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| SEDONA
Releases Multi-Vertical CRM Solution
SEDONA Corp., a provider of web-based CRM solutions for small and
mid-sized businesses, has announced Intarsia version 5.1. Intarsia
is a vertical CRM application solution specifically designed and
priced to meet the needs of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs)
with multiple lines-of-business across multiple vertical industries.
The multi-vertical capability available in Intarsia version 5.1
provides organizations that support multiple lines-of-business to
have an accurate view of the overall relationships and interactions
they have with their customers and prospects, all within a single
system. Intarsia version 5.1 is available for community and regional
banks, credit unions and insurance companies and it is fully tailored
to meet their unique processes, back-end system integration, and
marketing analytics requirements. It also contains components that
are unique to the business requirements of each of these markets,
such as agency management for the insurance market. With Intarsia
version 5.1, small and mid-sized companies can now deploy a multi-vertical,
multi-currency, and multi-lingual CRM environment.
Dovarri Announces Mobile SFA Software
Dovarri Inc. has announced the delivery of wireless and mobility
solutions for HP products that specifically address the sales force
automation (SFA) needs of enterprise customers. The solutions, which
include HP access devices, servers and professional services paired
with Dovarri's SFA solution, deliver critical customer data to sales
professionals where they need it the most: in the field. Designed
to deliver an optimal mobile experience, the combined Dovarri and
HP solutions allow sales people to prospect, qualify and close deals
right in front of the customer on a mobile device. Armed with the
Dovarri mobile solution on an HP iPAQ Pocket PC or HP Compaq Tablet
PC, sales professionals will have a flexible, user-friendly mobile
sales solution with the power for extensive reporting capabilities
that management demands. With quick and simple implementation and
the choice to manage in-house or outsource to HP, customers of all
sizes are better able to achieve a rapid return on investment and
an increased competitive advantage through improved customer responsiveness.
Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance Turns to IEX
IEX Corp., a provider of contact center workforce management solutions,
has announced that Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance has selected IEX
TotalView SC, the IEX workforce management solution for smaller
contact centers, to streamline operations and improve agent performance
in its customer service contact center. The TotalView SC solution
provides the same core functionality as the IEX TotalView Workforce
Management solution, but is priced and tailored to meet the needs
of centers with fewer than 100 agents. Turnkey installation and
training, along with pre-loaded templates, profiles and sample agent
records make it easy for smaller-sized contact centers to get up
and running quickly, and achieve the benefits of advanced workforce
management technology in their operations,
AltiGen Releases AltiWare 5.0
AltiGen Communications Inc. , a provider of next-generation IP call
center solutions and IP-PBX telephone systems for small-to-midsize
businesses, has announced the release of AltiWare version 5.0. This
marks the sixth generation of the AltiWare software platform supporting
AltiGen's AltiServ systems: the AltiContact Manager, AltiServ Contact
Center and AltiServ IP Business telephone systems. The result of
more than a year of rigorous development and testing, version 5.0
offers significant enhancements for every aspect of the AltiGen
system including call center, distributed communications, Voice
over IP, enhanced general telephone systems functionalities, management
and reporting and improved integration capabilities. AltiGen has
also enhanced the overall look and feel of all administrative interfaces
and desktop PC software. This latest version continues to deliver
on AltiGen's commitment to providing businesses with cost-effective,
feature-rich IP phone systems and contact center solutions, helping
companies increase productivity, streamline business costs and improve
customer service.
Perseus Releases EFM System
Perseus Development Corp., a provider of Windows-based and PDA-based
survey software, announced the release of Perseus SurveySolutions
Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM), a complete web-based application
that allows enterprise managers to centrally manage and control
the survey practices of their organization. SurveySolutions/EFM
enables enterprises to monitor and optimize relationships with customers,
employees, web-site visitors, partners and members at every interaction.
The key benefit of SurveySolutions/EFM is that it provides centralized
control of the design, implementation, distribution, and analyses
of the feedback process. Completely Web-enabled, it supports multiple
workgroups and allows individuals within workgroups to share and
review questionnaires and survey results.
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| Is
Your Customer Service Operation Facing These Challenges?
