CRM Buyer - Ectnews.com
Demandbase Applies Web 2.0 Tricks to Lead Generation
Two-year-old Demandbase has planted its own stake in the rapidly emerging next-gen lead generation and lead conversion space with the introduction this week of Demandbase. A Software as a Service platform, Demandbase Central consists of sales and marketing applications, as well as a search, scoring and transaction engine that identifies qualified sales leads.2008-08-30 00:00:00
Scope of Best Western Customer Data Breach Open to Debate
Did a computer intrusion at a Best Western hotel in Germany open the door for a hacker to steal the records of 8 million customers and pull off "the greatest cyber-heist in world history," as a Scottish newspaper put it? Or was the incident a significantly more minor affair, affecting only 10 customers at the one facility, as claimed by Best Western International?2008-08-30 00:00:00
Bringing Web 2.0 Behind the Firewall
Some of your employees have a blog -- approved, of course -- as do some of your customers. In addition, your employees have been posting videos from the latest trade show on your Web site, as well as on some of your partner Web sites. Your latest project is the funneling of customer comments from your forums into your product development pipeline. Does this sound like your company?2008-08-30 00:00:00
CRM, Energy, Disruptions and Opportunities
I am sitting on a train heading to New York from Boston for a CRM conference. Not driving, not flying -- I prefer the train for this trip for a bunch of reasons. Rail brought us traveling troubadours like Woody Guthrie, circuses and baseball, and it helped define a job type: the traveling salesperson.2008-08-21 00:00:00
The Customer Loyalty Myth
Do loyal customers translate into steady sales or profits? Intuitively, the answer should be yes -- and indeed, customer loyalty is a significant metric by which companies rate their performance. However, there a few problems with the concept of customer loyalty and a corporate strategy to develop it, according to Esteban Kolsky, practice leader with eVergence.2008-08-21 00:00:00
Apple Gives MobileMe Users 60 More Days, Pleads for Patience
Apple took another step to acknowledge the issues surrounding MobileMe reliability by extending current subscriber memberships an additional 60 days. The company previously extended memberships 30 days, which means qualifying subscriber renewal dates have been extended 90 days.2008-08-21 00:00:00
Customer Experience Management: Rx for the Top and Bottom Lines
CEOs across companies and industries have become focused in 2008 on the critical role that customer experience plays in keeping their companies competitive and driving profitability. These same CEOs are challenging their CMOs to move beyond CRM to Customer Experience Management, which takes an outside-in approach to the customer experience.2008-08-21 00:00:00
Product Development: Getting Customers In on the Act
This week, Sage Software is bringing out version 11 of ACT, its high-flying contact management software. ACT has been around since the mid-1980s and has been through multiple incarnations and owners in that time. ACT was what you used back then if you were tired of keeping notes on paper and wanted to improve the way you sell.2008-08-13 00:00:00
IBM Kicks Mobility Play Into High Gear
IBM has rolled out "Mobility@Work," a package of new software tools that allow developers to run existing desktop applications on a mobile device, together with new mobile consulting services aimed at helping companies implement and manage a mobile work environment.2008-08-10 00:00:00
Sustainability and CRM
This summer, I have been doing a lot of research into sustainability and have developed some thoughts that relate to CRM, especially CRM 2.0. The whole idea of "sustainability" deserves some contemplation. Too often we see the word applied to just about anything that needs to look a little bit green. Sustainability and related words absolve a multitude of sins.2008-08-10 00:00:00
Three Special Ingredients for a Great Cross-Channel Loyalty Brew
In this heated battle for the consumer dollar, retail marketers are looking to establish a personal and consistent relationship with shoppers through integrated customer loyalty programs that leverage traditional offline and emerging communications channels. Not surprisingly, it can be overwhelming for retailers to figure out where to start.2008-08-01 00:00:00
What Does the Future Hold for the Call Center?
