|
Biographical Information
David Myron
Editorial Director, CRM and Speech Technology magazines
|
David is responsible for the general direction and day-to-day operations of CRM magazine and Speech Technology magazine, their Web sites, weekly email newsletters, and Webinars. In addition to story assigning and editing responsibilities for each publication, he spearheads the direction of CRM's annual Market Awards and Service Awards and Speech Technology's Speech Industry Awards. David is also the conference program director of the annual destinationCRM and SpeechTEK conferences, where he also presents and moderates. A multiple-award-winning writer and editor, David brings more than a decade of business and technology writing experience to CRM and Speech Technology magazines and their associated products. His articles have appeared in magazines from leading media publishers, including CMP Media, Forbes, Freedom Communications, Primedia, and Ziff Davis. David's work has been cited in various business strategy books, including Best Face Forward: Why Companies Must Improve Their Service Interfaces with Customers (Harvard Business School Press), Return On Customer: Creating Maximum Value From Your Scarcest Resource (Doubleday), and What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class, and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live (Simon & Schuster). David is also quoted in a variety of newspapers, including The Arizona Republic, The Chicago Tribune, and Newsday. He is also a co-author of the research report "CRM Market Forecast: 2002-2003" (Primedia) and co-author of the book Application Service Providing: The Ultimate Guide to Hiring Rather than Buying Applications (SCN Education). David started at CRM magazine in October 2001 as a senior editor covering customer service and the contact center industry. After a stint in 2004 at American Demographics magazine, covering Generation X buying and behavioral trends, he returned to CRM in January 2005 as editor-in-chief. In August 2006, after Information Today Inc. acquired Speech Technology magazine, David became the editorial director of both publications. Prior to his first period at CRM magazine, he worked on PC Magazine's IT Insider Series, covering CRM and wireless technology. He also served as the founding editor of Small Business Solutions Provider, a monthly supplement to Small Business Computing magazine, and as the founding online editor of the Small Business Computing and Home Office Computing Web sites. Prior to that David was the small business editor at CMP Media's VARBusiness magazine. He received a BA in print journalism from Hofstra University.
|
|
There are instances when primarily focusing on the experience makes sense.
Salesforce.com has proven the importance of making sure its customers are successful.
If your goal is to launch a viral campaign simply to increase your brand awareness, you're flirting with danger.
The CRM industry grew 12.5 percent in 2008, to $9.15 billion.
Proven business strategies abound—even new ones.
In a recession, an innovative organization can learn to focus on fewer projects—but ones that can meet and even exceed expectations.
Customer attitudinal information is what companies have been clamoring to obtain for years.
Stress levels brought about by the economy are making people more combative in their everyday lives.
Customer strategists' service and support options are rapidly multiplying.
In tough economic times, people are forced to dig a little deeper.
In a difficult economy, don't sit idly by. Do something -- but be sure it has a payoff.
Google doesn't want its name to be only synonymous with search.
Clearly, improving customer trust should be a major focus for organizations in 2009.
Voters are also customers, and customers vote with their cash.
if the message in a television commercial isn't compelling, simply raising the volume isn't going to make it so.
SaaS revenue will likely remain the driving force behind the CRM industry's growth, but emerging niche markets will also play a role.
Too many companies are losing agents at an alarming rate, simply because they're often measuring, managing, and treating the wrong problems.
Many companies are already seeing the ownership, or control, of their customer relationships shift toward the customer.
Unfortunately, too many executives are reactive and only turn to loyalty programs when problems arise.
The May 2008 issue of the magazine covers three areas that are experiencing -- or are on the verge of experiencing -- extraordinary shifts in their respective markets.
New kinds of software solutions are playing an integral role in helping companies provide faster and more accurate support.
Preserving cultures in America is a growing phenomenon -- one that marketers would be wise to address.
Despite all the buzz around CRM 2.0 and Web 2.0, companies, on average, have been stuck in place for two years.
We recently overhauled our own IVR. What we learned can provide useful lessons as you adopt Web 2.0, CRM 2.0, and social networking strategies.
The one overarching trend that will likely make an indelible mark on customer-centric strategies will involve social networking in a big way.
The failure of many word-of-mouth marketing campaigns is largely due to their transparency.
Generating insight into sales and marketing performance is critical for making smarter business decisions.
Salesforce.com and others prove that small oceans can still make big, big waves.
Automation is beginning to prove its value--not only in cutting costs, but in driving revenue as well.
Focus on providing value to salespeople and to the company.
I've noticed an unfortunate eagerness to view business intelligence as a business panacea.
Even if a salesperson is successful selling to these blues, consider what the company sacrifices.
Analysts will likely be less forgiving of WFO vendors that ignore speech technology in the future.
Thankfully, CRM implementations are not as risky as they used to be.
If business professionals would pause for a moment to analyze how their short-term actions can negatively affect long-term customer attrition rates, many would likely do things differently.
In minutes P&G on its Web site accomplished what takes other companies months or years -- and millions of dollars -- to do.
There will be lots of potential for customer data quality apps; financial and product data also stand to benefit.
There isn't much difference across generations when it comes to consumer loyalty.