- Requests
fall through the cracks and customers experience delays
- Agents
spend more time on each issue than necessary
- Customer
satisfaction levels are not achieved
- Agents
have limited access to shared data and/or problem
resolution resources
Consider
web-based customer service automation. Read about how
you can deliver the best customer experience with a
multi-channel problem management strategy.
Download
our complimentary white paper, “All Customer Service
Automation Solutions Are Not Created Equal”.
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| Voice
Automation or Outsourcing? - Make the Cost-Cutting Strategy
Fit the Call
by Mark Levinson, President, VoxMedia Consulting
Call center
managers today are under enormous pressure to drive
down costs. The two main weapons in their arsenal are
outsourcing and voice automation. Both can save money,
but which approach is right for their companies and
their customers?
Outsourcing
and voice automation each have advantages and disadvantages.
But choosing between them is not simply a matter of
comparing return-on-investment. It turns out that the
types of calls and transactions that are best suited
for voice automation are not necessarily the same as
those that make the most sense for outsourcing. And,
of course, there are probably calls that should continue
to be handled by in-house agents. So, when making decisions
about automation or outsourcing (or not), it’s
instructive to take a look at them from the point of
view of the types of calls you have to handle.
Full
Article...
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| Payment
Choices Lead to More Sales Online
According to a recent report from CyberSource, the more payment
methods offered by e-commerce Web sites in North America, the higher
the sales conversion. Specifically, CyberSource finds that North
American e-commerce Web sites offering four or more payment methods
get, on average, sales conversion rates of 72%. Web sites offering
three payment methods receive conversion rates of 71% — 20%
higher than those Web sites offering just one payment method.
So
what kind of payment options are these sites offering their potential
customers? CyberSource determines that nearly all sites offer general
purpose card payments (payments made with Visa, American Express,
Master Card or Discover cards). Less than one-half of respondents
offer any other payment option, but the percentages are not necessarily
insignificant — 46% offer gift certificate payments and 41%
allow consumers to choose to be charged with recurring billing options.
Further, over 20% offer choices like PayPal or electronic checks.
Considering
many consumers have fears about giving up their credit card information
online to make a purchase, online retailers are well-advised to
publicize the number of alternative payment methods they offer online.
Education could be the key to further adoption.
More...
Procurement:
Optimizing Supply Chain Savings
Top companies depend on savvy purchasing tactics to increase supply
chain performance measurements, according to research by benchmark
and consulting firm Best Practices, LLC. New research reveals the
supply chain practices leading manufacturing companies use to gain
a competitive edge, includes these findings:
- Top-performing
procurement departments run their organization with fewer than
one procurement official for every 1,000 company employees. These
lean organizations also demonstrate superior on-time delivery,
lead time, and other supply chain performance measures, indicating
streamlined and automated systems that eliminate department waste,
lower costs, and deliver outstanding customer service.
- Top-performing
procurement departments support the realization of more than $150
million in revenue per procurement employee. Coupled with minimized
supply chain costs, these organizations are having a profound
impact on corporate profitability and shareholder value.
- Profiled
companies claim purchasing savings of up to 25 percent off retail/un-discounted
prices through diligent negotiation (not including volume discounts
or similar reductions offered to each customer).
Optimized
supply chain systems allow procurement professionals to focus on
rooting out costs at every opportunity, according to Best Practices.
Commodity, inventory, and distribution management are constantly
under pressure to realize ever increasing gains for the organization.
More...
Older
Generation Less Receptive to Wireless Marketing
Despite the recent marketing trend to use wireless telephone messaging
as a channel to reach customers, this practice is generally considered
invasive and undesirable by older generations of consumers, according
to a survey by FIND/SVP's Guideline Research Division. The survey
of a representative group of online consumers found that about 65
percent of participants said voice mail or direct phone contact
was the most despised method of contact for marketers.
The
survey also found that approximately 56 percent of respondents would
prefer not to receive text messages from the companies they already
have dealings with, while 44 percent said they would be receptive
to receiving marketing messages through their phones. It is important
to note that the average age of survey respondents was approximately
42 years old.
While
the survey indicates a lack of desire for consumers to receive marketing
messages through these new methods, early adapters to technology,
such as Generation Y, are more likely to be open to this type of
contact.