What is the future of the call center industry over the next five years? Here are some predictions: 1. Real-time Internet-based feedback techniques will become popular, enabling customers to rate agents from Web sites with click-to-call capabilities. 2. Trans-national quality assurance practices will extend in both directions, with more U.S. and UK facilities using offshore centers for QA of U.S. and UK agents.2008-08-01 00:00:00
Yahoo to Music Customers: Burn It to Save It
Although Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers have known since February that their music service would end in September, they may have been surprised to learn this week they would need to back up any purchased tracks on an audio CD by September 30 if they wanted to keep them. Failure to do so could leave users unable to play music they had bought.2008-07-26 00:00:00
Customer Feedback: Mind if I Ask You a Few Questions?
Never before has the voice of the customer been so loud. And never before have companies been so keen to not only pay close attention to the wants, likes, experiences, preferences, opinions, suggestions and complaints of customers, but to carefully analyze and act upon the information in a systematic fashion.2008-07-24 00:00:00
Study: IP-Based Contact Centers Speed Product Churn
At $2.4 billion, the global contact center marketplace has grown mature. However, trends in the industry are still driving much growth in the space, according to a newly released report by Gartner that looks at the market and its players. These trends include a move -- after many years of analyst predictions -- to IP-based systems, which in turn is leading to more product churn, Gartner analyst Drew Kraus told CRM Buyer.2008-07-23 00:00:00
B2B Customer Service: The Competitive Edge
The customer is always right, or so the saying goes. And while, strictly speaking, this might not always be true, it is clear that a good level of customer service and empathy can be the differentiator between a happy customer and one that goes elsewhere. Just as consumers on the high street expect a good level of customer service, businesses too expect their service providers to respond effectively to their needs.2008-07-23 00:00:00
Virgin Mobile: The Wireless Road Less Traveled
Virgin Mobile USA definitely walks to its own, very hip drumbeat. Big cell phone carriers such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless are famous for herding customers into long-term service contracts. Virgin specializes in prepaid plans that allow its customers -- half of them under 35 -- to pay as they go, by the minute or by the month. That difference is what distinguishes Virgin, CEO Dan Schulman says.2008-07-23 00:00:00
The Good Old Analog Customer
On my blog, I have been writing about my experience with my new computer: an iMac. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the whole cultural difference between the Windows world and the Apple world. As a longtime user of Windows, I felt I knew and understood that platform pretty well and the jolt of cutting over cold turkey was both surprising and refreshing.2008-07-19 00:00:00
Heavy Bandwidth Users May Face Ticking Meter
For as long as consumers have had high-speed Internet at home, they have surfed the Web as much as they wanted, downloading any content while paying their service provider a flat monthly fee. Those days may be ending. Internet service providers, especially cable companies, are eying new pricing models to address the rapidly growing popularity of such applications as streaming online video and the sharing of large files.2008-07-19 00:00:00
Creating a Stronger Customer Link
Service and warranty management executives still wrestle with post-sale customer satisfaction issues and escalating warranty costs. These executives are revising business processes and adopting technology solutions to better manage warranty workflow, enhance claims administration, reduce costs and implement a closed-loop analytic-driven warranty chain, Aberdeen found.2008-07-14 00:00:00
Opening New Channels for Emergency Communications
Five cities across the U.S. are testing a new national 911 system that would allow communications with police and other emergency personnel by text message and take advantage of the latest technology to pinpoint accident scenes. Call centers in Rochester, N.Y; Bozeman, Mont.; King County, Wash.; St. Paul, Minn; and Fort Wayne, Ind., began testing the system in June.2008-07-14 00:00:00
Real Estate Discovers CRM, Part 1: Embracing the Idea
In few other industries is the need for a good CRM system as great as in real estate -- a business that employs large sales forces with a need to build lasting client relationships and processes lots of documents. Add to that the need to track property listings, sales leads and referrals, and it becomes clear that CRM is the name of the game in real estate.2008-07-14 00:00:00
Data Brawn Meets Interface Brains
The larger the business or government agency is, the bigger the volume of data it deals with. That translates into massive efforts to manage that data to meet ever-increasing compliance regulations for adequately maintaining electronic records. Any software company that can figure out how to manage this process better than its competition can become king of the vendor hill.2008-07-10 00:00:00
Recordant Helps Reps Fine-Tune Sales Pitches
Salespeople know the right word can seal a deal. The question is which word is the right one? An Alpharetta, Ga., company has technology that could provide the answer. Recordant, a 5-year-old firm, has developed a computer program that pinpoints passages in recorded conversations that can be analyzed to improve job performance, including sales.2008-07-10 00:00:00
Senate Committee to Put NebuAd in Privacy Hot Seat
Executives from major Internet players are due for a grilling about online privacy in a Senate committee Wednesday, but the company likely to get the most scrutiny is a small startup called "NebuAd." NebuAd has drawn fierce criticism from privacy advocates in recent weeks for working with Internet service providers to track the online behavior of their customers and then serve up targeted banner ads based on that behavior.2008-07-10 00:00:00
Online Businesses: Recession-Proof or Just Lucky?
