Customer Interaction Hubs

Phil Windley writes:

The CIH manages three important resources that companies have at their disposal for interacting with customers: channels, rules, and knowledge. Note that there are other resources, like people, that the CIH doesn't manage. Think of the CIH as a big switch that uses rules to control the flow of knowledge in and out of various customer interaction channels (chat, phone, web, forums, email, etc.).

The goal of the CIH is improved interaction with customers at reduced cost by providing an end-to-end customer experience across all channels. You might have experienced the frustration of losing the context of a customer support interaction when we moved from email to phone. A CIH makes sure that doesn't happen. What's more, the CIH should seamlessly transition a customer from a self-service interaction to an assisted interaction.

AttentionTrust

Seth Goldstein writes:

Attention is the substance of focus. It registers your interests by indicating choice for certain things and choice against other things. As Steve reminds, the establishment of value in the attention economy is a dual register of what one pays attention to and what one chooses to ignore (or unsubscribe, turn off or tune out).

The reason attention is becoming more important now is that the Internet has enabled the recording and sharing of these choices in real-time. The massively parallel synthesis of meta data streams has concentrated enormous influence in people and their sites. Some consumers are proactive in gaining full control over their influence, but the majority are passive users of free services and offers (that actively capture and sell their intentions).
...
The first move in establishing an open market for Attention was to declare a set of basic rights:

Property: I own my attention and I can store it securely in private.
Mobility: I can move my attention wherever I want whenever I want to.
Economy: I can pay attention to whomever I wish and be paid for it.
Transparency: I can see how my attention is being used

Two Types of Mobile Searchers

ClickZ writes:

In "Mobile Search and Its Implications for Search Engine Marketing," Oneupweb identifies two key demographic groups: "need-it-now shoppers" and "killing-time" mobile shoppers, both of which are already changing the marketing landscape.

"Mobile search is influencing how people search," Lisa Wehr, Oneupweb CEO told ClickZ News. "They're entering shorter search queries, there's a higher emphasis on the top few results, there's less emphasis on photos / graphics, and more influence on shorter copy."

"Need-it-now" mobile search users have an immediate need that is based on something that is happening at the moment. "Killing-time" users are doing research during downtime and are generally speaking stuck in their current location.

Long Tail Businesses

Chris Anderson writes:

There are, as it happens, three main long tail businesses: filters, aggregators and producers.

--Filters: Here, as I wrote in the preceding post, I think filters are the key to a working long tail market and that people make the best filters, giving such trusted tastemakers the effective power of a brand.

--Aggregators: The best of these, such as Amazon and Google, have built their brands on the power of their filters. Yet these filters--from Google's search algorithms to Amazon's recommendations--are nothing more than the wisdom of the crowds, the statistically measured opinions of millions of, yes, people. That's why we trust them.

--Producers: Not much change here. As much as the TV networks, music labels and movies studios have tried to build their own brands, it's always been mostly about the individuals stars, shows and talents. Now, in an emerging era of infinite channels where talent can find an audiences regardless of how it's distributed, this will be even more true.

Web-based Applications

[via Sadagopan] FastCompany writes: "Web-based applications free companies from constraints on growth."

You may have heard of these new style applications described as ASPs (Application Service Providers), On-demand applications, or Hosted software. All those terms mean the same thing: Your application vendor hosts and maintains the software and the hardware to run it so you don't have to.

The types of applications that are available using this approach run the gamut from pure business applications to group calendars, HR and workflow applications, and specialized applications for different industries. Some applications that use substantial resources on the PC, such as 3D modeling programs, are the laggards -- but with faster networking technology even those types of programs may succumb to this trend.

TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: 3G and 4G (Part 2)

In the context of our discussion on IMS and SIP, Paul Golding makes the connection between IMS, SIP and 3G:

In my opinion, 3G is IMS. What SIP enables is a generic "connecting" protocol. We don't necessarily have to be interested in connecting users to make a voice call. In other words, SIP isn't just a "calling" protocol.

Thus far, mobile networks have been almost exclusively concerned with voice calls. The data model that has emerged so far is WAP, which is essentially "Web-lite". The paradigm is connecting users with information in the form of Web pages (portals etc.)

However, the essential nature of mobile technology is connecting people. This Person-to-Person (P2P) nature will be a dominant feature of mobile computing. We need to grasp what P2P "connecting" is all about. Today, we talk to each other. But, tomorrow, we shall: Click to play, to share, to view, to update, to invite, to compare, to tag, to consult, to message, to conference
…Click to connect!

GSM only allows "dial to talk", which is why we need SIP. With SIP, we can do all the above things. …

I believe that the future of the 3G era is:

3G = SIP + Presence

or,

3G = IMS + Presence
…
IMS allows operators to build an infrastructure that will support this paradigm. Therefore IMS will become important in the future of the 3G era. 3G is IMS.

MobileInfo writes on the need to look beyond 3G:

3G performance may not be sufficient to meet needs of future high-performance applications like multi-media, full-motion video, wireless teleconferencing. We need a network technology that extends 3G capacity by an order of magnitude.

There are multiple standards for 3G making it difficult to roam and interoperate across networks. we need global mobility and service portability

3G is based on primarily a wide-area concept. We need hybrid networks that utilize both wireless LAN (hot spot) concept and cell or base-station wide area network design.

We need wider bandwidth

Researchers have come up with spectrally more efficient modulation schemes that can not be retrofitted into 3G infrastructure

We need all digital packet network that utilizes IP in its fullest form with converged voice and data capability.

OFDM is one of the technologies which will be the cornerstone for 4G networks. Wave Report writes about OFDM: “Frequency division multiplexing (FDM) is a technology that transmits multiple signals simultaneously over a single transmission path, such as a cable or wireless system. Each signal travels within its own unique frequency range (carrier), which is modulated by the data (text, voice, video, etc.)…Orthogonal FDM's (OFDM) spread spectrum technique distributes the data over a large number of carriers that are spaced apart at precise frequencies. This spacing provides the ‘orthogonality’ in this technique which prevents the demodulators from seeing frequencies other than their own. The benefits of OFDM are high spectral efficiency, resiliency to RF interference, and lower multi-path distortion. This is useful because in a typical terrestrial broadcasting scenario there are multipath-channels (i.e. the transmitted signal arrives at the receiver using various paths of different length). Since multiple versions of the signal interfere with each other (inter symbol interference (ISI)) it becomes very hard to extract the original information.”

From India’s viewpoint, investing in the research and development of next-generation networks like 4G is something which should be strongly considered.

Tomorrow: BPL

Related Entries:  [All]
TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Mirror Worlds (Part 2) [August 19, 2005]
TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Mirror Worlds [August 18, 2005]
TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: FolkTV [August 17, 2005]
TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Next-Generation Services [August 16, 2005]
TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: BPL (Part 2) [August 15, 2005]