Global Service Executives and Visionaries to Attend the Annual Chief Service Officer's (CSO) Summit to Draw a Strategic Vision for Service Management

 | Source: Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - September 11, 2008) - Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS) -- Now in its third year, Aberdeen's Chief Service Officer's (CSO) Summit will once again bring together leading service executives to network and discuss strategies facing their post sales service organization. While the first two extremely successful and well-received service conferences focused on 'why' companies need to make service a strategic initiative, this year's summit will actually look at 'how' companies can transform their service operations into strategic profit centers. The current speaker roster and agenda reflects the planned interaction on key areas -- such as the building of a service ecosystem, developing a service culture, or the marketing and branding of your service organization.

To prepare for this year's CSO Summit, Aberdeen's senior research team surveyed hundreds of service professionals to really understand the key challenges that plague service organizations as a whole to ensure this event is event is highly targeted with a primary goal of identifying actionable recommendations for service professionals in attendance.

Participants will hear from and network with strategic service professionals like: 

--  Doug Lipp, former head of customer service & training, Disney
--  Jeffrey Fons, General Manager of Service Operations, GE Healthcare
--  Heidy Kelley, VP of Fulfillment, Comcast
--  Chris Yessayan, VP of Service, Invacare
--  Greg Lush, CIO, The Linc Group
--  Curtis Hill, VP of Technical Support, Cisco
--  Greg Blackmore, VP and General Manager of Service, Steris Corporation
--  Hank Coleman, CEO, OpenLabs
--  Ian Alletson, Workforce Specialist, British Telecom
--  Craig Cole, Global Strategic Operations Director, Customer Field
    Support, Beckman Coulter
--  Justin Crotty, VP of Services North America, Ingram Micro
--  Steve Blaz, VP of Global Service Operations, Juniper
--  David Webb, UK Service Director, Avery Weigh-Tronix

"Our annual CSO Summit is a terrific opportunity for us to bring this research to life, along with a world-class roster of global service chain executives, for valuable discussions and actionable recommendations surrounding post-sales service that address issues that go beyond the tactical view of service in the past," states Sumair Dutta, Sr. service management research analyst at Aberdeen.

Summit participants will have the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the largest network of global service chain thought leaders to: 

--  Build a Best-in-Class strategy for their own service chain
--  Differentiate themselves from their competitors through customer
    service
--  Identify key drivers, challenges, trends affecting the service
    strategies of companies across industries and company sizes
--  Attain fact-based research insights in topics such as workforce
    optimization, customer benchmarking, service quality and knowledge
    management
--  Manage their Service operations as a Profit Center

Aberdeen's service management research has tracked the rise of post-sales service up the corporate priority list. In fact, Aberdeen's research indicates that Best-in-Class firms rely on and are increasingly relying on service for a significant portion of their overall revenues and profits. To view Aberdeen's Strategic Service Library, please visit http://www.aberdeen.com/channel/svc.asp.

Senior service professionals who wish to register for the CSO Summit or require additional event information, please visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/events/live/CSO08.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely 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 http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com. 

© 2008 AberdeenGroup, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
451 D Street, Suite 710
Boston, Massachusetts  02210-1928
Telephone: (617) 854-5200
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com

Contact Information: Media Contact: Sumair Dutta Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (773) 857-2123 Sumair.dutta@aberdeen.com