Articles by Colin Shearer

"This phone stinks!" "I don't want to be a nuisance, but I wanted to let you know that I've had a lot of dropped calls over the last two weeks."

The consumer backlash against unsolicited telemarketing and e-mails coupled with ever-increasing competition for customer attention have forced companies to take a new look at their inbound call centers Long considered a profit drain and necessary evil, inbound call centers are now seen as a critical link between an organization and its customers.

In the early days of the dot-com boom, companies tracked "hits" and "eyeballs" and measured "stickiness" on their hastily created Web sites. As Web sites matured into viable business channels, however, these simple Web metrics proved to be of little value. Just as the customer data generated through operational CRM systems must be analyzed in order to turn it into useful customer intelligence, the same is true for Web customer data...

Customers today come in increasingly unique and differentiated segments. They want to be seen and approached as individuals with specific needs and to feel that offers address them personally. Satisfying these self-segmented customers requires a careful balance of science and art While creative ideas and good marketing instinct will always be impor...

The customer is king again. After decades of mass-market driven customer outreach, which typically lumped customers in large, homogenous segments, a complex mix of socioeconomic factors coupled with a proliferation of new media and technologies have put the customer back in the driver's seat Today's customers perceive themselves as having unique ne...

Micro marketing, one-to-one marketing, niche marketing. Whatever buzzwords are used to define it, the trend driving businesses today and tomorrow is the need to profitably serve smaller and smaller audiences This focus on knowing thy customer on a one-to-one basis is fueled by advances in technology, global competition and the Internet. It also has...