Archive

Last week Salesforce.com introduced its new support concept dubbed "The Service Cloud." I have to say it makes a lot of sense both as a product direction and as a business decision. The announcement is in line with many of the business initiatives that the company has made over the last decade in t...

They may not be the most thoughtful presents in the world, but they sure are convenient. Gift cards relieve shoppers of having to find the perfect size, style, and color of any item on a shopping list. They also avoid scenarios where what the buyer views as desirable is antithetical to the receiver'...

Finding business value in Software as a Service implementations is a perennial topic of discussion, no matter how established the SaaS business model becomes. In part, that's because it's more a business than a tech issue, and companies tend to focus more on features and functionality during the pro...

Salesforce.com has rolled out another cloud offering -- this time for the service space. Called "Service Cloud," the bundled applications, which include integrated social networking tools, are built on the Force.com platform. Service Cloud allows users to create an online community for up to 250 cus...

A trigger is a device that automatically executes a response to a certain event. In marketing, triggers are used to automatically deliver targeted messages, offers, recommendations or other treatments to customers on an individual basis at the most optimal point in time, based on any number of facto...

I have been writing about communities for many years, and it seems like a particularly good topic for the interesting times we live in, to borrow a Chinese phrase. A couple of weeks ago I wrote that this is a perfect time to engage in community building, but there is a lot of ambiguity built into t...

Avaya is rolling out two new industry-specific applications at the National Retail Federation's annual trade show on Monday. One, Avaya Video Assist, leverages the company's contact center expertise. The other, In-Store Connect, allows retailers to do away with siloed commnication systems such as i...

Happy New Year! Let's be counterintuitive for a moment, shall we? We're in a recession and we all know it. Traditionally (and sadly) in an economic downturn, when companies seek to lower their expenses, they cut their marketing budgets -- and why not? Marketing costs money, and if you believe your ...

The global financial marketplace has recently become quite volatile, as fears of an American recession affect economies all over the world. Such fears can be especially dangerous for businesses. In times like these, many top managers panic and make unwise decisions such as firing quality employees a...

Working from home has become an acceptable option for a wide range of professionals, including salespeople and lawyers. Until recently, this option, dubbed "homeshoring," was unpopular in the call center, although that perception has been changing. "Companies are becoming more comfortable in letting...

In Internet time, it's been an eon since "smart appliances" were said to be stocked on the near horizon, but many sunsets later -- eight years, actually -- the futuristic devices are still, well, in the future. One would think the green movement, among other things, would have pushed this concept al...

For many e-tailers, online chat is a closer. Packaged and offered up to site visitors as a service, it provides an opportunity to close a sale when an uncertain customer wavers. Retailers were early adopters of this technology precisely because of the distinct return on investment, Conversive CEO Ro...

Memo to telecom service providers: "We never thanked you, but you did a great job offering us consolidated billing. It is hard to remember now, as for the last few years you have been so aggressive in promoting bundled services, but five years ago, this was a major pain point. Three bills for ISP, c...

This summer, Bob Lyons was tapped to lead Avaya's contact center division. The new general manager and vice president of customer service applications -- a relatively new position at Avaya -- joined the company at a crucial time. It was in the midst of reorganizing its operations around three busin...

There is little doubt that these are increasingly uncertain times for managers. In 2008, U.S. businesses cut nearly 2 million jobs -- amounting to 11 straight months of shrinking payrolls -- and some economists predict that we could lose another 3 million jobs in the next two years. In the past fou...