Business

INSIGHTS

CRM GPT

Generative AI's appeal stems from the potential to lower costs (labor) while maintaining close customer relationships. Hence, CRM vendors are all over it, like junkyard dogs.

As physical stores enjoy a return of foot traffic from younger consumers, their banking and payment preferences present challenges to retailers.

INSIGHTS

The Quantum of Salesforce

Salesforce’s quantum characteristics are largely due to its ability to let its machines generate some of its products, and that will continue.

It's vital to stay ahead of the activists and to act before they force your hand, even if the results will be very similar. Staying ahead means possibly keeping some activists off your board of directors.

EXPERT ADVICE

Retailers, It’s Time To Get Phygital

Attention retailers! Are your stores ready to get phygital? A successful phygital retail strategy blends the useful elements of the in-person customer experience into the digital sphere interchangeably.

By executing wisely and investing in communication automation and AI services, companies can avoid negative impacts on revenue growth while improving CX.

INSIGHTS

Salesforce’s Suitors

Activist investors frequently, but not always, strip a company of its equity, load it with debt, and cast it off, a quivering hulk of a once dynamic company. It's too early to say this fate awaits Salesforce, and it's important to see the process work out because there is some truth in the need for ...

The baseline of personalization still involves the consumer experience. Staying ahead of the trend is essential to make informed decisions. Expect the following three personalization trends to make an impact in 2023.

INSIGHTS

CRM in the Era of ‘Peak Tech’

The model for success in CRM always went through first helping customers do right by their customers, but then also helping the second generation of customers help their customers in turn, and not just customers but stakeholders -- employees, partners, localities -- all of them.

INSIGHTS

Iterate, Don’t Fail

Implicit in the failure idea is that you succeed now and then, and it’s only to get to the successes that we seek fast failure. If it ain’t gonna work, let’s be done with it and try something else.

Until now, retailers have relied heavily on SaaS offerings for their fulfillment systems. But research shows that many retailers are shifting away from this in favor of solutions they own. Why? To gain the flexibility for providing a better customer experience.

Maybe it's time to reinvent the corporate research lab for IT in the 21st century. If Salesforce isn't a good pick to bring back the corporate research lab, I don't know who could. I think Bret Taylor could run it, which might be a greater use of his prodigious talents.

Retailers must understand the buyers they'll be meeting in the store, online, and over the phone. Each group knows what they want and is not shy about saying when sellers do not meet those expectations.

INSIGHTS

Elon, Remember Thy Stakeholders

Many employees whose position at Twitter was to take input and register customer concerns are among the recently eliminated jobs. It's as if the message is: we don't want your input.

CRM Buyer Channels