This is a cheap shot at the Marine Corps and unworthy of this site and the Center for Media and Democracy.
First of all, the Corps has to compete for talent just like any other organization...why shouldn't they use culturally relevant technology? When I joined 30 years ago I first got a card in the mail. Things are different now.
Second, saying "Fortunately, the Marine Corps has stated that they won’t actually enlist anyone directly through the MySpace site" is a throw-away line and absurd on its face. No one joins any arm of the service without a battery of tests, a physical, and interviews. An actual enlistment contact must be signed, and it is gone over in detail with the potential recruit. And as I recall, the parents are always consulted in person when a recruit is below a certain age.
Third, no one who joins the military these days -- and who has his or her faculties -- can possibly be unaware that they face the very real prospect of combat, terrible injury and/or death. Anyone who IS unaware of this is either culpably ignorant, or simply too stupid to pass the tests.
The undelying sentiment here, unspoken but implied, seems to be that young people are suckered by the "atmosphere" of myspace.com into joining and then sent off to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., by the Corps.
That's not the case. If and when they are sent off to war -- in this case an unnecessary and disastrous war of choice -- it is by the civilian leadership of this country.
Don't blame the Marine Corps, one of the finest organizations on earth, for using this technology to recruit. If that is indeed your theme, take it up with Messrs. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Ms. Rice, and the cabal of neocons who launched and are pursuing this diaster.
Gleason may have been pimping for the drug, but he has a point. Xyrem is very effective as a sleep agent, without the side effects of ambien, lunestra, etc.
I'm quite familiar with the issue and the non existence of such a manual would have been surprising. Customer service platforms are automated and employees usually just have to follow scripts and prompts.
All the corporations that claim to provide "services" have "customer retention programs" because minimizing churn is everyday more important for the likes of AOL. "Customer loyalty" is not that big an issue when new customers pour in but in a mature market, recruiting new customers tends to cost more and more, ARPU tends to dive and churn rates tends to jump... so don't expect any return on investment before years for any given customer.
Specific customer retention platforms are trained to cope with potential churners and generally have targets in terms of percentage of aborted resiliations. Even gaining a few months can dramatically change the bottom line.
There is always a point in a market where this gets nasty : even the one who must leave is almost forced to stay a few more months. Such caricatural deviances usually don't last long : first, the multiplication of calls to customer service costs the company much more than the potential gain and second, the multiplication of such incidents creates a chain reaction (negative buzz, collaborative lobbying, this kind of articles...) generally leading to a revolution.
In a truly mature (and truly competitive) market, customer retention systems become much more subtle and efficient. The aim becomes more positive : let's make the resiliation experience smooth and polite, the churner will want to come back on his own if the competitor's customer service isn't as good.
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Stephane MOT -
http://e-blogules.blogspot.com
Tanker man,
I support your right to have fun on the 'job', but this post reeks of a military bravado that I feel qualified to comment on.
I served two combat tours in Vietnam. I fought and was wounded during the TET Offensive of '68', we took 2000 US KIA's and 30,000 wounded in a bloody week of fighting. I remember the first man I killed in living color, I looked him in the eyes from six feet as I emptied my M-16 into his chest. I was asked some years later if I felt guilty about it. No, it was 'kill or be killed, my military training saved my life. I can tell you that I took many lives in Indochina and I wasn't proud of 'it', and it was't fun.
War is a dehumanizing process, there is no glory in it. and this one isn't any different. We saw smiling people too, built hospitals and schools, taught the ARVNS to fight, and it all fell apart because the logic of it disregarded reality of it. The current brain trust is 'reality challanged' IMHO. But lets not go there.
I thank you for putting your butt on the line and covering our 'six', and if you need help in 'coming home', there are many here that went before you, that have your 'back'.
In Brotherhood,
Dirk
'Illegitimati Non Carborundum'
This is a cheap shot at the Marine Corps and unworthy of this site and the Center for Media and Democracy.
First of all, the Corps has to compete for talent just like any other organization...why shouldn't they use culturally relevant technology? When I joined 30 years ago I first got a card in the mail. Things are different now.
Second, saying "Fortunately, the Marine Corps has stated that they won’t actually enlist anyone directly through the MySpace site" is a throw-away line and absurd on its face. No one joins any arm of the service without a battery of tests, a physical, and interviews. An actual enlistment contact must be signed, and it is gone over in detail with the potential recruit. And as I recall, the parents are always consulted in person when a recruit is below a certain age.
Third, no one who joins the military these days -- and who has his or her faculties -- can possibly be unaware that they face the very real prospect of combat, terrible injury and/or death. Anyone who IS unaware of this is either culpably ignorant, or simply too stupid to pass the tests.
The undelying sentiment here, unspoken but implied, seems to be that young people are suckered by the "atmosphere" of myspace.com into joining and then sent off to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., by the Corps.
That's not the case. If and when they are sent off to war -- in this case an unnecessary and disastrous war of choice -- it is by the civilian leadership of this country.
Don't blame the Marine Corps, one of the finest organizations on earth, for using this technology to recruit. If that is indeed your theme, take it up with Messrs. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Ms. Rice, and the cabal of neocons who launched and are pursuing this diaster.
Gleason may have been pimping for the drug, but he has a point. Xyrem is very effective as a sleep agent, without the side effects of ambien, lunestra, etc.
She said about Lebanon what he should have said about Iraq -- "birth pangs" of the new Middle East, rather than "final throes of the insurgency."
I'm quite familiar with the issue and the non existence of such a manual would have been surprising. Customer service platforms are automated and employees usually just have to follow scripts and prompts.
All the corporations that claim to provide "services" have "customer retention programs" because minimizing churn is everyday more important for the likes of AOL. "Customer loyalty" is not that big an issue when new customers pour in but in a mature market, recruiting new customers tends to cost more and more, ARPU tends to dive and churn rates tends to jump... so don't expect any return on investment before years for any given customer.
Specific customer retention platforms are trained to cope with potential churners and generally have targets in terms of percentage of aborted resiliations. Even gaining a few months can dramatically change the bottom line.
There is always a point in a market where this gets nasty : even the one who must leave is almost forced to stay a few more months. Such caricatural deviances usually don't last long : first, the multiplication of calls to customer service costs the company much more than the potential gain and second, the multiplication of such incidents creates a chain reaction (negative buzz, collaborative lobbying, this kind of articles...) generally leading to a revolution.
In a truly mature (and truly competitive) market, customer retention systems become much more subtle and efficient. The aim becomes more positive : let's make the resiliation experience smooth and polite, the churner will want to come back on his own if the competitor's customer service isn't as good.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Stephane MOT -
http://e-blogules.blogspot.com
______________________________________________________________________________________
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