The
respondents who said that they would be receptive to various select
services via wireless messaging expressed interest in the following:
55 percent said wireless bills/account updates; 54 percent said
direct response surveys; 38 percent said new product availability
updates; 34 percent said financial services (i.e. banking, stocks,
insurance); and 33 percent said sports-related scores and stories.
The
potential for wireless messaging will continue to grow as more phones
are developed and sold with advanced technologies that allow for
this type of marketing, according to the Trend Report. Therefore,
the shift from wire line communications to wireless presents a myriad
of opportunities, including the dissemination of photos, picture
brochures and other enriched collateral. In the end, according to
the Trend Report, the companies that best adapt the old-world approach
to selling and understanding their customers will be the clear winners
in marketing via this new channel.
More...
Buying
Patterns for Offshore Services
Based on interviews with 30 U.S. enterprises that currently leverage
offshore as part of an overall sourcing strategy to support their
IT and business services needs, the results of a new demand-side
IDC study show that U.S. companies are not only leveraging offshore
to source a wide variety of business and IT services but also requiring
that key best practices be integrated into the process of procuring
these services. In addition to these findings, the study reveals
that enterprises are looking to increase their offshore spending
for these types of services by approximately 25% over the next 12
to 24 months.
While
the share of budgetary investment currently made by companies in
procuring offshore services is still small, relative to total budgetary
expenditures on IT, the interest in increasing spending on offshore
highlights that overall offshore expenditures in the coming years
will become a larger share of total spend. A major impact of this
increased spending will be the need by service providers to seriously
adjust their service delivery capabilities in order to support the
broader set of services required by companies going offshore.
More...
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| CRM
Success Hinges on Integrated Order Management
So far, CRM has focused on the elusive goal of the 360-degree view
of the customer. And while that is a good goal, customer-lifecycle
management also is an important element in the success of CRM projects.
To understand the customer
lifecycle, enterprises need to capture certain crucial events —
such as orders placed — and then analyze that data. Thus,
analytics is one of the hottest areas in CRM software right now.
Full
Article...
Knowledge-Powered
Service
Across industries, profit margins are being squeezed as enterprises
face relentless competition and customers increasingly regard products
as commodities. These market conditions are driving enterprises
to distinguish themselves through the delivery of exceptional customer
service in order to increase customer satisfaction and retention.
At the same time, enterprises expect improvements in service to
take place within the constraints of limited and diminishing budgets.
Enterprises have attempted to deliver a better customer experience
at lower cost by analyzing the costs associated with resolving customer
inquiries and using CRM applications to streamline each segment
of a service interaction.
Full
Article...
Go-to-Market
Strategies: Steps to Success
New offerings have always driven growth in the technology business,
but bringing them successfully to market today has become both more
important and more difficult. Competition is more intense, existing
offers become commodities more quickly, and buyers are more skeptical
of the return on technology investment. As a result, marketers are
under tremendous pressure to increase their hit rate when they launch
new services and solutions.
The first response to
the added pressure is often to review the process. Many large tech
firms are now working hard to improve the go-to-market process with
a goal of creating a more consistent, systematic, and efficient
approach. Rather than rely on ad hoc initiatives from anywhere in
the organization, a good process can create discipline for the entire
development, launch, and management cycle. But process in itself
is not enough. It too often breaks down, fails to provide the necessary
support, or lets through too many misguided new offers.
Full
Article...
Call
Centers: How to Increase Efficiency
The front lines of a corporate call center are often charged with
emotion, and companies need to account for that when hiring and
training workers to take on this critical role in customer contact,
according to speakers at a recent Call Center Industry Forum sponsored
by Wharton's Financial Institutions Center.
With an estimated 3% of the U.S. workforce employed in call centers,
the emotional labor of dealing with customers can lead to costly
employee burnout and high turnover rates. It’s important to
figure out ways to counter stressful situations so that employees
are not feeling overwhelmed by their work and so they are not building
up more steam.
Full
Article...
