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Articles by Jeff Berg
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Hi all, I'm currently in the process of rehabbing a California Craftsman Bungalow built in 1908 in the Los Angeles area. It's in a Historic Preservation area, and I need to create an entrance to the backyard (the current entrance to the backyard is going to be walled off). I need some help in choosing a style of door. I would love to put a sliding glass door in, as it lets in more natural light, which would greatly improve the space.
Emergency Exit: A World Trapped Between U.S. Power and Iran’s Leverage
In a previous life I directed a version of Jean Paul Sartre’s ‘No Exit’. In the play Sartre illuminates his intuition that ‘Hell is other people’. The three characters are doomed to an eternity of pain and torment that they will inflict upon each other because they cannot escape who they are. Estelle must have the attention and adoration of a man to believe she truly exists. Garcin must have the approbation of a person with integrity and intelligence in order to believe he is not craven.
A Legal Game-changer: Unlocking Results With Document Intelligence
The legal landscape struggles with vast amounts of complex, unstructured data. Financial statements, contracts, and regulatory documents are critical to investigations but extraction of information from these sources is often riddled with quality concerns. Fortunately, AI-powered data processing tools like Azure Document Intelligence (DI) are revolutionizing this space, accelerating document analysis and delivering meaningful results.
A real-world game changer: Getting to meaningful results overnight
More data means more complexity and more time needed for analysis and ultimately results, right? Everyone involved in litigation and regulatory action lives this problem every day. But thankfully, new AI-driven tools can help cut through this complexity and provide meaningful insights in hours, rather than the days to which we’ve become accustomed. A recent, extremely complex client matter made this new reality clear.
The Advantages of Machines with Change Capabilities
How to Adapt and Adjust to Product Changes Faster By Jeff W Berg, Product Development Manager at HMC Products The need for machines that can handle changes in production levels will also need to handle changes for different products in a timely, cost-effective process. The “Just in Time” concept has moved into the packing formula for several reasons; one being shelf life not wasted waiting on packer’s shelves.
A pandemic pandemonium has paved the way for metaverse success
We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today! I was surprised to find out how many peers and friends had been gifted the Oculus over the holidays. In 2021, when Meta rebranded the popular CR headset to Quest 2, they hit a benchmark of 10 million units sold.
A pandemic pandemonium has paved the way for metaverse success
Check out all the on-demand sessions from the Intelligent Security Summit here. I was surprised to find out how many peers and friends had been gifted the Oculus over the holidays. In 2021, when Meta rebranded the popular CR headset to Quest 2, they hit a benchmark of 10 million units sold. As a creative storyteller, I’m excited about the spread of the metaverse and the marketing opportunities that it could present. Still, I find the speed at which people are adapting to this lifestyle mesmerizing.
How the Wellness Revolution Introduced a Consumer Mindset
The health and wellness revolution is finally here! Perhaps a strange time to make this statement as COVID-19 ravages the globe, but long-rumored and showcased each year at CES, technology and digital media are finally making an impact in the way people manage their personal health and well-being—putting much more control into their hands.
Masai and the Iceberg of Impunity
Every report I’ve seen on the injustice suffered by Masai Ujiri in Oakland last June has talked about the tip and ignored the iceberg. That this could be so at this BLM moment is deeply worrying and shows that our problems go well beyond even systemic racism. For those of you who don’t know, bodycam footage of a police officer twice shoving Toronto Raptors President Masai Ujiri –as Ujiri tried to make his way to the trophy presentation–exploded across the internet last week.
The vision for 2025: Hyperpersonalized care and ‘care of one’
As the traditional call center has evolved into a contact center, companies have begun to view the function less as a cost center and more as an opportunity to provide strategic, experience-oriented customer care. The initial shock of the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to adopt physical distancing, test their business continuity plans, and rapidly deploy work-from-home models, all while customers rushed to digital channels.
The vision for 2025: Hyperpersonalized care and ‘care of one’
Personalization—and the empathy and connection that go with it—are more critical than ever. What will it take to meet customer’s expectations in 2025 and beyond? As the traditional call center has evolved into a contact center, companies have begun to view the function less as a cost center and more as an opportunity to provide strategic, experience-oriented customer care.
Are You “All In”?
You hear a lot about employee engagement these days. Many companies have jumped on the Gallup bandwagon, and are administering the Gallup Q12 survey—a, you guessed it, 12-item survey that provides an overview of how engaged a company’s employees are. There are many other engagement surveys out there, both commercially available, and home grown.
