Posted June 11th, 2010 by sharkdancer
In part I of this article, we examined the effects of management ignoring customer service to focus on “sexier” parts of the business, and introduced a couple of the negative things that can happen as a result. Let’s continue on:
VOICE MAIL HELL
This is my pet peeve and the pet peeve of many other people as well. I’m a tech guy, and love the application of leading edge technologies to reduce labor costs. But enough, already! A number of otherwise good companies have taken automated voice mail attendants way too far. They make you feel like a mouse in a 6 square mile maze. Companies need to remember that when you pick up the phone to call, it’s with the intention to TALK TO SOMEBODY. Using technology to quickly route people to the correct department, or answer simple inquires like directions to the company, is an efficient use of technology for both the company and customer. But making it extremely hard to get through to ANYONE, even after wading through seemingly endless nested menus—is just ridiculous. The only purpose it serves is too alienate your customers and prospects. This is truly the definition of “penny wise, pound foolish”.
UNTRAINED OR UNDER-QUALIFIED CUSTOMER AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT REPS
After waiting in voice mail hell, you think it can’t get any worse. But wait. After the one half hour wait, your call is now answered by someone so green, so incompetent or so rude that frustration turns to rage. You are asked to enter your account number on the phone pad. Then the rep answers, and again requests the exact same information. You haven’t reached the right department, of course, so you are transferred to another department, where the rep asks you, yet again, for the exact same information. After this rep finally fills in his or her form (not answering ANY questions until it’s complete), you ask them about your situation, that cries out for an exception to normal company policy. The rep robotically and coldly repeats the company policy—which you already knew. Think someone will want to do business with this company again? Customer and technical support is CRITICAL in the long run. It’s one of the true long term differentiators in the market. Spend a little more to hire and retain good people, train them well, and empower them to actually take care of real world customer issues. It will pay back many times in the future.
UNFRIENDLY HOURS OF OPERATION
I’m on the West Coast of the US, so this happens all the time. Try to call customer support in the early afternoon, but the office closes at 5P Eastern Standard Time. This is a particularly important issue for those of you serving consumer markets—many people can’t easily call support lines from work, without putting their employment in jeopardy. In this day of inexpensive, fast communications technology and worldwide commerce, there is no excuse for inconvenient business hours for the markets that you serve.
PREDATORY SUPPORT COSTS
This is something that has continually degraded for customers over time. It used to be that technology companies supported their products for free. The economics of competition has, in the long run, made this go the way of the dinosaurs. Many times, this is with good reason. A well-priced maintenance contract, from a B2B software company which provides an 800 number, unlimited supported, and all major and minor updates, can be a really good value. If it is priced at the industry standard 18-20% of product cost, and enables the vender to provide excellent support—that’s great. But what if the support is lousy and it’s priced at 30% of the cost of the product annually? Or how about a consumer software company that is charging $100/hour, without even the benefit of a free 30 day startup window, to troubleshoot their buggy and non-intuitive product? Give me a break! If you want to stand out in today’s market, try providing an intuitive, bug free product, coupled with free or reasonable support (there won’t be many support calls needed if you do this!). People will beat a path toward your door—and tell every friend they have. This won’t show up in the Controller’s cost control report—but the benefits to your company’s top line will be enormous.
So these are some of the low tech ways to screw up a high tech business. Software and Tech CEOs, keep your eye on the customer service ball. Otherwise, a savvy and opportunistic competitor, with lesser product technology, may take advantage and steal a piece of your market share.
Posted June 10th, 2010 by sharkdancer
My earlier article entitled “Adverse Effect of Technology” resulted in an avalanche of e-mail from readers, all predominantly favorable. In that article I put forth an observation that “As the use of technology increases, social skills decreases.” I want to take this concept a little further herein.
Before we had computers and the sophisticated communication devices we now have in the work place, there was a lot of manual processing involved. Orders were processed manually, as were shipments, financial transactions, and many other business processes. All involved considerable paperwork with documents, reports, journals, logs, spreadsheets, etc. We of course used the latest technology of the day which included such things as typewriters, adding machines, filing systems, cash registers, and tabulating equipment. Nonetheless, the emphasis was on manual processing which meant we were forced to work together, like it or not, hence the need for better interpersonal communications. In other words, out of sheer necessity we were forced to socialize in order for the company to function properly. Since the business processes were so laborious, companies would worry about losing time on a task, hence the need for long range planning.
Today, electronic automation is used to implement just about every business process in a company. The idea of operating without computer support or electronic communications is unimaginable. True, such devices have been able to expedite the processes, but in doing so people no longer have to interact in order to fulfill their jobs, hence the breakdown in interpersonal communications. And because our tasks are not as laborious as they once were, the technology allows us to make changes on the fly. Consequently, long range planning has been sacrificed and reactionary management practices have taken their place. In reality, long range planning is still very much needed in order to remain competitive in a world economy, but this is not the mindset in today’s corporate cultures anymore.
