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Bank of America has quietly raised ATM fees it charges noncustomers to $3. The bank has more than 16,000 national branch location machines; of these, some 6,000 are located in such public places as malls, movie theaters and stadiums. Fees to use these ATMs will remain $2. The bank raised its fee to ...

In the ultimate game of bait-and-switch, several Web sites try to pass off a bot as a bod. That is to say that Live Chat is offered to users, but there's no flesh-and-blood person on the line, there's only a chat bot making a robotic guess at what the user might want to know. Few are fooled by the s...

A CRM consultancy will be launching what it describes as the first CRM Web 2.0 portal for executive recruitment and career development in this industry. Located at myCRMcareer.com, the Web site will be managed by Bruce Culbert, Ted Hartley and Paul Greenberg, principals at BPT Partners. Besides empl...

I saw Marc Benioff in New York just after Labor Day. He was in town for various business reasons and hosted a dinner for a group of customers, analysts and journalists. It was a very interesting group though also informal -- there were no speeches or presentations and no need to drag out the safe h...

CentricCRM, a developer of open source CRM aimed at larger enterprises, is set to release an update of its flagship product, CentricCRM 5.0, next month, CEO David Richards told CRM Buyer. "This will be a very significant release for us," he said, pointing to new platform-level support for third part...

Although some people are still trying to enjoy the last of the summer weather, the retail holiday shopping season has begun. With that, inevitably, comes the peak e-mail marketing season. The holiday e-mail season started last year on Sept. 6 with a Christmas reference in a Sam's Club e-mail, accord...

Aspect Software has introduced a series of software modules under one suite aimed at optimization performance in the contact center. The modules are for workforce management, recording and quality management, performance management, campaign management and coaching and e-learning. Called "Performanc...

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs abruptly announced that the company was cutting the price for the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, he appeared to be a bit dismissive of the product's early adopters -- many of whom stood in line for hours to acquire the coveted gadget. Some 24 hours later, though, he was tryi...

My last few columns have been focused on new technologies that are making their way into the broader CRM suite. Expanding the CRM suite has never been easier, as platform vendors like Salesforce.com provide all the capabilities necessary for innovative developers to add something to the ensemble. He...

Salesforce.com has signed a contract to supply 40,000 Web-delivered software subscriptions to Japan Post, bringing the total number of deployments to the company to 45,000. The contract is now the largest seat deployment for the iconic on-demand vendor to date. Japan Post, which is set to be privati...

Dave Duffield, most famously the founder of PeopleSoft and now Workday, was giving a keynote presentation at the RightNow user conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., when it hit me. Duffield is about to become a kingmaker in the on-demand market. Please forgive the apparent hyperbole and continue. ...

Oracle plans to acquire Netsure Telecom, a Dublin, Ireland-based company that provides networking intelligence, analytics and network data integrity software. The company's typical clients include tier one operators of next generation network and service providers such as Vodafone, Cable & Wirel...

Three months after it released version 8.0 of its GoldMine Premium Edition, FrontRange Solutions has put out a point version that continues to develop much of the new functionality it introduced in May. For instance, a new customer service module debuted in GoldMine in 8.0. Now, in 8.0.1, FrontRange...

As people head off to enjoy the last holiday weekend of the summer, few are thinking about the next stretch of holidays ahead: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah and New Year's. Rest assured, though -- retailers are giving the matter plenty of consideration. Labor Day weekend signals the start of the ...

Retail marketing and e-commerce are rapidly evolving via the exploding adaptation of Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, video, RSS, widgets and podcasting into the marketing and customer relationship management process. Labeled CRM 2.0, it has become the essence of smart e-commerce. Improving u...