Hospitality / Entertainment

David Heneghan

The 10 Most Annoying Restaurant Trends in 2011 and 2012

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If a list is compiled of the most annoying trends or bugbears in a business sector, it is a handy opportunity for the customer-centric manager to run an inventory of how their business proposition stands up.

In the restaurant business, where customer advocacy is the most powerful form of marketing, being in touch with the zeitgeist is becoming ever more important. Social media represents a terrific opportunity to amplify word of mouth, while the upside is terrific, the downside can be detrimental. Against this backdrop, there is no doubt that leveraging customer insight is the best way to carve out opportunities and competitive advantage.

In 2011 Zagat came up with a list of the 10 most annoying restaurant trends To come up with the list they took suggestions from 30 people under 30 years old who highly regarded in the business, so these guys should know.

1. Communal Tables
2. “The Civil War” Look
3. Chalkboard Menus
4. Mustachioed Bartenders
5. “Gourmet punch”
6. Iceless Table Water
7. Pop-Up Restaurants
8. “Comfort-Food” Menus
9. Sliders
10. Bread Baskets You Have to Pay For

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David Heneghan

Key Financial Outcomes and Return On Investment ROI

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If you come across anyone that is not convinced about the efficacy of CX initiatives, the best way to remove any ambiguity is to measure satisfaction metrics against key financial outcomes. For a customer experience manager, failing to map customer experience performance against key the financial outcomes, is like a financial controller trying to run a business without a managing cash flow.

You cannot gauge CX performance without requisite analysis of results against key outcomes. It is hugely important to gather and analyse feedback, but very difficult to drive key decisions and assess progress without charting performance against key financial outcomes.

If you can grow the number of customers that are satisfied and delighted you will see a positive correlation with the key outcome. The key outcome depends largely on the industry in question, but it is often best advised to get buy-in form the finance department, as these are the guys that will have access to the key financial outcome data.

2 Tips for successful ROI analysis

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Text Analytics World Topics & Case Studies – March 6-7, 2012 in San Francisco

Text Analytics World San Francisco 2012 (tawgo.com) is the business-focused event for text analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners. This conference delivers case studies, expertise and resources to leverage unstructured data for business impact and deploy the latest text analytics technology.

CASE STUDIES:

Text Analytics World San Francisco 2012 will feature over 20 sessions with case studies from leading enterprises in e-commerce, financial services, government, healthcare, high technology, insurance, retail, and social media such as: Accident Fund Insurance, AlphaGenius, AVG (security), Amdocs and the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a U.S. Federal Department, Brocade, Center for Disease Control, Hewlett-Packard, MTV and Warner Music Group, Samsung, a Fortune 500 global technology company, hedge funds, emergency response companies, plus special examples from U.S. government agencies DoD, DHS, and SSA.

HOT TOPICS:

TAW San Francisco's agenda covers hot topics and advanced methods such as blackbox trading, customer service and call centers, decision support, document discovery, document filtering, financial indicators from social media, government applications, insurance applications, knowledge discovery, marketing and branding, product launching, sentiment analysis, social data, social media applications, test analytics software, topic discovery, voice of the customer, and other innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

WORKSHOPS: TAW also features a full-day, hands-on text analytics workshop, plus several other pre- and post-conference workshops in analytics that complement the core conference program.

For more information: tawgo.com

Save $400 on Predictive Analytics World and Text Analytics World 2-Day Combo Pass:

1. Super Early Bird Registration by December 16th – Save up to $400.

2. Take $150 off the Early Bird or the Advance Two Day Pass registration fee with this posting's promotional discount code: CUSText Analytics WorldText Analytics World150.

3. Save an additional $200 for each additional attendee from the same company registered at the same time.

Register Today!

http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/register.php

If you'd like our informative event updates, sign up at:
http://www.textanalyticsworld.com/subscription.php

To sign up for TAW group on LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/e/gis/3869759

For inquiries e-mail regsupport@risingmedia.com or call (717) 798-3495.

ALL ANALYTICS EVENTS:
PAW San Francisco: March 4-10, 2012 – www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco
Text Analytics World SF: March 6-7, 2012 – www.tawgo.com
PAW Toronto: April 25-26, 2012 – www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com
PAW Chicago: June 25-26, 2012 - www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com
PAW Videos: Available on-demand – www.pawcon.com/video

Predictive Analytics World San Francisco 2012 Conference Announces Speaker Line-Up

San Francisco, CA – Predictive Analytics World, the business-focused event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, today announced the speaker line-up for the March 4-10, 2012 San Francisco, CA Conference (www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco/2012).

Predictive Analytics World (pawcon.com) is the business-focused event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, covering today's commercial deployment of predictive analytics, across industries and across software vendors.

