- Section 2.1: Mobile Applications
for Business and Work
A Framework for Web and Mobile Customer
Support Service
S. Pensa
Mobile Services Go Beyond Wireless, Beyond
Internet … Beyond 'e'…
F. Violante
Electronic Service Using Advanced Information
and Communication Technologies
G. Burger, I. Hartel, S. Billinger
A
Framework for Web and Mobile Customer Support Service
Simone Pensa
Standards and Technologies, Siemens Information and Communications
Networks S.p.A, Via Monfalcone 1, 20092 Cinisello Balsamo (Milan),
Italy
The enormous growth of the
service sector in the last decade has spread its way into other
sectors of the economy as well, forcing more traditional industries
to adapt to and accommodate the new importance of this growing
economic dimension. This pressure is exemplified by the increasing
expectations that consumers have from traditional non-service
oriented enterprises for extensive and immediate personal care
and support in exchange for their product loyalty, especially
as more and more consumer products become commodities. Advanced
call centres have become an important tool for businesses for
managing both customer and business-to-business relations. By
integrating telephone services with company internal computer
databases companies have had some success in facing large volumes
of customer support. Traditional call centres, however, can often
become quickly overwhelmed by heavy customer demands, can be
costly due to the necessary high-availability of human operators,
and tend to offer very generic impersonalised services. These
facts, together with the rapid growth of web-based electronic
commerce and the rapid growth of the Internet in general, have
made the extension of traditional call centre services with the
integration of web-based customer support very attractive. An
integrated call/web centre, hereafter referred to as a contact
centre (CC), can be cost-effective, available 24 hours, easily
scalable, offer very quick response times, offer new multimedia-type
support, and be highly personalised, offering a true one-to-one
customer service. Integration implies that the traditional voice
based support still be retained and supported, but integrated
in the new model. Additionally, as the use of mobile phones becomes
continually more widespread, offering product services to such
customers becomes essential. New means need to be found to make
available these advanced personalised services to those with
mobile phones or terminals.
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Mobile
Services Go Beyond Wireless, Beyond Internet … Beyond 'e'…
Francesco VIOLANTE
President EDS Italy, EDS, Electronic Data Systems, Viale Monza
257, 20125 Milano, Italy
Mobility is about individual
and on-demand connection. It's about getting the right information
at the right time and in the right place. For governments and
businesses, mobility is about having citizens, customers,' employees
or a sales force empowered by technology. In the end, mobility
has the power to transform the way we go beyond the Internet.
As the digital economy evolves, businesses of all kinds are searching
for the Holy Grail of the mobile services market. This means
mobile services that go beyond the Internet, beyond wireless
-- beyond 'e.' In other words, delivering the right content and
applications with the right portal and the right devices -- whether
wired or wireless -- combined with a high level of security,
the right interface and network and integrated with the user's
vital business processes. Delivering mobility isn't just about
wireless devices and networks. It's really about connecting people
-- connecting them with one another, with their work, their homes
and their play -- and supporting their experience regardless
of which technology is used. So that the end result is a seamless
customer experience with all the old boundaries removed.
- Converged technologies drive
the creation of new, highly leveraged applications that promote
the creation of new business processes, which in turn increase
productivity and revenues. It's clear that technology alone does
nothing to accelerate business growth. Rather, growth occurs
as new and emerging applications and business processes create
competitive advantages for technology customers.
- More and more businesses and
governments are extending their supply chains in all directions.
Global enterprises are automating the distribution and sharing
of data, information and applications in real time. This necessitates
a strategic plan that assures the privacy, confidentiality, integrity
and availability of their information systems, supporting infrastructures
and other intellectual assets. Yet the issue of data security
is only the top of the iceberg when planning comprehensive information
assurance strategy.
Real-life business needs have
to be met and they are - processes and communications need to
be transformed, costs need to be reduced and fast and efficient
entry to the mobile business marketplace need to be facilitated.
If this is accomplished, the necessary four imperatives in the
digital economy can be fulfilled -boundaries can be eliminated,
collaborate in new ways, establish their customers' trust and
continuously seek improvement.
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Electronic
Service Using Advanced Information and Communication Technologies
Gerhard BURGER, Ingo
HARTEL, Stephan BILLINGER
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich - Center for Enterprise
Science (BWI)
Zurichbergstrasse 18, CH-8028 Zurich, Switzerland
Continual development of information
and communication technologies (ICT) opens up new possibilities
for the one-of-a-kind industry with regards to the design and
delivery of services. A survey with one-of-a-kind producers revealed
that many companies do not yet make extensive use of modem ICT.
This means there is a great potential still to be exploited in
terms of electronic support (e-service) for new and existing
services. This contribution will first look at the issue of the
structure of e-services and introduce the Service Model, which
will be used in order to classify services and their areas of
application. Furthermore, the relation between communication,
people, technologies, and applications will be presented within
the resultant E-Service Cube Diagram. This allows identification
of the characteristics of services that are supported by ICT.
An example of a maintenance service in industry illustrates the
way in which these characteristics, technologies, and applications
are connected.
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