Heard and Overheard

"Customers no longer want a product or service, they want an experience. And at the heart of that experience is the relationship." --Brenda Hodge, senior director, SAS Americas Marketing and Support "Product expertise can be duplicated, so any competitive advantage based on products will eventually go away. But customer expertise is competitively defendable, unique, and permanent." --Martha Rogers, Ph.D., cofounder, Peppers & Rogers Group "Companies have kissed all these frogs in search of call center transformation and have finally realized it's the people. Nurturing agents to improve their performance could be the frog that transforms into a prince." --Matt McConnell, founder and cochairman, Knowlagent "The mid-market is notoriously difficult to sell to. It is very sensitive to risk, so one credible supplier [for front- and back-end applications] is usually the preference. --Linus Parker, president and CEO, Americas group, Intentia "CRM should be a living system that changes as your business changes." --Brent Frei, CEO, Onyx Software "Customers don't care how valuable they are to you, they only care how valuable you are to them." --Don Peppers, cofounder, Peppers & Rogers Group