Leading Service Firms Achieve High Profit Margins and Enrich the Customer Experience

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - November 11, 2009) - The latest research report published by the Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), titled "The State of Service Management: Forecast for 2010," found that top performing organizations are turning to multiple service delivery channels to meet the needs of their customers. By managing service as a strategic profit center, forward-thinking companies have rejected the traditional approach in favor of a more integrated approach that includes managing resources (people, parts, vehicles), partners (internal, external), contracts and customers with a razor-sharp focus that aligns directly to corporate goals and objectives. Organizations that have successfully employed a strategic service management approach are able to deliver on the four key precepts of a strategic business unit: customer value, competitive differentiation, financial performance, and product quality.

"Managing post-sales service as a profit center within the organization is not new," said Bill Pollock, Vice President - Principal Analyst, Aberdeen Group. "However, what is new to many organizations is the ability to manage it strategically in order to benefit from the higher levels of customer satisfaction and retention, service profit margin and year-over-year workforce productivity improvement."

Research findings in "The State of Service Management" report indicate that top performing companies are twice as likely as all other organizations (All Others) to systematically share customer and product information with all relevant internal and external partners. As such, these firms exhibited the following:

--  95% customer satisfaction rate
--  93% customer retention rate
--  34% annual service profit margin
--  25% workforce productivity increase (i.e., number of service calls
    completed daily) over the past 12 months
    

The report also finds that leading service organizations are considerably more likely to use an appointment management solution to equip their teams and customers. In addition, leading firms are more likely than All Others to place a significant focus on business intelligence and analytics in order to better align service-related KPIs with business goals.

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part to the following underwriters: Metrix and Single Source Systems. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=5997.

For additional access to complimentary Service Management Research, please visit http://research.aberdeen.com/index.php/-service-management.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen provides fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having queried more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748.

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Contact Information: Media Contact: Aly Pinder Research Analyst Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5388 Aly.pinder@aberdeen.com