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Gamification: What If the Game Is Over? January 05, 2013 
Gamification, using game-play mechanics for non-game applications to engage users and drive desired behavior, has become all the rage, or so it seems. Like any hot trend, there is a tendency to overcompensate for the sake of participating in the new, hot concept. The herd mentality leads everyone to think they need to gamify their product, app or solution to just to keep up with the pack.
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Amazon's Prime Directive Makes It No. 1 With Customers December 27, 2012 
For the eighth straight year, Amazon achieved the top position in ForeSee's survey of customer satisfaction during the holiday shopping season. Amazon maintained its No. 1 score of 88 out of 100 in the annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index. Amazon "continues to do a great job in providing customer experience," said ForeSee CEO Larry Freed.
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Gamification Brings In Serious Business December 22, 2012 
More than just a marketing gimmick, gamification has the potential to inject new life into a variety of industries and broaden the appeal of many new and existing offerings. The term "gamification" describes the use of game mechanics, such as challenges, achievements and rewards, to drive certain consumer behaviors in what are traditionally non-gaming contexts, such as television services, energy or health.
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Loyal Customers Are Not to Be Trifled With December 13, 2012 
As I've said in the past, CRM's biggest benefit is in extending your customers'
relationship with you for as long as you can. New customers are great, but returning
customers are profitable -- and profit is what you're really after, right? Thus, it makes sense to foster loyalty in these customers.
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Building Loyalty When Customers Are a Moving Target December 10, 2012 
When Double Cola wanted to encourage its customers to keep coming back for more of its vintage fizzy drink, it started a rewards program. Using tried-and-true loyalty methods, the company offered customers the opportunity to turn over the cola's caps, earn points, and get discounts and merchandise.
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Mobile CRM's Lofty and Contagious Expectations December 04, 2012 
The mobile experience has clearly changed consumers' expectations of the shopping experience, creating higher expectations. With in-stock notifications, a mobile shopper doesn't have to run around to various stores. Want to ask a question about a product? Many apps offer chat. If mobile has changed just this one piece of the consumer experience, one can only wonder what else it has changed.
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Study: Many Shades of Like in Brand-Consumer Engagement November 29, 2012 
A Like on Facebook goes a long way. Seventy percent of consumers who engage in social media make purchases from brands they are connected to, according to a new study released by SocialVibe. Connections form when a consumer clicks Like on Facebook, Follows a brand on Twitter or interacts with a brand's presence on other social networks including YouTube, Pinterest or Google+.
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The Most Desirable Customer Data Plays Hardest to Get November 29, 2012 
As a callow youth, I enlisted in the Navy and found myself at sea aboard the USS Gray as a bosun's mate. That meant standing a lot of watch on the bridge, and being on the bridge meant knowing how to report positions of other things based on a 360-degree arc. The idea was to have a 360-degree view of what was out there -- primarily so we didn't run into it.
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No One's Better at Wrecking CRM Than the CEO November 15, 2012 
I love CRM as a discipline, but I have no illusions about its ability to survive in the cruel world. The reality is that customer relationships are fragile things; they need the right environment to flourish and be profitable. There are a host of things that can scuttle these relationships, and most of them are entirely out of the control of the person tasked with CRM.
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When Disaster Strikes, Customer Service Exceptions Are the Rule November 08, 2012 
Disasters -- be they man-made or natural, like Hurricane Sandy -- showcase the best in people. Neighbor helps neighbor like never before, people share what they have, and assistance comes from unexpected places. They also showcase people at their worst -- looters, scammers and other lowlifes emerge and heartlessly seek to profit from the victims. Then there are businesses that do the same.
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How Is Tim Cook Not Livid When Apple Steals From Children? November 08, 2012 
I cannot believe that Apple, my favorite company in the whole world, still has its head stuck in the sand over deceptive in-app purchases in games targeted at small children. Sure, I heard the horror stories about Smurfs and zoo animals and buying food and supplies with children tap, tap, tapping their way to hundreds or thousands of dollars of in-app purchases.
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If You Build a Good Customer Experience, Fans Will Come November 01, 2012 
I'm a gigantic San Francisco Giants fan -- so, two World Series Championships in three years has been something of a dream come true. But when I was a kid, my family was devoted to the Oakland A's -- as they won three consecutive championships from 1972-1974. As a much younger adult, I worked for the Giants -- but today, I live about five miles from o.Co Coliseum, the home of the A's.
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Social Marketing: Right Idea for the Times October 24, 2012 
You might be tempted to consider social marketing just another idea in an endless stream of things dreamed up by the software industry -- and pundits like me -- to generate more business. Well, you'd be right about some of that, but I'd like to argue that the idea is more than hype and is, in fact, in sync with the times. Conceptually, marketing and sales have not changed for a very long time.
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Quit Trying to Control Your Customers October 11, 2012 
As a technology journalist, I interact with public relations professionals regularly, to the point where some firms have asked me to speak internally about what journalists are looking for from the companies they cover. Usually, these are straightforward discussions -- journalists want access and they want
honesty. They want to hear a good story.
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OpenWorld's Missing Ingredient October 10, 2012 
I went to Oracle OpenWorld as a guest of Oracle and came away with a variety of observations that I can share. Some of what I saw was under NDA and that will remain undisclosed, though I have to tell you that I did not see any labs or next-generation products beyond what my colleagues saw at the show. My secret experiences revolved around customer stories.
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CRM in a Customer-Empowered World September 28, 2012 
About five years ago, CRM analyst and author Paul Greenberg set out to develop a definition for social CRM, or CRM 2.0, as some called it at the time. Through his impetus, some crowdsourcing, some crowd-editing and ultimately, I suspect, a degree of fatigue, he arrived at a definition.
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Insurance and CRM: Big Barriers, Bigger Benefits September 14, 2012 
Back in my college days, I worked part-time for an insurance agent. It was an eye-opening job, and not just because it pointed out how many strange and silly ways people could get into car accidents (loose birthday balloons obstructing the driver's vision, concrete poured off an overpass into a brand-new convertible BMW, a catastrophic collision between a Saturn and some Canadian geese, etc.).
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CE: Our Next Great Customer-Focused Buzzword September 07, 2012 
CRM is not itself a technology -- it's a discipline enabled by a technology. But
the ideas are so completely enmeshed with technology today that it's almost impossible to talk CRM without lapsing into jargon. That's led to the abduction, abuse and expropriation of technical terms, which often results in confusion over what they actually mean.
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Better Billing Means Happier Customers September 06, 2012 
The billing function conjures up many images, few of them positive. Essential to success of your business, yet often a burden for most organizations independent of size or market, billing is seen as a necessary evil to collect cash and enable organizations to stay alive.
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Injecting That Personal Touch Into SMB Communications August 18, 2012 
In today's economy, there are many tools designed for sustaining small and mid-sized businesses. Web conferencing is a tool that an increasing number of companies find very useful. Over the last few years, Web conferencing and online meetings software have taken off as communication tools with several benefits, like reducing cost of travel and enabling long-distance meetings.
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