I recently had the pleasure of attending the ACUTA (Association of Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education), conference recently held in Denver, Colorado. ACUTA focused this conference on the topic of adopting unified communications (UC) across academia. A survey of ACUTA membership prior to the conference indicated that the campus constituencies most likely to benefit from UC include IT, help desks, and teleworkers. Benefits most often cited from deploying UC include enhanced collaboration, increased productivity and operational efficiency. So  how does this relate to customer service management?

UC tools help customer service personnel become more effective and efficient in performing their duties. Academia has become a competitive industry, and student retention is a key strategic metric followed by institutional leaders. Retention is greatly influenced by student satisfaction on every aspect of college life … IT systems, facilities, financial aid, course enrollment, and other student services. Combining the imperative of student satisfaction with the necessity to reduce costs, many institutions are consolidating student services into a single contact center for assisting students in addressing questions and concerns. SpiceCSM is specifically designed to accommodate organizational efforts to bring efficiency and effectiveness into the customer service management function.

SpiceCSM has targeted higher education as a key vertical for adoption of the company’s platform. We are also encouraging the development of an industry-wide open knowledge library of customer service issue resolutions. All higher education institutions have a similar set of departments and associated services, thus making the sharing of such a knowledge library a very feasible idea. To learn more about open knowledge projects in higher education, click here.

Best regards,

Mark Cornett, COO

SpiceCSM

From June 15-17, Jennifer Balaban and myself will be in sunny Las Vegas, NV for the Call Center Week 2009 Conference. Taking place at the majestic Bellagio Hotel, we are looking forward to meeting all those that are planning on attending. Unfortunately our booth # has not been assigned, but if you are there, please be sure to stop by and check us out. Just look for the red pepper back drop and our smiling faces. As always we will be there to answer any questions as well as give live demos to all those that are interested.

If you are planning on attending and would like to setup a time to meet privately with Jen or myself, please email either one of us at jgroden@spicecsm.com or jbalaban@spicecsm.com.  At the least, be sure to stop by and grab a “stress pepper” which we are giving away.

Cheers,
Justin

Calling all Call Center Managers, Help Desk Managers, and Customer Service Directors… Spice needs your help!

We are always interested in knowing what our customers and potential customers think about our products so we are asking for a favor. We want to hold a focus group for our customers and potential customers to say whats on their minds. We will talk about current features, the product roadmap, pricing, and much more.

We understand we can’t be everything to everyone, but ensuring that our products and services are aligned with your needs and initiatives is very important to us. We are in the midst of rolling out a new pricing scheme and with your help it will be fine tuned for the market.

If you are interested in taking part (which we greatly appreciate) please visit the following link to sign up. This will be a virtual focus group and should last approximately one hour. We will be limiting the attendance, so be sure to register as soon as possible.

https://spicecsm.ilinc.com/register/czwkjxm

-Justin

For everyone that was at the show, we would like to thank you for stopping by the both.  We had a phenomenal time meeting and learning about everyone’s individual situation.  Hopefully we were able to provide you with some value-add information about Spice to take back to your respected organizations.

Congratulations to the winner of the Asus Netbook that we gave away. There were certainly a lot of great prizes up for giveaway so hopefully everyone was able to walk away with something.  It was also good to see that our “stress peppers,” were a big hit, we will make sure to order some more.

As we mentioned at the event, if you are interested in signing up for a free trial of SpiceCSM, please visit the following page: http://spicecsm.com/resources/free_trial.html.  Also we are glad to answer any questions that you might have. You can reach us at sales@spicecsm.com or if you would like to get back in touch with myself (Justin) or with Jen you can reach us at jgroden@spicecsm.com and jbalaban@spicecsm.com.

Thanks,
Justin

The following is the slideshow I used for my presentation at the 2009 ATA NY Metro Tech Forum. Though the event was small there were a lot of great speakers and we were glad to be there. The official title was, “Utilizing a Multi-tenancy and a Shared Agent Environment to Reduce Operating Expenses.” Quite the mouth full, huh.

SpiceCSM has been chosen… to be a speaker that is, at the upcoming ATA NY Metro Technology Forum.  It will be my pleasure to give a short talk on “Utilizing Mutli-tenancy and a Shared Agent Environment to Reduce Operating Expenses.” The event is taking place at the DialAmerica building in  Mahwah, NJ on April 2nd.

If you are an ATA member and are planning to attend the show, I look forward to seeing you there. If you are not a memeber, you can still come down and enjoy the day. Either way, please visit the registration page to get started.

Hope to see you there.

Cheers,
Justin