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)

This week I was in Ottawa, talking to a whole group of government officials about the importance of customer centricity. But, you say, governments are monopolies, so they don't compete for business. And even if they did, they don't REALLY have customers anyway. But the surprising truth is, the principles around customer centricity are universal, and the government officials I addressed were just as interested in the topic as any business audience.

Watch the Peppers Unplugged video, "Should Governments Be Customer Centric?

Posted by Don Peppers at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We at 1to1 Magazine interviewed all 15 1to1 Customer Champions for this year's cover feature. They had many different stories to tell, but many seemed to approach their corporate and customer challenges in a similar way.

Continue reading "Dissecting a Champion's DNA" »

Posted by Elizabeth Glagowski at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“I’m passionate about customers. I always start with, how does that affect the customers?”

Those were the words of Sage Software President and CEO Sue Swenson yesterday during the opening keynote at Sage’s Insights partner conference. Swenson was emphasizing to partners how important customer relationships are to her, and to Sage.

I always love to hear that kind of customer focus, but it especially strikes a chord when someone at the C-level not only talks the talk but walks the walk. Because as we all know, an enterprisewide customer strategy can only succeed if company leaders believe in the power of customer centricity, communicate that to their employees, and deliver on it.

Continue reading "C-Level Customer Centricity" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of hearing John Maxwell deliver an engaging keynote on leadership at the Sage Software Insights partner conference. Maxwell is the author of several best-selling books on leadership, as well as the just-released Leadership Gold: Lessons I've Learned from a Lifetime of Leading.

I was especially drawn in because of two things Maxwell said that, to me, directly apply to customer strategy: 1) when your ability to lead grows, so does your business; and 2) leadership is all about engaging people—and without engaged employees customer centricity is not much more than big talk. “Your ability to lead will determine your effectiveness,” he said.

Maxwell discussed the five levels of leadership. Here’s an overview.

Continue reading "Leadership: A Customer Strategy" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 1:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)