Organizaciones de servicio a clientes: Cómo avanzar del manejo de la crisis a la recuperación
La pandemia del COVID-19 exige poner el foco en seis imperativos para adaptarse rápidamente al nuevo contexto. Con la propagación global de la pandemia del COVID-19, las empresas de todos los sectores debieron luchar por estabilizar sus operaciones e instituir nuevas prácticas para proteger la salud de sus empleados y continuar brindando servicio a los clientes.
Organizações de atendimento ao consumidor: passando da gestão de crise para a recuperação
A pandemia de COVID-19 demanda que as empresas se concentrem em seis imperativos para conseguirem se adaptar rapidamente ao novo ambiente. À medida que a pandemia de COVID-19 se espalha mundo afora, empresas de todos os setores lutam para estabilizar suas operações e instituir novas diretrizes para proteger a saúde de seus funcionários, ao mesmo tempo que mantêm o atendimento a seus clientes.
Customer-care organizations: Moving from crisis management to recovery
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world, companies across all sectors scrambled to stabilize operations and institute new guidelines to protect the health of their employees while maintaining service to their customers. Contact centers moved with unprecedented speed: within days, some companies had shifted thousands of workers to remote locations or enabled them to work from home. Others quickly experimented with staggered shifts.
Why are your customers calling you again?
It’s long been a fact of life that call centers often receive multiple calls from the same customers. Yet despite the availability of call data, few organizations fully understand the reasons behind repeat calls, making them hard to reduce or eliminate. Stay current on your favorite topics There’s ample financial incentive to fix the problem, as illustrated by a large US-based energy producer’s $200 million-a-year call center. About 20 percent of the calls received were repeats.
Por que seus clientes ligam novamente para você?
Descobrir por que os clientes continuam a ligar para seus call centers pode gerar economias significativas e resultar em clientes mais felizes. Não é possível negar o fato que os call centers costumam receber várias chamadas dos mesmos clientes. Entretanto, apesar das informações sobre as chamadas estarem disponíveis, poucas empresas entendem completamente os motivos que estão por trás de chamadas repetidas, dificultando que elas sejam reduzidas ou eliminadas.
Why are your customers calling you again?
Getting to the bottom of why customers keep calling your contact centers can generate significant savings. And result in happier customers. It’s long been a fact of life that call centers often receive multiple calls from the same customers. Yet despite the availability of call data, few organizations fully understand the reasons behind repeat calls, making them hard to reduce or eliminate.
How advanced analytics can help contact centers put the customer first
Companies without advanced analytics are leaving significant customer-service improvements on the table. But to fully reap the advantages of advanced analytics, organizations must have the right foundations in place to make the most of their data. More and more, to put the customer first, the heads of customer service require the accurate and detailed performance information that real-time analytics can provide.
How advanced analytics can help contact centers put the customer first
Companies without advanced analytics are leaving significant customer-service improvements on the table. But to fully reap the advantages of advanced analytics, organizations must have the right foundations in place to make the most of their data. More and more, to put the customer first, the heads of customer service require the accurate and detailed performance information that real-time analytics can provide.
Smarter call-center coaching for the digital world
Digitization is transforming the role of the customer contact center. Staff are spending much less of their time handling simple, transactional calls, as more of these requests are completed via digital channels. Instead, their focus is increasingly on high-skill, high-value tasks, such as complex support requests or revenue-generation opportunities. Stay current on your favorite topics It’s no surprise, therefore, that customer-care leaders are working hard to upskill their contact centers.
Smarter call-center coaching for the digital world
The demands facing contact-center staff are becoming more complex, more varied, and more valuable. That calls for a smarter coaching approach. Digitization is transforming the role of the customer contact center. Staff are spending much less of their time handling simple, transactional calls, as more of these requests are completed via digital channels. Instead, their focus is increasingly on high-skill, high-value tasks, such as complex support requests or revenue-generation opportunities.
The Changing Face of Agencies
When I was on the client side of the business, I had a front-row seat to two different mergers (Boots/Knoll & Searle-Monsanto/Pharmacia). I also spent four years in business development, helping acquire products and companies. So I have a bit of history as both prey and predator in the world of mergers and acquisitions.
¿Por qué vuelven a llamar sus clientes?
