Spotlight Features

I spent part of last week at a user group meeting high in the Rockies, the RightNow Summit. The term "summit" is not only figurative -- it's literal. The company is headquartered in Bozeman, Mont., another high spot on the continent, and it seems to select meeting locations near the tree line to b...

As if the airlines haven't had enough challenges since Sept. 11, 2001, British authorities were compelled to introduce a new one at the beginning of August. In addition to weathering economic downturns, volatile bankruptcies and merger flirtations, airlines now must comply with new carry-on restrict...

I had my annual meeting with my friends at Walker Information the other day when they were in Boston talking about their latest report. I have written about Walker before, and it gives me pleasure to do so again -- and to point out that I have no business relationship with them; I just like what th...

Dell made headlines a few years ago with the announcement that it was bringing its Indian-based contact center operations back to the U.S. because of customer complaints of poor service. Since then, however, apparently unable to resist the lure of cost benefits, the company has sent additional opera...

The best performing companies when it comes to customer-facing strategies actively attack the seven deadly sins of CRM with a vengeance. These observations come from their quantified success, and for certain publicly held companies, a rise in their Price/Earnings Ratio, stock price and valuation. ...

Companies that seek to automate the customer service process to cut costs often alienate customers instead, as Part 1 of this two-part series reveals. Some companies, though, are finding ways to incorporate informed, personal interactions into their customer service programs, and are treating every...

Friends in the call center software industry are telling me that they've noticed a decided pickup in their business. What's interesting about that tidbit is that these people are also saying that the interest is in on-demand solutions and that opens a lot of topics for discussion. For example, we ...

American consumers would rather have to deal with a rude or condescending customer service agent on the phone than one who speaks with a foreign accent, according to a survey released earlier this year. The survey seemed to indicate that the arguments against outsourcing of certain operations -- fro...

With tight budgets and plenty of alternative ways to invest their money, small and medium-sized businesses must always balance value with overall affordability as they pursue software solutions. Some solutions may seem like must-haves -- but if it is not affordable, then the "must-have" quickly beco...

Google made its presence felt in the front office market in a big way this week when both Salesforce.com and NetSuite announced within hours of each other their embrace of Google AdWords as an integral part of their marketing solutions. To be sure, the AdWords platform by itself will not solve the...

Accessing the Internet in India can be a major problem, discovered Akiba Stern, a partner with New York-based Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, on a recent visit to an outsourcing service provider's facilities there. It wasn't that the firm's connectivity services were poor. Rather, its security processe...

One of the most advanced communication hubs in the world crashed unexpectedly in Seattle on Sunday afternoon, July 30, 2006, due to a string of malfunctions in the facility's electrical power system. The facility, called Fisher Plaza, is billed as one of the most secure data centers and telecommuni...

Not long ago, if a company wanted to outsource non-core operations -- such as contact center or back office processes -- India was the locale to choose. End of story. That was then, though. Over the last few years, markets around the world -- as well as the outsourcing industry itself -- have evolve...

The service revolution in CRM -- and, in fact, throughout customer-facing strategies -- is well underway in many companies. The reason the remainder of the industry doesn't see it yet is because many CRM vendors' responses to the revolution are so slow that they make lagging economic indicators loo...

The idea of the customer ecosystem is a strong one, and I believe we'll be hearing about it for the foreseeable future. The customer ecosystem is only one half of the story, in my opinion. The other half is something I call the "sales web," and the two fit together rather neatly if you know how to...