Among the mistakes I noted were the following:

• not having the right project team in place;
• failing to develop detailed business requirements; and
• limiting the search to a preselected number of vendors, based on the premise that “someone that somebody knows” said “this is the system you should get.”

I also focused on the methodologies companies use to ensure their businesses are selecting the right systems. These methodologies include the following:

• assessing your business requirements and documenting them;
• developing a request for a proposal that accurately reflects your business;
• vendor demonstrations;
• vendor negotiations; and
• contracting through implementation.

Also covered in the wide-ranging session were tips on the average timeline for selecting a system, building a budget, selecting a systems model (build, licensed or SaaS), and choosing on-premise or hosted services.

I also covered trends that many businesses are looking for in systems today, including these:

• one system vendor with modules for e-commerce, OMS, customer relationship management and WMS;
• one customer view across the enterprise; and
• the integration of systems still being key for functions such as inventory management.

Catalog Success, F. Curtis Barry Team Up for Systems Workshop
Want to learn more about selecting and implementing the right system for your business? F. Curtis Barry & Company, in partnership with Catalog Success, is hosting a co-branded, two-day interactive workshop, “Evaluating, Selecting and Implementing Direct Commerce Systems,” on June 16 and 17 in Richmond, Va. For registration information, visit www.fcbco.com/seminar

If you are a non-profit, would you consider this to be a great deal? A 5% royalty from each item sold and a commitment to contribute $1 million a year to your cause. Just think, no longer do you have to worry about marketing to your customers, selecting and sourcing merchandise, maintaining an e-commerce site, and running operations with a call center and warehouse. For many non-profit companies you’d be silly to walk away from a deal like this. But as Howie Mandel on NBC’s Deal or No Deal says, “Did you make a good deal?”

What happens to your business when the parent company of the service provider, in this case BlueSky Brands, closes the doors? The monies that were budgeted and expected in the fiscal year won’t be available, not only for this year but possibly future years as well. For many non-profits, this type of loss directly impacts their bottom line which in turn impacts their ability to support their programs. The purpose behind direct-to-consumer sales for many non-profits is to generate revenue; in most cases unrestricted revenue which can be used within the non-profit organization in any manner they prefer. Losing revenue, particularly in the case of National Wildlife Federation, of $1 million a year, has to be devastating. A similar situation has happened with Winterthur except the revenue impact is unknown.

Not only is the money lost, what happens to future business? BlueSky Brands and AB&C Group are shut down at this time. Customers can’t place orders, the website has a message posted that it can not process orders at this time and to please check back for updates. Essentially, National Wildlife Catalog is at least temporarily out of business until further notice. Will customers hang around for National Wildlife Catalog to recover? In today’s economy and given the competition for consumer dollars it is not likely.

If you are a non-profit, is this a path you would have taken? It certainly looked good, a company willing to pay royalties and contribute $1 million a year, take over your whole catalog and operation while your company focuses on its core competencies. In an article in Catalog Success dated 11/17/06 by our good friend Larry West:

“Although payment terms were undisclosed, expect a lot of money flowing from BlueSky to the nonprofits. For such organizations, a fairly predictable cash flow without real investment risk is a Godsend, especially since it has become tougher for both nonprofits and for-profits to generate respectable profits and ROI in recent years”.

The article referred to the licensing deals of Winterthur and NWF catalogs to BlueSky Brands. In 2006, all indications were this was a great deal.

Does this mean that all licensing and third party fulfillment deals are doomed for failure? Absolutely not. In fact a number of our clients use third party providers successfully, particularly non-profits. The rule of thumb here is regardless of a great deal in place, you still must be on top of your business and service provider.

What do you think? Deal or No Deal.

Tocky Lawrence a Vice President of F. Curtis Barry & Company, a multichannel operations and fulfillment consulting firm with expertise in multichannel systems, warehouse, call center, inventory, and benchmarking; Learn more online at: http://www.fcbco.com.

There are more dynamic email/chat systems that will allow you to better service your customers and not break the bank. Using either an Application Service Provider (ASP) or email management system will give you greater access to monitoring and quality control. KANA, RightNow and eGain all have great solutions for centers that process hundreds of thousands of transactions, but as contact center consultants, we find that ASPs such as InstantService, LivePerson or Talisma—all fine solutions—offer alternative options with distinct advantages.

Those that charge a per-use fee, such as InstantService, are more enticing than a seat/named user license. You will have an annual fee, but that is reasonable considering the peace of mind and reduced need for IT support at your location. Your fee structure will then be based on answered email or chat transactions. Using an ASP gives you a solution that is virtually maintenance free, saving on IT resources and server space. It allows you to manage your email and foray into chat, while establishing best practices and KPIs that will service your customers—and have it up and running quicker and easier than any other tool. In fact, some ASPs can have the entire implementation, from initial contact to production, done within a few days.