Every person and company mentioned in this issue should be proud to have helped the industry experience its second consecutive year of growth since its post-Y2K malaise.
When consumers' days are filled with all work and no play, it makes communicating with them even more difficult than usual.
Many business professionals still need some convincing when it comes to using CRM technology.
The Nicaraguan government is betting that U.S. companies will opt for educated, bilingual agents for an average wage of $2.35 per hour, which is even lower than India's average agent hourly wage.
The affluent are not the only ones craving premium experiences.
A recent bone-chilling story involving delayed cell phone messages has convinced me to stick with reliable landlines.
A close look at CRM's third annual Service Leader awards issue reveals that in some areas,
the age-old debate is being resolved.
At its Convergence conference, the software giant touts real-time integration and a hosted CRM offering.
Posted 28 Mar 2006
Consumers are growing more frustrated with and resistant to companies.
Good relationships, over time, generate more value for customers and, as a result, more revenue for businesses.
This is an example of a simple market research campaign becoming a botched effort, resulting in a call to the police.
The company beats the release's expected launch date with aplomb.
Oracle plans to release its first fused application in January 2006.
A bad customer experience is only the beginning of a much bigger problem for sizeable airlines.
A distinguished Gartner analyst offers some tips for success and a CRM maturity model at Gartner's CRM Summit.
Posted 02 Nov 2005
There's no question that when boomers retire their spending habits will change. However, this doesn't mean economic calamity for Wall Street, as several factors can help sustain the economy.
There will likely come a time when not one, but all vendors in the large enterprise category offer a hosted solution.
Congratulations to this year's award recipients. Their hard work this past year has helped organizations streamline many of their business processes and significantly improve their customer relationship efforts.
Posted 23 Sep 2005
Product service and support for existing customers highlight Open World day 2, but challenges have emerged for Siebel customers' business.
Posted 20 Sep 2005
Identity theft victims' assurance of security reflects comfort levels with online banking, and not their loyalty to a particular bank.
Version 3.0 focuses on the SMB market with hosting options, Outlook integration, and marketing automation tools.
New product coverage only helped to inflate the 1990s technology bubble by focusing more on the technologies' gee-whiz factor than on the business problem they aimed to solve.
Once transactional systems are in place many ask the obvious next-step question: What do I do with the information?
Customers may not tell you when they're happy, but when they're unhappy, look out--you'll get an earful.
In honor of the 100th issue of CRM magazine we bring you 100 proven CRM ideas--90 great ones and 10 not-so-great ones.
...successful and disastrous: 90 bright ideas for your CRM strategy and 10 dim ones to avoid. Edited by David Myron
...successful and disastrous: 90 bright ideas for your CRM strategy and 10 dim ones to avoid. Edited by David Myron
Most industries don't have to clear the same hurdles as the tobacco industry, but more products and legislation will likely thwart your communication attempts.
SAS upgrades its Enterprise BI Server to include OLAP, and query and reporting tools.
CRM magazine presents the Service Leaders awards to the most impressive providers of customer care architecture, technology, and services who have worked tirelessly over the past year to improve their capabilities so that contact centers can go about their crucial business more efficiently and effectively than ever before.
CRM magazine presents the Service Leaders awards to the most impressive providers of customer care architecture, technology, and services who have worked tirelessly over the past year to improve their capabilities so that contact centers can go about their crucial business more efficiently and effectively than ever before.
May the efforts of the 2005 Service Leaders, Service Excellence, and Service Elite award winners continue to build and maintain consumer trust and satisfaction.
It's still about the people and the processes that drive the technology.
The latest product upgrades enable the CRM software giant to better serve the SMB market.
Posted 11 Jan 2005
Cognos unveils its latest upgrades in enterprise corporate planning capabilities, designed to provide a real-time single view of a company's operations.
Posted 16 Dec 2004
Most firms' analytical activity is fairly rudimentary, according to a new study.
Posted 15 Dec 2004
Analog Method unveils its first hosted partner extranet.
Posted 13 Dec 2004
Active Decisions is offering Consumer Reports product information online and at retail locations to help customers make the best purchasing decisions.
Posted 10 Dec 2004
EADS readies the largest single-system contact center operation for Sprint.
Posted 09 Dec 2004
Industry pundits maintain that the biggest growth area in CRM over the next three years will be in the public sector, especially within state and local governments.
At its core, workforce optimization prepares a staff to manage the ebb and flow of daily call volumes into a call center.
The company is now able to be more responsive to customer needs, as software upgrades are based on customer feedback from the site.
Marketers have done a lot of house cleaning and are better positioned and able to effectively garner more budgets internally.
Application service providers are building on their success with hosted CRM applications and jockeying for position in the budding computer telephony service provider market.
An overwhelming 85 percent of respondents stated that cost reduction is their priority.
Posted 04 May 2004
Onyx Software today unveiled its latest call center offerings, including updated intelligent call scripting functionality and a partnership to provide agents with knowledge management capabilities.
Posted 03 May 2004
Reward agents not simply for volume, but also for meeting customer-focused goals.
When a rep can squeeze in time with physicians it is paramount to bring the right message to the right doctors at the right time.
