Biographical Information

Articles for Koa Beck

Brand Those Tweets

K9Cuisine.com generates a revenue increase simply by keeping its name in tweeted URLs

Utility Giant Re-Energized

A major American energy company uses a customized sales program to cross-sell its way to higher profits

Pizza Chain Goes Extreme on Facebook

The San Francisco company partners with eWordofMouth to generate a 99 percent increase in Facebook "likes"

Socially Graceful CRM?

Why the old rules of etiquette no longer apply

Required Reading: There's No "I" in Company

Companies need to shift from a "me first" to a "we first" world, author warns

Can Mobile Help Clarify Confusion Over Reforms?

New federal laws have "thrown everything up for question"

Radian6 Sees Cloud Computing As Future of Marketing

Overshadowed by news of a deal with Salesforce.com, Radian6 user conference stresses need to engage with customers, not bombard them

Software Company Takes Hard Look at Phone Automation

FundNET installs Ifbyphone to redefine call-in support for financial services clients

Required Reading: Ruling the Roost with Relevance

Being the preferred brand is not enough in the face of quickly shifting market dynamics

Can Mobile Apps Save Customer Loyalty Programs?

Most consumers are not active users, study shows, but easing access may spur participation

Will Paperless Payments Take Off Among Customers?

Pitney Bowes and others reveal digital delivery service applications

Heroku Accelerates Cloud Adoption with Expanding Partner Ecosystem

Heroku partners with Accenture, Pivotal Labs, and more than 50 other companies to deliver cloud solutions.

Appirio Acquires VMG

Appirio makes its third acquisition in three months.

Adaptive Planning Introduces New Sales Planning & Analysis and Multi-Entity Management Solutions

New packages make it easy for new types of users in sales and multiple corporate divisions to improve business planning and management.

Amazon, Kohl’s, and Costco Top Experience Ratings List

The Temkin Group's "2011 Experience Ratings" identifies retailers as doing the best job with customers overall, but almost half of companies do a poor job.

Forrester Deems Web Content Management “Alive and Well”

Forrester Research determined that many companies are planning to invest heavily in WCM with plans to use other technologies in conjunction.

Parature Spring ’11 Delivers New Cloud-Based Customer Engagement Functionality

Key features include Twitter and Lithium social customer channels, automated customer answers, advanced reporting, and support for 33 languages.

Appirio Acquires Infowelders, a Salesforce.com Consultancy

Infowelders expands Appirio by bringing additional customers.

The Feminine Marketing Mystique

How to Demystify Women's Purchasing Behavior

Required Reading: Taking the Lead

Sales and marketing teams must be connected for a win-win scenario

Taco Bell’s Meaty Marketing Campaign

After a lawsuit questioned quality of its beef, the food chain aggressively disseminated its side of the story

Forrester Research Describes a “Global Social Imperative”

Analyst Nate Elliott recommends developing global outreach strategies through social media.

IBM Makes Commerce Smarter

New software and consulting service includes a "university," cloud analytics, and personalized shopping strategies.

JetBlue Partners with Allegiance

The Allegiance Engage platform is expected to help the top-ranked airline improve customer service even further.

Few Consumers Share Experiences via Social Media

A report by the Temkin Group surveying 6,000 consumers determines that social media is not yet the largest "word of mouth" medium.

Mzinga Names New CEO

A trusted advisor joins the Mzinga executive team and board of directors.

Clickatell Launches New Personalized Priority Messaging Text

New solution guides small companies through the set-up of customer outreach programs that use text messaging.

Customers Becoming Salespeople

The rising power of consumers should put them at the forefront of social strategies

Beagle Research Selects the Top Marketing Videos

Salesforce.com video tops the list of Beagle's first Short Tale Awards.

Study Finds Lower Churn Despite Decreasing Satisfaction

Customers expect more from service providers with expectations being set high by one particular channel.

Mobile Banking to Increase Five-Fold Over the Next Five Years

A Forrester forecast indicates one in five American consumers will be using online banking by 2015.

