Spoken Communications

Top 5 Call Center Trend Predictions for 2012

2012 will bring shifts to the cloud, to SIP, to at-home agents and show the big data winners

This year has seen a lot of changes in the call center space. Within an industry that is notoriously slow to change and embrace new technology, 2012 is going to buck that trend and show some major shifts in the industry. My predictions for 2012:

1. Shift from premise-based systems to the cloud. In 2010, experts were predicting a shift to the cloud. And so it has come to pass and will continue to pass in 2011. Forrester is making optimistic forecasts for analytics, cloud computing and smart computing, based on their tracking of 40 Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) vendors. Now that solid reports are available showing operating costs savings averaging 40% over five years, the only holdouts are those who have sunk too much into capital expenditures on newer infrastructure. Even so, many are dipping a toe into the cloud with hosted virtual desktops and other SaaS options.
2. Heightened speed of transition from TDM to SIP. The SBC (Session Border Controller) market grew by 45% in 2010, increasing that market to $271 million. SIP trunking is the primary service provided by these SBC adopters and will continue to be through 2012. Let's face it; IP hardware is more reliable and flexible than old-fashioned TDM ware, and with more call centers requiring data streams to support multi-channel approaches to customer service, TDM is no longer an efficient solution.  SIP is rapidly becoming the standard, and it carries cost savings benefits as well.
3. Technology winners will be providers of big data visualization. Analysts have estimated that 80% of business data is unstructured. Leaders in the trend towards big data will be those that can provide an analyst-in-a-box, with simplified data visualization that reduces the signal-to-noise ratio and provides curated, actionable information streams for the average user. While the specialized eye of a trained analyst can't be boxed, key data points required to make a decision can be. The frontrunners in the call center space will be those that can break and restructure the system of data visualization so that it can be used on a daily basis.
4. Increased adoption of work-from-home model. In a 2010 survey of contact center decision makers, Forrester found that 35% of companies had plans for expanding their home agent program over the next year. And those who had already adopted the remote agent model reported expanded skills recruiting, decreased attrition, higher productivity and lower infrastructure costs. The case has clearly been made for the remote agent model, and 2012 will see an expansion of at-home agents. And why not? Organizations can even make the argument that their at-home workforce is greener and more environmentally friendly than a brick and mortar center.
5. Return of focus to customer service over technology. While each trend listed above is a technology solution, what we will see more of in 2012 is technology enabling a return to customer-centricity. As more organizations adopt cloud and SIP technology, send their workers home to be happier and more productive and use big data to drive decisions, the ultimate result will be counterintuitive: more time to focus on the original value of the call center, which is the opportunity to provide cutting edge customer service that keeps customers loyal.

Welcome, 2012. It's going to be a fun ride.

The worst customer service fail of 2011

If you've ever feared a bad customer service incident going viral, don't read this; you'll have nightmares for weeks.

The blogosphere has been abuzz with the stunningly bad customer service one gamer received from a third-party marketing company charged with PS3 controller overlays. I wrote an overview of the kerfuffle from the PR point of view here and continue to add updates.

The quick summary: Dave (the customer) pre-orders a PS3 controller overlay, paying in advance in full with the promise of early December delivery. Early December comes and goes; no word. Dave emails Ocean Marketing to inquire about the delivery date (remember, he's already paid in full) and receives short email from Paul Christoforo saying only "december 17" without so much as a capital letter or period. Dave asks for more details. An increasingly condescending, bullying and punctuation-free series of emails ensues, with Chrisotoforo ranting at Dave, telling Dave to "put on your big boy hat and wait like everyone else" and "you think you speak for billions son your just a kid you speak for yourself no one cares what you think that’s why were growing and moving 20-50 thousand controllers a month."

Dave brings the email exchange to Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade and founder of PAX, who posts the content online and contacts Christoforo to cancel his booth at PAX. The internet explodes with critiques of Christoforo's unbelievably bad customer service.

