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CRM + BPM: Raising the Customer Experience Bar October 16, 2009 
For decades, organizations have been dealing with the challenges of driving more effective customer service. Traditional CRM solutions have focused on presenting consolidated customer information, but they still rely heavily on employees to resolve customer issues. This means that the customer's experience can vary greatly depending on the manual processes and efficiency of the staff at any given organization.
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T-Mobile Offers Glimmer of Hope - or $100 Credit - in Data Loss Debacle October 13, 2009 
Service is now largely restored to Sidekick users, but T-Mobile is apparently still struggling to retrieve content and data lost due to a server malfunction over the weekend. At the same time, the carrier is piling on the mea culpas to its customers, many of whom are furious about the incident.
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Social Sites New Conduits for Customer Service October 13, 2009 
A Seattle woman tweets from an airport that JetBlue's birthday present to her was forgetting to put her wheelchair on her flight. Seven minutes later, an airline official tweets back that the crew will work quickly to make things right. On a Facebook page used by Delta Air Lines, a traveler suggests Delta wrap its WiFi fee into its ticket price rather than charge separately. The airline doesn't respond.
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Dell, Salesforce.com Join Forces in SMB Territory October 13, 2009 
Dell and Salesforce.com have added another tie that binds -- a service offering Salesforce.com's flagship CRM applications to Dell's SMB customers. Data integration and quality control are among the value-add features Dell is bringing to the table through its integration services division.
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IBM and Apple: Why We Love Monopolies and Then Kill Them October 12, 2009 
The age of the computer started in the 1950s, and one of the first things that happened to a then relatively tiny IBM was it got nailed by the Department of Justice. The result was competition and the modern age of computing. Last week, the DoJ opened another, very similar, investigation of IBM. It was -- you'd never guess -- on the mainframe.
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Bonobos Wants to Do for Pants What Zappos Does for Shoes October 10, 2009 
Brian Spaly's quest for the perfect pair of pants led him and former roommate Andy Dunn to start a Web-only clothing company that wants to sell men's trousers that fit -- without the need for fitting rooms. Business is good for their company, Bonobos, though it's too early to tell whether the startup can achieve the heights of another online apparel store with a remarkably similar beginning.
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Bookit.com Has Some Nifty Features Hiding Under the Clutter October 09, 2009 
Clutter, clutter, clutter -- will they never learn? Well into our survey of travel-planning Web sites, a common design theme continues to predominate: a crowded user interface that detracts from the supposed utilitarian purpose of the site. As I examined Bookit.com, though, a few features jumped out of the busy display, dispelling my initial less-than-dazzled impression.
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Redefining the Value of Cloud October 09, 2009 
One of the biggest challenges in today's rapidly evolving cloud computing market, if you're an aspiring vendor, is how to clearly differentiate your offerings in an increasingly competitive environment. This is especially difficult because of the Web's knack for sucking the value out of everything it touches.
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Employee-Customer-Employee: Closing the Feedback Loop October 09, 2009 
Organizations with the most loyal customers not only measure and monitor employee interactions with customers, but also share that feedback with employees. This creates a closed-feedback loop that allows customer-facing staff members to understand the impact of their interactions on customers, enabling them to improve those interactions over time.
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For Digital Marketing Startup Edo, Success Is in the Facecards September 23, 2009 
If you ask Edo Interactive CEO Ed Braswell the classic Facebook status update question -- "What are you doing?" -- he's liable to answer that he's providing a new spending avenue for consumers, along with a mother lode of digital marketing information for retailers.
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Taking Customer Loyalty to the Next Level September 18, 2009 
Today, loyalty programs come in all shapes and sizes, and they give retailers, financial institutions and hotels opportunities to reward their best customers like never before. There are many benefits to offering a loyalty program that is tailored to your customers. However, there can be risks, too.
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How to Keep Online Shopping Carts On Target September 17, 2009 
Online retail sales are projected to increase by 11 percent this year to US$156 billion, according to Forrester Research. Although that's good news, it's a small decline from last year's growth of 13 percent. It's clear the down economy, with the lack of credit access and low consumer confidence, has dampened consumer spending.
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E-Commerce Innovations - What's Now and What's Next September 14, 2009 
Just as the evolution of the speed-skating boot set new standards for the sport, innovation in today's constantly evolving e-commerce landscape has worked as a catalyst to move it forward. E-commerce practitioners from all industries need to be ready to step up and embrace innovation as a means of staying ahead of the game.
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CRM in 2009: Personal, Social, Mobile, Adaptable September 14, 2009 
Making sure that every customer gets the personal touch may be fairly easy for the owner of a neighborhood bakery, but in a mass market of millions, making each customer feel like an individual is a formidable challenge. In the information age, tools like customer relationship management software make it possible for companies to apply a personal touch to the mass market -- and that's golden.
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IVR Systems: Are They Done Yet? September 11, 2009 
Remember the bad old days of customer self-service? Automated systems would present you with five or more different options -- any one of which could lead to five or more other options. With touchtone systems, accidentally pressing the wrong number at a prompt could result in instant death by disconnection. Then came the speech-recognition systems, with their own specific tortures.
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Speaking the Right Language Online September 08, 2009 
A rose by any other name can raise quite the stink, making the act of localizing Web sites to fit foreign cultures all the more thorny. "Ben and Jerry launched their 'black and tan' flavor of ice cream without realizing that this phrase referred to British soldiers that were best known for their cruelty in the fight for Ireland's independence," said Nataly Kelly pf Common Sense Advisory.
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