Llegar al fondo de los motivos que llevan a sus clientes a llamar reiteradamente a su call center puede generar ahorros significativos (y aumentar la satisfacción). Es un hecho que los call centers suelen recibir múltiples llamadas de los mismos clientes. Pero a pesar de tener a su disposición información sobre las comunicaciones, son pocas las empresas que comprenden cabalmente los motivos que conducen a esa situación, lo que las vuelve difíciles de reducir o eliminar.
New technology means new value from contact centers
The rumor: Advanced chatbots and virtual agents will make contact centers irrelevant. The rumor: Advanced chatbots and virtual agents will make contact centers irrelevant. The reality: Humans (and the contact centers they work in) will be more important than ever. There’s no question that what contact centers do is changing.
WW III This Ain’t
For anyone wondering what this most recent attack on Syria by the U.S., U.K. and France is all about the answer is refreshingly simple. It is about the shape of the peace to come. The U.S. its allies and their proxies have lost the ground war but have no intention of losing the peace. And what is it precisely that they intend to win? It comes down to two words: territorial integrity. The Syrian government unsurprisingly wants its country to go back to its internationally recognized borders.
UN Paralyzed by Chemical Weapons
An alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria has once again ratcheted up tensions in the war ravaged country.
Review: War on the brink of madness in “Journey’s End”
Catch this flick today through tomorrow, April 12 at Fountain Theater, 2469 Calle De Guadalupe. Admission Prices: Regular $7; Matinees $6; Members $5; Seniors over 60, Military, and Students with ID $6; Wednesdays $5. By Jeff Berg For the Bulletin Although this film takes place on the fields of war in 1918, it is more about the psychological effects upon the soldiers rather than actual combat, which only takes place in two brief, but harrowing sequences.
Russian to Judgment
One would have to have been very deeply sequestered from the electronic and print media not to have repeatedly run into the spy poisoning narrative emanating from Britain. It is as ever very important to parse what we know from what is merely being alleged. All the more so in this case for the straightforward reason that the rush to judgement is in fact the most important element in this story so far.
Making the leap to omnichannel: An interview with MetLife’s Kristine Poznanski
The insurer’s head of Global Customer Solutions discusses MetLife’s transformation from a traditional to an omnichannel strategy. The promise of omnichannel—all customer care channels closely integrated, seamless transitions, and a unified view of the customer, among other benefits—has been rightly hailed as the future state of customer care. But omnichannel can seem like an unreachable goal for companies that are adapting to customer preferences across channels.
Charting the future of customer care through a core optimization philosophy
New customer-care technologies have made it possible to maximize revenues, savings, and customer experience all at once. But to maximize competitive advantage, companies must be smart—and quick. Until recently, the majority of the discussions around customer care focused on reducing labor costs by optimizing service levels, implementing lean practices, and achieving the optimal mix of offshoring.
Charting the future of customer care through a core optimization philosophy
New customer-care technologies have made it possible to maximize revenues, savings, and customer experience all at once. But to maximize competitive advantage, companies must be smart—and quick. Until recently, the majority of the discussions around customer care focused on reducing labor costs by optimizing service levels, implementing lean practices, and achieving the optimal mix of offshoring.
Approaching Day Zero
Day Zero refers to the shut off of all water to residents. Most schools and many businesses will also have to close. The drought that has caused this has been described as so rare as to occur “once a millennium”. For any of you still unclear as to the trajectory of modern meteorological events, yes climate scientists are agreed that climate change is involved. Climate models have been predicting for decades that Cape Town would get dryer if global warming continued and dryer it is.
The Logic of Drug Legalization
The Drug Lords of today exist because of the extraordinary profits resulting from criminalization. Estimates run in the half a trillion range globally per year. By way of comparison there are only twenty or so countries with a national economy of that size. The situation is exactly analogous to the prohibition era. When gunfights, beatings, murders and firebombs were the business strategy of choice for the pushers of alcohol.
Looking for a Glass of Water and a Place to Shit
Imagine if you will that the U.S. had instead put $3.6 trillion into measures to improve infrastructure around the world. It has been estimated by the UNDP that to give the entire world fresh water and sanitation would cost half a trillion. That leaves $3.1 trillion for further projects. Now what would the U.S. have gained by being the country known for giving the entire world a glass a water and a place to shit? Think on it. The first obvious effect would be a tremendous uplift to U.S. prestige.
The view from the other side of the table
I’ve had the great opportunity to see all sides of the market over the years. I’ve been a board member of the Kingfield Farmers Market and Neighborhood Roots for almost ten years now. I’ve been a vendor at the market and worked the front greeter’s table. I’ve set up the market tents and I’ve seen the carnage of vegetables left over after a rainy Sunday market. But the one part I love the most is all of the great people. I’m a people watcher. Come on, admit it, we all are.
