Overland Park, KS (Vocus) December 18, 2009 — CXO Global Solutions (http://www.cxogs.com), a managed services firm specializing in unified communications and managed call center operations, today announced it has acquired Florida-based S3 Integrity (http://www.s3integrity.com), the developer and distributor of the WuLi Solution™, a proprietary customer self-service business process and technology. The agreement will be effective January 1, 2010.

The company also announced that Mike Tripp, S3 Integrity’s chief executive officer, will join CXO Global Solutions as president. Tripp will be responsible for the day-to-day operations and strategy for the call center oversight and management portions of CXO. Bryan DiGiorgio continues as CXO Global Solutions chief executive officer, driving the strategy of the parent company, as well as the operations and strategy for the non-call center lines of business.

The S3 Integrity WuLi Solution™ provides clients with web-based customer self-service solutions designed to improve their customers’ experience while reducing operating expenses. The unique solution provides clients with the means to analyze the drivers of customer service calls, and then creates web-based multi-media content to address those questions and issues. This enables the customers to find answers/solutions through the easy-to-use WuLi portal, eliminating the need to call customer service. While many companies focus on resolving a customer’s issue on the first call, the WuLi Solution™ allows them to take customer satisfaction to a new level by providing pre-contact resolution – a tangible market advantage.

Tripp is a 20-plus year veteran in customer management and business process outsourcing. He has extensive experience within the financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, consumer electronics, logistics and business process outsourcing sectors. He has led customer management operations for CBS SportsLine and multi-client BPO operations for well-known organizations, including APAC Customer Services and Sprint Telecenters. He will relocate from Orlando to the Kansas City area.

“We are excited about adding S3 Integrity’s capabilities into CXO’s service offering. The WuLi Solution’s self-service capability is a strong addition to CXO’s client solutions and complements our core set of call center management capabilities. This enables us to deliver a complete one-stop solution for our clients’ customer experience needs,” says DiGiorgio. “We’re also very glad to welcome Mike to the management team. He brings a great deal of experience and expertise and will be a strong addition.”

About CXO Global Solutions (http://www.cxogs.com)

CXO Global Solutions is a leader in enterprise communications systems and managed contact center operations. The company provides consulting, telephony, unified communications, managed contact center solutions, and related services to leading businesses and organizations. Companies of all sizes depend on CXO Global Solutions for state-of-the-art communications and operations that improve efficiency, customer acquisition and retention, collaboration and competitiveness. Through its wholly owned subsidiary WorkSpace Communications™ (http://myucworkspace.com), CXO Global Solutions delivers telephony and Microsoft-based unified communications on a subscription basis to the small- and medium-sized business segment. 

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Having read all the white papers, heard the webcasts, visited the sites of “Social CRM” providers and end-users…and with the acknowledgement that social media has intrinsic value and is here to stay (with or without Google Sidewiki)…I’m left wondering if the current social media feeding frenzy is not – at least in part – a convenient distraction for an industry that’s failed to deliver on the most widely used customer service channels: phone, chat and email.

Is there no obligation to address the shortcomings of the tools most consumers are presently offered before the industry moves on to promote its new higher calling? Last month’s RightNow / Loudhouse research showed that, on the purchase side, 50% of consumers prefer online self-service, compared with phone (18%) or email (19%). If the industry offered true self-service on the customer service side, consumer preferences would likely be similar.

Chat, IVR and most Knowledge-Based Systems, however, do not really deliver customer self-service solutions. Neither does fancy technology.  Another newly published study – underwritten in part by Cisco – showed a continued decline in customer satisfaction levels with IVR-based speech recognition systems. Apparently, people have figured out that automated voice is more of a cost saving for companies than it is a convenience for customers. Or maybe they’re just tired of screaming into their phones.

I’m all for consumers having greater voice through community. But based on market sentiment, if customer service were a Broadway show, it would flop faster than Brighton Beach Memoirs. And Social CRM will not fix customer service shortcomings.

