Customers

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'...

After years of job losses due to the decline in the manufacturing and lumber industries, the Pacific Northwest may be seeing a bright spot for growth as call centers target the region. Oregon seems to have more pull when it comes to new centers being put in. Recently, Royal Caribbean chose the state...

A fully interactive, Web-based three-day conference and expo set for November is designed to connect contact center professionals with developers of IP technology and industry experts in what the promoters say is the first-ever virtual event of its kind for call centers. The IP ONLINE Conference and...

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 technolog...

Internet automotive marketing services company Autobytel today announced that it has signed an agreement to provide a national online customer referral program for the Asbury Automotive Group, the fourth-largest auto retailer in the nation. The agreement, which encompasses all 139 of Asbury's franch...

Let's face it. For many companies, the level of service to customers is lacking across the entire spectrum of their customer base, and service to internal customers is even worse. The cruel irony of all the maneuvering inside companies to protect departments is that the only goal that matters -- ser...

It's that time again; the earnings calls for CRM, ERP, hardware and services vendors are being scheduled, rehearsed and delivered to shareholders, industry and financial analysts. What's common across the more than two dozen calls I've listened to that span CRM, ERP and SCM software, hardware and se...

Much analysis has gone into the debate about which type of loyalty instrument is most effective in helping businesses dynamically interact with customers in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. The debate, focused on smart cards versus magnetic stripe cards, is irrelevant. The ...

American businesses are struggling with retaining experienced customer service agents as demands and contacts increase along with higher expectations in the customer-driven economy. At the same time, the marching orders to the contact centers are to keep costs down, reduce call time, increase satisf...

Maine isn't normally considered a hotbed for emerging-technology entrepreneurialism. Yet that's where IntelliCare, a healthcare call center outsourcing company, started in 1997. By 1999, the company had put its Yankee pragmatism to work to create a distributed networking model for telephonic nursing...

Look long enough at any company's Web site, C-level presentations, earnings conference calls or marketing efforts, and you'll find the phrases like, "customer-centered," "The customer comes first always," and "The customer is the center of the business." They are all noble thoughts to be sure, but t...

In 1997, Keith Raffel founded UpShot Corporation, the first company to offer Web-based, hosted sales-force automation and CRM. UpShot launched its initial product two years later. By 2003 its products included UpShot for small and midsize businesses and UpShot XE for larger organizations. Today Raff...

In 1816, Eliphalet Remington II turned to his father's forge and began working on a better rifle. At that time he wasn't worried about supply chains or customer relationship management. But almost 200 years later, his one-man startup is Remington Arms Company, a US$360 million enterprise selling fir...

At Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI), the numbers told the story: About 180 customer-service reps were using old "green screen" technology. With dumb terminals connected to a claims-processing system, trying to handle a total of 900,000 calls per year. Each call took about 10 minutes, ...

Hosted CRM vendor RightNow Technologies announced earlier this week that solutions and services provider 170 Systems has deployed RightNow Service to increase the quality, speed and resource efficiency of its technical support operations. Based in Bedford, Massachusetts, 170 Systems provides solutio...