Jonesing for Real Change
Every now and then something interesting or at least enraging scrolls by on my FB feed. Today it came thanks to Mike Harris a former leader of Canada’s Green Party: In politics, when a new media came along, whoever mastered it won. So FDR mastered radio and against all odds became president. Kennedy mastered television and beat Nixon. Obama mastered political engagement and fundraising using the Internet. And Trump mastered reality TV and Twitter. What is reality TV?
Economic Life on a Melting Planet
In 2008 I had the opportunity to chat with Noam Chomsky in his office at MIT. Our discussion was free ranging and at one point the conversation turned to Naomi Klein’s book ‘Disaster Capitalism’. Chomsky’s take was as follows. “The facts in her book are correct but the problem is not disaster capitalism but capitalism itself.” He went further to state that the problem is markets. The underlying support for this assertion was that all markets operate on the principle of externalizing costs.
Our No Trump Contract
At this critical moment in human history it is important to recognize that Trump is in charge of very little. Every President struggles to overcome the basic inertia of large systems, entrenched bureaucracies, and a media and media owners with their own ideas on policy. Even when a President is intelligent and engaged with the information there are severe limits on their ability to exert change. When the President is instead like Trump these limitations become even more restrictive.
The Ideology of Bonfires
The number of those reported killed in the Grenfell Tower fire in London’s West End is rising. The reporting I’ve seen started the count at six, soon rose to twelve, then seventeen, and now stands at fifty-eight. There are some on social media claiming the number may be as much as ten times higher. This question at least will be answered sooner rather than later. What is also true is that a fight over numbers at this point distracts from more pressing facts.
America the Indispensable
There is a screaming need for us to properly account for the things that come from the bounty of nature. If ever there was something that was not developed privately and belongs to us all publicly that thing is nature. And yet business is taking an extremely costly free ride at our collective expense by failing to account for and pay for the full costs of their activities.
Lessons From a Modern Greek Tragedy
Trump has just inked a deal for $110 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia. The first installment of a longer term $350 billion deal. No sane person can believe that this will lead to anything but an escalation of violence in a region that is already in flames. In Yemen as a result of relentless Saudi bombing 17 million people are faced with famine and there is an incipient cholera epidemic.
Casino Economics: From Our Hands to Their Pockets
“The decade 2003-2012, the 449 companies publicly listed in the S&P 500 index spent only 9% of their earnings on new capital investment. They used 54% to buy back their own stock, and 37% to pay dividends.” “Gambling is a stealth tax on poor people hoping to beat impossible odds.
Winning the expectations game in customer care
Call centers aren’t what they used to be. Here’s how to capture the loyalty of increasingly demanding customers. The customer, so the saying goes, is always right—and these days it’s increasingly evident that customers don’t hesitate to flaunt their power. Assisted by technology, they wield unprecedented influence over the purchase of goods and services, as well as the ongoing care from the companies that offer them.
Art-House Film Venues
This list is actively updated. Showing art-house, indie, and/or repertory films, ordered by state and then city. Where applicable, parent film organizations are also listed, and * denotes nonprofit. Did we miss any? Let us know at editor@filmlinc.org! ALABAMA Crescent Theater (est. 2008) Mobile, 1 screen Capri Theatre* (est. 1983) Montgomery, 1 screen ALASKA Bear Tooth Theatrepub (est. 2000) Anchorage, 1 screen Gold Town Nickelodeon (est. 1990) Juneau, 1 screen ARIZONA FilmBar (est.
Winning the expectations game in customer care
Call centers aren’t what they used to be. Here’s how to capture the loyalty of increasingly demanding customers. The customer, so the saying goes, is always right—and these days it’s increasingly evident that customers don’t hesitate to flaunt their power. Assisted by technology, they wield unprecedented influence over the purchase of goods and services, as well as the ongoing care from the companies that offer them.
Mastering the challenge of capacity management
Meet varying demand while keeping staffing costs under control with flexible scheduling. Significant demand variability is common in many service environments—most notably in call centers, hospitals, field delivery, and retail operations. Each of these environments faces a daily, weekly, or seasonal struggle to meet customer service expectations at peak times without leaving expensive staff idle during lulls. Managing variable demand can be a source of tension between functions too.
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