Customer Service

In November, as the crowds of caffeinated holiday shoppers began to swell, Starbucks baristas received a corporate edict: slow down. Going forward, they were to make only one drink at a time, no matter how many customers were waiting in line. According to sources, Starbucks customers were complainin...

The cost of business travel is going up and up and up and, oh yeah, Happy New Year. Forget all the CRM prognostications you've been reading over the holidays, the only one of significance to your business and to CRM is what you'll be paying to get in front of customers. Last week a former Shell Oil...

Self-service is a concept that has been evolving. In decades past, self-service meant providing a detailed manual. The downside, of course, was that a printed manual could not be updated dynamically and was costly to distribute. In the late 1990s, with the advent of the Web and content management, s...

With helpdesk, knowledge management, customer portal, email auto response, project management, and mobile access capabilities, Soffront prides itself on being a one-stop shop for customer service solutions. "The customer service solution we offer is pretty comprehensive," said Manu Das, CEO of Soffr...

FuzeDigital characterizes its customer service solution as social business software that uniquely blends comprehensive multichannel support and online community technologies. "The Fuze Suite is a blending of SCRM and E2.0 technologies," said Chuck Van Court, president of FuzeDigital. The community k...

Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides customers with a complete customer service solution, including marketing, service automation and sales capabilities. Microsoft currently offers Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 as either an on-premise option or a partner-hosted version; Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is a ve...

Companies spend a lot of money to drive traffic to their websites. Reactive live chat implementations, while highly beneficial, are similar to search engine optimization -- "the more impressions, the better." However, placing a live chat button on your website will not generate more traffic to your...

NetSuite CRM+ is a customer relationship management tool that provides users with more than just standard customer service functionality. NetSuite's system gives users the capability to run their entire business by providing a single view of the customer. "NetSuite provides a complete business manag...

It's always fun to see the flood of articles this time of year about the holidays. "Is Your CRM Ready for Christmas?" the headlines knowingly ask. "Are You Facing a Christmas E-Commerce Customer Experience Crisis?" "The Holidays: Will You Survive? Will Your Family Survive?" OK, I stole that last one...

Salesforce.com's Service Cloud 2, a Web-based platform designed to help companies handle their customer service needs, includes integration with Salesforce Chatter, the service provider's new real-time collaboration tool. "Service Cloud is the fasting-growing product offering," said Fergus Griffin, ...

Apparently years of complaints by consumers about long wait periods for service providers have gone unheeded: The standard three-to-five hour appointment period for in-home visits by cable companies, utilities and repairpersons is still very much in force, a new survey found. The 2010 In-Home Servic...

Online consumers are more demanding than ever. They have little, if any, tolerance for website issues, poor site design or longer-than-necessary processes. For organizations with e-commerce channels, this leaves little margin for error. In fact, research indicates that when saddled with an unsatisfy...

I was eating dinner at my favorite Japanese restaurant last night, and I was nearing the end of my meal when the waitress came to the table and presented two beautiful pieces of maguro, or tuna sashimi. When I said I hadn't ordered it, the sushi chef leaned over the counter. "No -- you did not order...

For years, Verizon Wireless has fielded complaints from customers about mistaken data charges. This Sunday, the carrier announced it was providing a rebate totaling $90 million to be distributed to the estimated 15 million customers hit by these charges. Most of the customers reportedly were clip...

We all like to say our businesses are "customer-centric." It's the de rigueur thing to say these days, and it's the only smart way to describe yourself to your customer audience. But how many companies really revolve around the customer? Not many, and for realistic reasons. For instance, your busine...