What has made the debacle interesting to follow is the pure schadenfreude of it all--Christoforo, the most clueless of the clueless, had no idea that his simple customer service email exchange would become public. With every blustering defense he tried to make, he only made things worse. When his gaming contacts disavowed him, he called them names publicly via Twitter. When he got flamed, he changed his Twitter account, but internet gamers quickly discovered the ploy and posted his new account name.

When he half-heartedly apologized, it was only for underestimating Dave's and Krahulik's level of influence, saying "I underestimated you and its cost me a lot of trouble thousands of spam emails , a lot of personal bashing , and internet spam and trouble and just overall stress with my wife and newborn." Notice that he never actually apologizes for being rude or for the product delay, just for doing so to someone with influence. Even Geico jumped in on the fun, lightheartedly mocking the poor customer service with a hilarious Tweet.

Now, Christoforo and Ocean Marketing have become synonymous with ultimately bad, disrespectful and supremely ineffective customer service. There is a meme to this effect, and a Cheezburger page set up just to mock the hapless marketer.

There are quite a few lessons to be learned from the Ocean Marketing debacle:

1. Don't use third-party marketers with plagiarized sites. The Examiner ascertained that most of Ocean Marketing's site was plagiarized without credit from other sites. When you hire a third-party company, do your homework. Check references. This person is representing your company both to channel sales and to the public. Do your homework before farming out the face of your company.
2. Hire for the right experise. Christoforo was ostensibly a marketer and SEO specialist--why was he communicating directly with customers for customer service? While I agree that everyone in the company is in customer service, this guy clearly has zero skills and training in talking to customers. He may have been fine at sending out free units for review, but he should never have been allowed to interact with customers.
3. Don't hire anyone who can't communicate clearly. The fact alone that Christoforo has never sent an email that didn't contain prolific misspellings, missed punctuation and lack of coherent thought should have disqualified him from any communication position from the start. Claiming to have connections in the industry is one thing, but even if that were true (which, it turns out, it isn't), the lack of ability to communicate absolutely anything clearly should have disqualified him from both marketing and customer service positions.
4. Ethics matter. PR issues aside, it takes ethical integrity to build good customer relationships. Lying about one's qualifications would indicate that the person isn't qualified to handle either marketing or customer service.

While not everyone has the luxury of the candidate pool that Google has, it might be worth it to consider asking interview questions such as, "You receive this email from a customer who has paid up front for a controller overlay, but we just discovered the controllers are held up in China and won't be delivered before Christimas as promised. What do you do?"

 Hint: If the candidate replies with, "I'd go into a rant and blame him for being an idiot because I don't think he's influential and it's not my job to make nice with customers, anyway," don't hire him.

Boring is good: Using Big Data to Enhance the Customer Experience

Thanks to Altamont for the opportunity to speak in front of such an amazing group this afternoon! The theme of the talk was that current customer experience metrics aren't necessarily accurately measuring what the customer wants, which is:

• Did you hear me?
• Did you solve my issue?
• Was it easy?

 

Boring is Good: Using Analytics to Enhance the Customer Experience

View more presentations from Spoken Communications.

A better way to evaluate customer service on social channels

Is social media stealing customer care away from more valid callers in the call center? And is that necessarily a bad thing?

With the rise of social media has come a rise in customer expression through social media channels. Who could forget Dave Carroll's 2009 YouTube hit, United Breaks Guitars, now with over 11 million views. The ComcastCares Twitter team constantly monitors the microblogging site for any mention of Comcast, positive or negative, and offers customer care with "Can I help?" Foursquare and Yelp recommendations draw and repel customers at point of use.

Are social media channels drawing customer care away from the call center? And if so, what are organizations to do about it?

Michael Shrage recently made the argument in the Harvard Business Review that complaints made via social media are unduly pulling focus from the quieter customers who obediently call in to the call center as instructed. His argument stems around the perception that those who complain about a company publicly in social channels get better treatment than those who call in to call centers, even though their complaint might not be as pressing or as valid:

Consider the most obvious, and pernicious, perverse incentive: publicly tweeted complaints get faster/better reaction than calls or emails to the corporate customer contact centers. Social media circumstances invite organizations to prioritize indiscreet tweets over less transparent call center interactions. The squeaky tweeter gets the grace.

