Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 22, 2018

Our call centers became the FEMA call centers. For example, now with our call center experience, we are competing for the call centers for the U.S. We needed to adjust our plan to give room and seize the opportunities that had risen within housing, energy, and services. and Caribbean.

Media 9

Media Company Call Center Real Estate 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 28, 2015

If it’s all about the operations then you lose sight of the customer. For example, a call center may pride itself on completing X percentage of service calls within 30 seconds, but that’s not a valuable metric for determining overall customer satisfaction – or what the customer then does after that service interaction.

COO 8

COO Planning Metrics Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 28, 2018

Instead, we bring people into different contexts — removed from typical day-to-day company operations — that can serve as a metaphor for what customers experience and therefore jolt employees into a more empathetic stance. Take our work with Consumers Energy in Michigan.

Energy 10

Energy Creativity Brainstorming Call Center 10

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 5, 2014

Talk about how complex marketing has become is very much in vogue, but there’s much less discussion about the operational (and diplomatic) muscle CMOs need in order to get things done. With so many parts of the organization needing to come together to deliver on a customer journey, the CMO has to operate as the “glue” across the organization.

P&L 9

P&L Banking Marketing Call Center 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 5, 2016

At one large telecom firm, the overburdened customer contact/call center function throttled back an 18-month plan to double people’s productivity in favor of a radically different approach. This clean-sheet customer experience prioritization over more traditional call center KPIs had a huge effect.

Levitt 8

Levitt Disaggregation Kaizen Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 9, 2011

We hear from business leaders who perceive that flexible work is a make-people-feel-good play that disrupts operations and drags down performance. 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.

Productivity 14

Productivity Products Real Estate Bottom-up 14

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 20, 2014

At Essent, the Dutch energy company, CEO Erwin van Laethem provided practical guidance to his CMO. “My That process incorporates operations, customer service, R&D, clinical specialists, sales, supply chain operators, and service teams. Informal practices can be even more helpful. That can sometimes be an uphill battle.

CEO 8

CEO Marketing Hotels Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 8, 2013

Its Gen2 "machine-room-less" product replaced woven ropes with flat polyurethane-coated steel belts for savings in noise, energy consumption, and space, eliminating the traditional rooftop "machine room." (One According to a Booz study , such external R&D in India alone will exceed $37 billion annually by 2020.

Engineering 8

Engineering Globalization Innovation Marketing 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 15, 2016

Many companies love customer feedback, but only a handful have devoted as much energy to employee feedback systems. For example, if your customer feedback is organized around touchpoints within lines of business, survey employees who interact with customers at those same touchpoints, such as a call center conversation or an account signup.

Survey 8

Survey Retail System Automotive 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 13, 2013

In the first article in this series, I showed some striking numbers to stress what many inferred: there are real costs to locating operations outside of a startup super-hub (San Francisco Bay, New York, or Boston). Energy is still the domain of Houston and Dubai. From engineer to call center employee, people loved being at Zappos.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Venture Funding Finance Engineering 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 26, 2016

Instead she was ramping up mobile-banking operations—which competitors were also doing—and looking to experiment with something more innovative: partnerships with supermarkets and electronics stores that would allow FDM to set up kiosks within them. Will we all be working out of call centers or supermarket kiosks next year?

Case Study 8

Case Study CEO Banking Agility 8

Strategy Driven

DECEMBER 15, 2010

Ed holds a Master of Science degree in Operations Research and a Bachelors degree in Mathematics. Mary Grace holds leadership appointments with several professional societies including Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

Resources 50

Resources Process Constraint Objective 50

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

To open a bank account today, for instance, a typical customer embarks on a multichannel journey: researching online; downloading an application; speaking to a call center agent; linking brokerage accounts; visiting a branch; and installing the bank’s mobile app. Those steps leave a long and complex digital trail.

Call Center 8

Call Center Banking Analysis Knowledge Management 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 2, 2013

Retailers have stores, call centers, and e-commerce. Marketing, IT, store operations, and loyalty programs are all connected. “Our customer is in a store, then she’s reading a magazine, then she’s online. On the executive team you have marketing, sales, technology, and service.

Marketing 12

Marketing Teamwork Technology Information Technology 12