Your Source for Providing a Better Customer Service and Customer Support Experience

The fun and unique Zappos office environment

Discover how customer phenom Zappos.com grew their gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.

Rob Siefker of the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team discusses the Zappos commitment to WOWing their customers through service, how they retain repeat customers, and what they do internally to inspire the Zappos culture & core values. Read more »

Challenged by managing & motivating a culturally diverse customer service team a continent away?

I am a customer service manager at Voice123.com, and a challenge I face is managing the staff we employ in Bogota, Colombia from the offices we have in New York City, NY. When I took this job as Customer Service/Quality Assurance/Blogger/Public Relations manager at Voice123, I understood ahead of time what challenges were ahead of me. I was not told what the challenges were, but my past experience in traveling to other countries filled me with the knowledge of how businesses in the United States were viewed internationally. I also understood that there are countries that view the United States as ‘1st World’, as if to say that their own country must be ‘3rd World’ by comparison. Luckily, traveling has also taught me that many times people who believe their country is inferior to the United States, may simply need to be reminded as to how the world is pretty much the same no matter where you go. Back in 1992, I read a book called ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill. In this book, he describes very basic needs shared by all human beings, or at least, that is my interpretation of his writing behind his Philosophy of Success: Read more »

Download the IGN success story

In the U.S. alone, computer and videogame software sales topped $11.7 billion in 2008. In this hot market, millions of devoted gaming fans are online looking for the latest content, news and tips to enrich the gaming experience – and many of them are going to IGN Entertainment sites.

A unit of Fox Interactive Media, Inc., IGN is a leading Internet media and services provider, bringing news, reviews, videos, previews and forums to videogame and entertainment enthusiasts. In fact, IGN sites attract one of the largest concentrated audiences of young males online.

In a given month, tens of millions of unique users visit one of IGN’s targeted sites, which include IGN.com, GameSpy.com, Direct2Drive.com and AskMen.com. Across all sites, the company’s customer service department fields 12,000 support inquiries every month, from login questions to help finding specific content.

Download this customer success story and learn how leading Internet media and services provider IGN maintains a high level of service without costly staff additions.

Web Marketing Association 2009 WebAward - Standard of Excellence

Parature has been honored by the Web Marketing Association (WMA) with ‘Standard of Excellence’ awards in the computer software and technology industry categories during its 13^th annual WebAward Competition for website development.  This premiere website award program received entries from more than 2,000 sites from 45 countries that were adjudicated in 96 industry categories during this year’s competition.

Parature’s corporate website www.parature.com was judged by an expert panel of members of the media, advertising executives, top website designers, content providers, and webmasters on seven different criteria, including design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation, and use of technology.  Judges designated higher than industry average scores on all criteria for Parature’s website in the computer software category.

Check the WebAward website for more information.

Software Magazine Ranks Parature as one of the World’s Largest Software Companies with 63% Growth

Parature is in! We’ve been included on Software Magazine’s Software 500 ranking of the world’s largest software and service providers, now in its 27th year.

“The 2009 Software 500 results show that revenue growth in the software and services industry was healthy, with total Software 500 revenue of $491.3 billion worldwide for 2008 representing 8.8% growth from the previous year,” says 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 says. “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.”

Some 44 percent of the 2009 Software 500 companies are privately held. Read more »

Download this customer success story

In today’s medical environment, physicians are pressed to see as many patients as possible. Often, that means staying late to catch up on paperwork accumulated throughout the day.

Technology from e-MDs is changing that. The company’s electronic health record (EHR) software allows physicians and their staffs to document patient visits electronically with just a few clicks – saving time and improving documentation.

EHRs also allow practices to eliminate cumbersome paper charts – a huge time saver for staff and a critical customer service tool since patient information is now available from any computer with the EHR software. It is a true mission-critical application.

That’s why e-MDs’ customer support response times are so vital.

“If a doctor has an issue with his computer, he needs help immediately to access patient records or chart information,” said James Foster, client data operations manager at e-MDs.

Download this customer success story and discover how electronic health record (EHR) software provider e-MDs empowered their customers to help themselves and reduced critical issue resolution times by 80%.

Parature CEO and President, Duke Chung

Duke Chung, our CEO and President, will present to the Sierra Ventures CIO Advisory Board at its fourth annual CIO Summit. The invite-only event is specifically designed for the 40+ person advisory board made up of IT executives from Fortune 500 companies across all major industries and throughout the US. The Advisory Board serves as a key element of Sierra’s IT investment strategy. This year’s event includes keynote speakers Joe Tucci – CEO/Chairman, EMC; Charles Phillips – President, Oracle; and Mark Templeton – CEO, Citrix, as well as 12 CEO presentations from Sierra’s portfolio, and panel discussions such as cloud computing and top IT spending trends. The event will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel Silicon Valley at East Palo Alto on Tuesday, September 15th in the Main Ballroom.

Watch the recorded version here

Those who manage people know that it is often challenging to provide ‘constructive criticism’ or feedback without causing their employees to become defensive. All too often human nature and an instinctive need to defend ourselves takes over, resulting in resentment or resistance to suggestions for change.

This webinar features Rich Gallagher - Author of What to Say to a Porcupine & How to Tell Anyone Anything: Breakthrough Techniques for Handling Difficult Conversations a Work – exploring a fresh new approach to coaching customer service professionals. An approach based on recent developments in the psychology of how we communicate with each other focusing on strength-based coaching versus deficit-based coaching. Read more »

Can customer feedback help?

Customer satisfaction, an important factor in increasing customer loyalty; essential to success in today’s challenging economy. What can organizations do to increase customer satisfaction and in turn their loyalty? Feedback may be instrumental to the cause.

Companies of all types have long been requesting feedback on their products or services. Companies like Amazon.com, Best Buy and Wal-Mart ask you top rate their products by brand, Netflix asks you to rate their movies, restaurants ask you to rate their food and service, and hotels ask you to rate the quality of your stay all in an effort to determine what their customers like and don’t like, what makes them happy and unhappy, and what they can do to improve their product or service. So then, why shouldn’t organizations ask for this same type of customer feedback within their customer service and support channels? A customer’s support experience can often determine their loyalty to your brand or service. Read more »

Parature jumping for joy!

As others tighten belts, they’ve turned to Parature’s SaaS customer service software to help retain customers. That’s led to a 40% year-over-year revenue growth for the Vienna-based company and some recent milestones: 3K support portals worldwide, 16 million people using its product, and a 90% customer renewal rate. Pictured in various stages of flight: VPs Paul Ironside, Elaine Harvey, Gary McNeil, Karolyn Dector, Ben Martin, CEO Duke Chung, and VP Calvin Lam.

Originally posted by Tech Bisnow