Serious six back Talisma’s forum

The big boys have shown up to play in Talisma Corporation’s ballpark. The Bellevue, Wash.-based enterprise customer interaction management solutions, have announced the launch of the CIM Forum, a business and technology consortium with a mission statement of exclusive focus on managing online customer interaction.

The murderer’s row lined up to bat at the CIM Forum are Epson, IBM, Microsoft, Outsell, Pitney Bowes, and Sprint. Through events and research co-developed with CRM strategic advisory firm eVergance, the CIM Forum will promises to explore key areas of CIM management such as thought leadership opportunities, key performance indicators, and technical infrastructure associated with positive customer experiences.

The CIM Forum was created as a result of the charter members’ mission to continuously improve enterprise CIM and the overall customer and agent experience. Built upon a strong customer service background and combined knowledge gleaned from hundreds of millions of chat, email, and online support sessions, the CIM Forum provides thought leadership and best practices for companies worldwide.

Much of Talisma’s motivation for founding the forum is rooted in the Forrester report of October 2005 entitled "Twenty-Three Best Practices for Customer Service Center.” Of particular importance to the CIM Forum philosophy is the report’s statement that "With similar products and services offered by multiple suppliers or vendors, customer loyalty is low."

The CIM Forum therefore seeks to foster change in online customer service business processes that increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. "The formation of the CIM Forum couldn’t have come at a better time," states Allen Bonde, eVergance strategy and marketing senior vice president. "Streamlining service delivery … has become a key business priority.

Yet many companies are unaware of the best practices and key steps to truly transform the customer experience.” As proof of the potential power of the gang, the CIM Forum also announced the release of its first white paper, focused specifically on enterprise chat. (CIM Forum PR explains the study’s purpose via citing a statistic from a May 2006 report by JupiterResearch stating that 63 percent of U.S. online consumers who contacted customer service used text chat at least once in 2005, up from the 41 percent reported in 2001.)

The white paper offers analysis of enterprise chat topics such as best practices, performance management, key metrics, and technical infrastructure. Future white papers will study email management, web self-service, knowledge management, and cross-channel analytics. Though the page on which CIM Forum sits (www.cimforum.org) was kicked off at the beginning of 2006, the page has been sadly devoid of content. Concomitant with the announcement, the CIM Forum blogosphere over there has seen its first settlers.

The page is also certain to be loaded with material quite soon, as this week marked the first-ever CIM Forum roundtable. The program featured representatives from Talisma and eVergance among others kicking around a few possibilities and such in exploring enterprise chat to deliver improved customer service and enhance communication efforts.

The next CIM Forum webinar will be held on August 10 at 2 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (US EDT 9 a.m.) That webinar will address the topic “Developing and Maintaining a Successful Knowledgebase, with topics of discussion to include importance of corporate buy-in and support; real-world examples of project scopes and timelines; expansion of extant knowledgebases; and measuring user satisfaction.