How smart are customer-centric firms that effectively train complainers to disregard or disintermediate their contact centers?

Disparity of training by channel

As a representative of both the call center space and the social media space, I had a mixed reaction to Shrage's analysis of the situation. It seems that there is an assumption that the agents who respond via social media are somehow faster and better trained than those who respond via the call center. If that is indeed the case, my question would be: why don't smart, customer-centric firms train their call center agents the same way they train their social media agents? There is no reason that a Tweet should get a different resolution than a call. If both channels feature efficient, expert staff, there should be no difference. So whose fault is that if it does?

I speak from personal experience: a few years ago, I had an issue with Comcast. After numerous, time-consuming calls (at least 20 minutes each) to the call center, I Tweeted my frustration. Within 10 minutes, ComcastBonnie responded and took my account information. Within an hour, she had fixed the problem and DMed me the solution. If the call center had been able to resolve my issue on the first, second or third call, there would not have been any reason to Tweet.

That would be the difference. Staff who monitor Twitter and blogs have typically been trained within the marketing and PR departments because there is the perception that these agents represent the public face of the company. Their words and actions are on public record, so attention is paid to their responses. And while this should be true for call center agents as well, it isn't. Agents are trained by customer service or worse, by sales. No one but the immediate supervisor ever hears the recording of the calls the call center agent handles. Even the customer can't obtain the call records and often is denied permission if she requests to record the call herself. By nature, the channel is veiled in secrecy--and often for that reason, can be frustrating for customers who are promised one thing over the phone only to be told there is no record of that the next time they call.

The message to organizations might be: don't want your customers Tweeting negatively about your product and service? Fix your product and fix your call center.

The channel matters

That being said, people DO use public social channels for complaints, and they don't always wait until after they've contacted the call center three times. One reason is because there is a well-founded belief that complaining in private (e.g. through calling an IVR and speaking with an agent) is often ineffective, time-consuming and frustrating, for some of the reasons mentioned above. And the truth is that if customers had a history of timely, effective problem resolution from contacting a call center, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If the call center worked more effectively, then people wouldn't dread it more than needles and mothers-in-law. But it doesn't, and they do.

Which leads me to reason number two for the use of social channels for complaints. I'm fond of saying that individuals gravitate toward their own preferred communication channels. My mom uses the phone for everything. I never use the phone; I use texting, Twitter and Facebook for 90% of my communications. That is why companies have added web chat to their service offerings--because we have figured out that some folks prefer that communication channel and will do anything to avoid making a phone call.

My point is that even if call center functions become 100% effective and as enjoyable as a champagne pedicure with a basket of puppies and kittens, many customers will still opt for Twitter first because it is their preferred communication channel. Should we give the channel lower priority because we already invested too much in call center infrastructure? Or because it requires new and different skills?

Fish where the fish are. If your customers are on Twitter, then your organization should be monitoring and responding via Twitter.

Which channel merits priority?

To answer the question of which channel should be given the highest priority, that can easily be answered with metrics: the channel that provides the biggest returns aligned with the organization's stated goals. If it is determined that loyalists and the target market is on Twitter and that the publicity and brand awareness that a good Twitter problem/resolution instance proves to increase Metrics A and B for type C customers, then Twitter should be given priority. If it's proven that the most loyal customers still use the call center, thereby increasing Metrics C and D, then call center callers should be given priority.

In short:

• Know your fans and detractors and know their preferred channels
• Train your call center agents in PR as carefully as you train your social media agents
• Listen to your front line call center agents--they will tell you what is wrong with the call center experience

Good robots vs bad robots: two cases of customer service automation

Good robots versus bad robots: in customer service automation, there are winners and losers. There is good customer service, and there is bad customer service. What makes for a good automated experience versus an evil one?