The entire United States is debating whether the country is in the midst of an economic slowdown. Some of the signs are fairly explicit: steadily rising gas prices and their cascading effects on the average consumer, unemployment rate bumps, and the continued fallout from the housing market bubble.2008-07-10 00:00:00
Publisher to Let Subscribers Swap Out Magazines Online
Magazine buying may get an Internet-era makeover in September when Time Inc. launches Maghound, a service that promises to blend the convenience of subscriptions with the flexibility of newsstand sales. Customers will pay a monthly fee for home delivery of the publications they want. However, unlike with subscriptions, which typically run for fixed terms, users can go online and swap one title for another whenever they want.2008-07-10 00:00:00
Shoring Up Customer Communications With BCPs
Enterprises have long sought ways to add real-time communications to business applications to improve customer interactions, streamline workflows, more quickly respond to critical events and more efficiently execute time-sensitive transactions. Integrating interactive communications with software applications and business processes, however, has proven difficult, costly and time-consuming.2008-07-09 00:00:00
5 Ways to Build an Indestructible Customer Data Fortress
On June 30, data security standards set by the Payment Card Industry became mandatory for organizations that handle online credit card payments. This is a significant milestone in the ongoing push to strengthen online security as these important standards have moved from recommendations to hard and fast mandates.2008-07-09 00:00:00
SaaS, Emerging Markets Drive CRM Sales
Sales of customer relationship management software rose dramatically in 2007, driven in part by the take-up of Software as a Service offerings, according to analyst group Gartner. Sales of CRM software totaled about $8.1 billion in 2007, Gartner said in a new report. That represents a 23 percent increase from sales in 2006.2008-07-09 00:00:00
Virtual Personal Assistants: Not Just for the Filthy Rich
Think only celebrities, high-ranking professionals and the wealthy can enjoy having personal assistants at their beck and call? Not necessarily. A growing number of Web sites are making it easier to outsource virtual errands overseas, making it cheaper to indulge in the luxury of never having to write another thank-you card or sit on hold with the department of motor vehicles.2008-07-07 00:00:00
Is Circuit City Headed for a Blowout?