PAW SF promises to once again break records as the biggest cross-vendor predictive analytics event ever. PAW's program is packed with the top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors and business thought leaders, including keynote addresses from Piyanka Jain, CEO, Aryng.com, former PayPal Business Analytics Head, and PAW Program Chair Eric Siegel, plus special sessions from industry heavy-weights Andreas Weigend and John Elder.

The event will be held at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, 55 Fourth Street, San Francisco, California.

PAW's SF 2012 program is the richest and most diverse yet, featuring over 40 sessions across 2 tracks: 1) "All Audiences,” and 2) "Expert/Practitioner " -- so you can witness how predictive analytics is applied by AARP, Alberta Motor Association, Altos Research, Broadspire, CA General Underwriters, CompassLabs, HP, Interclick, Kelley Blue Book, LinkedIn, Major League Baseball, NFL, MLB, and the NBA, Pfizer, Sisters of Mercy Health Systems, Social Media Research Foundation, University of Phoenix, Volunteers of America, Wells Fargo, Yahoo!, YMCA, ZZAlpha, an IT support firm, a sales workforce, real-world examples in financial services emergency response, and true-to-life anecdotes based on miscellaneous enterprise successes, plus insights from projects for Anheuser-Busch, Dept. Homeland Security, and US Postal Service Office of Inspector General.

HOT TOPICS AND ADVANCED METHODS: PAW SF’s agenda covers agile analytics, behavior-based advertising, black box trading, branch location assessment, churn modeling, clinical healthcare, crowdsourcing predictive analytics, cloud analytics, econometric indicators, education, enterprise-wide analytics, forecasting, HR analytics, insurance, list sourcing, non-profits, online marketing, real estate market scoring, risk management, social data, sports analytics, targeting direct marketing, uplift modeling and other innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

TEXT ANALYTICS: Text Analytics World (tawgo.com), co-located with PAW San Francisco the day immediately thereafter, provides reasonable cross-registration options so your breadth of session topics expands to include this rapidly growing field.

WORKSHOPS: PAW also features several full-day pre- and post-conference workshops that complement the core conference program.

Join PAW and access the premier keynotes, sessions, workshops, exposition, expert panel, live demos during "Lab session", networking coffee breaks, reception, birds-of-a-feather lunches, brand-name enterprise leaders, and industry heavyweights in the business.

Read more: Articles and blog entries about PAW can be found at pawcon.com/pressroom.php

View agenda overview: www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2012/agenda_overview.php

Registration: http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/register.php

PAW’s Super Early Bird Registration by December 16th – Save up to $400. You can also take $150 off the Early Bird or the Advance Two Day Pass registration fee with this posting's promotional discount code: CUS150. Save an additional $200 for each additional attendee from the same company registered at the same time.

View the PAW overview video:
www.pawcon.com/newyork/2011/video_about_predictive_analytics_world.php

What is predictive analytics? See the Predictive Analytics Guide:
www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/guide

If you'd like our informative event updates, sign up at:
www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/signup-us.php

To sign up for the PAW group on LinkedIn, see:
www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1005097

Follow PAW on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/pawcon/

For inquiries e-mail regsupport@risingmedia.com or call (717) 798-3495.

ALL ANALYTICS EVENTS:
PAW San Francisco: March 4-10, 2012 – www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco
Text Analytics World SF: March 7, 2012 – www.tawgo.com
PAW Toronto: April 25-26, 2012 – www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com
PAW Chicago: June 25-26, 2012 - www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com
PAW Videos: Available on-demand – www.pawcon.com/video

Becky Carroll

The Bathroom Experience

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Once again I am participating in the Bathroom Blogfest. As I have mentioned before, if you have a physical presence, whether you are B2C or B2B, your bathroom is an important part of the customer experience. What does it say about your brand?

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eGain named to Software Magazine’s 29th Annual Software 500

Software Magazine ranks eGain as one of the world’s largest software companies for the ninth straight year

Mountain View, CA (October 13, 2011): eGain ( NASDAQ: EGAN), the leading provider of cloud and on-site customer interaction hub software, today announced its inclusion in Software Magazine’s Software 500 ranking of the world’s largest software and service providers, now in its 29th year.

“The 2011 Software 500 results show that revenue growth in the software and services industry was healthy, with total Software 500 revenue of $541.5 billion worldwide for 2010, representing approximately 10 percent growth from the previous year’s list,” said John P Desmond, editor of Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com.

“The Software 500 helps CIOs, senior IT managers, and IT staff research and create the short list of business partners,” Desmond said. “It is a quick reference of vendor viability. And the online version, to be posted soon at www.softwaremag.com, is searchable by category, making it what we call the online catalog to enterprise software.”

“As consumers go social and mobile, businesses are struggling to consistently manage interactions across the customer lifecycle,” said Ashu Roy, eGain Chairman and CEO. “Our Customer Interaction Hub platform enables businesses to deliver differentiated and consistent customer experiences across the web, social, and phone. We are pleased to be in the Software 500 list for the ninth straight year.”

