Heard and Overheard

"When CRM strategy is led from an ERP perspective, customers get treated like widgets, at best. When CRM strategy is led from an SFA perspective, customers get treated like transactions. It is only when CRM strategy is approached from a customer-service perspective, that customers are treated like customers." --Greg Gianforte, CEO and founder, RightNow Technologies "One phone call can completely erode the margin for that customer." --Brian Kelly, executive vice president, products, KANA Software "Once a decision is made, you do an action immediately; that is real-time business." --Henning Kagermann, CEO, SAP "Churn is a problem [in contact centers] across all industries. The very nature of having a headset is not an appealing job." --John Kim, founder, Five9 "Retention rate, that's what drives profitability." --Barton Goldenberg, founder and president, ISM "If you don't measure something, you can't tell if it was a success or not." --Rich Berquist, CTO, senior vice president, and PeopleSoft Fellow, PeopleSoft "Until it's culturally what they do, it's hard to get salespeople to use [CRM]." --David Brooksbank, manager of market development, Colfax Power Transmission Group "Marketing is the promise that you keep, not just the one you make." --Kristin Zhivago, founder, Zhivago Marketing Partners "Fear always sells." --Dan Starr, chief marketing officer, Salesnet "People continue to fail in their CRM effort because they only care about getting the data all in one place, or making it accessible--but they don't put any thought into the quality of that data." --Ted Friedman, principal analyst, Gartner