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Indicates a new White Paper
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Strategic Planning: A Primer for HR Practitioners |
| By Joanne Smikle |
| There are as many different strategic planning processes as there are HR practitioners seeking to create alignment. Alignment, the intention congruence of all elements of the enterprise, is one of the most important goals of any planning process. Whether leading a workgroup, department or entire organization, it is best to utilize a straightforward process that is clear and comprehensible to all participants.
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What the CIO Needs to Know About Cyber Security and Technical Support |
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By Robert S. Last, Content Manager, HDI |
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In many ways information security and defenses against hackers remains the dirty
little secret of the IT and support professions. Executives don’t like to talk about
it, but as 2005 made it abundantly and painfully clear, it is a reality that is
not going away, and one that shows every sign of growing and becoming more profit
driven and organized.
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It’s Not an “Issue:” Problem Solving and Troubleshooting Techniques for Technical
Support Analysts |
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By Robert S. Last, Content Manager, HDI |
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Using a recognized PST approach that can be described, measured, and evaluated is
not only efficient and cost-effective for the support center and the support analyst;
it communicates respect for the customer’s time and indicates that the support center
leadership places a value on customer service. Almost everyone has had the experience
of calling a help desk or a support center and engaging in a dialog that is slow
to the point of frustration and wasteful of their time. Such situations are frequently
the result of problem solving approaches that are unorganized, poorly planned, and
lack direction. These are not characteristics that a support manager wants a customer
to use when describing their experience, yet, sadly, this is what happens. This
HDI white paper provides a basic discussion of what problem solving is and how problems
can be solved using different techniques and approaches.
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The Sound of Quality: Best Practices in Call Monitoring |
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By Robert S. Last, Content Manager, HDI |
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This white paper discusses ten of the most common best practices used in technical
support call monitoring programs. Like any customer support initiative or program,
a call monitoring program requires a commitment of both time and resources to be
successful. In addition, the best programs and the ones that are most accepted by
employees, are the programs that are closely tied to training and quality improvement
programs.
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Proactive Communications for Enterprise Service Desks |
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By Alistair Ball |
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In June 2006 the Financial Times ran an editorial discussing the effectiveness of
communications within the enterprise. They looked primarily at the digital communication
channels available (email, Intranets, Instant Messenger (IM), SMS) and their conclusion
was stark: “In the attention economy the value of email is rapidly approaching zero”.
If this is true what does this mean to the effectiveness of organizations that rely
on email for communications? What value do the other channels provide and how can
they be managed? How does the enterprise service desk offer the best possible service
at low cost when important notifications cannot get through this communication fog?
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The Labor Shortage |
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By Joanne Smikle |
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Even if you did not believe the doomsayers of the past few years, if you have positions
to fill, you know that there was truth in their predictions. In a 2004 study conducted
in partnership with the Employment Policy Foundation, consulting firm Watson Wyatt
concluded that the labor shortage in the United States could reach 18.1 million
workers in 2020. This is due, in part, to the aging population. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics estimates that, from 2005 to 2012, the annual growth rate of the 55 and
older population will be four times greater than that of the overall workforce.
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“You and The Golden Gate Bridge” and “Lessons Learned from Man’s Best Friend”
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By Bryan Flanagan |
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These two little musings – “You and The Golden Gate Bridge” and “Lessons Learned
from Man’s Best Friend” – are perfect discussion starters for your next team meeting.
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How to Get a Good Night's Sleep |
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By Bruce Weinstein, PhD |
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Do you have trouble sleeping? If so, you're not alone—and the price you pay can
be significant. Think about how irritable you are and how poorly you perform at
work after not sleeping well. It's not just your mood and performance that are at
risk, either. Chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to such heath problems as
heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. The sleepless turn to a wide range of remedies,
including over-the-counter and prescription medications and various therapies. People
in the U.S. spend $4.5 billion a year on sleep medications, according to a recent
New York Times article.
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Five Easy Principles |
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By Bruce Weinstein, PhD |
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Over the past four weeks, this column has looked at some ethical questions that
arise in professional and personal life, such as the ethics of New Year's resolutions,
whether it's O.K. to lie to help the company, and collecting for kids at the office.
By now, you might be wondering, "On what are you basing your analyses, Ethics Guy?"
After all, it would be easy for anyone to shoot from the hip and say what he or
she feels is the right thing to do when presented with an ethical dilemma.
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Imagine a World Without Ethics |
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By Bruce Weinstein, PhD |
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Much of my time is devoted to traveling around the country and giving speeches about
ethics. Because this topic is of fundamental importance across all social groups,
I'm hired to address people in business, education, health care, law, and the government.
At the end of every talk, I ask the group, "Why should we be ethical?"