The Software 500 is a revenue-based ranking of the world’s largest software and services suppliers, targeting medium to large enterprises, their IT professionals, software developers, and business managers involved in software and services purchasing.

Some 27 percent of the 2011 Software 500 companies are privately held. More than 100 companies are on the list in 2011 for the first time, a reflection of the dynamic nature of the industry.

Go to www.softwaremag.com/register to subscribe to be among the first to see the 2011 Software 500. It is being released first in the digital publication, to be distributed in late September.

The ranking is based on total worldwide software and services revenue for 2010. This includes revenue from software licenses, maintenance and support, training, and software-related services and consulting. Suppliers are not ranked on their total corporate revenue, since many have other lines of business, such as hardware. The financial information was gathered by a survey prepared by King Content Co. and posted at www.softwaremag.com, as well as from public documents.

About Digital Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com
Digital Software Magazine, the Software Decision Journal, has been a brand name in the high-tech industry for more than 35 years. Softwaremag.com, its Web counterpart, is the online catalog to enterprise software and the home of the Software 500 ranking of the world’s largest software and services companies. Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com are owned and operated by King Content Co.

About eGain
eGain (NASDAQ: EGAN) is the leading provider of cloud and on-premise customer interaction software for sales and service. For over a decade, eGain solutions have helped improve customer experience, grow sales, and optimize service processes across the web, social, and phone channels. Hundreds of global enterprises rely on eGain to transform fragmented sales engagement and customer service operations into unified Customer Interaction Hubs (CIHs). To find out more about eGain products, visit http://www.egain.com/products/index.asp

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has operating presence in North America, EMEA and APAC. To learn more about us, visit www.eGain.com or call our offices: +1-800-821-4358 (US), +44-(0)-1753-464646 (EMEA), or +91-(0)-20-6608-9200 (APAC). Also, follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/egain and Facebook at http://facebook.com/egain

eGain contact:
Jamie Abayan
Phone: 650-230-7532
Email: jabayan@egain.com

Software 500 contact:
Tracy Kunichika
Software 500 Project Leader
Email: Tracyk@softwaremag.com

Dr. Johnny D. Magwood

Southwest Airlines and Walt Disney: Comparing to Determine Their Success

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Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines is a standard-bearer for low cost carrier initiatives. The original founders, Rollin King and Herb Kelleher, started a different kind of Airline Company 37 years ago. King and Kelleher began with one simple notion: if an airline can get its passengers to their destinations when they want to get there, at the lowest possible fare, and they have a good time doing it, people will fly this airline. In 2008, Southwest Airlines flew 70 million passengers annually to popular cities all across the country using a standard fleet of Boeing 737 jets (Southwest Airlines, 2007).

Major Leadership Component: Personal Commitment

Creating long range competitive advantage requires personal commitment, consistent discipline and steadfast investment (Spreitzer & Quinn, 2003). Toward personal commitment, Southwest Airlines places emphasis on employee job satisfaction and their leaders take extra steps to ensure that the corporate environment supports employee health and welfare. This assurance is consistent with Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory which highlights a link between motivational factors supporting job satisfaction and maintenance factors ensuring job satisfaction is maintained at acceptable levels (Smerek & Peterson, 2007).

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Vijay Dandapani

Ancillary fees as revenue enhancers: turning chump into chunk change

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Fees for "ancillary" services have been proliferating across industries for the past several years with airlines and hotels being at the forefront in coming up with creative ways to raise money without raising prices on the main product or service.

While fees for checked baggage amongst airlines is by now ubiquitous and largely, if grudgingly, accepted a slew of new fees are either being contemplated or already levied by the airlines. These include in-flight wireless use, extra-legroom and/or recline, in-flight "meals", preferred seating and priority boarding with particularly annoying, if not egregious, levies like itinerary change fees. 

Baggage fees are evidently lucrative with the New York Times reporting that last year "domestic airlines raised $3.4 billion just from charges for checked bags. In 2007, the year before most airlines started charging extra for checking a bag, the comparable figure was $464.2 million."

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LOGiQ3 Protects Critical Data Automatically with e-ternity Cloud Backup Powered by Asigra

Leading Canadian Insurance Company Cuts Backup Administration Time up to 90 Percent

TORONTO – August 31, 2011 – Asigra Inc., a leading Cloud Backup™, recovery and restore (BURR) software provider since 1986, today announced that LOGiQ3, a leading Canadian insurance and reinsurance outsourcing company, is protecting its critical data with Asigra's Cloud Backup solution, delivered by Asigra partner e-ternity Business Continuity Consultants, Inc.