The industry's average customer churn rate at 30 percent annually, but a closer look indicates that the market could contain even more would-be churners.
The company moved its customer service center to another of Bell Canada's multitenant buildings, a 60,000-square-foot facility about four miles away from its headquarters.
Overall, SMBs are expected to increase their technology spending this year 6.6 percent over last year.
Posted 29 Apr 2004
Updates to the Genesys voice platform include the ability to decouple hardware from software to enable easier application development on the customer side.
Posted 28 Apr 2004
In 2003 NetSuite's overall revenue jumped 300 percent, a growth rate CEO Zach Nelson says is largely attributable to its reseller channel.
Posted 23 Apr 2004
PeopleSoft announced that George Ahn, a former Tibco, Siebel Systems, and IBM veteran, will spearhead its PeopleSoft CRM solutions.
Posted 20 Apr 2004
Echopass has unveiled its upgraded TeleCenter 2.0, a hosted call center suite, which makes use of a partnership with Salesforce.com and Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories.
Posted 15 Apr 2004
Pitney Bowes to Acquire Group 1 Software to help marketers clean up their customer data and lower direct mail costs.
Posted 13 Apr 2004
IBM has unveiled its plan to acquire Daksh e-Services, India's third-largest business process outsourcing (BPO) services firm.
Posted 08 Apr 2004
Blue Pumpkin's latest suite upgrade adds benchmarking, forecasting, and incentive management capabilities to merge performance optimization with workforce management.
Posted 06 Apr 2004
Capital One Terminates Indian Call Center Relationship after Wipro Spectramind discovered agents' unethical business practices.
Posted 01 Apr 2004
With the high cost of dirty data becoming increasingly apparent, companies are turning to outsourced data specialists.
Acxiom and ADP's service enhances ADP's DataFresh product by making use of three data integration and data hygiene offerings from Acxiom: AbiliTec, Acxiom BestAddress, and Acxiom ChangePlus.
The report finds that most emails are opened on Wednesday and that unsubscribe rates are declining.
infoUSA and its division BusinessCreditUSA announced that they are offering customers unlimited access to business credit reports, and more.
SAS Institute has unveiled SAS9 Intelligence Platform, its biggest product launch to date, uses grid computing and multithreading technology capabilities to increase speed, reliability, and scalability.
Posted 31 Mar 2004
A new report by The Yankee Group evaluates contact center efficiency and effectiveness between agents and customers, and highlights CRM's next step in contact centers.
Posted 29 Mar 2004
The speech platform enables advanced speech-recognition solutions to retrieve text information from Web sites and relay it back to customers in a voice solution over the phone.
Posted 25 Mar 2004
The new report works much like Gartner's Magic Quadrant with regard to leader positioning--the main difference is vendors in the MarketScope are scored individually, and not ranked against each other.
Posted 23 Mar 2004
The report, "IT Spending on Customer Knowledge Technologies: Healthy Increases Across Most Regions," states the compounded annual growth rate of customer-knowledge technology investments by financial services firms worldwide will be 6.2 percent from 2003 to 2008.
Posted 18 Mar 2004
The study shows the average increase of companies bolstering their marketing efforts is 10.8 percent.
Posted 11 Mar 2004
The deal, announced late December 2003, delivers a hosted-CRM solution to compete with the likes of Salesforce.com, NetSuite, and Siebel Systems.
Posted 09 Mar 2004
The acquisition would further what analysts say is a trend toward melding the marketing automation side with the marketing operations side.
Posted 04 Mar 2004
The pairing integrates White Pajama's contact center and telephony functionality with Salesforce.com's on-demand CRM services.
Posted 02 Mar 2004
Gartner estimates that spending on CRM services in North American will increase at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.4 percent from 2001, reaching roughly $22 billion in 2006.
There are two kinds of human needs: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic needs are things like money and incentive programs, but what many organizations lack is the ability to satisfy an agent's intrinsic need, such as appreciation.
Posted 26 Feb 2004
Gartner estimates that Best Software has amassed 25 percent of the worldwide CRM market in the small business space, besting companies like FrontRange and Salesforce.com, which are vying for the same space.
Posted 24 Feb 2004
Organizations are shifting their investments from internal applications to outward-facing applications.
Posted 19 Feb 2004
A new Yankee Group report, "Hosted Speech Applications are Poised for Growth, Increasing Competition and Volatility," focuses on qualitative trends in voice self-service.
Posted 17 Feb 2004
The results of a recent Strativity Group study paint a grim picture of customer understanding on behalf of executives at large, global companies.
Posted 12 Feb 2004
Forrester BPM TechRankings '04: The research firm reevaluates the top pure-play BPM vendors' products, separating process analysis capabilities and human workflow capabilities.
Posted 10 Feb 2004
The consulting company released its latest report on how VoIP technology can be leveraged in contact and customer service operations.
Posted 05 Feb 2004
Nuance has released its Nuance 8.5 and Nuance Verifier 3.5, respectively.
Posted 03 Feb 2004
Low labor costs are spurring more and more companies to consider outsourcing their contact centers to service providers in offshore and nearshore locations.
What the costs to corporate America are to defend against DNC legislation is as yet unknown, but some companies have started to try new outbound customer campaigns.