Gartner’s CRM analyst Michael Maoz, in his recent blog (“Press 3 for more options (and other signs your social network is insincere”), may have landed on the perfect solution for challenges the industry hasn’t yet figured out for itself: apply social media to let consumers solve them.

S3 Integrity Puts Web Chat Customer Service Channel Under the Microscope: Asks “Has Click-to-Chat Fallen Short of Expectations?”

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Despite Low Grades in Cost Reduction, Customer Experience and Ease of Implementation, Web Chat Has Untapped Potential as an Online Customer Self-Service Tool

ORLANDO, FL – 23 September 2009 – S3 Integrity LLC announced today the publication of its Blue Paper that suggests Web Chat (or “Click-to-Chat”) has failed to meet market expectations as an online customer communication channel. Based on interviews with large-scale users of the technology, the report assigns low performance grades to Web Chat on its ability to reduce operating expense, to build customer loyalty, and to be managed internally.

Web Chat adoption has grown rapidly over the past 5 years as an eCommerce tool; enabling consumers to communicate directly with an organization’s sales or customer service agents on a real-time basis, through a written exchange similar to email or SMS texting. “Reactive” Chat conversations are initiated by consumers who click a Chat icon; “proactive” Chat involves pop-up icons triggered by the website operator, primarily as a means to increase completion rates of online transactions.

According to S3 Integrity’s CEO Mike Tripp, “Our Blue Paper does not question the necessity of Web Chat as a tool for companies seeking to provide consumers with a complete portfolio of communications channels. Our report does suggest, however, that Web Chat’s business-related benefits have been over-promised and under-achieved in three important categories; primarily as a result of inadequate direction on the part of some Web Chat technology suppliers, as well as sloppy implementation on the part of many companies using the tool.”

Specifically, S3 Integrity’s Blue Paper assigned the following performance grades to Web Chat:

“Cost Reduction” Grade: C minus

According to the report, “Many companies believe Web Chat will be less expensive than phone-based customer communication, but often fail to accurately calculate embedded technology- and agent-related costs, as well as increased transaction (or “handle”) times and incremental traffic driven by the additional channel. Additionally, many companies are unable to develop their agents’ ability to manage multiple Chat conversations simultaneously (called “concurrency”), which is required to reduce transaction costs. Although Web Chat can be an effective customer collaboration tool, it is not a true online self-service solution, so its return on investment is never assured.”

“Customer Experience” Grade: C plus

According to the report, “Because customer service agents are managing concurrent conversations, customers are often subjected to long waiting times between Chat responses, or they are provided with automated “canned” responses that can miss the mark in terms of content and conversation dynamics. Further, customer service agents – operating from either on-shore or offshore locations – who have poor writing skills or do not understand nuances of the written word, will not deliver a positive Customer Experience and may even damage brand loyalty. Proactive Chat also is considered intrusive by many consumers.”

 “Ease of Implementation” Grade: D

According to the report, “Web Chat is not a plug-and-play customer service solution, and is very different from phone-based customer service in several respects, notably the skill set, personality and temperament of Chat agents versus phone agents. Chat suppliers often downplay, and companies can underestimate the complexity of proper Web Chat implementation, which involves business goals, performance metrics, policies and procedures, skills-based routing, record keeping, analytics and testing, oversight, security and privacy issues, quality control…in short, a lot of hard work and ongoing attention.”

 “S3 Integrity’s Blue Paper examination of Web Chat’s current shortcomings,” Mr. Tripp noted, is based on existing Web Chat market research and case studies, as well as our conversations and direct experience with well-known companies currently using Web Chat as a customer service channel. Although we appreciate that the Web Chat experience of some companies may be more positive than what’s reflected in our Blue Paper, we believe the low grades assigned to Web Chat’s cost effectiveness, Customer Experience and ease of implementation represent the sentiment of a significant number of companies that have developed a Web Chat capability.”

