Author: Alan Sears

Social Media applications are not a passing trend. They have quickly grown into a powerful resource for businesses. More than 75% of the Fortune 500 use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or corporate blogs to communicate with their stakeholders. Forward-thinking companies are using these online communities, social networks and other internet-based, collaborative media to support their customer base and improve the customer experience

Traditional customer service has evolved over the past few years with this growth in social media usage. It is no longer enough for businesses to connect with customers on social media. They are now driven to monitor online conversations about their company then provide responsive and timely support through these channels. In addition to using social media for sales, marketing and business intelligence many companies have updated their customer service strategy to integrate these platforms. According to Gartner, 35% of all customer service centers will have social media capability by 2013.

If implemented correctly social media provide additional data streams for understanding customers’ expectations and needs. According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, 38% of bloggers say they post about brands that they love or hate. And the 2nd most trusted information source for product referrals are Facebook friends. There are plenty of tools out there identifying where these conversations about your brand are occurring. The challenge has been turning the data produced by that monitoring into something actionable.

So how do you keep track of what the 800+ million Facebook users are saying or what is being written about you on the millions of active blogs out there? I think Cisco’s SocialMiner product can help by providing the bridge between social media and your customer support team along with the CRM system you are using.

SocialMiner is a customer care solution that helps companies proactively respond to customers and prospects communicating through public social media networks like Blogs, Facebook, Twitter or other online forums. It provides monitoring, queuing, reporting and workflow to organize internet postings related to your business. Then your customer care team can use this info to provide real-time responses using the same channels your customers are communicating on.

SocialMiner is part of the Unified Contact Center so deployment should be familiar if you are an existing Cisco customer. John Hernandez, General Manager of their Customer Collaboration Business Unit (CCBU), has said that SocialMiner is an engagement product, not a listening product. Check out the full list of features that support his statement and help set SocialMiner apart from traditional social media monitoring tools:

Whether you’ve established a social media presence or not, chances are that people are talking about your business online. SocialMiner is one of those products you may want to consider to help your company start listening to these conversations. Your team will be in a better position to increase customer loyalty, provide responsive service, engage new customers and protect your brand.

In their Connected World Technology Report, Cisco surveyed 2,853 people split between college students and recently employed college graduates ages 21 to 29 in fourteen countries and asked them “How important is the Internet to you?” Cisco offered three options and asked respondents choose the best: (a) I could live without the Internet, (b) I could live without the Internet but it would be a struggle, or (c) I could not live without the Internet.

Among college students, 55% say they could not live without the Internet compared to 62% of those recent graduates with jobs. Over 30% in both categories say they could survive, but it would be a struggle. 40% of students rank the Internet as most important as compared to partying, dating, and music. 64% would rather have Internet access than a car. A big thing they rely on the Internet for is news, with 77% of students saying they get their news and other information from the Internet. TV comes in a distant fourth at 7% with newspapers, magazines and books behind that. The results are similar for the recently employed.

How is your business building an environment to support this new Internet generation of workers? Are your business apps web-ified? Can your data centers support mobile access to these applications on any device, anywhere? These will be critical components to recruiting the next top talent for your organization. Are you ready?

I have often said that “work is not a place, work is where you are” to depict the ever changing workplace infused with mobile devices and new definitions of work-life balance. Most professionals today do not sit behind a desk from 8 to 5, but are out and about, taking meetings, making calls, or taking the kids to soccer practice. Whether it be in the parking lot of your next appointment or the sideline of a little league game, mobile devices today mean we are always connected and always a finger’s tap away from work. However, I recently saw the statistic that by 2013, 75.5% of workers in the United States will be mobile. Now while many of them will still have a desk in an office somewhere, this will also mean an increase in teleworkers as well. It’s no surprise that employees prefer to work from home, but technology is allowing more employers to be comfortable with teleworker as they are connected to them no differently as if they were in the office down the hall. Being able to see their productivity instantly, not to mention the increased work output from employees that don’t have to commute, is making many employers more open to allowing employees to work from home.

This increasing benefit for employees will mean a recruiting advantage for companies that are more developed in their teleworking policies. As the Internet generation of young adults enter the workforce, workplace mobility will undoubtedly be a key factor in their employment decisions. Are you preparing your business for the Anywhere Office? Morning staple to many, Starbucks Coffee is with a home-delivery bean subscription service. Now your employee truly doesn’t need to leave the home.

There is no substitute for face time with the right people. If you’re like most companies, you have a key set of employees who are experts in what they do. And the ability to maximize your client’s exposure to these individuals has a dramatic effect overall revenues and, ultimately, your bottom line.

For example: Regional banks typically have a group of highly talented loan officers or investment personnel. These experts usually have scheduled days to be at a particular branch location. As the number of branches grows, the number of times these key resources can be at a particular branch becomes severely impacted. What happens when a client prospect walks through the door and asks to see someone about refinancing a home or investing an inheritance? Telling them to “Come back on Monday” when the appropriate person will be onsite is not acceptable. As that potential business prospect leaves, you’re literally allowing money to walk out the door.