Dollar Rent A Car's top brass wanted more productivity and efficiency enhancements.
The combination of Nextel's wireless service and mobile devices with Salesforce.com's on-demand model will help mobile sales reps access their critical customer and deal information any time, anywhere.
Posted 29 Jan 2004
Driving global initiatives are increased efforts in follow-the-sun strategies and the ability to generate a local presence in many geographical areas.
Posted 27 Jan 2004
Datamonitor's "IT Services Contract Tracker" reveals the number of deals worldwide with a value greater than $100 million increased 49 percent to 244.
Posted 22 Jan 2004
Acquiring Ineto enables Siebel to get 100 percent of the CRM business from existing clients, and opens up more opportunities for Siebel in the small- and midsize business market.
Posted 20 Jan 2004
The research firm aims to help BPO service providers identify BPO trends for companies within five vertical industries.
Posted 15 Jan 2004
ScanSoft announced it has acquired Montreal's LocusDialog, a developer of speech-enabled, auto-attendant applications and call routing solutions, to further ScanSoft's efforts to bring more speech applications to the market.
Posted 13 Jan 2004
Business Objects joins the ranks of Teradata and SAS Institute, first tier BI vendors providing enterprise reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, enterprise performance management, data integration, and analytic applications.
Posted 08 Jan 2004
The deal, which was announced yesterday, brings a total of 4,200 agents under the ClientLogic roof.
Posted 06 Jan 2004
A customer-centric enterprise uses business strategies throughout the organization to best serve customers.
By automating access to specific information Armstrong Floor Products decreased customer hold times, reduced customer call durations by 50 percent, and improved call completion rates by 123 percent.
Technology companies contribute to disaster-relief efforts.
The report focuses on whether a hosted-CRM solution is tenable for companies.
Posted 23 Dec 2003
According to a recent "Delivery Trends Report" from EmailLabs, Tuesday is the best day to send an email campaign, with Wednesday being the top day for recipients to open emails.
Posted 18 Dec 2003
It positions KANA customers to capitalize on the growing BPO trend, enabling companies to benefit from low-cost labor available in offshore regions like India and the Philippines. Email responses can be conducted offshore and managed in the United States, using KANA IQ to look for customer-specific information.
Posted 16 Dec 2003
The book contains white papers, case studies, and customer profiles highlighting input from academics, analysts, consultants, end users, and solution providers.
Posted 11 Dec 2003
NetSuite is taking a slightly different approach to customization than Salesforce.com by requiring code changes to be done inside the NetSuite application using JavaScript.
Posted 09 Dec 2003
The new version provides integration with SpeechWorks' Suite of network speech solutions from ScanSoft, including ScanSoft's OpenSpeech Recognizer 2.0 speech recognition software and Speechify 3.0 text-to-speech software.
Posted 04 Dec 2003
The automated voice solutions industry has been surging since the late 1990s, with North America leading the way in sales.
Posted 02 Dec 2003
Aberdeen Group surveyed 380 executives earlier this year, asking them to identify their technology investment priorities for contact centers over the next 18 months. The most surprising takeaway is that 45 percent maintained that the contact center was a "critical" part of their company's product and customer strategy.
At least that's what Industry experts were saying at the recent SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference.
Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp. needed to gain a better understanding of agent performance levels to provide faster and better quality service.
If all goes according to plan, on November 24 the FCC's wireless number--portability (WNP) legislation will go into effect.
Posted 25 Nov 2003
Several large companies have already started an exodus from the United States to Canada, including Marriott, UPS, AOL, and IBM.
Companies experimenting with BPO complain of inflexible contracts, difficulty managing vendors, and a lack of performance metrics; ICICI OneSource announced its intention to acquire FirstRing; and automated speech recognition solutions are growing in popularity as their accuracy improves.
The increase in government e-procurement spending is largely due to the popularity of what is known as reverse funding.
Posted 20 Nov 2003
Reservoir Partners' report, "Do Not Call--An Executive Risk Assessment," shows mounting concern over DNC legislation, and a recent Jupiter Research survey found that permission-based email marketers are not as concerned by Do Not Spam legislation.
Posted 18 Nov 2003
If approved, the deal would yield a combined entity with 2,600 customers and combined annual revenue of $110 million, besting other pure-play CRM vendors in size such as E.piphany, Chordiant, and KANA.
Posted 12 Nov 2003
Automating business processes can be the biggest challenge for Comergent's mostly manufacturer and distribution customers--that's why Comergent is offering new functionality and enhancements across the order transaction lifecycle.
Posted 11 Nov 2003
Nearly 40 percent of online users plan to do some or all of their holiday shopping online in 2003.
Posted 06 Nov 2003
Based on figures from Britain's National Statistics Office, unsuccessful phone connections costs British businesses nearly L83 million ($139.1 million) a day, or L22 billion ($36.87 billion) in a working year.
Posted 04 Nov 2003
Hundreds of thousands of customers visit the support portal, which has deflected a significant portion of calls from Charter's contact center.
The number-three local phone company (behind Verizon and SBC Communications) is targeting small and midsize business (SMB) customers with its latest offering.