Web Chat’s shortcomings notwithstanding, S3 Integrity’s Blue Paper claims that companies have only scratched the surface of Web Chat’s potential as a tool that can drive online customer self-service. Mr. Tripp said, “Pushing page links to customers who are already engaged in an agent-assisted Web Chat conversation is a rudimentary tactic with limited measurability. There are much more effective ways for companies to use Web Chat as an online self-service tool and a true call deflection strategy, but they are currently being overlooked.” 

Orlando-based S3 Integrity LLC provides consulting, technology and content that enables companies to replace agent-assisted customer service transactions with online self-service solutions – lowering operating expense and improving the Customer Experience. S3 Integrity is the home of the WuLi Solution^™, a proprietary customer self-service business process that combines customer-driven analytics with a media-rich, online interactive experience.

S3 Integrity’s examination of Web Chat is the first in its planned Blue Paper Series™, entitled “Customer Service Under the Microscope: What Works, What Doesn’t and Why,” designed to present insight, opinion and best practices on customer service channels. Upcoming Blue Paper publications will address phone-based IVR, email, Knowledge-Based Systems, online communities and Social CRM. S3 Integrity’s Blue Paper Series™ is designed to be half the length, twice as practical, and exponentially less self-serving than most White Papers.

Companies may request a copy of the Blue Paper on Web Chat by contacting Mike Tripp at (407) 876-1200, or by completing the “Contact Us” form on the S3 Integrity website. 

• #6:  The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
• #19:  Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
• #26:  Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.
• #62: Markets do not want to talk to flaks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.
• # 74: We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
• #83: We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
• #95:  We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

Although several of its 95 points are clearly over-the-top on the soapbox scale, and despite the fact that its authors offer companies no practical guidance, the underlying premise of their document still rings true: that markets are two-way conversations that are “getting smarter faster than most companies.” In a Web 2.0 world, customer service reps are likely to have greater influence on revenue generation and brand loyalty than their company’s marketing and PR departments combined.

The good news for American Enterprise and for customer service professionals is that now, ten years after publication of The Cluetrain Manifesto, the significance of online communities, corporate transparency and Customer Experience is finally being recognized in the C-suite at forward-thinking companies.

The discouraging news is that it’s likely to take another decade before social media becomes standard corporate practice. According to a recent Forrester survey of more than 300 global interactive marketing professionals (“How To Organize Your Company For Social Computing”) by Jeremiah K. Owyang (who is now a partner at Altimeter Group), many companies “are struggling to develop a definitive approach to their social marketing strategies.”

According to Owyang’s report, at many companies currently engaged in Social Computing:

            — objectives for social media are unclear,

            — measurement practices are incomplete, and

            — governance over social media is not established.

Does this suggest that even forward-thinking companies are not really committed to meaningful change, and are simply sticking their toes in the Social Media pool?

Perhaps it’s time for a Cluetrain Manifesto Part II, to incent Corporate America (or to scare them) into actually jumping into the Social Computing water.

S3 Integrity Launches the WuLi Solution™;
Cornerstone of Customer Self-Service Portfolio
Designed to Reduce Costly Phone Calls and Drive Brand Loyalty

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Kansas-based CXO Communications Signs On as First “WuLi Enlightened™” Client To Educate and Support its Unified Communications Customer Base

ORLANDO, FL – 10 September 2009 – S3 Integrity LLC announced today that it has launched the WuLi Solution^™ – a proprietary customer self-service business process that combines customer-driven analytics with a media-rich, online interactive experience; enabling companies to reduce costly agent-assisted customer service (including phone, chat and email), while enhancing the Customer Experience. The WuLi Solution^™ can be applied to a broad range of consumer products and services that require ongoing training & instruction, sales assistance or technical support. (WuLi is the Chinese word for “enlightenment.” Its English pronunciation is “woo-lee.”) 

S3 Integrity also announced today that Overland Park, Kansas-based CXO Communications – a wholly owned subsidiary of CXO Global Solutions (www.cxoglobalsolutions.com) – will become the company’s first WuLi Enlightened^™ client. S3 Integrity will apply its WuLi Solution^™ for customer training and technical support on CXO’s unified communications portfolio, which virtually combines disparate business communication applications and communications capabilities under a single platform – enhancing collaboration and faster decision-making, which results in a higher level of efficiency and workforce mobility.

