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I've had to do a lot of thinking about customer loyalty lately, both for my book and more recently for client engagements ...

eGain is touting a report from Forrester Consulting and my friend Ian Jacobs purporting to show that omnichannel customer service is stagnant or worse when it comes to delivering service that customers need and want ...

I'm always looking for emerging trends at Dreamforce, the kinds of things that are hiding in plain sight. They might never amount to much, but it's more likely, given that it's Dreamforce, that many of them will bloom. ...

What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, the booths on the Dreamforce show floor were little more than outposts for widget-makers. Fast-forward to Dreamforce 2015, and one is struck by the number, variety, and size of the partner community.That's only part of the story, though. Often out of sight is the sizable display of talent that has consolidated around Salesforce from other industry sources...

I couldn't put my finger on it, but for a long time I have been uneasy about the selling discussion's direction as it relates to CRM and SFA. Something didn't relate. We talk a lot about accelerating the sales process and freeing up sales people's time so that they can spend more time selling, but it all made me wonder. ...

As a former sales and marketing guy, I am more than familiar with spreadsheets as a not-so-good tool for managing the avalanche of data generated by the front office, even before the big data craze. ...

We've watched as Salesforce emerged from the crowd in the dot-com era to become a massive company with a US$7 billion run rate. We also have changed perspectives several times on what to expect from Dreamforce. ...

"With these announcements, Salesforce is getting ever closer to the ideal of letting any user develop and maintain standardized, sophisticated and maintainable apps, with or without declarative coding," said Denis Pombriant, principal at the Beagle Research Group. "That's big...

You might ask what the difference is between personalization and authenticity in CRM, and the answer is subtle. For a long time I have felt -- and said -- that we overemphasize personalization when what customers really want is authenticity. However, examples are hard to find, especially with our current culture's strong emphasis on personalization and the tendency to give authenticity quizzical looks. Perhaps you are feeling quizzical right now...

The social CRM sector "is very competitive and has been so for several years," Beagle Research Principal Denis Pombriant told CRM Buyer The biggest challenge resulting from deals like this is "always making sure you don't slow down as you grow," Favaron observed. "We've seen t...

I recently talked with Bonnie Crater about changing her company's name, and something really struck home. Crater is CEO of Full Circle Insights, and I've known her since her days as an executive at Salesforce. I have followed her startup's progress almost since day one. ...

Microsoft earlier this week announced that it has bought FantasySalesTeam, a sales gamification platform. The intent of the product is to boost sales productivity. The gaming part is designed after some aspects of fantasy sports leagues in which participants build a team from known professional athletes and try to beat other teams. The team aspect makes everyone more competitive, and the goal is to improve everyone's performance...

Spreadsheets suffered a body blow on Tuesday, when Salesforce announced new platform functionality. Soon all spreadsheets will be good for is financial analysis. This sounds funny, because the spreadsheet for several decades has been the unofficial IT prototyping tool. ...

I've been looking at process as the next big thing in CRM for a while. It only makes sense, for several reasons. First, as we move to conducting increasing amounts of business online, we lose the intimacy of personal contact between vendor personnel and customers. In its place we need accurate and authentic processes that treat customers in ways they appreciate...

Having meaningful work is one of the biggest challenges for many people at the bottom of the employment ladder. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell documented the multigenerational effect of meaningful work. ...

I've written many times about how conventional, premises-based ERP seems to be evaporating. CPQ -- configuration, pricing and quoting -- are business processes that illustrate the point. ...

It occurred to me at Salesforce's Marketing Cloud event held last week in New York that CRM has come full circle in a fundamental way. I was never a fan of labels like "CRM 2.0" or "Social CRM" or whatever else came along, principally because those monikers didn't signify anything that was new in doing business. ...

"My personal interest is in journey mapping with Journey Builder because I believe all marketing should start with vendors understanding their customers' journeys," said Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research "Many think they know, but it's amazing what you discover whe...

If you read a lot, like me, you might notice almost daily there's a new study that contradicts some earlier research. Something causes cancer -- then it's good for you. You know the drill. What's going on here? Do we simply not know what our research is saying? Can nobody correctly interpret the data? ...

"The reason for pharma CRM is counterintuitive," noted Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research Pharma is highly regulated, and vendors are legally restrained from making claims about products that don't match what the products were approved for, "so not only do sales pe...