PayPal for their credit cards to be process. In addition, fraud protection is offered through advanced ways of detecting possibly fraudulent transactions.

Learn more at Bella Mobile Field Service Management

While continuing to push on revenue opportunities from new service offerings, the Best-in-Class are also ensuring that they keep a strict focus on service contract management, the core contributor to service revenue (see the sidebar on page three). These leading organizations are focused on attaching a higher number of service contracts at the point of product sale which in turn drives increased predictability into revenue streams flowing into the business. While there is still significant room for improvement for these organizations at a 38% contract attach rate, they significantly outperform all other organizations who return a 21% contract attach rate. The impact of the nearly doubled attach rate can be quite significant as responding service organizations report that a 5% increase in attach rate can lead to a 9% increase in overall service revenue.

To achieve higher attach rates, Best-in-Class organizations rely on their dedicated service sales teams to sell service contracts, a strategy that has been shown to yield better improved results. These organizations are also much more likely than all others (50% vs. 32%) to provide their front-line service sales agents with incentives to increase overall attach rates.

Incentives are also used to boost contract renewal rates, a metric in which Best-in-Class organizations significantly outperform all other organizations (77% vs. 40%, respectively). In addition to the presence of a dedicated sales team and of renewal-based incentives that have been shown to impact renewal rates, the Best-in-Class are also equipping themselves with analytics and performance management tools to ensure a clear line of sight into renewal rates across different parameters. For example, while 72% of leading organizations track renewal rates by product, another 52% track renewal rates by customer types. As a result, these organizations are able to ensure that they are focused on renewing their high-value contract opportunities, which in turn can have a significant impact on service revenue.

Learn more at Bella Mobile Field Service Management