Customer Service

5 Places Customer Relationships Go to Die
June 14, 2013

Building a customer relationship -- the kind that lasts a long time -- is a not an easy thing. There are lots of occasions where things can go awry, touch points where signals can get crossed and communications that can unwittingly turn a customer off. In a lot of cases, the conclusion is triggered by something the business does that brings the relationship to a premature end.

Where CRM and BPM Meet
June 13, 2013

Pegasystems held PegaWorld in "PegOrlando" this week, and a good show it was. I have always wondered about the difference between CRM (social and otherwise) and BPM, or business process management, so I was happy to attend. Both CRM and BPM deal with the interaction between the vendor and customer, and each is involved in doing the things that make customers come back.

Overdraft Protection May Do More Harm Than Good
June 12, 2013

Overdraft costs on consumer checking accounts vary widely across financial institutions and often result in more costs and more involuntary account closures for consumers who opt into such coverage, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported on Tuesday. "Consumers need to be able to anticipate and avoid unnecessary fees on their checking accounts," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

How's Your Mistake Process Management?
June 06, 2013

Perfection is elusive, if not impossible to achieve. Businesses are made up of people, and people are imperfect. They make mistakes -- mistakes involving internal operations and mistakes that affect customers. How many have planned for those inevitable instances when people prove fallible? Not many. We don't like to envision ourselves as vulnerable to making mistakes.

Through the Looking Glass Watson
May 29, 2013

I was recently discussing Watson -- the IBM super silicon brain that won Jeopardy! -- with a reporter writing an article. Around the same time, I was also looking into Google Glass, the wearable computer that enables people to record what they see and to see what they're recording through a teeny tiny screen mounted on a frame over their eyebrows.

Crowdsourced App Helps Otis Lift E-Service to Another Level
May 24, 2013

Mobile CRM is well entrenched in the sales and marketing spaces -- perhaps too entrenched in some cases. However, the third tier of traditional CRM -- service -- has barely been breached by mobile technologies. Some headway has been made, but for the most part it has been in fits and starts. Only a few vendors offer e-service applications for the mobile environment.

When Customers Get the Shaft, Companies Are the Biggest Losers
May 23, 2013

Do you ever wonder why some companies flourish and grow while others struggle? Why you love doing business with some but not others? It all has to do with how they interact with customers. Hilton Head Island in South Carolina has become my family's favorite vacation destination. There are two big brand name hotels there, and we've experienced a big difference in the way they treat customers.

Integration Plus Intelligence Equals Multichannel Campaign Success
May 23, 2013

The personality inventory known as the "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator" is premised on the idea that different people process information in different ways. Some people are verbal processors. Others are visual processors. Some people respond more strongly to images -- others to text. The most effective way to learn is to map the different learning styles to each individual's characteristic strengths.

Criticism: A Security Chief's Most Valuable Resource
May 17, 2013

This past week, a lesson about enterprise information security found its way to me via a somewhat unorthodox channel: specifically, an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. In this particular episode, the upshot was that Ramsay wasn't able to help. Why not? The owners weren't able to take criticism. There's a lesson in this for those of us in the network and security space.

Bloomberg Caught With Hands in the Customer Data Jar
May 16, 2013

Bloomberg has been embroiled in scandal since news broke last week that its reporters were using the company's corporate terminals to monitor its customers' activities. The story began to unravel when news surfaced that Goldman Sachs had confronted Bloomberg over the possibility that reporters were accessing its account data.

CRM's Stairway to Stardom
May 14, 2013

Although the acronym "CRM" has been around for a long time, most people have no idea what it means. That's kind of a shame, because they brush up against the effects of CRM every day in their interactions with the businesses they patronize. As a result, when I say I write about CRM, I'm often asked to explain what it is. That leads me to think a lot about a practical definition of "CRM."

Improving IT Ops Service Levels and Efficiency
April 22, 2013

New tools are available to help with service level management, but they require a new perspective on how IT infrastructure components should be managed. The key is to embrace a new ideal of managing every infrastructure component from the perspective of how it impacts end-user service levels. To do this, IT operations teams must understand the three laws of service-oriented IT operations management.

Kana Adds Context, Subtracts Search
April 16, 2013

Kana Software on Tuesday debuted its next generation of Kana Enterprise, a multichannel customer service application with functionality for both the agent-based desktop and self-service. Its features include case management; Web self-service; mobile chat; co-browsing; social listening, analytics and community engagement; email, campaign and white mail management; and advanced knowledge management.

United Sinks to Bottom of Customer Satisfaction Barrel
April 09, 2013

Airline travel experiences were relatively satisfactory for passengers in 2012, based on a number of metrics -- except for the most telling one of all: customer complaints. Those rose sharply, according to the Airline Quality Rankings Report, which examined 14 of the largest U.S. airlines and their performance. Overall, Virgin America claimed the highest customer satisfaction rank, while United Airlines scored the lowest.

Salesforce Cranks Up Chatter for Social Intelligence
April 05, 2013

Salesforce.com has upgraded Salesforce Chatter with a new feature that collects and aggregates unstructured data -- or perhaps better put, social intelligence -- onto one page for easy reference. The feature is called Chatter Topics and Expertise, and it lets users find information and related resources and identify experts, based on topics of interest.

Cook's Apology Part of China Brand Rehab
April 02, 2013

Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a public apology to customers in China this week following nationwide criticism over the way the company handles warranty and return policies in the country. For the past two weeks, several media outlets in China have run stories claiming that Apple's customer service policies, particularly in regards to the iPhone, leave much to be desired.

Apple Apologizes to Chinese Customers Following Media Beatdown
April 02, 2013

Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized Monday to Chinese customers over the company's warranty policy, adding that he would improve customer service in China, which is now Apple's second-biggest market. The apology may be linked to a mid-March television special that aired on "Consumer Rights Day," claiming Apple's Chinese customers were treated worse than their Western counterparts.

Finance Companies Bristle at Public Airing of Consumer Complaints
April 02, 2013

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau announced last week that it has expanded the Consumer Complaint Database it launched last summer, increasing the number of complaints about credit card companies from 19,000 or so to 90,000. The added data comes from additional players such as mortgage companies, banks, private student loan providers and other consumer lenders.

CallCopy Lets Managers See What Customers Are Saying
April 01, 2013

CallCopy recently unveiled cc: Discover 5.1, an upgrade to its flagship workforce optimization suite. Many of the changes incorporated in this version were made at the behest of customers who provided feedback at the company's first annual User Conference last fall, said Patrick Hall, CMO of CallCopy. Taken as a whole, the upgraded application "provides a simple solution to solving complicated problems."

Walmart's Latest Bright Idea: Let Customers Do the Schlepping
March 29, 2013

Walmart reportedly wants to get the jump on e-tail competitors such as Amazon by widely offering same-day delivery for online purchases. Instead of contracting with a shipping provider, it would use one of its most plentiful and never-ending resources: the customers who stream into its 4,000 stores every day.