Will Circuit City join the long list of electronics retailers, like Tweeter Home Entertainment and Harvey Electronics, that have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past year? Given that shares of the Richmond, Va., company are trading at just over $2, Wall Street is betting that could be a possibility.2008-07-04 00:00:00
Banking on Customer Satisfaction
Most Americans rank the customer service at their financial institution as above average, but there is still room for improvement, according to a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of the American Society for Quality. ASQ conducted the survey to identify areas of concern regarding customer service in financial services.2008-07-04 00:00:00
Call Centers, Healthcare Firms Offer Unique Employee Perks
It used to be getting a foot in the door was the hard part for job seekers, but some companies these days are making it easier, even paying for some to get to the door. Trainees who travel more than 10 miles to the Network Solutions call center in Butler Township, Pa., receive a $20 gasoline card. Benco Dental provides a cash bonus to employees who refer a new hire.2008-07-04 00:00:00
Lyris Pushes Web Marketing Toolset Downstream
Lyris has upgraded its flagship product and rolled out a new application for the marketing and advertising industry. The enhancements to Lyris HQ pave the way for a steady addition of collaboration and social networking tools this year. Lyris HQ for Agencies, meanwhile, will provide an inroad into a new constituency: advertising and marketing firms that serve multiple clients.2008-07-04 00:00:00
A Two-Pronged Approach to Better Medical Bill Collection
When two medical practices in Lakewood, Colo., began comparing notes in 2006, they discovered similar financial and operational challenges. In an increasingly competitive healthcare environment where costs were escalating while the pool of reimbursement resources diminished, leadership at each practice recognized the need for a re-engineered approach to revenue cycle management.2008-06-30 00:00:00
Take Care Cofounder Hal Rosenbluth on Patient Care and Provider Prosperity
During three decades in the travel industry, Hal Rosenbluth emphasized customer service, convenience and interconnectivity, building Rosenbluth International into a business travel giant with $6 billion in annual sales before selling it to American Express in 2003. A year later, Rosenbluth entered the healthcare market, founding the convenient care clinic chain Take Care Health.2008-06-30 00:00:00
New Auto Loan Leads Marketplace Shifts Into Drive
Reply.com launched a new automotive finance leads marketplace Monday, partnering with the Detroit Trading Company to help create what the company says will be the largest repository of consumers interested in securing car loans. Promising to the act of buying and selling sales leads easy, Reply.com said the automotive loan category will the first of several it plans to roll out on its lead platform.2008-06-30 00:00:00
When Will BI Head Downstream?
Over the past year, the business intelligence landscape has transformed drastically. Formerly, this market was comprised of a vast collection of solution providers, but it has evolved to just four major players -- IBM, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. These BI titans have expanded through acquisition, snatching up the BI solutions provided by Cognos, Business Objects, Hyperion and ProClarity.2008-06-28 00:00:00
Industry Players Outline Rules for Online Health Records
Google and Microsoft have teamed with Intuit, WebMD and a consortium of more than 100 healthcare providers, insurers and consumer and privacy groups to develop a framework of practices governing online personal health record services. Under the leadership of the Markle Foundation, the Connecting for Health guidelines are an effort by PHR service proponents to establish a common set of principles.2008-06-28 00:00:00
Genius.com Adds Instant E-Mail Marketing to the Mix
On-demand business-to-business marketing vendor Genius.com has developed a new collaborative e-mail marketing module that focuses on lead qualification and prioritization. MarketingGenius brings together the sales and marketing departments.2008-06-28 00:00:00
Oracle Teases With Strong Q4, Disappoints With Forecast
Oracle finished its fiscal year with an impressive flourish, then pulled out a wet blanket. After announcing fourth-quarter results that exceeded analyst estimates, the business software maker dampened investor sentiment late Wednesday by raising the specter of a slowdown in the traditionally sluggish summer months.2008-06-28 00:00:00
The Customer Loyalty Jackpot
Casinos have been on a roll when it comes to customer relationships. The house has learned it always wins when it places its bets on the fact that humans are creatures of habit. Unlike other industries, however, the gambling lot does not leave the odds to a stack of faceless data mirroring only transactional data.2008-06-26 00:00:00
The New Contact Center Profit Model