 According to S3 Integrity’s CEO Mike Tripp, “We expect our WuLi Solution^™ to fundamentally change the way consumers seek information and assistance. Similar to the financial services industry’s transition in the 1980s from human tellers to ATM machines, the simplicity, convenience and immediate gratification of S3 Integrity’s WuLi Solution^™ will gradually influence consumer behavior. When consumers have a question or a problem, they will no longer instinctively reach for the phone to speak with a customer service representative; instead, they will find and apply all the information and guidance they need online through the WuLi Solution,^™ and will enjoy the experience. Consumers avoid long waits on hold and unresolved issues. Companies gain lower operating costs and customers who are more brand loyal. Both sides will benefit.”

“We believe that viable customer self-service solutions are an essential component of cost-effective customer service,” said Bryan DiGiorgio, CXO President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are confident that CXO’s WuLi Enlightened^™ customers will learn our platform’s capabilities quickly and efficiently through this self-service solution. This will give them the benefit of time savings, and ensure they are fully trained and educated on our unified communications products.”

The WuLi Solution^™ Performance Guarantee: ”We Reduce Agent-Assisted Transactions, Or You Don’t Pay Us”

S3 Integrity’s WuLi Solution^™ represents the company’s initial effort in its mission to disrupt the traditional phone-based customer service industry by offering cost-effective self-service alternatives that consumers enjoy using. Behind the scenes, the WuLi Solution^™ applies real-time analytic disciplines that enable companies to identify and address specific product / service-related problems and opportunities; to uncover and remedy underlying issues that generate customer inquiries; and to evaluate and apply customer feedback and interactions.

The WuLi Solution’s^™ online presence involves an intuitive, content-driven, multi-media device that enables consumers to fully understand, experience, communicate and contribute. “The underlying value proposition,” according to Mr. Tripp, “is that the WuLi Solution^™ establishes a rewarding, two-way partnership between the consumer and the product / service provider. Consumers are empowered through education, interaction and voice; companies benefit from reliable market feedback, lower customer service expense and brand loyalty.”

In fact, S3 Integrity is so confident of the WuLi Solution’s^™ ability to deflect agent-assisted transactions, that the company provides clients with a performance guarantee. “If we don’t meet our deflection performance metrics, clients are not required to pay our transaction fees,” Mr. Tripp said. “Our market research supports S3 Integrity’s strong belief that consumers, when given a viable and easily accessible online alternative, prefer to find answers for themselves, rather than to seek help from customer service agents.”

To learn more about S3 Integrity’s WuLi Solution^™, or to request a demo, contact Mike Tripp or Gordon G. Andrew at (407) 876-1200. Additional information can also be found at http://wuliblog.wordpress.com 

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About S3 Integrity LLC:

Orlando-based S3 Integrity provides consulting, technology and content that enables companies to replace agent-assisted customer service transactions with online self-service solutions – lowering operating expense and improving the Customer Experience. S3 Integrity is the home of the WuLi Solution^™, a proprietary customer self-service business process that combines customer-driven analytics with a media-rich, online interactive experience. See www.s3integrity.com

About CXO Global Solutions:

CXO Global Solutions is a Kansas City-based firm specializing in unified communications and call center operations. The firm’s goal is to help multi-site, geographically dispersed companies improve their efficiency and profitability while delivering a consistently superior customer experience. Working in partnership with its clients, CXO provides the people, processes and technology required to “commonize” and optimize the performance of each site. The firm also offers both SaaS-based and on-premise unified communications, including the design, build and deployment of an integrated voice and data solution. As a result of CXO’s central management, strategic guidance and unified communication solutions, clients can more effectively acquire, support and retain their customers. See www.cxoglobalsolutions.com

The HBR article suggests that the factors most important to customers…notably, knowledgeable frontline workers…”often aren’t even on customer-service managers’ dashboards. Most service centers continue to measure time on hold and minutes per call, as they have for decades. Such metrics encourage agents to hurry through calls—resulting in just the kind of experience customers dislike.”

