Customers

Transition marketing is an often-overlooked but extremely powerful online marketing strategy that welcomes prospects and optimizes their conversion to customers while increasing the likelihood of a lifetime relationship. By creating a transition window comprising a set period of time and a program o...

The big question as we move through 2010 may be, "What does the future hold?" But really, the past year will give us a clearer glimpse into the future than any crystal ball possibly could. 2010 is the year of the customer. December 31st, 2009, marked the end of one of the toughest years companies h...

The commercial airline business -- ever sensitive to booms ands busts -- is struggling to maintain traffic in the short run while also trying to build a customer base for the future. Rather than compete on price and schedule alone, airlines are moving away from a mass marketing and commodity approac...

For businesses serving the public, employees are the face of the company. Likewise, the manner in which employees interact with customers shapes their perception of the business and its brand. Ultimately, customer loyalty is built through positive interactions and high-quality customer service that ...

Businesses all over the world have made enormous investments in service -- both in people and in technology. The amount of thought dedicated to service is enormous, and the time spent trying to make service divisions more efficient is countless. Guess what? Most of this money, time and effort has be...

Consider the advantages of joining an airline frequent flier program: The more you travel, the more points you earn. On the other hand, the more you travel, the more likely your baggage will be lost. Or the airline will still charge a fee for converting frequent flier points into a "free" extra trip...

Aberdeen Group's September 2009 report "Enterprise Search - Discover the Next Opportunity for Growth" investigated the strategies and tactics companies have used to drive productivity and improve customer service using enterprise search. In that report, Aberdeen used four key performance criteria to...

One of the reasons that sustainability is such a big issue for all of us is the way the marketplace has shaped up in the last few years. A telltale sign is the initial public offering market. The once-vibrant activity of bringing new companies to the stock markets has shriveled up, and with it you...

Major hotel chains have been wooing travelers for years with CRM tools focused mainly on "loyalty" or rewards programs. The CRM programs help hotels and resorts determine which customers patronize the same hospitality brand on a regular basis. Those frequent customers accumulate points that can be e...

Move over Data.gov. The United Kingdom has unveiled its own version of an open source database for its citizens, and the U.S. version pales in comparison. The site, data.gov.uk, which has been running in beta since last September, opened to the public this week to much fanfare. The brainchild of Web...

"Sustainability" has been the key issue capturing my attention this year, so it makes sense to tease apart just what that term means for CRM. To me, sustainability is about business processes that are repeatable and, more to the point, processes that both sides readily engage in. However, in addit...

As financial institutions gear up for 2010, many companies are still on the long road to recovery after facing some of the most difficult challenges in years. Mortgage defaults and foreclosures, new regulations on credit card and bank fees, and the constant barrage of related news stories sent custo...

Pick a room -- any room. There are lots of choices of places to stay for travelers in the U.S. In fact, there are 4.4 million guestrooms across the country, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. And that's a problem. Competitors in the hospitality sector need some kind of an edge...

Businesses are increasingly adopting customer-focused business processes to gain competitive advantage. Especially prevalent in industries where product offerings and price no longer provide sufficient differentiation, this new focus offers a myriad of benefits. Customer experience is the battlegrou...

Whether driven by lack of product differentiation, customer demand for better service, or simply the need to improve the prospect/customer experience, companies are seeking to better understand their customers in order to more effectively acquire and retain business. Yet recent Aberdeen research sho...