Alcatel-Lucent Brings Next-Generation Customer Conversations with Context-Based Social Engagement

The solution leverages existing investments to route social media interactions to the best resource based on message context and business value.

Salesforce.com Names New Senior Vice President

Jeff Lautenbach brings with him 20 years experience at IBM.

Forrester Research Outlines Co-Creation Market of 2011

Forrester's report on co-creation outlines six co-creation engagements.

Betting on Bar Codes

Will the smart money back experimental technology?

Information Overload

Unilever's unsightly knowledge base was costing the company money, customer satisfaction, and time—until it turned to Astute Solutions

Stores’ Tenuous Hold

Fickle customers toting mobile devices are just one click away from taking their business elsewhere

Former Salesforce.com Exec Joins Parature to Lead Growth and Expansion Plans

Parature Appoints former Salesforce.com Senior Sales Executive Mike Minelli to Chief Revenue Officer

Sword Ciboodle Appoints Mitch Lieberman as VP of Strategic Marketing

Sword Ciboodle's new VP brings experience with social technology and traditional CRM.

Forrester Evaluates Database Marketing Providers

Forrester Wave's new U.S. database MSP names Episilon, KBM Group, and Targetbase as pack leaders.

Groupon Chooses the Vertica Analytics Platform to Gain Insight into Subscriber and Customer Behavior

Groupon will deploy the Vertica Analytics Platform on the Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) solution for deployment flexibility and ease of scalability.

Salesforce.com Acquires Dimdim

The acquisition will extend Chatter collaboration platform with real-time communication technologies.

Pitney Bowes to Launch Volly, a Secure Digital Delivery Service

Customers can receive bills, coupons, and catalogues through a single application

Salesforce.com Completes Acquisition of Heroku

Salesforce aims to become "the cornerstone of the next-generation of cloud computing" with latest acquisition.

Taxpayers Demand CRM

The U.S. government struggles as the entity most resistant to change

Thundering into Social Media

J&P Cycles accrues more than 28,000 Facebook fans in less than a year with RightNow for Facebook

Changing the Mobile Channel

Mobile service is finally catching on with consumers of all ages—but not everyone is embracing the same methods

Learning What to Teach

Identifying a few dropped signals enables Telvista to filter out more of the noise in its agent-training processes.

Barcodes Reach a New Dimension

QR code software like Microsoft Tag and iCandy is catching on with companies to bridge the digital world with the physical

Teradata Acquires Aprimo

The company snatches the cloud-based integrated marketing software vendor for $525 million.

311: The Agency That Never Sleeps

How NYC's non-emergency contact center managed to flourish in the downturned economy, become social media-savvy, and meet the needs of citizens

Schools and Social Media: Pass or Flail

The lessons universities are learning about emerging technologies

Alcatel-Lucent Announces Contactless Payment and Loyalty Pilot for Sanoma Magazines

With contactless stickers and an e-wallet, publisher hopes to enhance magazine marketing at the point of sale.

Forrester Research Releases Listening Platform Landscape Report

"The 2011 Listening Platform" reveals a splintering of the listening landscape and demands for higher-quality real-time data.

eGain Introduces All-In-One Search for Customer Self-Service Experience and Multichannel Contact Center

eGain Multisearch provides federated search, multi-access navigation, and multi-process expertise behind the simple search box.

Baynote Launches Adaptive Web Suite

Baynote's new solution automatically adapts to real-time customer needs, delivering relevant and personal experience across digital touch points.

Gartner Releases Its Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management

The 2010 MQ report reveals that MDM is quickly approaching mainstream.

Demandbase Solution Can Make ID in Real Time

Real-Time ID is expected to provide a change to online marketing strategies.

Salesforce Announces Database.com, the Enterprise Database Built for the Cloud

Salesforce's new Database.com will be available across mobile devices, languages, and platforms.

Gartner Releases Its Magic Quadrant for BPM Suites

Gartner's MQ report reveals that more and more organizations are adopting BPM as a discipline.

Call Centers Becoming Profit Centers, According to Portrait Software Research

Stronger integration of customer data, online customer service, and company brand values seen as critical for turning large B2C call centers into revenue generators.