Posted 30 Oct 2003
According to the study, 90 percent of customers say they are at least satisfied with their retailers, but less than 50 percent can be considered truly loyal.
Posted 28 Oct 2003
Akibia will still have local consultants working at clients' sites, focusing on project management, organizational alignment, business processes, technical architecture, change management, and training.
Posted 23 Oct 2003
SupportSoft yesterday started shipping its real-time service management software platform, which enables organizations to avoid or resolve technology-related problems.
Posted 21 Oct 2003
The victory marks a big win for Blue Pumpkin, as the lawsuit threatened the very core of its skills-based routing business.
Posted 16 Oct 2003
Siemens Information and Communication Networks is integrating its HiPath ProCenter Suites' real-time contact center capabilities with Microsoft Business Solutions CRM.
Posted 14 Oct 2003
If there is one silver bullet that can help companies be more successful, it's humor--there are humor strategies companies can use to bring a little levity into the workplace.
Posted 09 Oct 2003
According to a recent online survey by ITtoolbox, 36 percent of survey participants stated the top strategic reason for outsourcing was the lure of cost-savings, whereas 15 percent cited special skills and/or services as the top reason.
Posted 07 Oct 2003
Speech technology vendors showed their wares during the ninth Annual SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference in New York City this week.
Posted 02 Oct 2003
Time management, customer knowledge, Web self-help, knowledge management, and embracing opt-in automation are the keys to improving efficiency.
National Customer Service Week '03: The International Customer Service Association (ICSA) started commemorating the event in 1988.
Some analysts say the success of the Do-Not-Call registry will likely spawn additional Do-Not-Contact legislation.
Pertinent information like name, address, and type of arthritis is used to create a Web form; this, plus the information gathered from the automated telephone system, is saved into one central database for a holistic view of an individual.
According to the company, VoiceTone lets customers hold natural conversations with computer-based systems.
Posted 30 Sep 2003
The product has more than 200 enhancements, and includes the company's first outbound marketing product, RightNow Outbound.
Posted 23 Sep 2003
The sluggish telecommunications industry and poor-clarity issues facing voiceover IP have traditionally plagued the industry, but the fact that a sizeable company with $338 million in revenue is investing in the nascent technology may be just what the VoIP industry needs to kick it into high gear.
Posted 22 Sep 2003
NetLedger today announced it is changing its corporate name to NetSuite Inc.
Posted 18 Sep 2003
Aprimo focuses on four states of marketing expenditure, including budget, forecasted expense, committed expense, and actual expense.
Posted 16 Sep 2003
European call center spending among financial services organizations grew 130 percent since 1998--a large chunk of that came from U.S. companies moving operations overseas and outsourcing back-office operations.
Posted 11 Sep 2003
To make up for lost revenue opportunities associated with DNC compliance, Siebel is encouraging customers to capitalize on inbound service calls by turning them into sales calls.
Posted 09 Sep 2003
Symon aims to integrate its real-time communication solutions with TargetVision's visual communication products.
Posted 04 Sep 2003
The research firm surveyed 82 senior business and IT executives and found that companies experimenting with BPO complain of inflexible contracts, difficulty managing vendors, and a lack of performance metrics.
Posted 02 Sep 2003
Dr. Michael Treacy, chief strategist and cofounder of GEN3 Partners, advised attendees to beware of the "twin diseases of IT," which he identified as the enterprise disease and the process disease.
Posted 28 Aug 2003
Small to midsize contact centers were the clear winners at this week's International Call Center Management (ICCM) Conference and Expo.
Posted 28 Aug 2003
CRM magazine scrutinized CRM suite vendors and related categories to uncover the top-five leaders in each category: enterprise CRM, mid-market CRM, analytics, contact center outsourcers, and consulting firms. The results are based on a combination of weighted criteria, including revenue and revenue growth (last four completed quarters, ended March 30, 2003), market share, customer wins, and reputation for customer satisfaction.
CRM magazine scrutinized CRM suite vendors and related categories to uncover the top-five leaders in each category: enterprise CRM, mid-market CRM, analytics, contact center outsourcers, and consulting firms. The results are based on a combination of weighted criteria, including revenue and revenue growth (last four completed quarters, ended March 30, 2003), market share, customer wins, and reputation for customer satisfaction.
Envision introduces a workforce management tool; Verint's ULTRA Express leverages every customer contact to optimize call centers' processes; and Aspect Iphinity Call Center and Aspect Iphinity Workforce Management (WFM) are designed to bring enterprise level functionality to SME contact centers.
Posted 26 Aug 2003
Two reports released today reveal the growing interest in CRM among pharmaceutical companies.
Posted 21 Aug 2003
A report by consulting firm Reservoir Partners examines how organizations still need to be proactive with customer communications.
Posted 19 Aug 2003
The report states that outsourced call center agent positions in Canada are expected to rise 52 percent by 2007.
Posted 14 Aug 2003
The report maintains that this year, participating IT services providers expect to sell 26 percent of their services via other IT services providers.
Posted 12 Aug 2003
Expanding the capabilities of its FootPrints Web-based service desk software, UniPress Software yesterday made available live eSupport tools from Atinav.
