Customer Service

By this point in the evolution of e-commerce, most e-tailers know the benefits of live engagement. Website visitors are three times more likely to make a purchase when they have the support of a sales representative. Just as in brick-and-mortar stores, interacting with a knowledgeable person in real...

Whenever I talk about CRM to people who aren't CRM experts, I find the discussion devolving into an examination of the real common denominator in all of this: the human aspects of doing business. The "R" of relationships resonates far more strongly with people than the "M" in management, and for goo...

Avaya is delivering multimedia capabilities to the front line with its announcement of two new contact center products designed to bring agent-assisted and automated customer service up to speed with the social networking world: Avaya Aura Contact Center 6.2 and the Avaya Experience Portal. Avaya Au...

If you are a regular reader, you know that from time to time I write about things that appear to be tangentially related to CRM -- at best. My favorite alternative to straight ahead research and reporting on CRM is a strange sounding thing called "peak oil." For those of you not familiar with the i...

CDC Software's Pivotal CRM Customer Service and Support has launched, with major changes to the application's integration with social media and email, and more configuration options. This module was developed for the Pivotal 6 platform, which was built on the .Net Framework. The biggest jump in func...

Imagine a customer service agent who can do virtually no wrong. She typically answers questions in about three seconds, with an astonishing 94 percent accuracy rate. She puts callers at ease, offering them information about related issues without making them listen politely through an entire spiel o...

Last week Marc Benioff was in Boston with another regional Cloudforce tour event, and Stephen Denning has written a good book. There is a connection between them. The day after the Boston Bruins clinched the Stanley Cup, Benioff was in Boston, and thank goodness the company decided on a noon start ...

Customer experience can make or break a company. The pressure to manage costs has never been greater, but it's a fatal mistake to view customer service channels as a cost center. The solution? An at-home workforce that delivers excellent results: 10 percent higher customer satisfaction; 30 percent m...

If you like speaking with live customer service reps about service issues without having to first endure a long and frustrating wait on the phone, then shop at Sierra Trading Post. That is one conclusion that can be drawn from a study of online retailers released by StellaService, which found that...

For more than a decade, B2B firms have used the Internet to publicize their product catalogs. As a result of the rise in consumer sales on the Web and the rapid maturation and adoption of Internet technologies like RIAs and Web 2.0, B2B firms are now rethinking their e-business strategies. At the sa...

It has been a wild ride for retailers these past few years. But when we look back, we won't be talking about the economy, the drive for lean inventory, or deep discounting. Rather, we will recognize the fundamental change that occurred was in the shopping process itself. Shoppers are often interac...

To meet the growing demand for social CRM, RightNow positions itself as a provider of "customer experience management" solutions, a term the company prefers to use, said John Kembel, vice president of social solutions. "That's a bit more customer-focused." RightNow CX, the customer experience suite,...

My wife is a recruiter working in high technology. Recruiters are like every other profession: There are some bad ones, a bunch in the middle who are competent, and some who are truly excellent. I may be biased, but I think she falls into the latter category. Here's why I think she's so good: She t...

I hate to sound like Dr. Doom and Gloom, but have you paid attention to the cost of gasoline lately? Of course you have. It's sickening to watch as prices resume their inexorable climb. The last time we saw prices spike was the last time the economy was in decent shape -- right before the wheels ...

eGain recently introduced a multidimensional search function to its knowledge agent and its self-service product lines. In essence, it is two sides of the same coin in that it provides the same functionality to both the agent desktop and the computer screen that a customer uses when searching for a...