Although I’m unsure why research or scholarly articles are required to verify that customers want correct answers to their questions and prefer to be treated with respect in the process, this HBR article raises some larger issues:

• Have consumers been mistreated for so long that they’ve come to expect poor service?
• Can individual businesses overcome the lousy reputation that American Enterprise has established with consumers?
• Does online self-service provide an opportunity for businesses to salvage their reputation with consumers? (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

The good news is that there are lots of ways an individual business can distinguish itself, service-wise, in a world of low consumer expectations.

Last year, I ordered Easter flowers online from ProFlowers.com for my daughter in South Carolina and daughter-in-law in New Jersey. The day after I placed my order, I received a polite email from ProFlower’s customer care department suggesting that I may have ordered the flowers to be sent on the incorrect date.

ProFlowers was right. I had filled out the order form incorrectly, and if ProFlowers had simply filled my order, the flowers would have arrived the week after Easter. But in this case, ProFlowers took the time and initiative to do more than what I asked; they anticipated what I really wanted, and fixed a problem before it occurred.

That’s not only exceptional customer service, it’s effective call deflection…eliminating the cranky discussion I would have had on the day after Easter, asking ProFlowers why my flowers were not delivered.

Orlando-based S3 Integrity Will Help Companies Reduce Operating Costs and Manage the Customer Experience Through Proper Integration of Self-Service Solutions

ORLANDO, FL – 14 July 2009 – S3 Integrity LLC announced today that it has launched operations as an outsourced customer service provider dedicated exclusively to reducing telephone-based transactions and costs; disrupting the traditional agent-assisted contact center channel through design and proper integration of customer-facing Self Service Solutions, represented in the “S3″ portion of the company’s name. The company also announced it has acquired its first client.

According to S3 Integrity founder and CEO Mike Tripp, who has nearly 30 years experience managing call center operations, “The cost advantages of off-shore customer service outsourcing firms are too significant for domestic call center operations to compete against. In response, S3 Integrity intends to help our clients offset that competitive disadvantage by integrating lower-cost, high-touch, self-service solutions that maintain the customer experience and drive brand loyalty.

S3 Integrity’s underlying value proposition, according to Mr. Tripp, is “to reduce, rather than increase, the number of customer service agents (or “seats,” in contact center jargon) required to deliver an appropriate level of customer service. Most outsourced providers, both foreign and domestic, claim to deliver self-service solutions. However, the underlying economics of a traditional outsourcing business – which requires them to maintain and grow their own enterprise infrastructure and capacity – forces them to continually seek an increased number of contact center seats from their clients. This financial dynamic puts their own business interests at direct odds with their clients’ goal of delivering cost-effective, high quality service levels.”

Mr. Tripp noted, “Based on their business model rather than intentionally, most customer service outsourcing firms are incapable of doing the right things for their clients. At the risk of sounding self-righteous, S3 Integrity intends to differentiate itself in a crowded outsourcing marketplace by putting our clients’ best interests ahead of our own, and as a constant reminder of that lofty goal for ourselves, we’ve made “Integrity” part of our company’s brand name.”

Concurrent the company’s launch, S3 Integrity’s value proposition has already resonated with one Tampa-based firm – a provider of GPS locator devices featuring voice communication and third-party monitoring – that engaged S3 Integrity to assist them in building a cost-effective customer service and emergency response platform.

S3 Integrity founder and CEO Mike Tripp has nearly 3 decades of experience in customer service, having headed operations at two highly respected outsourcing firms, including APAC Customer Services. He has managed outsourced customer service program for scores of well-known B2B and B2C firms, including FedEx, Sprint, Napster, Logitech, SanDisk, Vonage, UPS, Comcast, AT&T, Olympus and CVS/Caremark.

Additional information regarding S3 Integrity is available on the company’s website at http://www.s3integrity.com/) or by calling the company at (407) 876-1200.