Customer Service

The coming year is going to reorder entire industries due to customer churn. With this reordering will be an entirely new set of selling dynamics, as existing ones prove marginally successful into 2007. The old "bundle three" rule for higher customer retention will prove no longer as effective as i...

As most people know now, the practice of pretexting was publicly highlighted earlier this year when it was revealed that HP had hired private detectives to spy on reporters whose reporting appeared to be based on leaks from members of its Board. The PIs has used pretexting ruses to gain access to th...

Selling products and services through multiple channels offers a number of "touch points" where information can be gathered from customers or potential customers. Most people in marketing clearly understand the importance of using this information to personalize communications with customers and per...

Service centers get a lot more calls with complaints and criticisms than they get showers of praise. All telecom companies experience churn rates way above those of many other industries -- it isn't unheard of for 30 percent of an average telecom company's customers to switch providers in the course...

CosmoCom has upgraded its IP-based contact center software platform to version 5. Called CosmoCall Universe, the system has been enhanced to address multiple contact center channels in a unified fashion, according to Steve Kowarsky, executive vice president of CosmoCom. It also improved functionalit...

There is no limit, it seems, to what financial institutions are willing to spend to ensure that their customers' money is safe. The latest twist? Biometric safeguards, such as voice imprints or iris scans. To be sure, this technology already exists and is used in all sorts of high-end applications.

Demographic information is the most common type of information gathered from your customers, and today ranges from basic information such as name and address to age, education, profession, hobbies, pets, and virtually any type of factual attribute. The more you know about your customers' profiles, t...

A recent national survey found that an overwhelming 83 percent of consumers would purchase more online if retailers provided more interactive and interesting sites. Consumers surveyed expressed interest in a wide variety of features that would improve their shopping experience, but what does creatin...

One of the benefits from the explosion of sales effectiveness solutions has been the effect on the marketing process. For too long, selling was regarded as a pseudo science while marketing was regarded as an art that needed to be tightly controlled to prevent waste. So it was no surprise to hear d...

Measuring a Web site's performance isn't what it used to be. Site operators are increasingly turning to outside sources for the components of their Web pages. That can muddy the metrics for companies trying to get a handle on how their sites are really performing. Gomez Inc., though, believes it has...

Digital dashboards for the corporate world usually employ the typical "green light, yellow light, red light" motif, giving you an at-a-glance view of the company's bottom line (except, of course, for the color-blind -- like myself). However, the Holy Grail for metric gazers is not where the busines...

A survey of online banking illustrates how banks can cement brand loyalty and even increase market share through a thoughtful redesign of their online channel. The survey was one of three extensive research studies released by Keynote Competitive Research, measuring the performance and competitive ...

What should companies do -- and what should they refrain from doing -- when reacting to blog postings about their products or services? Robert Cox, president of the New York-based Media Bloggers Association and a consultant to consumer packaged goods companies, has very specific ideas on the subject...

ATG has announced that it will acquire e-commerce best-of-breed vendor eStara in a US$48.3 million cash-and-stock transaction that will increase ATG's market share and bring new niche functionality under its umbrella. eStara specializes in click-to-call technology -- an online e-commerce tool that l...

As if the airlines haven't had enough challenges since Sept. 11, 2001, British authorities were compelled to introduce a new one at the beginning of August. In addition to weathering economic downturns, volatile bankruptcies and merger flirtations, airlines now must comply with new carry-on restrict...