Posted 07 Aug 2003
edocs launches Focused Solutions, software for financial services firms that consists of three components: e-Statements for Banking, Customer Self-Service for Credit Cards, and e-Billing for Insurance.
Posted 05 Aug 2003
Take the following advice on how to overcome these six barriers, and keep your organization from being among those that have squandered their CRM investments.
Skechers cut its email queries in half, to 4,500 each month, and can capture more customer information for marketing purposes--all now done with one tenth the old staff size.
Salesforce.com is reinventing itself with what CEO Marc Benioff says is the company's most significant release since launching its hosted CRM product.
To drive down procurement costs, Choice Hotels built ChoiceBuys.com, an electronic marketplace for its hotels and supply vendors.
Everything from phased deployments to optimizing business processes to implementing self-service to the rise in hosted solutions is being spurred by companies' desire to cut costs.
When it comes to communication devices, people simply prefer using the phone.
The combined company, which will be branded under ICICI OneSource's name, will have more than 3,500 employees and 2,000 seats in four call centers in Mumbai and Bangalore, India.
Posted 31 Jul 2003
The ERP functionality will link to NetLedger's Web hosted e-commerce capabilities to provide customer, vendor, and partner views of the business transactions.
Posted 29 Jul 2003
META analysts' various sources for generating vendor ratings include vendor surveys, customer references, META research data, and the analysts' collective experience in covering the ChRM market.
Posted 24 Jul 2003
According to a recent study, 32 percent of the typical workweek is spent helping others resolve questions.
Posted 22 Jul 2003
Kanisa5 is designed to improve agent productivity and reduce incident volume by incorporating various features like one-click CRM-data access, self-learning guided-search capabilities, and collaboration capabilities that help agents digitally connect to experts via a digital chat forum.
Posted 17 Jul 2003
Using natural language capabilities, the Banter Server, which will be preintegrated with KANA Response, can understand the intent of customers' emails and provide a suggested response for agents.
Posted 15 Jul 2003
Zeacom's screen pop capabilities can cut as many as 12 seconds from of each call, according to Zeacom CEO Miles Valentine.
Posted 10 Jul 2003
According to Meta Group's new poll, 75 percent of the organizations queried will spend the same or more on CRM in the next 12 months. The remaining 25 percent is expecting to spend less.
Posted 08 Jul 2003
Lawson Software yesterday introduced its Retail Comp Store Metrics Data Mart and Store Operations to improve store level profitability.
Posted 03 Jul 2003
Roughly 85 percent of the registrations occurred online (primarily at www.donotcall.gov).
Posted 01 Jul 2003
While the performance optimization market is still relatively new, the melding of workflow automation, training, workforce management, and workforce optimization solutions is starting to provide a soup-to-nuts means of identifying and improving agent performance levels.
If enough employees are not happy with their plan, they can complain to their employer, which might prompt the employer to drop the financial services company for another one.
It's a product that's designed to help its customers shave seconds off calls, but the way DirectQuest works has led to both benefits and controversy.
Intentia yesterday announced its migration path for J.D. Edwards to Intentia's Movex Collaboration applications.
Posted 26 Jun 2003
The upgrades represent what CEO Marc Benioff says is Salesforce.com's most significant release since launching its hosted CRM product in June 2000.
Posted 24 Jun 2003
A survey released today by marketing consulting firm Aelera polled 146 marketing and IT professionals online to determine the effects of bringing IT in on marketing projects.
Posted 19 Jun 2003
The mySAP CRM 4.0 upgrade was introduced at SAPPHIRE '03, SAP's annual international customer conference in Orlando, FL.
Posted 17 Jun 2003
PeopleSoft's board of directors unanimously decided that the offer to buy PeopleSoft's outstanding shares of stock for $16 per share would be met with lengthy antitrust scrutiny.
Posted 12 Jun 2003
Chordiant 5.5 provides real-time and wireless capabilities, and easier ways to manage business process changes.
Posted 10 Jun 2003
If the deal goes through, some analysts say PeopleSoft's roughly 5,000 customers would benefit from a smoother migration path.
Posted 06 Jun 2003
Convergys has been working since the beginning of the year with Benchmark Portal to create the Customer Experience Benchmark (CEB)
Posted 05 Jun 2003
Today Salesforce.com introduced sforce, an online application-development utility to enable companies to build business applications within the hosted software delivery model.
Posted 03 Jun 2003
Labor of Love
FSC executives were so pleased with its first CRM project that they happily took on a second. But delivering access across the enterprise proved to be a challenging workflow problem.
Using prebuilt accounting adapters Salesforce.com customers have the option to integrate with Intuit QuickBooks or Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains accounting software.
Posted 29 May 2003
SoundBite 4.0 uses interactive voice messaging in place of customer service reps.
Posted 27 May 2003
The solution is designed to reduce call handling times, increase the quality of customer interactions, monitor individual agent performance, analyze call-handling trends, and enable all calls and interactions to be recorded and made instantly searchable.
Posted 22 May 2003
Predictive Web Analytics merges SPSS's data mining and predictive modeling solution, Clementine 7.0, with the NetGenesis 6.0 Web analytics platform.
