Customers

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...

B. Joseph Pine II has been interested in the vendor-customer relationship for a long time. Pine and his partner, James H. Gilmore, have written numerous books and articles that lie at the heart of the CRM approach to business. Together they have written The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre &...

On New Year's Eve, Richard Rabins, cofounder of Alpha Software, posted a thank-you to readers on his blog. "Your suggestions, advice, criticisms, peer support and sweat equity were crucial to expanding the Alpha Five universe in 2007," he wrote. "Every new application you deployed, every peer you s...

The new year is here and marketers are putting the finishing touches on their budgets and plans for 2008. However, before we move forward, there are some trends from 2007 that are worth continuing in the coming year. One trend that is top of many minds is the increased focus on customer relationship...

2006 was the last year e-commerce vendors introduced new functionality to their Web sites that were visible to consumers, such as better search features and click-once-to-buy shopping carts. Coincidentally or not, it was also the last time aggregate customer satisfaction with online retailers regist...

Was it the "Year of the Frustrated Customer?" Here are a few highlights: Airline passenger complaints to the U.S. Department of Transportation were up 70 percent, as last summer saw the worst delays in 13 years of record-keeping; Verizon was ordered to pay $1 million to customers the company termina...

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...

John Fleming and Jim Asplund are the coauthors of Human Sigma: Managing the Customer Encounter. They believe that when it comes to human systems -- a company's employees and their relationships with customers -- businesses have dropped the ball. Their view is that by moving the customer experience a...

Linda LaBeau didn't know her rights as a credit-card holder. She did know she was getting constant calls from a collection agency for a debt she wasn't sure was hers. Angry, scared and frustrated, she asked The Watchdog several smart questions. We found some surprising answers. Turns out consumers h...

As technology collides with forces of globalization, contact centers and the executives who run them find themselves in the midst of five megatrends. These trends present unique opportunities for these executives to add strategic value to their business, reposition themselves within their organizati...

A U.S. Senate subcommittee on Tuesday hauled credit card companies onto the mat for their practice of using credit scores to increase the interest rates cardholders must pay. "Credit card companies go too far when they hike the interest rates of consumers who are faithfully paying their credit card ...

Trust remains a critical component of today's online economy. By its very nature, the Web 2.0 phenomenon factors into consumer or enterprise trust, as it can cloud judgments over what is and what's not trustworthy online. Web 2.0 applications are typically lightweight and nimble, with slick user int...

Amdocs has rolled out Smart Agent Desktop, a new product that gives contact center agents visibility into back-end applications and provides guidance on decision making processes related to calls. It is the combination of both factors in one product that makes this rollout unique in the industry, Ho...

Trust plays an important role in interpersonal relationships. The same can be said of business relationships. In both cases, trust means a willingness on the part of each partner to assume a certain amount of risk. In an interpersonal relationship, the risk may be that a partner will act unfaithful ...

All company executives believe that having loyal customers is a key to business success. However, what are executives really doing about it? Most will point to their customer care training or CRM system and say, "That's how we take care of loyalty here." Some will also point to their monthly newslet...