Biographical Information

Barton Goldenberg

president, ISM

Barton Goldenberg (bgoldenberg@ismguide.com) is president of ISM (www. ismguide.com). Since 1985, ISM has established itself as a premier strategic adviser to organizations planning or implementing customer strategies to address digital transformation, data analytics, CRM, social media communities, customer engagement, and emerging technology initiatives. He is in high demand as a keynote speaker (www.bartongoldenberg.com) and is the author of four books, including his latest, The Definitive Guide to Social CRM. He is currently completing his new book, titled Engaged Customer Strategy: Your Roadmap to Success in 2030.

Articles for Barton Goldenberg

Applying AI Successfully to Customer Service

Manage the challenges, realize the benefits.

How the GenAI-Metaverse Relationship Impacts CRM

The two technologies together lead to better sales, marketing, and customer service experiences.

Integrating CRM, AI, and the Metaverse

Futuristic-sounding customer experiences are now becoming reality.

VR Training Is Replacing Traditional Sales and Customer Service Training

This new training paradigm benefits employees, customers, and the bottom line.

Spatial Computing: The Power to Transform CRM

AR/VR is already making inroads with consumers, and CRM won't be far behind.

The Metaverse and Generative AI: Where Does CRM Fit into the Picture?

The interaction of these technologies will form the future of commerce.

How the Metaverse Will Change Everything

Leverage the technology to help you transform, or become the next Blockbuster.

What the Metaverse Can Learn from CRM and the Dotcom Bust

The metaverse has enormous potential, but successful applications won't simply happen.

How Should Metaverse Pioneers Organize Their Efforts?

Don't be late to the party or, worse, end up missing the opportunity altogether.

You Can’t Duck the Metaverse

And you shouldn't want to: This is where your customers will go next.

It’s Time to Focus on the Metaverse

Virtual worlds will be the most transformative technology in the next decade. Prepare your strategy now.

Eight Steps to Successfully Integrate VR-XR-AR into Your CRM Efforts

Virtual reality, mixed reality, and augmented reality will be game changers for sales, marketing, and customer service.

Six Future-Ready Trends to Boost Your Digital Transformation

Thanks to technology advances and the pandemic, we've passed the point of no return. Transforming your business must happen now

VR/AR: A Game Changer for Sales and Marketing

Virtual reality/augmented reality is poised to remake CX.

The Key to Global Success? Global CRM

Companies have to get all of their accounts rowing in the same direction.

Emerging Technologies Can Keep Your Digital Hotel Solidly Booked

Virtual gathering places for customers benefit from collaborative and immersive apps like Zoom, virtual reality, and augmented reality.

To Thrive During COVID-19 Recovery, Shore Up Your CRM Foundation

Three process pillars must be in place to steady your system

3 Ways to Enhance Customer and Employee Collaboration Post-COVID-19

Now is the time to harness all the tools of customer engagement

CRM’s Critical Role in Successful Digital Transformation

Putting customers at the center of your digital efforts involves sound CRM processes

How AI Is Impacting CRM (Already)

More customer data leads to smarter AI, and the sky's the limit

6 Steps for Creating and Leveraging a Digital Assessment

Here's how to ready your organization for digital leadership

Customer Engagement Has a New Destination: the Digital Hotel

Branded social communities can be re-imagined as rooms hosting private meetings, public seminars, and places to socialize

5 Building Blocks for Digital Transformation

Keeping up in these areas lowers your company's risk of being disrupted

Data Analytics Is Better, Easier, and More Critical Than Ever

Successful companies have made data analytics a part of their DNA for a reason

How Tesla Gets Customer-Facing Process Right (Video)

ISM Founder and President Barton Goldenberg presents a case study on outside-in marketing and customer-facing process modeling in this clip from his presentation at CRM evolution 2018.

5 Reasons Why Branded Communities Are Your Best Lead-Nurturing Platform

You can invite who you want, and you control the information these communities yield

VIDEO: What is the Right Mix of People, Process, and Tech in a Sound CRM Strategy?

