No sooner had my story on Dimension Data's 10th annual "Call Center Benchmarking Report" appeared in yesterday's 1to1 Weekly than I received another call center survey -- which, as opposed to the Dimension report, seems to indicate that call center-related satisfaction is improving.

The "Contact Center Satisfaction Index 2008: How Call Center Customer Satisfaction Impacts the Bottom Line," by CFI Group North America CEO Sheri Teodoru and coming out today, finds that call center c-sat gained 3 percent over last year, scoring 72 on the index's 100-point scale. A three-point improvement is admittedly not earth-shaking, but in today's climate it certainly does count for something.

But, not to put too fine a point on it, what?

Continue reading "The Call Center Cha-Cha" »

Posted by Kevin Zimmerman at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Forrester Research's 2008 Financial Services Forum, being held this week in New York City, is in part taking a look at how financial service firms measure the quality of the customer experience they provide, and whether or not their approach has been successful. According to Forrester's vice president, principal analyst Bill Doyle, the answer is: not so much.

Continue reading "Seeking Customer $atisfaction" »

Posted by Kevin Zimmerman at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Years from now, when our children ask, "What did you do in the mobile revolution, Daddy?" we may find ourselves saying something like: "Uh ... I was waiting for it to actually happen."

That was the somewhat surprising theme at last week's Mobile Marketing Forum in New York. On the one hand we heard outgoing Mobile Marketing Association president Laura Marriott say that about half of the world's population -- 3.3 billion people -- are mobile subscribers, compared with 1 billion worldwide Internet users. On the other hand, we heard Mozes Inc. founder and CEO Dorrian Porter compare the mobile environment to the movie Groundhog Day, noting that each of the past several years has been breathlessly heralded as "The Year of Mobile" -- only to see those hopes dashed. (Amusingly, Porter started giving the same presentation on the Forum's second day.)

So just what is going on?

Continue reading "Still Awaiting the Mobile Revolution" »

Posted by Kevin Zimmerman at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The best ideas for a company's product innovation aren't always internal ones. In today's Marketing Xfactor, we share insights from this year's World Innovation Forum, where it was clear customer interaction breeds innovation. Do you engage customers and capture their ideas? Has a customer ever suggested something that made you stop and wonder why no one at your company thought of it first?

Posted by Jeremy Nedelka at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Widget-based viral marketing campaigns are still working on monetization and measuring success, but it’s hard to argue with what RockYou! has done in this space. The San Mateo, CA-based publisher and developer of applications and other social network services is the most successful widget maker for the Facebook platform in terms of total installations.

Now developing widgets for MySpace and Bebo, RockYou! hit something of a motherlode last fall with Sony Pictures' branded RockYou/Facebook game, "Zombies," which featured Resident Evil: Extinction as the theme of a contest within the game. "Zombies" allowed Facebook players to build an army by virtually "biting" their "chump" friends and converting them into zombie slaves. Through RockYou, Sony instantly put its message in front of “Zombies” players, anticipating only 10,000 participants—but actually reaching a million contestants.

Continue reading "Night of the Living Viral Applications" »

Posted by Kevin Zimmerman at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)