Cross-posted to Talk It Up

I write a lot about customer service here, especially as it relates to the call center. And I get a little tired of the all-too-fluffy blog posts on customer service that give vapid advice (Smile when you talk!) or simply recount a bad experience to illustrate the fact that, in fact, bad customer service exists.

We're aware that bad customer service exists and that good customer service isn't as easy as it looks. And one of the controversial aspects of customer service is the trend toward automation. Some users proclaim their hatred loudly and flock to sites such as GetHuman. Others... well, no one really sings the praises of a well-designed IVR or email 'bot, because when they are beautifully designed, they simply work as promised and let the user move on to focusing on more important tasks.

Over the last week, I had two experiences with automation in customer service. With one, the automation was evil: involuntary to begin with, and the organization prevaricated, blamed the user and required several inquiries and escalations to complete a basic process. With the other, the automation was so simple as to be practically invisible, anticipating the user's every need. What can we learn from each one?

Automation #1: Email list auto-add (Evil)

With the first experience, I was added to an email list for night club events taking place in the D.C. area. I'm unsure as to how I got on the list, since I didn't subscribe and the email in question is used almost exclusively for listener feedback from a podcast I produce. It's not even really my email; it's the show's email address. At any rate, I sought an unsubscribe button, since (a) I live 3,000 miles from D.C. (b) I don't frequent nightclubs and (c) I generally don't drink cocktails or spirits.

The first thing I did was seek an unsubscribe option on the offending emails. No such luck. But I was given the prominent option to forward to a friend.

So, grumpy at the extra effort, I was forced to email the organization to report the spam and to ask to be taken off the organization's list. What followed was a series of ill-mannered prevarications designed to make it extremely difficult for the user to be removed from the list. The organization responded, insisting that I use a nonexistant unsubscribe button. When I pointed out their newsletters not only do not have an unsubscribe button but that I'd never signed up in the first place, they insisted I had signed up for the list (!!)  and that they were unable to remove me. Only robots can add and remove customers? Evil!

My response pointing out the lack of an Unsubscribe option:

Their response - blame the customer for the automation mistake:

I reported the behavior to the organization's email service, as most services have regulations regarding spam and automated subscriptions. Also, it's unlikely that the organization was unable to manage its user list and delete users on request, and it did turn out to be untrue, as the representative at iContact was kind enough to point out: "As for adding and removing contacts, the sender does have those capabilities. If an iContact customer is claiming they are unable to perform this task please let us know so we can look into the situation."

After some discussion about the lack of an Unsubscribe button, the issue was resolved by the email service provider--but never by the organization itself.

What went wrong:

• Automating without consent. It is absolutely best practices not to subscribe a user to a list without explicit consent. Even if I had attended an event once, that does not equate to consenting to being added to an email list. Likewise, every email list message must provide a clear unsubscribe option; hiding behind "Update Email Address" is no excuse or substitute. And let's face it; it's a little sleazy.
• Arguing with the customer. I'm not a believer that the customer is always right; we're wrong all the time. But arguing is fruitless, especially with regards to simple transactions that occur every day. Best to make a polite apology and remedy the situation.
• Blaming the customer. Claiming that the customer's situation is her own fault is rarely helpful, even on the occasions when it is true. (Although in this case, it wasn't.) The best customer service agents err on the side of compassion in instances in which automation has failed. What most likely happened in this case is the organization either purchased or "borrowed" a list from some event organizer I had attended during my lst trip to D.C. and automatically added all the emails from it. In any case, moving toward a solution is better than placing blame on either side.
• Not solving the issue. I'm unsure why the organization insisted it was unable to resolve the issue even after its provider confirmed that it could, but I'm reminded that in the world of automated emails, one human being taking just a few minutes to provide service is all it really takes for a user to have a good customer experience.

Automation #2: Ordering delivery (Good)

In sharp contrast to the above experience, last weekend I had a seamless experience ordering a delivery dinner via the internet.

