Archive

Paul English, a Massachusetts-based software engineer turned customer service "guru," has become famous nearly overnight for his "dial zero for a human" automated phone system revolt. Judging from the widespread phenomenon and national attention, this is a customer service movement long overdue. H...

IT consulting services will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.2 percent from 2006 through 2010, with slightly rising growth rates each year, forecasts a new study from IDC. Drivers behind this growth include the stabilization of prices, the entrance of new providers, and a changi...

Have you noticed the "dial 'O' for a human" movement gathering steam? One related manifestation is the clever set of ads put out by Citibank for its credit cards. You may have seen the ads showing a man calling for service and navigating through the tragedy that is the automated call response syst...

Two years ago or so, a handful of upstart companies entered the CRM market offering open source technologies designed specifically for this space. At the time, open source CRM was neither mature nor relevant enough to corporate deployment needs to make much of a dent in the CRM space. Fast forward t...

Genesys has updated its contact center and workforce management software suites. The former adds intelligent contact center routing functionality in a software-only application. The latter update includes the ability to dynamically reschedule agents in the middle of the day in response to call volum...

CDC Software is adding another CRM software vendor to its portfolio of acquisitions that will expand its product line and widen its distribution channel. On Thursday, the company announced it has signed a definitive agreement to purchase c360, a provider of CRM add-on products, industry-specific app...

In August 2005, specialty retailer Casual Male struck a bargain with its customers: If it didn't have a best-selling item in a particular size or color in stock, it would get it within five days. If it couldn't deliver, the customer would get the item for free. Nine months later, Casual Male is out ...

Dashboards and similar tech tools within the performance management sector are growing in popularity, according to a new survey by AMR Research. Overall performance management spending will increase to nearly US$23 billion in 2006, forecasts the firm's report, "Trends in Performance Management Spend...

Salesforce.com announced its purchase of Sendia on Tuesday in a well publicized affair that included a luncheon/press conference complete with presentation, demo and panel discussion. Some of the buzz around the announcement was a mild debate about the importance of the whole affair. After all, it...

Salesforce.com is extending its AppExchange network to mobile devices with the introduction of AppExchange Mobile. The new feature was developed using proprietary software from Sendia, a wireless business platform company, which Salesforce.com announced it would acquire for US$15 million in cash. Th...

Few events are likely to have a more devastating effect on a company -- or even the industry it represents -- than being exposed for deliberately misleading customers about the safety of its products. The sunscreen industry may be forced to crawl out of a ditch due to this sort of deception. Last mo...

Indian call centers are being purchased by U.S. and Canadian companies seeking to quickly gain access to call center services offshore, particularly outbound services. Although media attention focuses more on the sale of U.S. assets to Asian and Middle Eastern firms, this trend in the other directi...

The global outbound dialing market -- dominated by equipment vendors including Aspect, Avaya, Genesys, Nortel and Cisco -- not only is saturated in many regions, especially North America, but also is facing stiff headwinds, according to a new study by Frost & Sullivan. These challenges include a...

Spending the last week traveling through Australia, visiting a manufacturer, giving presentations and talking with several other companies after my presentations has been fascinating. What's so refreshing about Australian manufacturers' approach to using enterprise software for selling, serving and...

Genesys has announced plans to acquire VoiceGenie, a provider of self-service voice applications -- a move that is expected to solidify the drive to determine which standard will dominate the industry. The acquisition of the privately held firm, which is expected to close in a few weeks, will also a...