Heard and Overheard

"It's no longer good enough to build the best product--the guy who builds the number-two product is still pretty good. The challenge is to provide the customer service that makes the difference." --Barry Libenson, CIO, Ingersoll-Rand "If information is gold, then the contact center is the gold mine." --Oscar Alban, principal, market consultant, Witness Systems "Government regulation is always a concern. You never know what the next regulation is going to be and how that's going to affect your relationship with your customer." --Jane Johnson, vice president of global marketing solutions at Fair Isaac "We're probably the most customer-intimate company on the planet. We'll do whatever it takes to make a customer happy." --Steve Biegacki, vice president, commercial marketing, Automation Control & Information Group "I don't think you need to be on the bleeding edge, but you need to be willing to bleed a little bit. You need to be looking at architectures that are fresh and exciting, and there needs to be some element of controlled risk." --Phil Kautzman, vice president of global alliances, E.piphany "The real power of CRM and the ability to meet the evolving needs of customers starts to get into 'How well do you understand me?' not just 'Do you know what my records are?'" --Alton Adams, managing partner for Accenture's customer insight domain "How do you model your business processes into a CRM solution? It's possible today, but only with a lot of time and money." --Ben Kiker, chief marketing officer, Onyx Software "There are always a few agents in the contact center that do really well, either in number of calls, or satisfaction, or sales--there's always a group that does better than everyone else. [The goal should be to] raise everyone up to that level." --George Tubin, senior analyst, delivery channels practice, TowerGroup