TBL has a solution. Leveraging high-definition video conferencing resources, TBL allows resources to efficiently “meet” prospects, clients and customers in a number of different locations without ever leaving his or her seat. The key to this solution’s effectiveness is the client and resources seeing each other at their actual size in high-fidelity video – we’re talking “reading the second hand on the other person’s watch” quality – providing an immersive experience akin to being in the same room together. It’s the next best thing to meeting in person. And TBL makes the next best thing possible now.

Businesses are in the business of making money. While the model that a company chooses to attempt such a feat varies widely, the formula they all subscribe to is universal: revenue less costs equals profit. It is no wonder that the goal of most senior executives is to increase revenue, decrease cost, or both. The IT department for most organizations is seen as a cost center, and usually one that is in direct conflict with one of the three aforementioned goals. Yes, as technology continually improves, it seems the IT department wants to spend more and more. “Didn’t they just buy new servers six years ago?”

However, with the guidance of a data center consultant with expertise in virtualization, computing, and storage, the next expenditure in data center technology can improve operational costs of the IT department, and work in conjunction with the goals of executives. The consolidation of hardware and software that virtualization provides can allow for a reduction in many key factors that commonly contribute to the ongoing costs of supporting the data center. With the proper study ahead of time by skilled professionals, these areas can be identified, measured, and included in a plan for the next technology refresh that will improve the total cost of ownership for the IT department. At TBL, we have created a practice around 7 of these key areas that have the most impact on the data center. It takes a proven methodology and the discipline of carefully planned deployments with low level detail given to the migration from old to new, but savings can be realized in a virtualization project.

The main issue that many organizations that virtualize face is that they do not measure ANY factors, and therefore cannot claim success in virtualizing. While the ability to consolidate is a powerful one, simply reducing the quantity of something does not inherently means that the costs associated with operating it are reduced. Businesses who are planning to virtualize the data center should make sure to work off of a baseline of known cost factors so that the financial impact can analyzed. That is the true measure of success for a business.

The much anticipated day has arrived! The first installment of this series was posted on June 24^th, where I anxiously awaited the arrival of the Cius tablets we had just ordered from Cisco. The accessories have been trickling in over the last few weeks: first the power supplies, then the Bluetooth headsets, leather cases, a spare battery, then the media station dock with telephone receiver. I could practically visualize the full solution, we just needed the Cius tablets themselves!

Then, this past Tuesday the 30^th of August, while I was away on business in Charlotte, NC, the Cius tablets were delivered. My coworkers delighted in the irony that I was not in the office that day, and expressed their feelings in a portrait that they graciously sent to me.

 

So now begins the task of integrating the Cius into our infrastructure. I will leave the details of Cisco Unified Communications Manager versions, Microsoft Exchange compatibility, VMware View, Windows Folder Redirection, etc. to the technical blogs, but as we deploy the Cius for our own use, you will see more here on the user experience. Stay tuned!

TBL made its first inter-company Cisco TelePresence call this past week. After provisioning a new MPLS circuit from Masergy, we gained access to the British Telecom node of the Global Video Exchange (GVE). Our inaugural call was to who else but our local Cisco office, and of course, the call was every bit as perfect as the ones we make to our other unit down the hall. Masergy has a great product with their variable rate DS3 offering, which allows end customers to adjust the amount of bandwidth they have provisioned (and thus are charged for) through a web portal. Need a little more bandwidth over the next 24 hours for that video conference or big backup? No problem.

But what really struck me about the TelePresence call is that I was communicating from my office to one of another company’s over a public network that wasn’t the Internet. Most of us are familiar with reaching out and touching someone over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), but today most IP communications are forced to travel over the Internet to make it from company to another. And while the Internet has been the great equalizer in connecting the planet, it carries all kinds of traffic with equal treatment – which can be detrimental to real time media like video. But there I was, face to face with my friends in the Cisco office in all their 1080p-high-definition-100%-life-size-spacial-wideband-audio glory, and our packets were traveling over a purpose-built, packetized IP, quality of service enabled, public network specifically for connecting companies with Cisco TelePresence units. And all I did was dial a phone number  – talk about reaching out and touching someone. And then it hit me: I am going to witness the death of the PSTN in my lifetime.

Sorry Alexander Graham Bell – it’s been a great run, but 135+ years after asking Mr. Watson to come there, voice alone over a copper circuit just isn’t good enough anymore. Yes, the public network of circuit-switched copper wires that connect us all together and provide that comforting and all too familiar hum of dial tone will go silent one day. Most of us are communicating over IP networks for voice and video today already, as are most businesses intra-company. But we are all dependent on the PSTN to reliably connect us together externally… until now. Cisco, AT&T, British Telecom, and Tata have connected themselves together to form the Global Video Exchange (GVE), and offer this packet IP network to clients who wish to communicate together – much like the PSTN of old. Consider the GVE the new PPTN (Public Packetized TelePresence Network), and the harbinger of a new global, public network for inter-entity rich media communications. If Ma Bell could only see us now!