online service

Are customer communities really all that helpful?

I’m attending the Gartner CRM Summit here in Scottsdale, Ariz. this week and Michael Maoz opened up the show with a pretty compelling keynote laying out how the way businesses interact with their customers is evolving, how organizations need to adapt as we come out of a global recession and how Gartner will address it all in the coming days.

A few of Maoz’s statements stood out, particularly in light of recent announcements from RightNow and Continued »

Natalie Petouhoff and five strategies for social media customer service

While many corporate social media initiatives have focused on marketing and public relations some companies have begun to use social networks and communities as a customer service channel.

Natalie Petouhoff, an analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, recently authored a report outlining five strategies to achieve customer service excellence with social media. Petouhoff interviewed a number of organizations, including Comcast and iRobot, to learn best practices and pitfalls to avoid with social media initiatives.

In this 15-minute podcast, she details some of her research and conclusions and outlines the five pest practices for customer service excellence with social media.

For more on social media and customer service:

Read Natalie Petouhoff’s blog entry on the five strategies for customer service and social media

See her case studies on Lenovo’s social media customer service and Sage Software’s initiative

 

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Esteban Kolsky on email customer service

Think the days of email as a useful customer service channel are over? Esteban Kolsky, vice president and practice leader at Kana Software and a former analyst with Gartner, says he’s seen customer service via email make a comeback.

Companies are finding that, for some service requests, email is both cheaper and more effective than phone support. Drawing on his research as an analyst and experiences since joining Kana, Kolsky offers best practices and market insight.

In this 15-minute podcast, listeners will learn:

• How — and why — email is re-emerging as an effective channel for customer service.

• How companies are leveraging automated email service.

• What metrics to use when measuring email service initiatives.

• How the 80/20 rule applies to email service.

 

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Expert predictions for CRM in 2008

Three industry observers share their predictions for the CRM market in the coming year.

Rob Bois, analyst with Boston-based AMR discusses SAP’s latest release, the outlook for CRM suites and spending in the year ahead.

He’s joined by Elana Anderson, independent analyst with NxtERA Marketing, who shares her thoughts on marketing technology in 2008, including behavioral targeting, getting past the hype of Web 2.0, mobile marketing and the role of the CMO.

John Ragsdale, research vice president with the Service and Support Professionals Association, also joins the conversation. John gives his predictions for Web self-service and its effects on customer service, leveraging user communities, wikis and the job outlook for customer service.

Program guide:

• (00:01) Rob Bois
• (20:14) Elana Anderson
• (32:29) John Ragsdale

 

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John Ragsdale on self-service

John Ragsdale is the vice president of research with the Service & Support Professionals Association, a longtime industry analyst and call center manager.

In this podcast he discusses the future of customer self-service technology, its evolution from a tactical to a strategic imperative and how vendors in the self-service market are innovating. He also shares his take on highly customized “microsites” that allow companies to create personalized pages for customer e-service and the growing importance of “click-to-call” customer service technology.

 

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Richard Feinberg on call center technology and outsourcing

Our Voices of CRM podcast series continues with this conversation with Richard Feinberg, director of the Center for Customer Driven Quality at Purdue University. Feinberg shares his thoughts on call center technology, including speech technology, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), how companies are now paying for some of the mistakes of call center offshore outsourcing and the best way to measure customer satisfaction.

Feinberg, a PhD, is also a consumer psychologist and professor in the Department of Consumer Sciences and Retailing at Purdue. He teaches courses in consumer behavior, retailing, “e”-retailing, CRM and leadership.

 

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