Customers

Businesses have been using secret scores created by data brokers to determine how much to charge consumers, whether to allow purchase returns, and what level of service to offer, among other things. "Most consumers will never know when they are the victim of a secret surveillance score," noted Laura...

In the age of fast shipping and one-click ordering, a single technical glitch can be detrimental to retail sales. A server outage during the holiday season could be a critical issue. Target is a prime example. Its in-store registers and online services were down for a few hours as recently as Septem...

Even among companies that admit their journeys need work, most believe they know the areas that need improvement. This is classic company-first thinking on what should be a customer-first concept.

We may just be turning the calendar to November, but if you're like most retailers, you're already deep into planning for the gift-giving season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are circled and starred as you anticipate, with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, the spike in sales and massive incr...

Bob Stutz is a great guy. I have interacted with him occasionally over the years in his various senior postings throughout the CRM industry and always found him to be kind, generous and thoughtful. Last week he announced he was leaving his position as head of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which he...

As technology advances and consumers' expectations and digital sophistication rise exponentially, marketers no longer can focus on delivering static messages, regardless of how "targeted" or "multichannel" they may be. It's no longer enough simply to greet a customer by name.

We're starting to rely more on AI to interpret massive amounts of consumer and third-party data in real time, and to make it relevant. As a result, businesses can create personalized and tailored interactions for their customers at every step of the buying journey.

National Customer Service Week is the first full week of October -- a designation we've celebrated every year since 1992. The week highlights the importance of customer service and the people who serve and support customers on a daily basis. Customer service is a big deal in e-commerce, as many cust...

Digital marketing was the firstborn child spawned from the invention of the Internet. It quickly became the major focus of businesses interactions -- and transactions -- both online and in person. Digital marketing now is fundamental to the success of your business. Why is digital marketing so impor...

Your new salespeople have very specific expectations of how their workday should flow. These 20-somethings want to sign a contract poolside, then post about it on Instagram -- #workingpoolside, anyone? They want to approve a purchase order on the go as they head to post-work Pilates and pizza. They ...

I don't see how you can operate a modern application development shop without a platform. Many vendors, if not most, offer a platform or platform-like environment, and a new approach to development, called "DevOps," has been percolating in the information technology space.

Customer-centric CEOs are putting their most important stakeholders, customers and employees, at the top of their agendas, and with good reason. Today, no matter what channel customers use to interact with a brand --phone, email, text, chat, online communities -- companies must be able to create pos...

I was speaking to an Oracle executive about some of the company's announcements at OpenWorld, and my impression that the company has changed so much that it is difficult to recognize it from the entity it was just a few years ago. On the macro side it's easy to see that Oracle has transitioned from ...

Google has announced tweaks to its privacy policy following earlier reports that its Google Assistant software was eavesdropping on user conversations. Although it does not retain Assistant audio recordings by default, according to Senior Product Manager Nino Tasca, the company has increased privacy...