For the effort, time and money an ASP offers you more options than standard Outlook for the customer experience. You will gain efficiency immediately with increased productivity levels, and over time the monitoring capabilities will allow you to help agents develop better communication with the customer.

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F. Curtis Barry & Co., a multichannel business consulting company, focuses on the entire direct fulfillment process with expertise in call center consulting and benchmarking.

There are numerous ways to capture VOC. Box post cards, follow-up telephone surveys, end-of-call IVR surveys and email surveys are all options to gather vital feedback information about the customer’s experience. Focus groups and interviews are also great tools; just make sure any agency you hire has been given focused parameters—otherwise, you will be wasting resources and time. Postcards will need support for entering or scanning the data, and then for analysis of the data. Outbound calling is expensive and success is sometimes challenging. IVR surveys are great, but you need some expertise in surveying and telephony to make this really work (more on this in a future post).

That leaves us with….email surveys. These are both cost-effective to distribute and easy to analyze. As call center consultants, we find the post-call email survey is a great tool that can create near immediate interaction for true 360-degree or VOC reaction. Many of the ASP services have templates already developed and ready to go; look at Vovici (www.vovici.com) for one. If you are able to collect an email address for shipping confirmation or order acknowledgements, you can use that information for an immediate customer feedback module. You can start with the customer experience concerning the telephone call. It makes sense to send an email within two or three weeks to understand the customer’s acceptance or pleasure with the product they purchased, but don’t wait several weeks to gather information concerning the customer interaction. The process of data collection needs to be somewhat scripted, consistent and timely.

If the customer is not pleased with an aspect of your service or product they will leave, and it is far easier and less expensive to keep the customers you have than to try to acquire new ones. So listen to your customers and grow with them. By collecting these customer insights, your future mailing, product and service decisions will be supported by real data about what your customers think and want. In the end, does anything else matter?

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F. Curtis Barry & Co., a multichannel operations consulting company, focuses on the entire direct fulfillment process with expertise in call center consulting and benchmarking.

First, we suggest you hire specifically for the position and not move agents from within. The at-home model is not for everyone. Agents choose to apply for work in a contact center for a reason; more often than not, it is for the human interaction, so be careful about thinking you can send agents home as a reward. It is a physiological challenge for an agent to be solo. Another important consideration should you choose to take from within, is to guard against working at home becoming a replacement for childcare, eldercare or pet care. If you allow this, your customers will suffer. Noise, lack of focus and poor quality will all be part of your outcome, so if at all possible, hire for the position.

Second, technology is a challenge at times. If you can do it, send a CITRIX stripped-down machine home with the agent. Have them sign the necessary paperwork for your protection, but don’t require them to come up with their own. If you supply it you will have more success in keeping track of the machine’s software, and the help desk will thank you. We would suggest that you have the agent supply the high-speed Internet access and the second phone line, if you are not using VoIP.

Something else to keep in mind when starting a home agent program: Don’t go and inspect the agent’s house. If you find OSHA violations you might be liable to have them corrected. We suggest you stay far away from the home. You will need to develop some remote training programs and remote monitoring/coaching. This can be challenging if you are not prepared, but with proper timing it will work well. We will cover this area in future blog posts.

Finally, make sure that internal support—both supervisors and peer agents—are aware that you have a new initiative. They will need to support the agents and do so with a cheerful attitude. The supervisor ratio will need to drop from an average of 16-20 as an in-center standard to a 12-15 ratio for home agents. And home agents will need more coaching, monitoring and training to get started.

In the end, work-at-home is a great concept. There are lots of really successful examples out there, some quite large and others not so big. JetBlue, 1-800-Flowers and West are some of the more well known at-home models.

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F. Curtis Barry & Co., a multichannel operations consulting company, focuses on the entire direct fulfillment process with expertise in call center consulting and benchmarking.

Most of the people shown in brief interviews on the show said that they basically shopped online because it was more convenient for them because online shopping offers home delivery. Since online retailers have often courted new customers by offering serious discounts, there is at least a perception that online prices can be much cheaper than store prices, and online searching offers shoppers the advantage of comparison shopping.

And yet, the Today Show referred to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal that claims online shopping rarely saves money. For commodity household and food items, for instance, prices are seldom cheaper online, especially when you include shipping charges in the total cost. In effect, Today suggests, shipping fees are the price you pay for the convenience of not having to drive to a store, find a parking place, and stand in line at the checkout counter.

If you are focused on saving money rather than paying for convenience, think of the process of shopping as more of a multichannel experience. For instance, you can do your research online, either by comparison shopping yourself, or by visiting such comparative sites as bizrate.com or techbargains.com. Once you find what you’re looking for online, you can go to a retail store that carries the same item and negotiate the same price. Or you can buy an item online and pick up at store to save the shipping fee.