ISM, Inc. President Barton Goldenberg breaks down the mix of people, process, and technology in a sound long-term customer engagement strategy in this clip from CRM evolution 2018.

VIDEO: How Clearly Do You Know Your Customer?

ISM, Inc. President Barton Goldenberg explains the importance of having a clear understanding of who your customer is to effective CRM in this clip from CRM evolution 2018.

VIDEO: What's Your Roadmap for Multi-Year Customer Strategy Growth?

ISM Inc. president Barton Goldenberg explains why it's important to take the long view when developing a customer engagement strategy in this clip from CRM evolution 2018.

Customer Success Takes Engagement to the Next Level

When customers buy your product or service, the relationship is only beginning.

Your Customer Data Is Limitless, and So Is Its Value

Your company can either navigate the digital deluge, or be swamped by it.

Make Your Customer Engagement a Closed Loop

Choose channels, gather data, create profiles, analyze, deliver right message at right time. Repeat.

Contextual Relevance Is Critical to Capturing Customers

They want information relevant to them, served up their way, not yours

Give Your Customers the Experiences They Want

Customer experience management needs to be at the vanguard of your strategy.

4 Big Barriers to an Integrated Customer-Centric Strategy

The key, as always, is data—and how you use it

‘Data On-Boarding’ Can Make Customer Profiles Whole Again

A new technology links customers' online and offline data, giving you a single, comprehensive view

4 Digital Strategy Journeys

These companies are grappling with their digital futures

Is Your Digital Strategy Ready?

Map out your digital future now—your competitors are

Why Amazon's and Uber's Digital Strategies Excel

A coherent digital vision is elementary

From the CRM Trenches: A 30-Year Perspective, Part 2

Brace yourself: Mobility, social CRM, and wearables will create new challenges—and opportunities

From the CRM Trenches: A 30-Year Perspective

Technology has changed everything but this: People are still the name of the game

Social CRM in Action

Businesses discover the value of social communities.

The Bright Future of the Internet of Things

Today's innovations are only the beginning.

The True Price of Channel Optimization

Why meeting your customers where they prefer is key to your business survival.

Forging the Next CRM Frontier

Integrated technologies hold great promise for the future of CRM.

Taking the Plunge into Social CRM

Integrating social communities takes a true commitment.

Integrating Social Media Is a Strategy for Success

Expand your insights with a hub and spoke model.

Software Advances Are Propelling CRM to New Heights

Seven trends businesses cannot afford to ignore.

Happy Agents, Happy Customers

Increased agent productivity leads to increased satisfaction.

The Future Is Now for Data Analytics

Turn data insights into customer excellence.

The Emerging Integration of CEM and CRM

Mapping out a customer journey is a two-sided process.

The E-Commerce Effect

This key pillar of social CRM is changing the business landscape.

The Challenges of Global CRM

Doing business in multiple countries adds new challenges to social implementations.

Mobile CRM: Nice to Have or a Business Essential?

Don't risk becoming a digital dinosaur.

A Tale of Two Companies

Why successful CRM is all in the mix.

The Real Value of Social CRM

Leverage public social media and niche sites to drive traffic to your community

Overcoming Skepticism to Exploit Social CRM

Many executives fear a healthy two-way conversation with customers

Three Cheers for Honest CRM Vendors

Dishonest practices that overpromise and underdeliver must be rooted out

Marketing + Sales + CRM = Big Impact

Winning formula links essential modules on the same platform

A Quarter-Century in CRM

An industry veteran looks back at the lessons learned over the course of 25 years.

The Next 15 Years of CRM

Your customer-centric business strategy must become a two-way street.

Your People Are Half the Battle

You have a simple choice: Prepare your people or prepare for failure

Assessing Your CRM Situation

You can't know where you are unless you look—and look hard.

The Final Steps Are Just the Beginning

The Journey of Implementation — Part 3: A successful social media initiative merely opens up future possibilities.

The Next Steps Matter, Too

The Journey of Implementation — Part 2: It's a bit like the Wild West out there — so be extra careful to conduct due diligence when choosing a vendor partner.