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Winning By The Numbers |
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By JoAnna Brandi |
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Customer Engagement and Customer Loyalty are the result of a number of things coming
together in the right combination – the right value proposition, consistently memorable
and positive experiences with the company, and the customer’s own disposition toward
loyal behaviors. As research continues to validate the pursuit of loyalty as a sound
long term growth strategy, it also shows that employee engagement is inextricably
linked to customer engagement. Involved and engaged employees go out of their way
to create better experiences for the customers and to go the extra mile for the
company. They are passionate about their work and are willing to take risks, be
more creative and help the company innovate and thrive in today’s competitive marketplace.
These kinds of employees help grow the organization but sadly represent less than
one quarter of the global workforce according to a recent Towers and Perrin study.
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Getting People to Accept Change |
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By Don Lee, NetworkD |
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Change is constant, but all too often, falls short of the desired outcome! Whether
you are directly involved in changes or not, this statement is not news. But, the
approach to making changes throughout the IT industry usually falls short where
people are involved. This statement is meant to be provocative because we usually
need to be strongly reminded to ensure that we take care of the people who are affected
by the change.
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Knowledge Management and the New ITIL Framework
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By Peter Dorfman |
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For the last 17 years, the gold standard for Best Practice in IT Service Management
has been the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®). In March 2007, ITIL saw the launch
of the framework’s third major release. ITIL 3 significantly changes the scope of
the framework. One important change directly affects those in IT with a stake in
the Knowledge Management discipline.
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Learning Transfer: Why and How |
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By Joanne Smikle |
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Less resources make it essential that human resource leaders guarantee the value,
applicability and sustainability of all learning initiatives. Business unit managers
demand that we in human resources deliver developmental activities with verifiable
worth. They determine that worth by the learning that is transferred and then used
in the business unit. These managers could care less about the traditional post-training
evaluations; after all, they didn’t get nicknamed “smile sheets” for nothing. These
evaluations fail to measure how and where the information will be plugged into the
operation. This article describes four practical strategies for delivering learning
transfer.
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Incident Matching and Trending and Business Integration |
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By Tony Krasinski |
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Incident matching and trending ensures that incidents are not escalated to tiered
support groups when acceptable workarounds exist. Additional analysis is needed
to provide corroborating evidence that will help justify the time taken for those
groups to complete the root cause analysis through problem management and also determine
how to eliminate the incidents. Incident matching and trending also helps reduce
costs by eliminating incidents and, in turn, can allow service desk managers to
maintain current staffing levels or even reduce head count. At a minimum, a service
desk that is struggling to meet service levels will benefit from elimination of
these incidents. Post implementation trending is also important to verify the fix
eliminated the incidents and the service desk adjusts standards, processes or knowledge
articles.
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KCS Measurement Matters |
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By Greg Oxton |
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Successful adoption of the Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS SM) methodology offers
profound benefits for any information-intensive service or support organization.
For most groups, KCS is transformational in that it changes and increases the value
proposition of support. The benefits realized in the short term can be tracked using
traditional support metrics. The longer-term benefits are in new areas of value
creation and, therefore, require new measures.
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The Essence of Professionalism |
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By Pete McGarahan & Ric Mims |
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Professionalism is knowing what to do, and doing it with passion and purpose.
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How to Survive Call Volume Spikes |
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By Robert S. Last, Content Manager, HDI |
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Every profession has a handful of articles and books that form the cornerstone of
the professional cannon for that profession. Such works are the result of a convergence
of talent, experience, events and luck and have such an impact on the members of
a profession that they stay relevant for years.
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Common-Sense Customer Service |
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By Pete McGarahan |
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Through high school, college, and graduate school I had a variety of jobs to pay
for my expenses. Each job reinforced the importance of customer-service skills in
terms of building better relationships with my customers, peers, and bosses. I came
to work daily with an attitude to do more than was expected of me; to be an eager,
lifelong learner; to be compassionate; and most of all, to apply common sense to
all customer-service situations. I learned to trust myself, to be unafraid of challenges,
and to embrace change and growth, and to have confidence in my own judgment and
abilities.
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High Performance and Corporate Culture |
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By Jason Young |
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What exactly is corporate culture? The dictionary defines culture as “the totality
of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions and all other
products of human work and thought.”
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The Service Mentality
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By Nancy Friedman |
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Customer Service. Pick up any ad, and there’s probably a line of type or two of
how well you’ll be treated when you shop there. Usually the advertisement reads,
"We’re the best".. or "Service is our middle name" - something like that. The phone
book advertisements are loaded with commercials for being very customer service
minded.
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TOP TEN Customer Service Mistakes
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By Nancy Friedman |
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Telephone Doctor usually gets asked: "What are the best customer service tips?"
Recently someone asked about the worst customer service mistakes? So, to make it
even, we’ve compiled the ten worst customer service mistakes. Take note.. and don’t
let these happen to you!
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