Contact center managers for years have been using tried-and-true efficiency-oriented key performance indicators to measure contact center success, such as average call handling time and cost-per-call. Aberdeen completed a benchmark survey in May that examines the trend of Fortune 100 Best-in-Class companies that are transforming their contact centers from cost centers to profit centers.2008-06-26 00:00:00
LucidEra Aims to Link Marketing Analytics to Sales Pipeline
LucidEra, a provider of on-demand analytics for sales professionals and managers, is bringing marketing into its fold with the addition of LucidEra Lead Insight. This is an analytics application with more than 65 prebuilt metrics focused on marketing performance -- specifically, how effective the marketer is in converting leads into sales opportunities and closed deals.2008-06-26 00:00:00
Beyond CRM 2.0
Last week, and for many other weeks, I discussed CRM 2.0, but today I am thinking more about the world beyond 2.0. Maybe it will be CRM 3.0, or maybe some wise guy like Paul Greenberg will change the numbering and call it "CRM 20xx," who knows? My reading and research tells me that there will be a need for something else.2008-06-26 00:00:00
Study: RFID Tags May Scramble Hospital Equipment
A new study is raising questions over how radio frequency identification chips could be interacting with hospital equipment. The report, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests RFID chips could cause some medical devices to fail when in close contact.2008-06-26 00:00:00
Up in the Clouds
The Google-Salesforce.com partnership grows ever more intertwined. The latest development occurred Monday when Salesforce.com released a Google Data client library for the Force.com platform that provides access to the full suite of Google Data APIs using Apex code, allowing developers to integrate their Force.com applications with Google Apps.2008-06-26 00:00:00
Humanizing the Online Customer Experience
The Internet has seen massive adoption. Online retailing has continued to dramatically build its customer base and more and more companies are sending their offline customers to the Internet for service and support. To service both these old and new customers, the Internet has already had an abundant history of "self-service" tools that have each seen their boom and bust cycle.2008-06-23 00:00:00
ORM: Tracking Operations From Half a World Away, Part 2
The global business process outsourcing market continues to strengthen relative to the more mature IT outsourcing market and is forecast to reach $450 billion by 2012, according to a June report from BPO analyst firm NelsonHall. Within this massive outsourcing market exists a relatively small $500 million niche market for outsourcing relationship management software tools from emerging players.2008-06-23 00:00:00
FCC Poised to Reprimand Verizon for Hounding Customers
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission reportedly is expected to rule against Verizon in a complaint filed by three cable companies against the telco. The FCC plans to tell Verizon it cannot try to talk phone service customers into staying instead of switching to a cable competitor, according to press accounts that leaked the pending decision.2008-06-23 00:00:00
eBay Puffs Up PayPal With Fraud Protection Upgrade
In its latest effort to increase user confidence in its e-commerce platform -- and to boost use of its PayPal payment service -- eBay will offer full protection against fraud to purchases made with PayPal. eBay buyers who complete eligible transactions with PayPal will be able to get 100 percent of their purchase price back, with no price cap.2008-06-23 00:00:00
Smart Strategies for Compensating Telemarketing Service Providers
With a third of all lead generation budget dollars allocated to outsourced B2B teleservices providers, how do Best-in-Class organizations most effectively compensate their external vendors? Aberdeen survey respondents from more than 200 organizations provide rich detail regarding their preferences for how they prefer to model the fiscal relationship they build with their outsourced provider partner.2008-06-19 00:00:00
Simple Request Becomes Phone-Company Ordeal
The second phone line seemed like a great idea 20 years ago, but times have changed. Now the Kogans all have cell phones. The second home line? Rarely used. So in April, Susan Kogan called AT&T with what she thought was a simple request: Disconnect line two, which was costing her about $30 a month.2008-06-19 00:00:00
Widgets and Social Apps: The Rules of Engagement
Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have become extremely fertile environments for product placement and branding. Marketers can reach consumers where they are spending significant amounts of time with compelling content that can potentially break through the marketing noise. Widgets are ideal for social networking venues because they pack a huge impact into a small size.2008-06-18 00:00:00
ORM: Tracking Operations From Half a World Away, Part 1
