Anna Engstromer shares an article on the management of external services, specifically, BPO transactions. Consequences of poorly managed services are like chronic diseases: spreading its consequences little-at-a-time over vast areas – like customer service, availability, performance and speed of delivery – slowly building awareness for the problem but not considered as such until something breaks, or stops. Temporal Focus Much of any organization’s cost is external. How significant it is and how it breaks down by categories vary across…

  The scope of an internship or employee position can be difficult to define; fortunately, Robbie Kellman Baxter shares key tips that help clarify communication and identify requirements, ensuring expectations are understood. The needs of a new subscription business change rapidly, especially early on. Before organizations invest in technology infrastructure, they often serve subscribers in a more labor-intensive way. This is a good strategy for businesses to take as they work to refine product market fit and race to launch…

  Duygu Cibik shares an article that identifies the key factors that can help you find an efficient and effective customer success manager. What is the right customer success manager (CSM) profile? This is another question that CEOs and other executives raise often. Clearly, desired CSM profile depends on your expectations from CSMs tied to CSM role definition. I’ve summarized my expectations in a previous post titled “What is Customer Success?” and I’ll cover the desired CSM skills and experience…

  Ben Dattner co wrote this article for Harvard Business Review on the issue of building ethical AI for talent management.  Artificial intelligence has disrupted every area of our lives — from the curated shopping experiences we’ve come to expect from companies like Amazon and Alibaba to the personalized recommendations that channels like YouTube and Netflix use to market their latest content. But, when it comes to the workplace, in many ways, AI is still in its infancy. This is…