Success in customer service is a qualitative measure and very difficult to calculate in terms of ROI. One thing a business like ours might look at is employee tenure. If people are learning what they need to learn to be successful in their jobs, then they're likely to stay longer, as opposed to people who are not properly trained and are frustrated by their lack of knowledge. Another thing to consider is the average transaction in terms of units and dollars. If salespeople are well trained, they're more likely to be able to persuade customers to go to a higher-quality product, which means higher dollars. Or they will be knowledgeable enough about a product to recognize that it should go together with others, and that increases items and dollars. Add-on sales in retail are what it's all about. They're the best way to increase revenues without the expense of increasing traffic.
The payoff in the longer term is that salespeople who are better trained provide better customer service and help create more loyal, long-term customers. So the ultimate payoff is survival.
We have found that in retail a lot of technology focuses on efficiency and on control of areas like inventory, assets, or cash, and that's important. But I think that using technology to improve the efficiency and capability of the people who form the company could prove to be just as monumental an application as one concerned with the "things' side of the equation.
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Tom Samph
CEO of $28-million Assessment Systems Inc., in Bala Cynwyd, Penn.
Our focus is to bring technology to state governments. We do what state governments should do but can't afford to do or don't know how to do. We literally become the service bureau, or backbone, of a regulatory agency, and we deliver its exams and manage its records.
We are going to be investing heavily in a network of CD-ROM delivery mechanisms. They will allow, say, social workers to take their licensing exams electronically, on a computer with full-motion video and sound, as opposed to taking written tests. That will be a major investment for us. The cost depends on implementation strategy. If we do it all at once, it will probably cost in the neighborhood of $6 million or $7 million.
Our return on the investment in CD-ROM will be something like 10% to 20%, based on utilization rates. Utilization is simply the number of people who sit in front of the machine and take a test. The more people who use it, the higher the ROI.
We will also be investing in interactive voice-response technology (IVR). Our service lends itself to license-renewal processing. To use an example outside our area of interest: Imagine renewing your driver's license over the phone, as opposed to filling out a form. You could do it using IVR. It would save time and money, and prevent hassles. Just think, you wouldn't have to deal with bureaucracy.
HOME IS WHERE THE DUO-DOCK IS
Martha Stewart, homemaking guru and queen of cuisine, may be trading in her spatula for a spreadsheet
It's like crazy. You'd be horrified at my office. I work in total chaos. Organized chaos. I have to deal with ribbons, tea, cats and dogs, technology, candle making, cooking, ordering manure -- all in the same five minutes. Do you know how long it takes me to find my birth certificate? Everything, every record of importance, I would like to have in my files. When I tear a recipe out of the newspaper, I want to scan it right into my files. I want to really have it easy. What I'm trying to do for myself, and ultimately for others, is to create some sort of technology that works for me, the homemaker.
So this is what I really want to have at my fingertips. An Audiovisual Power Mac -- this would be in my kitchen, where I work all the time. Ideally with duo-docking capabilities. I have a Powerbook, and right now I can't insert my Powerbook into my docking system. I want an extended keyboard. The Audiovisual Mac with duo-docking capabilities is about $5,000. The extended keyboard is about $150. I would also like an optical-character-recognition-capable scanner with the ability to process items such as forms, records, recipes, and possibly graphics. I want it to scan items quickly. That item costs about $1,000. I want a speedy black-and-white printer, which costs anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000. I want an affordable, decent-quality, reasonably fast color printer, and that's not here yet; color printers are too expensive right now. I want a high-speed fax modem, so when I write something I can fax a hard copy right away. I don't care about getting my faxes on this thing because I don't want to be using up my time receiving faxes. So I only want to send from it. That costs about $200 or $300. I want a Quicktake digital camera, which costs about $700 to $900. It will feed right into my computer so I can walk around my house and document my antiques, my art -- everything -- and have my records right in there. And then I'll take my disks right to the bank and put them in the safe-deposit box.
I would love to take all this stuff out of the boxes, plug it in, and have it work. So you see, I want to really organize my life. And I think everyone else would want to do that, if I could help them. And right now it's too expensive for everybody. We have to find out how to do it more cheaply.
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