Because outsourcing both creates and destroys, the multi-billion dollar global outsourcing industry has given rise to the field of outsourcing relationship management and a $500 million market for ORM software tools from niche players like Janeeva, Kelsar, Digital Fuel, Oblicore and RealTime Bookkeeping. ORM encompasses elements of organizational structure, IT infrastructure and management strategy.2008-06-18 00:00:00
CRM and the Enterprise 2.0 Challenge
What is the potential opportunity for Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise space? A whopping $4.6 billion a by 2013, according to a tally Forrester Research arrives at in a report released earlier this year. Spending on Web-based enterprise technologies, including social networking, RSS, blogs, wikis, mashups, podcasting and widgets will grow by 43 percent each year for the next five years.2008-06-13 00:00:00
Cutting Through the Business-Critical Information Fog
The variety of financial, business and operational risks inherent in the highly competitive global market, as well as the large and continually growing number of cross-industry mandates, governmental regulations and industry-specific regulatory guidelines have significantly impacted how organizations make business-critical decisions.2008-06-12 00:00:00
Oracle Offers Sales Pros New Prospecting Tool
Oracle has released the third in a series of small, plug-and-play Web 2.0 tools designed to enhance specific features of its customer relationship management platform. Oracle Sales Prospector, previewed Monday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, recommends prospective leads, rating the likelihood those leads will close, and then aggregates the data in a single repository.2008-06-12 00:00:00
Welcome to the Know-How Era
Lately I have been working on a keynote speech that I need to deliver in a few weeks, and in the process of doing my research, I came across some very interesting ideas that fit in well with my research focus. In the last half of the 20th century, a number of thinkers became increasingly dissatisfied with the classical model of economics and began looking for an explanation that better represented the facts that they saw daily.2008-06-12 00:00:00
Vote Your Data Off the Island and Onto the Mainland
As a company grows in size, various information sharing challenges appear that can stifle that growth. One such speed bump sets in a few years into the growth cycle, when the company expands and each department develops its own information needs. That problem is called "Islanditis."2008-06-10 00:00:00
Los Angeles Mad as Hell at Time Warner
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has filed a civil lawsuit against Time Warner Cable, alleging it deceived and ripped off its subscribers, providing inferior service for months. The complaint accuses TWC of engaging in numerous fraudulent acts and business practices.2008-06-10 00:00:00
Happy Birthday, Cluetrain Manifesto
The Cluetrain Manifesto, written 10 years ago by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger, has won over a sizable number of devotees with a simple premise: As the Internet introduces new levels of communication among consumers -- and between consumers and companies -- those companies are going to have to respond with intelligent and direct communication.2008-06-05 00:00:00
Having SaaS Your Way: Configuration Sophistication
There was a time when customizing enterprise software was a long, drawn-out, often painful affair. Then along came Software as a Service, recalls Dan Druker, senior vice president for Intacct, an on-demand financial management and accounting application. It was really easy for Ingres to integrate and then customize a joint Salesforce.com-Intacct implementation.2008-06-05 00:00:00
Breakthroughs in Analytics, Part 3
The growing reliance on business analytics at the enterprise level to improve strategic operational decision making and increase corporate competitive advantage is driving what IDC estimates to be a $20 billion market for business analytics development tools and packaged intelligence applications. Oracle remains a leader of the business analytics market, according to an IDC 2007 forecast report.2008-06-05 00:00:00
Is Bush to Blame for Airline Safety Woes?
Over the past two months, hundreds of thousands of airline passengers were stranded in airports nationwide as more than 3,500 flights were canceled because carriers failed to perform required maintenance. The mass groundings -- more extensive than any previous airline safety grounding in history -- cost airlines tens of millions of dollars.2008-06-05 00:00:00
How to Avoid Spreadsheet Suffocation
Growing companies encounter various bottlenecks that inhibit growth and cause them to plateau. It starts innocently enough. Everyone reaches for a spreadsheet to make lists. Things are fine while there are only three or four of you. Then the new hire in sales creates his own list of customers.2008-06-05 00:00:00
Jigsaw Aims to Open Web 2.0 Treasure Trove
Jigsaw, a provider of corporate information, sales and marketing leads, is providing some of its contacts for free to customer relationship management vendors under a newly launched Open Data Initiative. Companies taking advantage of the open source program include NetSuite, Oracle, Sage, SugarCRM, Entellium, Landslide and Maximizer.2008-06-05 00:00:00
