Customer Service

Last week Salesforce.com introduced its new support concept dubbed "The Service Cloud." I have to say it makes a lot of sense both as a product direction and as a business decision. The announcement is in line with many of the business initiatives that the company has made over the last decade in t...

Salesforce.com has rolled out another cloud offering -- this time for the service space. Called "Service Cloud," the bundled applications, which include integrated social networking tools, are built on the Force.com platform. Service Cloud allows users to create an online community for up to 250 cus...

For many e-tailers, online chat is a closer. Packaged and offered up to site visitors as a service, it provides an opportunity to close a sale when an uncertain customer wavers. Retailers were early adopters of this technology precisely because of the distinct return on investment, Conversive CEO Ro...

Memo to telecom service providers: "We never thanked you, but you did a great job offering us consolidated billing. It is hard to remember now, as for the last few years you have been so aggressive in promoting bundled services, but five years ago, this was a major pain point. Three bills for ISP, c...

The Internet provides opportunities for businesses to interact with customers in new ways. As innovations in social media appear, enterprises slowly adopt those same trends to offer alternatives for making the sale online. Some companies are attracting potential new clients through live video stream...

Are cable "bundle" customers changing channels to wireless telecom services? A recent study by the CFI Group, which focuses on measuring customer satisfaction and CRM issues, indicates they are. That is, if they can. Some can't, either because the choice is unavailable, or they have signed the optio...

Cable company and customer satisfaction: The two terms are often considered antithetical. Through the years, these corporations have earned a reputation of being slow to respond to customer inquiries, inflexible and callous. Now as new competitors tread on their cash cow video services, will these p...

The joke used to be on the U.S. Postal Service. Indeed, jabs about the government's mail system may have driven business to private-sector competitors like United Parcel Service, Federal Express and DHL. That was decades ago; now, it seems, some of the same companies designed to outperform the USPS...