Recently I was at a conference  where former New Labour spin-doctor Alistair Campbell was speaking. He stated that the “citizen and the consumer had merged” and that people want “private sector standards and public sector values”.  I pondered on this and decided it meant that people want the efficiency of the private sector and the [...]

“I wish they would only take me as I am” – Vincent Van Gogh Personas are essential to Customer Experience Management. It’s a given that good design begins with understanding the design target. A Persona nets-out as a “word portrait” of a customer type, distilling the essential elements of a market segment. The richer and more [...]

There’s a term trending on Twitter at the moment that makes me shake my head and smile a little. Why didn’t I see that coming? It’s ‘Big Process’  (#bigprocess) and I find the tweets by Clay Richardson really interesting. Now, I had no clue what this could mean, so my mind was running in all [...]

I may very possibly be the last to blog on the theme of technology trends and predictions for 2012 with every blogger worthy of a following already having done so (and before 2012 actually arrived). But in my role at KANA, this is not something I think about only at New Year. On the contrary, [...]

Business process management (BPM) has largely focused on making business processes more efficient and agile. It provides tools and methodologies to achieve this goal. BPM is quite valuable for back office processes where the processes can be well defined and there is not much customer interaction. BPM ensures consistency in the back office processes but [...]

Saw Bill Cosby the day after Thanksgiving. He told the story of “Phil’s Famous Stuffing”. Phil, a craftsman in Cosby’s employ, is known, far and wide, across the townships of rural Massachusetts, for making the world’s greatest stuffing. Cosby described how folks drive out and line up at Phil’s each turkey day to get a [...]

One critical but challenging aspect of success for any project or program is achieving organizational alignment: keeping all key participants and stakeholders on the same page, working towards a common purpose. For many Support and Service organizations, organizational alignment is a major challenge, due to the unique role these organizations play in driving customer interactions. [...]

Sure, Gordon Ramsay is too good looking, seems to bask in celebrity, acts like a rude sod, and teaches management by intimidation. But, if, as one suspects, his eponymous London showpiece reflects the man, you gotta like him. Ramsay runs a terrific restaurant. No, we’re not talking French Laundry or Joel Robuchon here, my standards [...]

I wrote this blog when Steve Jobs announced his retirement from Apple. Tragically it has now become an eulogy to a great man. It’s worth repeating. When Steve Jobs launched the iPad, he described it as ‘revolutionary’, ‘unbelievably great’, ‘extraordinary’ and ‘truly magical’. He could just as easily have been talking about himself. No one in [...]

Post-it notes, Notepads, calling a colleague, stretching above cubical wall and yelling “Hey, have you received the PO yet? Can I invoice?” have become a part of our day to day work. How many times you have to ‘run around’ to get an order processed? Umpteen phone calls, emails, contract reviews etc. All this is [...]