Assessing
the Value of CRM
Companies across virtually every industry sector in the United States
have been cutting costs aggressively over the past three years to
stabilize and grow profits in a tough economy. After years of "cutting"
their way to prosperity, many companies are now re-focusing on top-line
revenue growth to create shareholder value — a strategy that
is highly in line with conventional wisdom, since a 1 percent increase
in price often has a greater impact on the bottom line than a 10
percent decrease in cost. However, growing revenues profitably has
never been as straightforward as taking dollars out of the cost
structure. To achieve this, companies have launched a variety of
growth initiatives: improving the customer experience; implementing
up-selling and cross-selling efforts through call centers; increasing
customer touch points through direct and telemarketing channels;
improving sales force efficiencies; speeding new product introductions.
Unfortunately, few of these initiatives have made a meaningful and
sustainable contribution to ongoing revenues. Implementing a customer
strategy and making significant strategic change is more difficult
than most believe.
Many
companies have turned to CRM solutions to solve such problems. CRM
can be a powerful tool to understand customer needs and help derive
additional value from customers. Developing the right customer strategy,
aligning your organization to serve your customers, and establishing
the supporting processes and tools for the strategy are all integral
components of CRM. The promise of value creation through improved
customer alignment and strategy plays out in enhanced capabilities
in a variety of areas across the organization.
Full Article...
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|  Purple
Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
by Seth Godin
What do Starbucks and
JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple and DutchBoy and Kensington and
Zespri and Hard Candy have that you don't? How do they continue
to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind
former tried-and true brands to gasp their last?
Face it, the checklist
of tired 'P's marketers have used for decades to get their product
noticed -Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few-aren't working
anymore. There's an exceptionally important 'P' that has to be added
to the list. It's Purple Cow.
Cows, after you've seen
one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though...now that
would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something
counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day,
consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of
brown cows-but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow. And it's
not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or
service. Purple Cow is inherent. It's built right in, or it's not
there. Period.
In
Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything
you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable.
For
more information, or to order your copy...
You can find more industry sepcific
books at our web site:
http://www.crmindustry.com/
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| Next-Generation
Self-Service: Moving from "Search" to "Resolution"
June 16 - 11:00am PT
Find out
how Network Associates empowers their customers with
the next generation of self-service sites.
Also featuring:
Allen Bonde, Founder & Lead Analyst, Allen Bonde
Group; Mark Angel, Founder & CTO, Kanisa, and Ginger
Conlon, Editor CRM Magazine
Register
at: http://www.destinationcrm.com/webevents/kanisa/16jun2004/si
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| Results
of Research: 2004 Service and Support Metrics
The results of supportindustry.com’s research study to explore
current trends in service and support is here! The research was
conducted using technology from CustomerSat.com and received nearly
70 responses from high-level executives across a range of industries.
The data provides valuable insight into leading service and support
trends and challenges, the technologies deployed to improve service
and support delivery, and the types of metrics support organizations
are using to measure performance.
Get your copy today!
(please note: you will need your member log-in to access this data).
http://www.supportindustry.com/members/2004survey_summary.htm
White Paper: 2004 Trends and Directions in Web-Based Support
More and more customer service organizations are looking to e-support
and e-service technologies to enable them to deliver a quality customer
experience. These technologies allow organizations to improve processes
and support delivery while, in many cases, driving down costs. These
offerings reduce the burden on overworked help desks and contact
centers in a variety of ways: automating and streamlining the resolution
of common problems, allowing businesses to push service and support
to less-expensive and expedient channels, and enabling employees
and customers to serve themselves.
Read
the Full White Paper:
http://www.supportindustry.com/whitepaper/index.htm
Visit Our Other Web Sites!
supportindustry.com
Access content our web site dedicated entirely to the Service and
Support marketplace! http://www.supportindustry.com/
RecognizeServiceExcellence.com
Access content related to all aspects of creating a corporate culture
that promotes great service, including topics such as training,
leadership, teams, the new workforce and much more. http://www.RecognizeServiceExcellence.com/
Check out the crmindustry.com Resource
Center
crmindustry.com has launched a new interactive database called the
Resource Center. Free for all members, the Resource Center allows
members to easily view and search valuable information related to
Customer Relationship Management. Check it out at: http://www.crmindustry.com/resourcectr/index.html
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