Posted 20 May 2003
Nearly 1.2 million agent positions in the region, 150,000 (12 percent) are currently outsourced to a third party within EMEA. Datamonitor predicts this number will have almost doubled to 290,000 by 2007.
Posted 15 May 2003
The upgrades are designed to increase calculation speeds and automate modeling and distribution analysis.
Posted 13 May 2003
Envision Telephony and Utopy partnered today to use speech recognition and analytics tools to get a better understanding of agent performance and how it relates to customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Posted 08 May 2003
ClientLogic and Siebel have agreed to implement a rolling payment plan for customers, enabling them to absorb the blow of large CRM implementations over time.
Posted 06 May 2003
According to Forrester Research's Paul Hamerman, although Oracle had a late start out of the gate--falling behind Microsoft, Siebel Systems, PeopleSoft, and others with CRM mid-market initiatives--there is still plenty of room for Oracle.
Posted 02 May 2003
The Nice Feedback can route callers automatically, obviating the need for agent involvement. Additionally, callers can choose to have their voice complaint tape recorded, which can then be automatically linked to the survey results to gain greater insight.
Posted 28 Apr 2003
Witness Systems today announced the completion of its acquisition of Eyretel, a U.K. provider of high-volume recording solutions.
Posted 23 Apr 2003
Predictive analytics developer SPSS has made available the latest version of its enterprise Web analytics solution, NetGenesis 6.0, which marks SPSS's first platform upgrade since acquiring NetGenesis during the fourth quarter of 2001.
Posted 18 Apr 2003
After acquiring Baan in August 2000, Invensys is looking to sell the much stronger business unit.
Posted 16 Apr 2003
According to 48 percent of the respondents, the biggest challenges are understanding new technologies and ways to integrate them.
Posted 09 Apr 2003
MetaGroup highlights the 19 leading companies in business intelligence in a recent report. The four leaders--Cognos, Business Objects, SAS, and SAP AG--were selected because of their robust product line and financial strength in the market.
Posted 04 Apr 2003
CRM is turning call centers into profit centers.
Posted 01 Apr 2003
Without a predefined set of mutually agreed upon metrics for a CRM implementation, or any large-scale implementation for that matter, failure cannot be accurately measured.
Posted 31 Mar 2003
Technicians using OTIS can reply to customer questions via email text or with an embedded video stream that shows the end user how to resolve the problem.
Posted 24 Mar 2003
While SAP announces customer wins the water utilities sector, Orcom, an outsourcer of customer information systems (CIS) and billing services, has made available its first hosted service for water utilities.
Posted 17 Mar 2003
Organizations are using speech recognition technology to bridge the gap between speech and text.
Posted 12 Mar 2003
The news bodes well for Salesforce.com, which targets sales professionals for its products by providing them with a lower-cost alternative to large software implementations; also fueling sales at the company are some recent, large corporate-customer wins.
Posted 03 Mar 2003
Mid-market CRM vendors are partnering with consultants to get your business. Here are 10 tips to help you select the right consultant for your needs.
In addition to the national Do Not Call registry, telemarketers are facing some heavy scrutiny from state public utility commissions (PUCs) and legislators for dead air and abandoned calls when calling consumers on the phone.
Posted 03 Mar 2003
Managing image files is a way to drive down costs and increase profitability at National Semiconductor Corp.
Posted 02 Mar 2003
The goal is to help organizations graduate from descriptive analytics to prescriptive analytics; the difference is that descriptive analytics captures historical customer data, where as prescriptive analytics creates actionable analysis on the data captured.
Posted 25 Feb 2003
Magic Quadrant '03: The report puts leading service providers into four key areas (challengers, leaders, niche players, and visionaries), all measured against each other by their ability to execute.
Posted 18 Feb 2003
Rogers' message was for organizations to focus on individual customers based on the information customers provide.
Posted 12 Feb 2003
Salesforce.com today announced the availability of upgraded versions of its online service, including improved activity management tools, reporting enhancements, and marketing automation updates, among other updates.
Posted 10 Feb 2003
By using digital sound cards to transfer calls, the product can decrease call abandonment rates by reducing call transfer time without clicks or silences.
Posted 04 Feb 2003
Once thought of as a tool for small companies needing sales force automation, hosted CRM solutions have developed into a formidable competitor to packaged CRM applications for mid-market, and even large enterprises.
Without tools that measure effectiveness, an organization with several PR agencies cannot get an accurate view of their performance, ROI, or their ability to generate impressions in the marketplace. Cymfony's technology will be bundled into MediaMap's Web-based solution called Performa, which enables PR and corporate communications professionals to manage branding efforts and their effectiveness in the media.
Posted 30 Jan 2003
Analysts welcome the long-awaited announcement of Siebel's integration into an open standards platform.
Posted 28 Jan 2003
Call center agents can make or break a contact center.
Posted 27 Jan 2003
Forrester Research's acquisition of Giga is an attempt to expand Forrester's emerging technology coverage and reach. Current Analysis Inc.'s acquisition of ARS Inc. combines the daily intelligence collection methodologies of ARS and the change-driven analytical model of Current Analysis.
