The 2010 CRM Service Awards: Introduction
Is “choice” a cornerstone of service? As customers, we don’t always have the luxury of selecting those who provide us services. We buy a product and are beholden to call a given service line or email a given address or fill out a given online form, as instructed. Even if our concerns are handled, the experience often fails to measure up to our expectations.
There’s got to be a better way, and the companies named in this year’s Service Awards are among those trying to uncover it. On the pages that follow, you’ll discover the vendors rated highest in each of eight Service Leader categories, the up-and-comers anointed as Rising Stars, and, most important, the CRM implementations deemed worthy of inclusion among this year’s Service Elite. These companies—vendors, providers, users—are firm believers in the importance of service, and, what’s more, they’re practitioners of that belief.
These awards are designed to remind us that technology plays a critical role in the customer experience. Even in those rare moments when we do have choice, we’d better also have the benefit of information, lest we squander it. That probably makes information one of the cornerstones of service, as well. —The Editors of CRM magazine
The 2010 Service Leader Awards
- Contact Center Infrastructure
Winner: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
Leaders: Avaya; Cisco Systems; Interactive Intelligence
Ones to Watch: LiveOps; Siemens Enterprise Communications
- Interactive Voice Response
Winner: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
Leaders: Avaya; Intervoice (a unit of Convergys); Voxeo
One to Watch: Cisco Systems
- Web Self-Service
Winner: RightNow Technologies
Leaders: Consona; InQuira; nGenera
One to Watch: Parature
- Web Interaction Management
Winner: RightNow Technologies
Leaders: LivePerson; nGenera; Parature
Ones to Watch: Helpstream; Kana Software
- Contact Center Search
Winner: RightNow Technologies
Leaders: Autonomy etalk; Coveo Solutions; InQuira
Ones to Watch: Consona; Google
- Workforce Optimization Suite
Winner: Verint Systems
Leaders: Aspect Software; Envision Telephony; Nice Systems
One to Watch: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
- Outsourcing
Winner: Convergys
Leaders: HP Enterprise Services; Sykes; Teleperformance
Ones to Watch: Sitel; West
The magazine also named six Service Rising Stars for the year -- the most ever:
- CallCopy, an emerging midmarket player among contact center vendors providing workforce optimization suites;
- Clickability, a provider of Web content management via software-as-a-service;
- ClickFox, a specialist in customer experience analytics;
- Communispace, which provides private online communities and participant analysis;
- LiveOps, a provider of outsourcing and workforce management solutions for work-at-home contact center agents; and
- Nexidia, one of the few companies making speech analytics relevant to the contact center.
Last, but certainly not least, the magazine named five customer implementations as winners of its CRM Service Elite Award -- again, a record number:
- online retailer Drugstore.com, which took a dose of RightNow Technologies to get better at making its customers look good;
- network-solutions provider Enterasys Networks, which turned to Salesforce.com to create relationships as well as efficiencies;
- Infusionsoft, a provider of email marketing software for small businesses, which used an online environment designed by Helpstream to enable customers to provide their own community-based support;
- insurance giant New York Life, which used a Verint Systems deployment to give its contact center agents something to stick around for; and
- Southwest Airlines, which, thanks to Virtual Hold Technology, now offers passengers the choice to hang on or hang up.
The 2010 CRM Service Awards will be presented at the CRM Evolution 2010 Conference (http://www.CRMevolution2010.com) at the Marriott Marquis in New York later this year. An expanded version of the results have been published in the March 2010 issue of CRM magazine-available in print and in digital NXTBook format (http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0310/index.php). The awards package was unveiled online on March 1, 2010, at http://www.destinationCRM.com.
About CRM magazine
CRM magazine is the leading publication of the customer relationship management industry, covering sales, marketing, customer service, and strategy. The magazine also administers and hosts the annual CRM Evolution conference. Each of these properties is designed to serve customer-centric business initiatives, and leaders who recognize CRM as a key strategy for creating enhanced customer value in any industry. For more information about the magazine, its editorial calendar, or CRM in general, please visit us on the Web athttp://www.destinationCRM.com; at our blog, http://www.destinationCRMblog.com; or on Twitter at @CRM (http://twitter.com/CRM) and @destinationCRM (http://twitter.com/destinationCRM). The destinationCRM Web site (which is updated daily) and the monthly magazine are properties of CRM Media, a division of Information Today, Inc.
Related Articles
InContact Partners with Verint Systems
03 Dec 2010
inContact aims to further service mid-market contact centers in providing their cloud-based workforce management solution.
Buyer's Guide Companies Mentioned