First Steps Are Always Critical

The Journey of Implementation — Part 1: Before the design and deployment stages begin, planning is everything.

Taming the Digital Client in 2009

Technology will pave the way to customer focus and cost-efficiency.

Technology and the Digital Client

A new reality emerges for the people-process-technology mix.

The Digital Client Is Older Than You Think

A three-phase approach to reaching social media maturity.

Is Your Contact Center Built for Multichannel Customers?

The boom in self-service doesn't mean your agents are off the hook.

Multiplicity Means More

Customers want it. Technology allows it. The Digital Client demands it. So why have so few companies mastered multichannel CRM?

Always On

The new generation of consumers, clients, and customers is perpetually connected -- to the Internet, to you, and to each other. What can Web 2.0 do for you?

Web 2.0 and the Digital Client

Handling the customers who represent the future of your business.

The Rise of the Digital Client

Catering to this new breed of always-on customer will require a new approach to CRM.

A CRM Initiative's Bermuda Triangle

Two best practice suggestions for preventing--permanently--user-adoption disappearance.

Execs, Not Tech

C-level personnel will drive the CRM industry to new heights in the coming years--here's why.

Getting Executive Buy-In: A Pocket Guide

Don't take it for granted, define the initiative's goals from the jump, and closely link the organization's business direction to the initiative.

Business Processes Must Precede Technology

At implementation, too many organizations depend on CRM software vendors to supply needed business processes.

A Real-Time CRM Software Capabilities Test

ISM's yearly winners must meet five functionality benchmarks to make the grade.

Transitioning to the NetGen Environment

6 steps smart companies are taking today to compete.

Executive Support: The Most Important CRM Success Factor

How weak, moderate, and strong support from the brass yield different results for CRM implementations.

The Future of CRM: Real Time

Always on, always connected, will be the prevalent way to conduct business in 10 years.

CRM: The Past and the Future

Born of contact management applications 25 years ago, enterprise software systems have come a long way.

Keeping the Faith

A tale of two companies' implementation experience--one sings, the other doesn't.

'Information at Your Fingertips'

These five business drivers will propel real-time CRM.

Real-Time CRM: A Business Revolution in the Making

Three trends are bringing companies to the next logical step.

The Consumer of the Future

The www generation crosses three generational cohorts.

Let's Keep to the High Road

Learn from others' mistakes and stay focused on what's important.

5 Ways to Refocus Your CRM Efforts

This year, seize new opportunities for gaining--and keeping--customer loyalty.

Who Really Owns the CRM Initiative?

The vice president must own whether or not the users perceive value from the CRM application.

Don't Put the Cart Before the Horse

In a successful CRM implementation process must always precede technology.

Whose Portal Is It, Anyway?

The complexity lies in the decision of whose portal should run the desktop: the CRM portal or a more application-agnostic portal?

Customer Self-Service: Are You Ready?

Analysts predict that by 2007, 70 percent of all contact centers will support Web-based service applications.

People Make or Break a CRM Initiative

It is increasingly imperative to turn your attention to driving successful people-change now--before your competition does.

What's in Store for CRM

Last year will be looked on as the year of renewal for the CRM industry; new technologies around the real-time enterprise (RTE) come into the picture in 2004.

Is Government CRM the Next Big Boom?

Government agencies are under increasing pressure to control costs, improve productivity, and deliver better products and services, but government agencies also face their own set of CRM challenges.

CRM Is Not a Game of Chance

Carefully consider and prioritize the business-functional, technical-features, and user-friendliness/support requirements for your CRM system--then move into the CRM-software selection process.

Service Is the Long-Term Winner

CRM and the new customer service capabilities that it offers are becoming integral to companies using product/customer service excellence strategies.

CRM Drives the Real-Time Enterprise : What Lies Ahead?

What is the Real-Time Enterprise?

Keep Your Priorities Straight When Implementing CRM

When automating CRM functions within a company, business leaders must both take into account and priorities the needs of its different departments, and stick to those priorities throughout implementation.