I’ve read plenty about companies looking to cut costs by trimming CRM budgets, but I think Gartner brings up some great points in one of their latest reports about how improving one’s CRM initiatives when you don’t have the money doesn’t have to be about the technology. It’s funny that after so many years of … Continue reading »
Posted in May 2009 …
Optimizing the Call Center to Optimize the Customer Interaction
It still amazes me how the call center, which is perhaps the pinnacle interaction between a customer and a business, still undervalues the actual interaction. After speaking with a call center customer this morning, a Canadian outsourcer called Tacamor, it’s amazing just how much of the technology is designed to run the call center, not … Continue reading »
Monopolizing the Customer Experience
I’m kind of thinking out loud (typing out loud?) here, but a blog post by Sav Rodrigues of at InfoWorld got me thinking. Savio’s post is about the experience factor of the Linux desktop OS: people tend to pay the extra $50 for a Windows Netbook he argues because they simply know what to expect … Continue reading »
A History Lesson in CRM
I couldn’t resist commenting on Martin’s blog post below, in addition to the linked comments made by Josh Weinberger and Jill Dyche over on the destinationcrm.com blog. I’ve always been a big history buff, mostly because it provides perspective on what’s happening today and what we can expect in the immediate future, whether it be … Continue reading »
Looking Forward by Looking Backwards in the CRM World
One of the first BIG issues I worked on while a journalist with CRM magazine had Tom Siebel as the cover story. This was back in October of 2002. Now, realize, this was NOT Siebel’s heydey – but quite the opposite. Still, it was a great interview in a lot of ways. The CRM Magazine … Continue reading »
CRM at Work
I was in touch with a partner today about CRM implementations and the volume and kinds of data that companies new to CRM are forced to handle. All too often, CRM becomes an exercise in managing customer information, as opposed to actual relationships. Businesses become to bogged down the numbers statistics instead of actually putting … Continue reading »
CRM, CMS Systems and Cloud Computing
Are you running your CRM system in tandem with a content management system (CMS)? Many have yet to see the simple need to integrate a CMS with their CRM initiative. But the basic benefits are clear: -Place sales and marketing collateral into the hands of sales people with ease and allow them to change that … Continue reading »
Is Remarketing a Good Idea?
The idea of “following” an online shopper who leaves the site without buying anything could be construed by some as evasive. But as this New York Times article details, that’s exactly what might start to happen thanks to a new service called Abandonment Tracker Pro. A Web store will be notified by Tracker Pro when … Continue reading »
Where is the True Value in Blog Tracking? (Hint: Not in the Blog Post Usually)
I was initially going to write a very quick mention that Starbucks is looking to better merge its online and offline viral marketing activities, which I think is a great idea. In this economy, a lot of people’s first discretionary cutback is a $4 latte. Starbucks has had an uphill battle to climb in a … Continue reading »
Twitter Data Persistence (For Corporate Twitter Initiatives, or Data Geeks)
We have been talking a lot about how companies should be getting on the Twitter bandwagon to keep their ear to the brand sentiment grindstone as it were. But Twitter, like many cloud-based tools having scalability problems due to super fast and unpredictable growth (maybe twitter could be using CRM to discover its growth trajectories … Continue reading »
