Harvard Business Review

APRIL 27, 2015

At least that’s better than the 70% of companies that plainly ignore complaints on Twitter. Yet, despite the urgency of getting it right—and the ample time that companies have had to figure it out—most corporations have an empathy deficit. We analyzed 350,000 tweets across 300 companies. call centers).

Company 8

Company Airlines Brand Analysis 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 10, 2017

Bernstein studied assembly-line performance at a company he called “Precision.” If you require them to post predictable earnings each quarter, they will reduce their investment in their companies’ adaptive performance. However, most companies measure only tactical performance. Building Balanced Cultures.

Organization 10

Organization Tactics Call Center Metrics 10

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 13, 2013

When I took over as CEO of Intralinks, a company that provides secure web based electronic deal rooms, the company was hemorrhaging so much cash that its survival was at stake. I spent more than four hours listening in to client support calls at the call center. So, what I do on my first day?

Call Center 10

Call Center Learning-by-Doing CEO Planning 10

Harvard Business Review

JULY 19, 2013

However, most companies require considerable planning and need both a competitive advantage and a solid business plan in order to succeed. For my company, I focused on a big market and found a profitable and attractive niche. If you''re thinking about starting your own company, here''s my advice: Set realistic expectations.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Hotels Travel Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 2, 2014

It’s the same in a company. You have front-line employees who create what you sell or who deal directly with customers: software developers, sales reps, call-center staffers, and so on. You also have support staff, including the people in marketing, finance, HR, and other functions.

Cost 10

Cost Span of Control Management Bureaucracy 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 2, 2012

My client Janet already had her laptop open when I asked how many versions of the budget report were on her company's SharePoint drive. Everyone from product managers, to call center reps, to the front-line worker in the branch or store uses information to make decisions. It's a hidden cost, and a growing one.

Business Intelligence 13

Business Intelligence Budgeting Report Library 13

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

And the bottom dropped out of the Indian outsourcing industry, which contracted as much as 80% while the Indian firm Aegis outsourced its call center — to Dallas. FINANCING THAT VACATION HOME IN VANUATU. Want to set up a company without revealing that you own it? Nothing could be easier. It’s all legal, so far.

Outsourcing 8

Outsourcing GDP Bottom-up Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 5, 2016

This painful decision cost tens of thousands of jobs but proved strategically, organizationally, and culturally essential to the company’s future success. The company will also eliminate a key chipset in the difficult tablet and smartphone market. But the past is merely a prologue.

Levitt 8

Levitt Disaggregation Kaizen Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

USAA Bank offers a voice-activated virtual assistant for mobile devices with a “tap to talk” feature that connects customers to a call center and allows agents to see what the customer was doing just before he or she called. Finance Internet Retail' Reconfiguring the branch network.

Banking 9

Banking Retail Open-book Finance 9

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 28, 2017

For the moment, this is good news for those companies still experimenting or piloting AI (41%). Survey respondents from firms that have successfully deployed an AI technology at scale tend to rate C-suite support as being nearly twice as high as those companies that have not adopted any AI technology.

Survey 10

Survey Execution First-mover Advantage Technology 10

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 23, 2012

Yet, when it comes to the workforce — one of a company's most expensive and valuable assets — too many executives rely on hunches, making decisions without making use of relevant data. Thankfully, in the course of researching our new book, my coauthors and I found several companies that don't fall victim to the Gradgrind effect.

Metrics 12

Metrics Parcell Call Center Productivity 12

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 31, 2018

They also generate $1 trillion as consumers and $361 billion in revenue as entrepreneurs, launching companies at 4x the rate of all woman-owned businesses. Developing a diverse leadership pipeline can benefit companies in all sectors. And what factors helped or hindered advancement in their organization?

Management 11

Management Tacit Knowledge Diversity Leadership Pipeline 11

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 5, 2014

That isn’t easy, but the payoff is worth it: Our most recent research shows that companies with excellent marketing capabilities outperform the market with 2-3X greater revenue growth. Yet, only 30 percent of companies believe they understand their customers’ needs well enough to identify what initiatives will drive growth.

P&L 9

P&L Banking Marketing Call Center 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 28, 2016

Every company these days seems to be either contemplating or pursuing digital transformation. We believe the greatest challenge to companies today is not keeping up with their competitors , but with their own customers. Operations need to go beyond the efficiency of the company to the efficiency of the customer.

Loyalty 8

Loyalty Peer Review Efficiency Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 13, 2013

I can’t give you an answer — every city and every company are too different — but I can suggest three questions can help you figure it out for yourself. Finance has homes in New York, Hong Kong, and London. Finding talent and financing isn’t the only hurdle to overcome on the road to startup success; it’s the first of many.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Venture Funding Finance Engineering 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 9, 2011

For instance, 82 percent of the companies on Fortune's 2011 100 Best Companies to Work For list offer telecommuting options. Frontier Communications, for example, has found that work-at-home agents are 25% more productive and have double the retention rate of work-in-the-call-center agents. They're spreading far and wide.

Productivity 14

Productivity Products Real Estate Bottom-up 14

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2017

Insight Center. Shore up your company’s first line of defense. You can use old technology like a land line to enter your SSN or you can relay it to a call center employee in India who can verify it. The Human Element of Cybersecurity. Sponsored by Varonis. There is a beauty in the simplicity of the nine-digit SSN.

Crisis 8

Crisis Insurance Technology Credit Scoring 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2017

Companies that claim to be “transforming” seem to be everywhere. Before describing those, let’s look at how we identified the exceptional firms that rose to the top of our ranking, a group we call the Transformation 10. How successful has the company been at creating new products, services, and business models?

Franchising 14

Franchising CEO Business Model Strategy 14

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Her excellent results notwithstanding, the ongoing "flak" from peers and colleagues became an unacceptable distraction within the company. In an attempt to correct the course the company offered Carla several turnaround assignments at the same level. Are joint ventures or strategic alliances critical to the company's success?

Proposal 11

Proposal Cialdini Execution Influence 11

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 9, 2011

It may seem counterintuitive, but smart companies need to routinely rid themselves of less profitable customers, the same way an asset manager or rebalances an investment portfolio or a Major League Baseball general manager trades a declining player. We call these people Cost Center Consumers, and they come in two flavors.

P&L 14

P&L Supply Chain Retail Price 14

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 21, 2015

And while there are lots of executive programs in “Accounting and Finance for Nonfinancial Managers,” there aren’t any that I know of on “Analytics for Non-Quantitative Managers.” That’s still useful, of course, but now companies are also using data and analytics to create new products and services.

Analysis 8

Analysis Supply Chain CRM Banking 8