When I found myself too exhausted after a full day at TEDx Rainier '11 to make or seek food, a friend suggested 24hour delivery. I'm sure others use this site daily, but I almost never order food to be delivered, so I wasn't sure where to start! But the site made it effortless, seamless and simple, just as every customer experience should be.

First, I did a search for restaurants that delivered at that time of night near my location. Then, I checked the ratings and selected an Indian restaurant that had good vegetarian reviews. As it turned out, clicking on the restaurant name brought up an interactive menu, on which the user can click on items to instantly add them to an immediate order. Likewise, each item has the option to include special instructions, such as "extra ketchup" or "medium spicy."

Even better, after the order is complete, there is the option to review, opt to pay in cash in person or via credit card; there is even a spot for a credit card or cash tip and for instructions on getting in to the user's residence. In short, the automation on the site considered all possibilities, absolutely everything the user might want and the driver might need to ensure a smooth transaction.

And smooth it was! A receipt was delivered via email for recordkeeping, and the site has a humor-filled page of FAQs should something go amiss. In short, every need the customer might have was already addressed, so only the most bizarre of situations would merit contacting the company.

What went right:

• Anticipated customer needs. The automation worked because every aspect of the search, order and delivery process had been designed as if it were a science.
• Gave more information, not less. Instead of making it difficult to report issues or assuming the customers would call if they were upset, the site proactively listed the most common questions in a friendly, laid-back manner, undoubtedly reducing the number of complaints both to the retaurants and to the site.
• Provided the opportunity to give positive feedback. The site allows users to rate the restaurants and create a community feel rather than a top-down situation.

Two examples of automation: one email automation that banks on users being too lazy to notice the involuntary robotic subscription to complain and one e-commerce automation that anticipates and delivers users' needs to complete a transaction.

Customer service automation isn't evil; well-designed self-service experiences can be incredibly easy, stress-free and provide a better customer experience than even an interaction with a live agent. It's in the way the organization chooses to address customer needs that makes the difference.

Benefits of remote agents (part 2) - Productivity myths exploded

Myth #2 regarding a remote agent workforce: it's harder to monitor quality and performance of at-home agents. Exploded: with virtual technology systems available today, it's actually much easier.

This post is the second in a series exploring the benefits and drawbacks of the growing trend of homesourcing call centers to remote agents working from home. (Part 1 on expanded recruiting is here.) In part two of our ongoing series, we explore the question of monitoring remote personnel. This is a common objection, and let's explode it right here. This risk comes down to three basic issues: giving up control, enhancing security and maintaining community.

Control

    Myth: With home offices, supervisors won't be able to control agent quality and productivity.

With remote agents, supervisors can no longer walk the floor and get a feel for the productivity and coaching needs of their agents. However, this was more justified as a concern before the modern virtual call center space. Today, a range of sophisticated hosted tools provides supervisors with more information at their fingertips than ever before. Hosted desktop applications, daily metrics, and internet-delivered call recording and screen capture give a complete picture of agent performance. Regardless of where actual agents may be located, supervisors can and should have access to a host of information about agent needs and performance. For example:

• Call recording Record all or a percentage of calls. Sort and listen to calls by agent, call length (do longer calls indicate a training need?), or by client. 
• Screen recording Record all or a percentage of desktop interactions. Capture a larger percentage of new agent interactions for training and a smaller percentage for established agents.
• Quality monitoring View individual agent's success rates with specified benchmarked metrics.

In fact, many remote agent solutions offer ways to link virtual call centers that replicate a brick-and-mortar call center, with additional real-time metrics and data to provide a wealth of information about phone time and success rates.

Security

    Myth: With home offices, customer data is at risk.

One of the risks raised with at-home agents is the concern that remote agents, without immediate visual supervision, might compromise sensitive customer data. As it turns out, levels of employee fraud are in fact not elevated for remote agents. While it may seem to be an issue, this risk is for the large part nonexistant.

