New guide aids "avoidable contact" [Rostrvm].

Byline: Rostrvm

Unnecessary calls to contact centres cost time, effort and money, which is why the government is imposing new obligations on local government to reduce "avoidable contact"

Woking (UK), 12 August 2008 - Local councils faced with the task of meeting new NI14 regulations on "avoidable contact" can turn to a new guide from Rostrvm Solutions. The guide contains a number of top tips on how to measure avoidable contact and minimise the number of unnecessary calls, which are a waste of time, effort and usually money for both residents and their local councils.

Performance on reducing avoidable contact is one of the factors that will be assessed within the new performance management framework agreed between communities, local councils, and the Local Government Association--so called National Indicator number 14 (NI14).

The guide explains how Rostrvm Solutions can quickly help organisations such as councils identify, monitor and reduce avoidable contact. It focuses on: acents The value of measuring avoidable contact acents The benefits of reducing it acents The functionality of rostrvm CallGuide software

"Local councils can find out the number and cause of avoidable contacts which is the first step to reducing them," says Ken Reid of Rostrvm Systems.

Local councils aren't the only organisations who can benefit from the rostrvm CallGuide, says Mr Reid. Almost everyone has experienced the frustration of avoidable contact, and it is a huge problem for overstretched call centre staff.

"The fact that simple transactions are increasingly satisfied by consumer self-service--internet and automatic voice response systems--means person-to-person contacts tend to be more complex and take longer," says Mr Reid. "Reducing avoidable contact gives more capacity to handle unavoidable contacts more effectively and reduce overall workload."

The rostrvm CallGuide software is a desktop IT application that lets public sector and commercial organisations support contact processes or simply record contact outcomes. It can manage an entire contact flow step-by-step recording the detail required, or can be used simply at the end of a call when the agent could confirm whether or not the call was avoidable.

All the data is stored in a relational database for reporting and analysis, for example providing a supervisor with a snapshot of current activity or printing results summaries. The information can be accessed using a range of analysis tools, including Microsoft Excel and SQL Reporting.

In addition to helping reduce avoidable calls, rostrvm CallGuide improves business efficiency, contact handling and the experience of callers. It can link to email or other IT systems, streamlining functionality across different technology platforms.

In the DIY arena, neither men nor women rule.(NewsMakers: Reporting on the Industry)

In a study conducted by The Integer Group, researchers explored how gender roles affected the planning of a home remodeling task, the purchasing of materials and dividing of labor. What the study found was that men and women basically approached the task in the same manner, for the same reasons, and with the same level of satisfaction from the results.

"What surprised us in this research is how actively involved men were in making decorating decisions, and how active women were in doing the physical work," says Katie Geraty, director of account planning at the Integer Group in Des Moines, Iowa.

The study showed that couples that were working together on a home improvement project approached the task in much the same way. All couples tended to identify the same needs in their homes. They all tended to research a project, although in many different ways and methods, from magazines and the Internet to point-of-sale reviews. All couples felt similarly satisfied with the results of their project upon completion, and that level of satisfaction was generally high and mildly unexpected by both halves of the team.

"We found that men and women were pretty much on the same page when they got to the home improvement store," says Kathleen Atkinson, the primary researcher on the project. "They agreed on colors, textures, styles and shapes, and they executed their projects with a relatively high level of confidence."

"There were gender differences in the language used to describe a project, and not surprisingly, there were minor factors affecting division of labor, but these were more likely based on physical ability than gender bias," says Geraty. "As one would expect, men were usually tasked with the heavy lifting and strength work, while women were more often tapped to do the detail work."

Other than finding out the unexpected truth that men and women were actually working pretty well together on home improvement projects, there was one other little surprise. "Men are deeply involved in the decorating part of the project," says Atkinson. "We consistently found that men were playing a major role in making decisions on color, materials and the feel of a room."

About-face by case: ex-AOL chief says TW should log off.(Time Warner Inc., America Online Inc., Steve Case)(merger forecast)

There's another prominent bizworld figure who doesn't like the direction of Time Warner: Steve Case.

In a long op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post, the usually tightlipped former AOL prexy criticized the current setup of AOL within the conglom and encouraged the company to sell the Internet division.

Sounding a Carl Icahn-like note, Case also advocated the splitting up of Time Warner into several companies, consisting of independent publishing division Time Inc., film and TV operation Time Warner Entertainment and Time Warner Cable, in addition to the AOL sale.

Case acknowledged that the utopia of a combined content and distribution company at AOL Time Warner never materialized. But he carefully avoided taking responsibility for the unwieldy merger he helped construct.

In fact, he expressed frustration at the conglom culture's effect on his former company. AOL "must be freed from its corporate shackles and return to its entrepreneurial roots, identifying ideas early and promoting their widespread acceptance," he said.

He did suggest that had his former company been better integrated into Time Warner, it would have seen more benefits.

Speculation about an AOL sale has been circulating for several months, with Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google all figuring into talks, and a number of partial ownership scenarios described. Case said wholesale separation between the two companies was the best course.

"Given that Time Warner failed to capitalize on AOUs potential during a period when it owned 100% of AOL, it seems doubtful that a scenario in which it has a lesser, but still controlling, stake will work better."

Case no longer sits on the Time Warner board--he now runs a venture-capital firm called Revolution--but he does hold a significant stake in Time Warner. It's likely he hopes a sale would allow company's share price to rise higher--and alleviate his personal responsibility for TW'S low share price.

Though Icahn has made the AOL-Time Warner merger a centerpiece of his campaign against TW management, Case said he found himself aligned with the corporate raider. Case said he had expressed de-merger ideas "long before" Icahn had, though he has never spoken with him.

Case cited the spinoff of Warner Music earlier this year as a successful precedent for other spinoffs.

Comments by a former exec are unlikely to directly spur a company to take a major action like a spinoff, but they could add pressure by increasing investor ire over a lagging share price.

Commentary continues the drumbeat for conglom splits, a process already under way at Viacom.

The piece also showed what a difference six years makes. Case once argued that AOL and TW made sense because bigger was better.

In the op-ed, however, he sang a different tune: "Within a multibillion-dollar conglomerate," he wrote, "emerging opportunities are often ignored until it's too late."