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We've all heard the lines: "blogging is so 2008"; "say that in 140 characters or less," and now, "the feed is the new desktop." This last one is from Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, and he said it in the context of his company's release of the new version of its enterprise social networking tool, C...

Microsoft is set to release both the online and in-house versions of its new CRM package this fall. Along with the beta release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the company will be opening an app store for third-party developers called "Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace." That's according to a company a...

It's the Holy Grail of contact centers -- creating a virtual agent that performs like that "real, live human being" that so many of us hope to reach when contacting a company. Unfortunately, the gap between automated agents and human ones remains a large one, with voice recognition and language proc...

CloudApps, a carbon management software company, and FinancialForce.com, which makes accounting software built on Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, have announced a partnership integrating their two products. The CloudApps Carbon solution is designed to allow companies to perform end-to-end carbo...

Siemens Enterprise Communications has announced an upgrade of its OpenScape Contact Center. The V8 release will be generally available May 18, Ross Sedgewick, senior director with Siemens' large enterprise solutions group, told CRM Buyer. The new version will provide virtualization from both the ser...

You're the manager of a Hilton Garden Inn, and it's the height of family vacation season. The lobby is abuzz with kids toting skateboards and moms pushing strollers; your front desk agents are overloaded with check-ins. In the middle of all this, a harried business traveler calls to the front desk f...

What a difference a few years make. Back when Al Gore ran for president in 2000, experts and laypeople alike engaged in lively debates about whether climate change was real or imagined. Two elections later -- after a mammoth public education effort by that same Al Gore -- most people believe that th...

You're the manager of a Hilton Garden Inn, and it's the height of family vacation season. The lobby is abuzz with kids toting skateboards and moms pushing strollers; your front desk agents are overloaded with check-ins. In the middle of all this, a harried business traveler calls to the front desk f...

I own an iPod. Do you? If so, do we have anything in common? Apple is hoping that we do, and it's providing plenty of room for us to find out at the iTunes Store. There, music lovers can write and read reviews of artists' recent, and not-so-recent, releases. Perhaps more commercially important, they...

When the last of the ribbons float to the ground and the mountain of wrapping paper is folded up for recycling, chances are that most households will have at least a couple of gift items that don't quite fit the bill. Many gift recipients will be among the mob that hits the malls in the days after C...

One of the most complex areas of online advertising -- what happens when a prospective customer clicks on an ad -- ironically happens almost entirely outside of the customer's awareness. The ubiquitous dancing Santa, robot or alien that we see on so many mortgage refinancing ads actually is only the...

While wireless carriers are shuddering in the face of the iPhone's launch, Sprint Nextel has sent letters to some of its more demanding customers telling them, in effect, "you're fired." The number of customers let go is unknown, according to press reports, and Sprint did not return calls for commen...

Last year, SAP spin-off company Tealeaf introduced software that allows call center agents and other customer service representatives to see what customers see through their Web browsers through an application called "cxReveal." Now, the company has announced an upgrade to that software that integra...

How can companies establish effective customer relationship management in the heat of battle? We're not talking about a military action; the conflict in this case exists between entertainment companies and their customers. "For the most part, the entertainment industry and its customers have been at...