Customer Service

Back in August I wrote about some research I had gotten into mostly for fun. You might recall it. I searched on a company name and the word "sucks" and reported what I found. The point of the research was not to be salacious or to offend anyone. In political circles, it's known as discovering on...

I was at a friend's dual celebration of birthday and wedding anniversary recently, and as part of the occasion someone had prepared two fantastic cakes, which were both amazing to behold and a delight to eat. While the appearance was all to do with the icing, the taste and nutrition were defined by ...

Last week I looked at an interesting downside of social media. Social media makes it possible for anyone with very little effort to start a blog or social group that thrashes a vendor. Generally speaking, the people behind these sites have a gripe that has a fragment of truth in it, and it would b...

Less than 15 years ago, establishing a global presence was a conscious decision that a company made. It usually involved long and complex discussions about offices, physical presence and physical travel. With the advent of the Web, all of that changed in an instant. With the establishment of a websi...

Customer service is being touted as a lot of things these days -- "the new marketing," "the new CRM," even "the new sales." That's all well and good, but many customers just wish customer service could be "the new, actually functional customer service." The situation isn't abysmal everywhere; there ...

Last week in New York, I began some field research in social CRM that will result in a longer paper later this fall. One of the things that interested me was the level of frustration and, well, anger that some customers have for some of their vendors. It's a mixed bag, really -- some people take gr...

Retailers' worst nightmare has indeed come to bear: American consumers have permanently changed their buying habits, according to research by several firms. Gone are the days of shopping as a pastime. And, for all practical purposes, brand loyalty has just about evaporated. In its grocery-buyer surv...

Every business needs to understand its audience in order to put together a social strategy that makes sense. A one-size-fits-all template fits no one in the social era. Still, there are some things that you don't do. You don't use social data to creep out your customers, for instance, by revealing t...

Seven months after Avaya closed its acquisition of Nortel and simultaneously released a road map for integrating the two product lines, Avaya has delivered on that plan. It is releasing a cornucopia of new and enhanced products that largely follow the promises Avaya made in January. "Most users on b...

Businesses will probably always have customers who want to place their orders by fax. When there are manual tasks involved in processing those orders, they can present a serious problem because companies may fall short in meeting expectations of the customers who place them. There is a fundamental c...

The facts about today's customers are well established: They know more about your business than ever before, they're talking to their peers and to the wider public about you, they want to be communicated with through the channels of their choosing, and they desire to have a more partner-like relatio...

Do you want to close more sales? Do you want to sell more to existing customers? Do you want to get closer to your users online so you can know what they are thinking? A virtual agent could be an effective way for you to do all of the above. What is a virtual agent? Technically, a virtual agent ...

Building better relationships with customers is an ideal that's not limited to any one market, community, industry or even country. The basics are the same, for the most part; they involves collecting data and applying it where appropriate to drive sales and customer loyalty. Understanding this come...

The consequences of providing poor customer service are well known. What is less obvious perhaps is the importance of providing on-target customer experience as a means to boost profitability -- in other words, neither underdelivering nor overdelivering in order to secure optimal customer satisfacti...

Business software has long been described as "front office" and "back office," which essentially mirrors the arrangement of real-world processes within most businesses. That arrangement made sense in the past -- what went on within the business was usually shielded from the customer. That dichotomy ...