Uncategorized

The Taxpayer Advocate Service on Wednesday released its annual report to Congress. Among other things, the report warns that a five-year plan to revamp how the Internal Revenue Service operates may result in a substantial reduction in telephone and face-to-face interactions with taxpayers. "Based on...

I've been trying to analyze modern rewards programs and customer loyalty recently for a project. It's a complex issue and so it is tricky to tease apart -- nothing like trying to defuse a bomb, but intellectually challenging for sure. At the heart of the issue is a body of research that says rewards...

Amazon UK recently introduced a monthly payment plan -- Pay Monthly -- for customers who purchase products it directly sells and ships. The offer doesn't extend to third-party retailers' products on its site. Customers whose order, including shipping and taxes, totals Pounds 400 are eligible for the...

At this time of the year, there's a great clamoring among the business publishing class for predictions. That is partly because prediction stories are considered easy to write, and once they're done the staff can go celebrate the holidays while their publication continues to deliver content. However...

Temkin Group on Tuesday predicted 2016 will be the year of emotion. That's one of 11 customer experience trends to watch for in the coming year, managing partner Bruce Temkin wrote in a blog post. "Emotion is the component of customer experience that has the largest impact on loyalty, but it is also...

Sage Software on Wednesday announced that it has launched Sage Live on the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace. Sage Live, built on the Salesforce AppCloud, gives small businesses real-time data connecting CRM, accounting and financial data, and can scale with a business. It works with thousands of t...

This year we traded in terminologies going from big data and analytics to digital disruption as the market-moving meme. I am not sure either one hits the spot, but they give me something to write about. Other things happened in 2015 too, but I'm just going to focus here. It seems to me we focus on t...

The end of the year brings out some interesting goodies from various workshops competing with Santa for big kids' attention. Some of it is pretty good stuff. Here's a sampling of the best end-of-year product announcements from the cloud community designed to put you in the post-holiday, already-back...

The amount of effort spent on talking and thinking about the best ways to connect with customers truly is incredible. The amount of ink spilled -- real and virtual -- the number of conferences held, and the dollars spent on efforts and expertise are vast. The irony is that businesses often start out...

Microsoft this week released Dynamics CRM 2016 in CRM Online and on-premises versions. Built-in intelligence is a key feature of the package, which is available in 130 markets and 144 languages. It leverages the Cortana Analytics Suite's advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities. Intellig...

Customers always do what they're supposed to do. If it's not what vendors want them to do, then it's likely because vendors haven't figured out how to ask the right question.

Despite all the talk about the customer journey, the increasing use of CRM, the omnichannel approach, and the seamless customer experience, stores still don't have technology down pat for the holiday rush, according to the "2015 Connected Shoppers Report" Salesforce released last month.

The term "customer experience" flows from the lips of business people so smoothly these days. Its importance has been trending upward for the last decade, and according to Gartner, by 2018 more than half of all businesses will implement significant business model changes in their efforts to improve ...

Here's a bold proclamation: Internally-developed IT software is a decelerator to business. When the need is specialized and you have a fully staffed IT team, there's a natural temptation to put everyone to work on a custom development project. For today's companies, however, this is often the slowes...