Follow the Money With Marketing Dashboards
Forty-five percent of marketing executives view return on marketing investment as a top driver compelling their organizations to track and measure marketing performance, according to a recent Aberdeen Group survey of 728 companies. This begs the question: Can the implementation of a marketing dashboard help alleviate the pressure related to improving ROMI?2008-06-05 00:00:00
Study: Asia-Pacific IT Market Growing More Sophisticated
Enterprise application integration services will emerge as the biggest opportunity in the Asia-Pacific IT marketplace, excluding Japan, between now and 2011, according to a forecast by Springboard Research. Springboard forecasts the EAI market in A-P will grow at a compound annual rate of 11.5 percent between 2007 and 2011, from $5 billion to $7.8 billion.2008-05-29 00:00:00
Creating an Enterprise App Vendor Short List, Part 2
The going is tough and the competition fierce, but opportunities are out there for small and medium-sized businesses looking to build businesses more global in scope than ever before. A lot rides on their choice and use of enterprise-wide applications -- software that supports core business functions across departments and geography -- and the vendors that offer and support them.2008-05-29 00:00:00
Borders Goes It Alone With New E-Commerce Site
Borders officially cut its ties with Amazon.com on Tuesday, with the rollout of its long-planned solo e-commerce site. The book retailer announced last March that it would go it alone online after teaming with Amazon for six years. Borders is now striving to differentiate itself from its online competitors -- namely, Amazon and Barnes & Noble -- with some unique features.2008-05-29 00:00:00
Customer Reviews: Good for Business in Moderate Doses
Mike Dorausch is always on the lookout for new chiropractic clients in Los Angeles. To help spread the word about his services, he gently asks patients to say nice things about him at one of the many customer-review sites popping up on the Web. "Online reviews is how people find us," Dorausch says.2008-05-29 00:00:00
Breakthroughs in Analytics, Part 2
Business "intuition," popular in the days of pen, ink and paper, was the first "BI" -- keen and quick insight rooted in trading experience and utilizing heightened observation with direct perception of commercial reality, all aided by strong inferences and at least some minimal amount of basic information.2008-05-29 00:00:00
What Do EMC and Apple Have in Common? Quality
OK, this may seem like a huge stretch because I doubt there are any tech companies more different than EMC and Apple. However, I just spent several days at EMC World and I actually found one similarity: Both companies are focused like lasers on customer loyalty.2008-05-29 00:00:00
Survey: Airlines in Customer Satisfaction Tailspin
Results of a customer satisfaction survey released this week are timely for one industry in particular, as it faces a perfect storm: the collision of potentially stringent new regulations affecting customer service with a host of economic factors that are driving perception of that service deeper into the ground.2008-05-22 00:00:00
Zuora: Unconventional Billing for On-Demand Services
Zuora introduced itself to the world this week, and while it is not a typical CRM company, its position should have a big impact on CRM and all other markets that offer on-demand solutions. Founders Tien Tzuo, K.V. Rao and Cheng Zou, formerly of Salesforce.com and WebEx, chose the usually sedate billing market because they have a new idea that looks like it has legs.2008-05-22 00:00:00
FCC May Prod Carriers to Lower Cell Phone Cancellation Fees
Cell phone companies routinely charge customers $175 or more for quitting their service early. Under a proposal to the FCC, the wireless industry would give consumers the opportunity to cancel service without any penalty for up to 30 days after they sign a cell phone contract or until 10 days after they receive their first bill.2008-05-22 00:00:00
Google Offers Virtual Filing Cabinet for Health Records
Google launched the beta version of its Google Health personal health records aggregator Monday. The service, according to Google, will put users in control of their own medical records, giving them 24-hour-a-day access to their health records from a variety of sources. With the introduction of Google Health, the search giant joins other Internet companies in the business of storing personal health records.2008-05-22 00:00:00
SAP Folds CRM Module Into Business All-in-One
SAP has released a CRM module for medium-sized firms. SAP has taken its latest CRM application for its full-blown ERP application and ported it to its Business All-in-One range. This effectively gives Business All-in-One a preconfigured CRM module, containing all of the functionality built into its CRM 2007 top-of-the-range product, delivered in a cost-effective package, said Donal Madden, UK channel manager at SAP.2008-05-22 00:00:00