Medallia Launches Integrated Text Analytics Solution

Medallia's text analytics solution brings unstructured data analysis to organizations.

Verint Systems Releases New Impact 360 Text Analytics Solution

Verint's Customer Interaction Analytics portfolio includes text and sentiment analytics.

InContact Partners with Verint Systems

inContact aims to further service mid-market contact centers in providing their cloud-based workforce management solution.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving Shows Vendors Catching On

Gartner's MQ of EIA reveals that many vendors now offer e-mail archiving

RightNow Announces Voice Experience Manager

Voice Experience Manager allows businesses to a identify a caller before they enter the IVR maze

Zuora Launches 4 for the Cloud

Vendor Deep Dive — Zuora, Part 1: The on-demand billing specialist recently unveiled four different editions of Z-Commerce for the Cloud, providing infrastructure for the pay-as-you-go business model.

"Getting Social Customer Service Right" Forrester Research Report

01 Dec 2010

Diane Clarkson, online customer service analyst, lays out the most successful social media strategies across departments.

Upstarts Start to Move in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management

01 Dec 2010

Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management '10: With the mobile Web rising in importance, veterans Oracle, Open Text, and Autonomy share space with upstarts SDL, Sitecore, and FatWire.

FinancialForce.com Announces New Portal Within Salesforce Customer Portal

01 Dec 2010

New MyAccount application gives customers self-service access to their invoices 24/7.

Forrester Wave Report Reveals Key Trends in Customer Service

01 Dec 2010

The Forrester Wave: CRM Suites Customer Service Solutions report evaluates 19 of the leading CRM suite solutions

A Boost in Morale May Bolster Customer Loyalty

30 Nov 2010

RightNow Summit '10, Day 2: RightNow's "chief morale officer" explains the value of establishing a corporate atmosphere that's respectful of employees.

Customer-Driven E-Commerce Isn't Cutting-Edge — Just Uncommon

30 Nov 2010

Shop.org Summit '10The CEO of Urban Outfitters delivers opening keynote.

eGain Launches eGain Social Experience Suite

30 Nov 2010

eGain Social Experience Suite enables agents to move heated customer debates from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to private interaction channels

RightNow Launches RightNow CX for Facebook

30 Nov 2010

RightNow CX for Facebook allows organizations to interact with consumers via Facebook from the agent desktop

Social Media as Customer Service

30 Nov 2010

RightNow Summit '10: Panelists discuss how social media should be addressed across all departments.

Siemens Enterprise Communications to Unite Social Media and Contact Centers

30 Nov 2010

The provider of enterprise communications announces OpenScape Fusion Social Media.

Parature Announces Facebook for Parature

30 Nov 2010

Rosetta Stone will be the first company to use Parature's new Facebook application

CSO Insights Release Annual Lead Generation Report

30 Nov 2010

CSO Insights reveals email marketing to be the most powerful lead generation for second year in a row.

Cisco Systems Introduces Collaboration Software for Social Media Interactions

22 Nov 2010

The communications and networking giant's new Cisco SocialMiner promises ways to increase customer interactions through social media.

LiveVox Announces VoIP Agent@Ready

16 Nov 2010

A cloud-based solution promises to eliminate contact center "whispers."

Avaya Releases Aura Contact Center

16 Nov 2010

Avaya Aura Contact Center creates a collaborative space for agents, customers, and experts using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based communications.

Anybody's Bot

04 Nov 2010

Virtual agents, deemed the new "concierge" of the Internet, help customers navigate through ever-increasing Web site complexities.

The Crash of Google Wave

04 Nov 2010

The search-engine giant beaches its innovative collaboration engine.

To Predict and Serve

04 Nov 2010

Predictive analytics helps a police department make better use of limited resources.

Genesys Announces a New Social Media Strategy

19 Oct 2010

The Alcatel-Lucent Genesys Social Media Strategy provides enterprises with a more expansive way to monitor customer activity across social networks.

Call Weighting

22 Sep 2010

With ClickFox, Sprint takes an analytical look at its crosschannel customer experience—and saves millions in the process.