Survey results from a study AHCC (At Home Customer Contacts) conducted earlier this year with over 90 companies deploying the home agent model showed that 95% of companies experienced same or fewer incidents of fraudulent behavior at home versus at a brick-and-mortar call center.

Concerns about remote agent security can be easily addressed with the following:

• Rigorous employee hiring practices
• PCI compliant IVR for sensitive data collection
• Use chat, webcasts and telepresence to connect remote agents to their supervisors, each other and the corporate culture

Community

    Myth: Remote agents will lose their sense of community, and productivity will suffer.

It is true that call center managers must shift practices in order to maintain a sense of community and achievement with the remote call center model. However, with the wealth of information available through virtual monitoring and through a variety of tools designed for the remote call center manager, this task isn't as daunting as it may seem. Online collaboration and coaching through group chat, individual chat, VoIP calls and web conferencing can keep remote agents in tune with the organization's mission statement and attuned to the corporate culture. And individual coaching delivered through phone and web can be more beneficial than the in-house variety specifically due to the distance involved.

Call Center Links: News from the front

Worried you missed something big last week in the world of call center news and innovation because you were busy on the front lines? Here's the quick Monday roundup of last week's headlines:

• Goodbye, thin clients; hello, system on a chip. Last week Citrix announced its new HDX System on a Chip technology, a system that is in fact a full computing system delivered as a single chip to   device manufacturers. Imagine the possibilities--and commenters to the post have. Read the comments for a healthy dose of skepticism and criticism as well as some practical applications for the new tech.
• Working from home is the new green. This OneEarth article makes the argument for the remote agent work from home model helping to prevent climate change.
• Seven deadly sins of call scripting Good advice on what works for basic scripting as well as some of the pitfalls that make both agents and customers miserable
• Changing the concept of First Call Resolution. This post points out Forrester data that 74% of customers use three or more support channels to resolve an issue. If the IVR is the third channel called and the agent resolves the issue, it may be FCR to the call center, but not to the customer.

Benefits of remote agents (part 1) - Expanded skills recruiting

While cost efficiency is usually the primary driver of the shift to remote agents, organizations are reporting expanded recruiting abilities and retention of more highly skilled and qualified agents with the shift to home-based agents.

This post is the first in a series exploring the benefits and drawbacks of the growing trend of homesourcing call centers to remote agents working from home.

With the rising adoption rate of IP telephony and an increasingly mobile work force, call center managers are warming to the at-home agent model. While cost efficiency is usually the primary driver of the shift to remote agents, organizations who have already made the shift have reported additional benefits that are driving the move.

Expanded recruiting

One such benefit is the ability to recruit nationally rather than locally for agent positions. With the elimination of location-based recruiting, call center managers are discovering that they can impose a higher level of selectivity when recruiting at-home agents. According to Forrester's 2010 survey of call center operations, the infrastructure cost savings was not the only benefit of enabling at remote workforce:

Forrester clients with home agents report positive benefits, such as improving their recruitment opportunities, attracting higher educated and more experienced workers, and lowering their absenteeism and attrition rates.

Increased talent level and reliability is a significant benefit of having a dedicated, talented workforce capable of working independently without on-site supervision.

Call center managers are wising up to the fact that a highly skilled and motivated workforce exists outside of the major cosmopolitan areas in which the brick-and-mortar facilities happen to be located. One such untapped pool is military spouses, which in a recent research study were found to be highly educated and highly motivated to maintain a career but disadvantaged due to frequent moves:

The clearest indicator of the challenges of military spouse employment is the fact that almost two-thirds of those interviewed felt that being a military spouse had a negative impact on their work opportunities. The most frequently cited cause was frequent and disruptive moves.

How long before call centers catch on to this dedicated talent pool eager for productive work opportunities? And military spouses are far from the only remote yet skilled groups currently untapped for at-home work.

Talent Retention

In addition to expanded recruiting, the remote agent model shows benefits in terms of valued agent retention. One call center, Veterinary Pet Insurance customer care center, implemented an at-home work program to enable its best agents to work from home. While it was intended as a reward and convenience to top performers, the program also helped the organization retain some of its best agents when their families moved out of state.