Posted 22 Jan 2003
A glance at some of the top news around the industry this week.
Posted 17 Jan 2003
One of the issues the TSR aims to change is predictive-dialer call-abandonment rates, or the percentage of calls for which no representative is available to answer the call after a connection is made.
Posted 15 Jan 2003
Contrary to the speed-to-resolution factor associated with call center agents and their ability to quickly answer customer queries, customers are spending more time on the Web because the tools they are using to find their answers are working.
Posted 08 Jan 2003
Users can drill down for more granularity, as they can click on any chart or graph to home in on specific data.
Posted 30 Dec 2002
CRM magazine interviewed more than 30 industry leaders and surveyed about 100 readers to uncover what they expect to and predict will happen in the industry in the coming year.
CRM magazine interviewed more than 30 industry leaders and surveyed about 100 readers to uncover what they expect to and predict will happen in the industry in the coming year.
According to a recent survey conducted by InsightExpress LLC, out of 500 American consumers who responded, 56 percent participate in loyalty or affiliate programs.
Posted 24 Dec 2002
A customer ownership scuffle between Salesforce.com Inc. and NetLedger Inc. is proving that one of the benefits of the CRM hosting model is true: Dissatisfied customers can sometimes easily switch from one CRM vendor to another.
Posted 20 Dec 2002
Osborne Clarke breaks down its information silos.
Some companies are finding that industry newcomer NetLedger's integration of back- and front-office data will give them a holistic view that Salesforce.com's front-office only system can't match.
Posted 13 Dec 2002
To improve relationships with and increase profits from the channel companies must treat those partners as well as they would their customers.
SAS CEO says analytics turns CRM into more than merely a Rolodex.
A portal solution bundled with Big Blue's hardware and software gives SMBs information to improve productivity and reduce costs
Posted 09 Dec 2002
The new release, which will be available on December 11, 2002, as a stand-alone component of the Enterprise Performance Management suite, can be used with PeopleSoft's Enterprise Portal.
Posted 02 Dec 2002
The new release, which will be available on December 11, 2002, as a stand-alone component of the Enterprise Performance Management suite, can be used with PeopleSoft's Enterprise Portal.
Posted 02 Dec 2002
Siebel Systems Inc. has appointed USinternetworking as a Premier Platform Partner in the Siebel Partner Alliance.
Posted 26 Nov 2002
Data cleansing companies like QAS Limited say it is not too late to clean data.
Posted 25 Nov 2002
SAS Institute Inc. has acquired assets of Verbind Technology for real-time customer behavior tracking capabilities.
Posted 20 Nov 2002
Integration is a hot issue. Here's what Oracle has to say about meshing CRM with ERP.
The open standards vendor enters the CRM fray by going head-to-head against the Microsoft .Net platform.
Posted 13 Nov 2002
Sweeping changes
Salesforce.com's first formal wireless solution, dubbed Airforce Wireless Edition, enables sales teams to access and edit real-time, up-to-the-minute customer information in Saleforce.com via their wireless devices.
Posted 13 Nov 2002
The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development's contact center is turning heads--including Mayor Bloomberg's.
An overview of this week's earnings and M&A activity in the CRM industry.
Posted 08 Nov 2002
Interwoven Inc. launched its Interwoven Solution for Media Asset Management (MAM) last week at its third annual Interwoven user conference, GearUp 2002, in San Francisco.
Posted 04 Nov 2002
Sybase announced yesterday at a customer luncheon in New York that it aims to improve the flow, speed, and quality of data to employees is through its latest portal solution, called Enterprise Portal (EP) 5.0.
Posted 30 Oct 2002
Despite the economic downturn, SAS is able to navigate its way through difficult waters. How it was able to do so was one of the main takeaways at its SAS Executive Conference, an event for customers and prospects held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas.
Posted 27 Oct 2002
Scott McNealy, chairman, CEO, and president of Sun Microsystems Inc., says that IBM and Microsoft are part of the integration problem, not the solution.
Posted 24 Oct 2002
Federal, state, and local governments have discovered
the benefits of CRM and are using it to interact
with and serve their constituencies.
Knowing your customer has become more than a business imperative.
Industry growth is measured by those who buy in, not by vendor consolidation.
Steve Carpenter had barely warmed the president seat at the Baan CRM business unit before a new president was appointed the top spot last week. Ed Daihl, a three-year Baan veteran, who is also president of the Baan Supply Chain Management business unit, is taking hold of the CRM reigns effective immediately. Carpenter is bumped up to Baan Enterprises.
Posted 21 Oct 2002
Certain sectors within CRM are showing signs of steady strength.
Posted 15 Oct 2002
The customer self-help solution aims to increase customer satisfaction and reduce contact center interactions.
Posted 14 Oct 2002
NetLedger unveiled the latest member of its family of hosted solutions for low-end mid-market companies.
Posted 14 Oct 2002
Retailers are wincing at their latest disappointing sales figures for the month of September, requiring many to take a closer look at their CRM initiatives.
Posted 10 Oct 2002
Only six months after the release of Affinium 4 in April, Unica Corp. announced the coming of Affinium 5, slated for general availability in December.
Po |