A leading agent of change within the life insurance and reinsurance industry, LOGiQ3, a PROFIT 200 company, is one of Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies. LOGiQ3 provides a variety of outsourcing services including reinsurance administration, production underwriting, auditing, consulting and training to companies in North America, Europe and the Caribbean from its offices in Toronto, Canada, and Cardiff, U.K. The company selected cloud backup for its simplicity and ability to cut backup administration time up to 90 percent compared to traditional backup technologies.

Prior to engaging a cloud backup solution, backing up LOGiQ3's distributed computing environment was challenging. The company performed file synchronization of laptop data, requiring users to protect the data on their own laptops. To improve the process, LOGiQ3 built a portal for users to save data in a SharePoint structured environment, but it was not 100 percent effective; manual processes were still required. When users searched the backup data set for specific information, data was often difficult to locate. This indicated that backups using only file synchronization were incomplete. The company looked at on-premise solutions but did not like their heavy backup agents or the fact that they provided file-level rather than block-level data protection and deduplication. Furthermore, LOGiQ3 wanted a backup time of 10 minutes maximum, not the 30 minutes required by on-premise solutions.

LOGiQ3 turned to e-ternity, also a Canadian company, because it offered the best solution for its distributed environment. e-ternity provides monthly managed services that guarantee business continuance to customers and depends on Asigra Cloud Backup as the technology behind its services.

"Protecting the laptop data of our mobile workforce was difficult; we needed a more advanced alternative," said Ian Sanderson, Vice President, Technology at LOGiQ3. "For our company, loss of communications or information assets can result in a loss of credibility which was not an option. e-ternity's cloud backup service provides the highest level of protection, which is critical to our business."

e-ternity cloud backup Powered by Asigra happens quickly and seamlessly, with no user intervention. The solution automatically protects 100 percent of the data across all LOGiQ3 laptops and desktops and select server data. Block-level backup minimizes the time required to capture all recent changes, thereby reducing backup run time and its impact on computing performance.

"Compared to on-premise solutions, Asigra Cloud Backup from e-ternity has cut our backup administration hours by 80 to 90 percent and reduced maintenance and management costs up to 25 percent," said Sanderson. "Plus, we now trust that the recovery of data is assured, allowing us to sleep better at night. Since deploying the solution we've had to do two data restores, one for a stolen laptop and one for a laptop with a crashed disk drive. In both cases, data recovery took only a couple of hours.

"The decentralized model of cloud backup is ideal for a 'road warrior' company like LOGiQ3, where the computing environment is highly distributed," said Greg Onoprijenko, president of e-ternity. "Our Asigra-based Cloud Backup service provides seamless backup of all data, wherever it is located, with no end-user intervention."

"More and more companies like LOGiQ3, where data is stored in disparate computing environments, are realizing that Asigra Cloud Backup can greatly simplify their backup procedures," said Tracy Staniland, senior director, corporate marketing, Asigra. "Because we partner with professional service providers such as e-ternity, end-users can be sure to receive excellent customer service from an experienced support team."

Tweet this: @LOGiQ3 Protects Laptop Data Automatically with #CloudBackup from @Asigra

Follow Asigra on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/asigra

About e-ternity
e-ternity provides internet-based services to companies in North America that guarantee business continuance despite any disaster or threat. With its innovative monthly managed services model, e-ternity utilizes cloud computing technologies combined with a comprehensive service program that will allow organizations to optimize their business processes and maximize efficiency and productivity. More information about e-ternity can be found at www.e-ternity.ca.

About Asigra
Asigra is the leading Canadian cloud computing vendor focused on backup, recovery and restoration with more than 400,000 customer sites deployed globally. Asigra Cloud Backup™ transforms the way businesses manage and protect their data by delivering seamless end-to-end data protection that efficiently scales and easily adapts to any IT environment. Asigra Cloud Backup is built for new and existing MSPs/VARs who focus on data protection, IT constrained organizations, and industries with compliance mandates that are looking to improve their backup with a secure, reliable and predictable data protection cloud backup model. With more than 25 years of experience as backup/recovery pioneers, Asigra manages one of the largest business-class backup service provider ecosystems in the world who power their cloud backup services using Asigra technology. Asigra is recognized among top-tier industry analysts, including the Enterprise Strategy Group, Gartner, IDC, Forrester Research and the 451 Group. Recently, the company was recognized as a leader in cloud backup for 2011 by the MSPmentor 250, a leading online destination for managed service providers. Asigra is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with offices globally. For more information, visit www.asigra.com.

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Asigra and the Asigra logo are trademarks of Asigra Inc. All other brand and product names are, or may be, trademarks of their respective owners.

Agency Contact:
Joe Austin
Ventana PR
(818) 332-6166
joe.austin@ventanapr.com

Company Contact :
Nerissa Martin
Asigra
(416) 736-8111 ext. 1455
nerissa.martin@asigra.com

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