"We currently have three agents for whom we have made special arrangements as they have moved out of state," reports Debbie Carter, Senior Director of Operations at VPI.

A nominal risk in implementing the at-home model was easily offset by reducing the need to recruit and train experienced, dedicated agents due to an involuntary relocation. How much did VPI save by retaining valued talent instead of going through the costly process of replacing the agent?

Recruiting Specialized Talent

The benefits of the remote agent model extend beyond the strict call center space as well. In the field of insurance, two of the top outsourcing firms teamed up to provide both offshore and homesourced talent for an industry requiring a host of specialized skills for specific tasks:

WAHVE (Work at Home Vintage Employees, LLC) innovated the "remote outsourcing" model under which experienced U.S. retirees work from home for insurance industry firms. Founded as an alternative to offshoring for agents, brokers and insurers, WAHVE provides back-office processing and customer service. WAHVE created a database of baby boomer retirees with insurance knowledge who provide contract staffing or consulting to firms on a full-time, part-time and/or project basis.

With virtualization, all businesses can benefit from increased opportunities to invest in highly skilled and dedicated agents who are motivated to work efficiently on a remote basis. Rather than being limited to a locally available talent pool, organizations can recruit based on skills and experience and increase both productivity and retention.

Call Center Links: TDM vs SIP

Confused about the benefits of staying with TDM or switching to SIP?

There has been a lot of talk brewing on call center sites, groups and periodicals on the benefits of making the move from the legacy analog TDM (Time-Division Multiplexing) architecture to SIP (Session Internet Protocol) industry standard. Stay tuned for a full post comparing the two and a cost-benefit analysis, but in the meantime, some of the best links we've found clarifying definitions, benefits, drawbacks and other information to fuel the argument to your CTO and CFO:

• Why SIP rules over TDM PBX Three basic arguments in favor of the newer, more flexible technology.
• What you need to know about moving from TDM to SIP-based systems NetworkWorld recommends two excellent white papers issued by Cisco. Both are extensive yet informative and easy to absorb, even for the non-technical person.
• IP vs TDM Great "copper wires versus the internet" quickie comparison from Telco Depot
• SIP Trunking The NET website gives a basic definition of the industry standard and its advantages over TDM.
• SIP Trunking Bandwidth.com has the best encyclopedic entry on SIP technology and applications
• SIP vs TDM Offers an architecture diagram comparing a legacy TDM with a single point of failure to a common SIP integration

What does your customer actually want?

What do your customers actually want, and what are you delivering?

Thanks to Marsha Collier for passing on this afternoon funny:

And the comic gets a chuckle because we've all been there. We have been the project manager or marketer for such a product, and it's likely we have been the customer at some point as well. In the absence of a genius such as Steve Jobs, who had an uncanny ability to design products that consumers wanted and needed without their saying a word, how can we deliver what the customer actually wants?

• Ask about functionality, not features. Better than, "How much do you want to spend?" is "In the best of all possible worlds, what would you like to be able to do?" The answer could be as simple as "map out my destination while on a phone call" or "properly identify and transfer 80% of callers to the right department with a wait time of under five minutes and a satisfaction score of at leave 90%." Then drill down deeper with the secret unicorn question: "If this were magic, what would you like to be able to do?" Never forget that some science-fiction didn't take too long to become science fact. More importantly, these questions give insights into the customer's pain points that might not previously have been voiced.
• Document the process. If certain features are impossible or too costly with current technology, document it. If features are available and simple to install but not popular or requested, document it. If the customer suggests additional features or benefits, document it.
• Make marketing a process. Market benefits, not features. Features change over time, but the benefit to the customer doesn't. Be willing to accept customer feedback as part of the development process and engage in a dialogue with customers about what they really need and want from your products.

What about you? How does your organization prevent delivery of a lackluster product when the customer only wanted a tire swing?