Crm News & Articles

Remember when the front office and the back office were separate things? When the folks who actually spoke to the customers had to dress nicely and even bathe daily, and use manners and speak in clear and coherent sentences, because they were the only representatives your customers would ever see?

There’s certainly not even a remote bit of controversy in saying that customers are truly the lifeblood that sustains the survival of businesses today. But are you doing everything you can to stay connected?

The Customer Life Cycle Experience belongs to everyone and no one. Every person within an organization who comes in contact with a customer is responsible for carrying the torch of customer service. And if you listen real close, your analytics can tell you what the customer wants. These and other insights were among those shared with us during this month's Tweet Jam.

Social analytics/CRM technology provider NextPrinciples is releasing a new solution called Insight-to-Action that the company terms an integrated social analytics and engagement platform for medium-to-large-sized users.

Marketers, and particularly those in the CMO positions will be forced to deal with the changing nature of the field in 2013. In addition, many marketing departments in all industries will need to become much more technically sound.

According to business video platform provider Qumu, three-quarters of a company’s business knowledge is spoken in meetings, not written down. When those meetings are video recorded, finding that knowledge has traditionally required that the videos first be transcribed into searchable text. Qumu is removing that step, by adding Speech Search to its video portal.

Although not yet officially announced, Salesforce has a bevy of updates planned for its Spring '13 release, and we've got a snapshot of some of the heftiest possibilities.

Productivity/collaboration solutions provider Zoho is adding updates to its CRM tool that make the solution more collaborative and social. New features include a document library, email filter and mobile location awareness capability.

Hype drives us all: we cheer for our products and later duck the jeers from market pundits and customers. 2012 saw plenty of hype in CRM. Let's separate the substance from the hype and see where CRM is headed in 2013.  

Technology for customer experience management is designed with one basic end goal -- enabling enterprises to deliver a great customer experience. But determining how to best deliver, and what even constitutes a positive experience, are not always easy tasks.

Cloud services broker, Cloud Sherpas has announced they've acquired and integrated with CloudTrigger, a cloud CRM solution consulting firm.

If the enterprise social applications market was a music genre, it would be punk rock. Everything about it just seems faster and louder. As I look ahead to 2013, I expect a continuation of 2012. In other words, the enterprise application market will continue to mutate rapidly under the effects of social, mobile and cloud.

In 2012, the focus on customer experience was all about delivering a great experience across platforms, channels and touch points. Leveraging key user data is integral, but so is delivering key messages and opportunities back to the user.

Social media management provider HootSuite is riding an app wave. In addition to the release of several apps last week for its platform, the Vancouver, California-based company is now unveiling several new apps.