The last few months have seen the introduction of new phone banking services in the UK. By downloading the necessary software to your mobile phone you can access your bank account on the move, check your balance, access a mini statement or make transfers between accounts.More
It’s only when you get to engage directly with customers that you get to see first hand the effects that the current global economic situation is having on their businesses. A couple of weeks ago I met with the contact centre senior management team of a large financial services company. With financial services businesses hit hard in the last year I was interested in hearing how business had change and particularly how that had effected their contact centre operations. Changing call mix It turns out that this multimedia contact centre had experienced large changes in type of contact and the...More
In his 2006 book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. Chris Anderson revealed how the worldwide web had enabled businesses to sell large numbers of unique items, each in relatively small quantities.More
Chatting to a few colleagues over coffee, we all agreed that the next competitive battleground for customers’ hearts and minds is going to be around customer experience.
Because of the internet and advances in product development processes, companies have become less able to differentiate themselves over the long term with unique products and access to specialised supply chains.More
It’s official. Presence is “cool.”
You know this because kids use it all the time to chat with their friends and you hear the techies at the office go on endlessly about it.
You also know it’s cool because your parents think it’s all really very nice but aren’t especially sure what they’d do with it. So it must be cool.
Unlike consumers, where being “cool” is often king, companies will only adopt new technology when it is able to demonstrate real tangible business value. So, for them, it has to be “useful” too.
More
Relaxing on vacation in Spain a few months ago, I was struck by the way exceptional customer service still has the power to "Wow!" the customer. Now, this wow factor wasn't anything to do with the service provided by the hotel staff, although this was faultless, it had to do with the activities of an organisation based thousands of miles away, in a different time zone, in a different land.More
Gordon Loader is Senior Manager of Solutions Marketing for Avaya Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He and his team help businesses realize the benefits of emerging communications technologies. In addition to his experience in business development and technical sales at Avaya and Lucent Technologies, Gordon was a marketing leader at Aspect Communications in the UK and the US. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Gordon enjoys watching and competing in sports and is a qualified hockey coach and longtime player/manager at the club level. He is a self-described "retired thrillseeker," having experienced an incident-packed Skeleton ride on the Lillehammer Bobsleigh course.