OPINION
CE: Our Next Great Customer-Focused Buzzword
CE: Our Next Great Customer-Focused Buzzword
Friday - September 7, 2012
CRM is not itself a technology -- it's a discipline enabled by a technology. But
the ideas are so completely enmeshed with technology today that it's almost impossible to talk CRM without lapsing into jargon. That's led to the abduction, abuse and expropriation of technical terms, which often results in confusion over what they actually mean. Just look at how terms like "the cloud," "customer experience" and "social CRM" have been loosely handled. At this stage, the definitions of these terms are cloudy at best.
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EXPERT ADVICE
Better Billing Means Happier Customers
Better Billing Means Happier Customers
Thursday - September 6, 2012
The billing function conjures up many images, few of them positive. Essential to success of your business, yet often a burden for most organizations independent of size or market, billing is seen as a necessary evil to collect cash and enable organizations to stay alive.
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INSIGHTS
Marketing's New Golden Age
Marketing's New Golden Age
Wednesday - September 5, 2012
Now is the golden age of marketing. I was tempted to write the second golden age since history sometimes seems to repeat but I am more of the Mark Twain school of history and he believed that history did not repeat itself but that it rhymed.
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The Rise of Self-Service Mobile CRM
Tuesday - September 4, 2012
Increasingly, CRM vendors -- and their customers -- are recognizing the value of applying mobile technologies to the self-service piece of a CRM operations. In response, more and more vendors are rolling out new applications for companies that wish to target this emerging, but rapidly growing, demand point.
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BEST OF ECT NEWS
5 Indicators That a Small Business Needs CRM
5 Indicators That a Small Business Needs CRM
Monday - September 3, 2012
There's a lot of opportunity for CRM vendors seeking to reach small businesses.
While there are 15 million seats of CRM in action today, there are a lot more than
15 million customer-facing workers out there, and the vast majority of them are in
small businesses. That's a big opportunity for CRM vendors -- but what does it mean for potential CRM users?
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PRODUCT PROFILE
Blackbaud Offers Nonprofits Sharper Prospecting Tools
Blackbaud Offers Nonprofits Sharper Prospecting Tools
Friday - August 31, 2012
Blackbaud has enhanced its CRM app for nonprofits with completely redesigned prospect and research capabilities. It is the company's second major release this year, said Tiffany Crumpton, senior marketing manager for CRM solutions. "This release was long in the works."
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OPINION
4 CRM Lessons to Apply as You Move to Social CRM
4 CRM Lessons to Apply as You Move to Social CRM
Thursday - August 30, 2012
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, wrote George Santayana, and if you've covered technology as long as I have, you know that the cycles of repetition become shorter with each passing year. When it comes to CRM, we're seeing it again in the form of social CRM: companies are making the same mistakes they made at the start of the CRM era.
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INSIGHTS
Transmutation in the C Suite
Transmutation in the C Suite
Wednesday - August 29, 2012
My sources tell me that Salesforce.com will be handling its major Dreamforce announcements differently this year. Rather than letting us drink from a firehose at the event, they promise to tell us much of their news beforehand so that they can spend the keynotes, I assume, drilling down into more of the substance of their announcements.
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Mobile CRM: Cost Center or Profit Maker? Part 2
Tuesday - August 28, 2012
Buried in a recent J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction study -- which showed consumers' satisfaction with credit cards was at a six-year high -- was this very telling factoid: Only 7 percent of credit card customers use their mobile phones to complete transactions, up from 4 percent in 2011.
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PRODUCT PROFILE
Kana Goes Modular With New Express Application
Kana Goes Modular With New Express Application
Monday - August 27, 2012
Kana Software is pushing into the mid-market space with a new offering called "Kana Express." It is a multi-channel Web customer service application divided into four modules, all of which can be deployed separately or used as a whole suite.
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Credit Card Customer Satisfaction Charges Upward
Friday - August 24, 2012
Customer satisfaction with the credit card industry has stabilized after years of dramatic changes to the space, according to J.D. Power and Associates' 2012 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction study. It found that for the third consecutive year, customers' satisfaction with their credits cards has increased.
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OPINION
How Mobile Can Help CRM Get Past Its Adoption Issues
How Mobile Can Help CRM Get Past Its Adoption Issues
Thursday - August 23, 2012
If Winston Churchill had been a CRM pundit, he may have penned the immortal turn of phrase, "never in the course of human events have so many paid so much to have so few use an application." That would have made him a pretty awful CRM writer. But give fictional Winston a break -- it is difficult to summarize the ongoing struggle with user adoption in a concise way.
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INSIGHTS
Sage Charts Its Course
Sage Charts Its Course
Wednesday - August 22, 2012
Pascal Houillon, the CEO of Sage North America, has been at the job for a bit over a year. He took over the reins at last year's Sage Summit where he famously introduced a new branding exercise. Houillon's idea was to make Sage a more prominent brand by de-emphasizing the individual product names, in many cases renaming them.
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