11 Tips to Conquer Contact Centers

22 Sep 2010

If your contact center empire feels as if it's crumbling all around you, these best practices may help you reclaim the seat of power.

A Tax on Every Call?

14 Sep 2010

A proposed federal tax on overseas calls has the potential to radically alter the contact center industry.

Is a Transparent Government a Trusted One?

31 Aug 2010

ForeSee Results determines a consistent link between online transparency and citizens' trust of federal Web sites.

8 Megatrends in Customer Experience

31 Aug 2010

The Temkin Group outlines eight customer "megatrends," predicting how companies should engage with customers over the next three to five years to sustain the strongest relationships.

The CRM Elite: Raising the Roof

24 Aug 2010

On the foundation of a Salesforce.com sales contact center, homebuilder Beazer Homes USA constructs increased sales out of fewer, better leads

Market Leaders: Open-Source CRM

24 Aug 2010

Rethink Your Strategy for Next-Generation Business Intelligence

19 Aug 2010

A new report urges companies to balance business impact with the cost of technology.

XTuple Expands to the Cloud

19 Aug 2010

The open-source upstart announces cloud-based services and three new editions of its flagship product.

ClickFox Targets the Market's Pulse

19 Aug 2010

The analytics specialist launches ClickFox Pulse, an analytics dashboard to capture the "pulse" of customers' experiences.

Partly Cloudy

11 Aug 2010

Two customers of communications provider Interactive Intelligence move their contact centers to the cloud—at least for now.

Are You Ready for Customer Service 4.0?

07 Aug 2010

CRM Evolution '10 — Day 2: ThinkJar founder Esteban Kolsky says the future of customer service will be service provided by customers.

CRM Evolution 2010 Opens with a Bit of Yellin

02 Aug 2010

CRM Evolution '10 — Day 1: Emily Yellin, author of Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us, shares some customer service interactions of her own, and reveals the secret of the karmic footprint.

Sword Ciboodle Releases Ciboodle Crowd

18 Jul 2010

The contact center specialist launches a new social CRM product to build communities comprising agents, consumers, and enterprises.

Sword Ciboodle and SAS Announce Partnership

18 Jul 2010

Sword Ciboodle and SAS revamp the contact center with SAS Real-Time Manager, designed to predict customer behavior.

Autonomy Promises Protection from Bad Comments

16 Jul 2010

The new Autonomy Social Media Governance product is intended to help businesses monitor social media channels for slanderous and inaccurate content.

Nice Systems Sticks with Eglue — Permanently

28 Jun 2010

The customer interaction specialist acquires longtime partner eglue, a manager of real-time decision-making and guidance for agent desktops, for at least $29 million in cash.

Consona Collects Compiere to Compete in the Cloud

28 Jun 2010

By acquiring a pioneer in open-source enterprise resource planning software, Consona hopes to strengthen its position in cloud computing.

Technology's Everyday Impact on the Everyman Consumer

17 Jun 2010

Internet Week NY '10: Advertising Research Foundation panelists from Google, Adweek, InsightExpress, and JWT stress the importance of video advertising.

Breaking Down the Silos of Social Media

13 Jun 2010

Internet Week NY '10: At an Advertising Research Foundation panel, executives from General Mills, Harris Interactive, and Porter Novelli reveal how brands should use Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.

RightNow Makes a Big Move Into Mobility

01 Jun 2010

RightNow Technologies announces the release of RightNow Mobile, increasing customer interaction via smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and GPS systems.

IBM Buys Sterling Commerce from AT&T

01 Jun 2010

IBM purchases Sterling Commerce from AT&T for $1.4 billion cash. IBM plans to use Sterling Commerce's software to connect more easily and efficiently with businesses, providers, and customers.

Angel.com Thinks Analytics Are Heavenly

25 Apr 2010

The vendor partners with business intelligence player MicroStrategy to deliver call analytics to the contact center.

CEO Greg Gianforte Delivers Keynote at RightNow Summit '10

11 Jan 2010

Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies, stresses mobile and social media interaction at RightNow Summit '10