As I mentioned in my article, we have developed an overt dependency on our technology which results in three areas of concern: first, that a company comes to a standstill when the power is disrupted (we can no longer perform the business processes); second, it tends to emphasize short-term planning as opposed to long range (whereby we are content to perform small tasks), and; third, basic interpersonal relations are negatively affected because we are no longer forced to interact with others.
Again, I am most definitely not anti-technology, but neither am I anti-human socialization. If I have learned anything in the 30+ years of experience in the information systems industry, it is that people matter most of all; that it is people who use information, not technology; that projects and business processes are executed by human-beings, not robots; that it is the human-being which is of paramount importance in everything.
I have always found it rather easy to teach people technology, In fact, it is relatively easy to program a person to use a particular device. But it is much more difficult to teach them the socialization skills to effectively interact with others. This is why our corporate slogan remains, “Software for the finest computer – the Mind.”
If you would like to discuss this with me in more depth, please do not hesitate to send me an e-mail.
Posted June 3rd, 2010 by sharkdancer
When we talk about Automated Forex Systems, the temptation is to think that you pick up one of these little robots, plug it in, and suddenly cash comes rolling in.
Sounds nice, but what is the reality of creating a profit from these little bits of programmed software?
The makers of most of the Forex Robots out there are quick to boast of their track record of making profits. But if you look closely, most of these Robots have shown great success in their back-test results, but can show no evidence of their success in live trading.
The companies backing these systems expect the unsuspecting buyer to believe this evidence proves that their robots will make them real money. In reality back-tests in themselves are worthless.
I need to make myself clear here. Back-tests are worthless unless you can validate them with live trading.
One Forex Robot has been backtested for 9 years, which means it was rigorously put through over 9000 trades. Not only that, in live trading it has been consistenely winning 85 to 100% of its trades!
You might ask, “What does that mean?” Here’s my point: If you back test a Robot and it shows 100% “demo” proof month after month, it should produce around 80-100% profit in live trading.
So when you’re shopping for a Forex robot, make sure you buy one that has a real and proven track record over time in live trading. What you are looking for is a system that will build you profits for the long run.
In my next article we’ll continue to discuss the reality of making money with a Forex Robot.
Posted June 2nd, 2010 by sharkdancer
The newest software that picks profitable stocks for you is called day trading robot. It is created to send you the most recent stock picks in order for you to respond in the right manner. Concerning the tens of different reviews which it carries about, it is very difficult to figure out whether it works or not. Read on to see for yourself whether it works or not.
The fact is this it works well due to the mathematical intelligence attached to it which it uses to detect those profitable trades. Everyday, day trading robot links to the internet to get the latest stock reports, when it has gathered all of these details, it systematizes all of those various stock trends into various charts and starting from there, it begins to scan these charts to find profitable picks which differs from others. This is made possible through its intelligent mathematical algorithms which has been fine-tuned long in advance prior to the release of this platform to make sure it brings an extensive record of stocks that are profitable. Even the financial turmoil is not affected by it. Click Here for Day Trading Robot Proof
Immediately the day trading robot finds the best stock pick, it emails them to its subscribers in details, consisting of the stocks you should trade and the value of the prices, from that point its left for you to place the trade. The unique thing about day trading robot which makes it incomparable with other robots is the rate at which it responses to profitable trade unlike the previous stock trading I have ever used. It works well for day to day trading due to it lets you know the best time to buy and most prominently, the best time to sell. This occurs in the same day. To my knowledge and trial, I have never come across any trading robot which is close to this one. It alerts you earlier once it detects a profitable stock pick, giving you the opportunity to increase your profits and most essentially, decreasing your losses to the lowest level.
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Posted May 31st, 2010 by sharkdancer
I don’t know whether you saw the video created by the brainchild of Day Trading Robot. If you have seen that video, then it must have increased your urge to get this incredible stock trading robot. Even if it doesn’t require much of that 300% daily gains to get you rich, even if you are trading with a mild capital. The truth is this, majority of trader don’t have the amount of money needed to buy the robot due to the fact that its license costs up to $100,000 yearly. This is the reason why they are just 7 persons really trading with day stock trading robot apart from the creator of the software. Read on the review.
Don’t be discouraged by this, considering the fact that the robot makes profit stocks picks, this you know is the most critical thing. If you can’t afford the robot, your best option is to subscribe for its newsletter which is not all that costly. The subscription is just $100 for a lifetime access to get the best stock picks sent to you on a weekly basis. Somehow, it’s still better for you due to you won’t have to work with the software or anything similar to that. All you need is to receive the stock picks through their newsletter which they send out weekly. It is all that simple. Once you receive the perfect stock picks, you place your trade and collect your profit.
The good thing about their newsletter is that it is risk free, due to the fact that it comes with a 8-week money-back guarantee, meaning if you don’t make gains with their stock picks you request for a full refund, no question is even asked. Also, if you don’t want to invest your hard earned money first, you can as well try out their stock picks first by checking out how it works before you purchase it.
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