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Customer Relationship Management
Gartner Research Competitive Landscape Analysis, CRM BPO Providers, Worldwide, 2007 Providers of CRM business process outsourcing services struggle to differentiate themselves. This report offers insight into 10 of the largest CRM BPO providers by revenue. CRM BPO providers can use this report to develop, modify or evaluate strategies for competing in this market.
Customer Centricity, Inc. Avoiding CRM's Common Pitfalls Many companies have placed bets on Customer Relationship Management (CRM), investing thousands or even millions on new initiatives. With the anticipated benefits that CRM brings, there is no wonder why. Why then, do studies show that between 55% and 75% of all CRM initiatives fail to meet objectives? While companies are "sold on" the promises of CRM, there are many aspects of CRM initiatives that must be addressed to ensure the anticipated return on investment (ROI) is achieved.
Sales and Marketing De-Bunking Mobile CRM Myths by: Christine Galea Just the mere mention of the acronym CRM makes salespeople cringe, but as all savvy executives know, it's critical to staying ahead in today's business world. Mobile customer relationship management (mCRM) has had a hard time finding its footing in the market, but all signs are pointing to a shift in this mindset.
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science CRM Implementation: Effectiveness Issues and Insights by: Timothy Bohling, Douglas Bowman, Steve LaValle, Vikas Mittal, Das Narayandas, Girish Ramani and Rajan Varadarajan Conceptually, customer relationship management (CRM) has been widely embraced by businesses. In practice, however, examples of success contrast with anecdotes where the diffusion of CRM into organizations continues to be a slow process and/or where CRM implementation outcomes have fallen short of expectations. Successful implementation depends on a number of factors such as fit between of a firm's CRM strategy and programs and its broader marketing strategy, and intra-organizational and inter-organizational cooperation and coordination among entities involved in implementation.
Customers Incorporated Making the Customer the Design Point with C-Business by: Liz Roche Companies known for customer-centricity have one thing in common: the customer has become the business' primary design point. This business philosophy recognizes the fact that from the customer's perspective, the economic value is not in individual composite business processes, but rather in how they are organized to support a customer's needs.
Customers Incorporated Achieving Sales Effectiveness with Sales Workflow Managementby: Liz RocheSales effectiveness is more than sales automation. In addition to the technology, it is the people, process, and information required to enable individual sales representatives and the sales organization as a whole to continuously realize their potential. Sales Workflow Management organizes and automates the workflow and associated hands-off of fine-grained sales activitiees, captures results, simplifies interactions across the extended sales team, and increases the sales representative's selling time.
Australasian Journal of Market Research Customer's Role in Continuous Quality Improvement Process By: Kumar, V. and V. Subramaniam
Journal of Marketing The Impact of Customer Relationship Characteristics on Profitable Lifetime Duration By: Reinartz W. and V. KumarThe authors develop a framework that incorporates projected profitability of customer in the computation of lifetime duration. Furthermore, the authors identify factors under a manager's control that explain the variation in the profitable lifetime duration.
Harvard Business Review Getting the Most out of All Your Customers By: Thomas J., W. Reinartz and V. KumarStable, healthy growth is built on the profitability of customers, not on their raw numbers or their loyalty. New techniques allow companies to focus their marketing dollars precisely where the profits are. Clearly, companies that focus only on customers who are easy to acquire and retain are not allocating their resources as efficiently as they might.
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science Using a Customer Level Marketing Strategy to Enhance Firm Performance By: Kumar, V. and J. Andrew Petersen
Journal of Marketing Measuring and Maximizing Customer Equity: A Critical AnalysisBy: Kumar, V. and Morris George
Journal of Marketing Research Optimal CRM using Bayesian Decision Theory: An application for Customer SelectionBy: Venkatesan, Rajkumar, V.Kumar and Timothy Bohling
1to1 media Striking the CRM Balance: Greater Productivity, Lower Costs, Tight IntegrationRich customer relationships that generate loyalty and revenue are critical to sustained performance. Now more than ever, organizations must be able to flexibly adapt to the unique needs of individual customers. To meet this challenge, companies of all sizes are deploying Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications and strategies across their organizations. They are coordinating multiple channels--including the Web, email, call center and face-to-face--to interact with customers and meet their needs.
1to1 media Stop Random Acts of CRM Does your company provide customers with a consistently excellent experience across all departments and all communication channels? Can your customers quickly and easily get answers to their questions, whether they call you, email you or search your web site? Do you have mechanisms in place for continuously measuring and improving your customer experience?
1to1 media No More Limits: CRM On Demand Goes StrategicOn demand is fast evolving into a more strategic, more capable CRM technology option. The days of all or nothing have given way to a wider choice of deployment options in which many of the functionalities that once were only available in on premise are now part of on demand. This white paper documents that evolution.
Sales and Marketing.com 7 Penny Pinching Ways To Make Money From Your CRM System By Gene Marks, The Marks Group PC
Ipsos Loyalty Customer Research, Not Marketing Research (PDF)
CRM Advocate Creating the CRM Business Case (PDF) Getting a CRM business case approved can be a tough challenge. This article explains how to define the benefits, business capabilities and scope of the CRM project in a way that will withstand executive scrutiny and present a compelling reason to invest.
Search CRM Seven Things Most CRM Vendors Are Afraid You'll Ask: Success Secrets for Evaluating Customer Management Software Evaluating customer relationship management (CRM) applications can be an interminable chore. But the goal is always the same - to select a platform for improving the way you do business, driving profits and reducing risk, while minimizing IT resource requirements.
Search CRM Customer Process Management: The Real-time Enterprise Depends on the Merging of CRM and BPM Customer-facing processes are a challenge to manage because they are dynamic. Conventional workflow automation and standalone business process management technologies lack the critical components which come from CRM--the building blocks of customer-facing processes. They also lack the flexibility, integration and reach required to manage continuous process improvement in a changing environment.
eTalk The Intelligent Contact Center: Extending Customer Insight into the Rest of the Enterprise For a limited time only, register at www.etalk.com and download The Intelligent Contact Center Whitepaper, featuring research by Gartner Inc.
Customer Centricity, Inc. Managing the Enterprise Customer Relationship by Craig Bailey & Lauren Weiss
Customer Centricity, Inc. Unlocking the Value of Your Customer Relationship by Craig Bailey
Customer Centricity, Inc. Preserving a Healthy Customer Base by Will O'Keeffe
Customer Centricity, Inc. Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings Like a Bee by Ida Zecco
Customer Manufacturing Group The Customer-Facing Roles of the CEO
Customer Manufacturing Group Setting Advertising Priorities to Communicate with Customers
Customer Manufacturing Group Great Investment of Huge Expense
Vendor Guru The Executive Guide to CRM Architecture: Why CRM Will Impact Your Success To gain a competitive edge in today's business environment, companies need to be customer-driven. Pivotal specializes in delivering flexible, powerful CRM that enables companies to implement customer-centric strategies that deliver a customer experience that sets them apart.
Marketing Sherpa How to Segment Best Customer and & Raise Conversions 300% Case Study A surprisingly small number of mass merchants segment their house lists by spend—only 21%, according to MarketingSherpa data. Right away, this tells us that four of every five marketers don't optimize their databases. And why not? After all, whom better to zero in on than your best customers?
CRM Guru Customer Experience Management: Accelerating Business Performance Spending all of your time chasing new customers instead of taking care of current ones? This white paper contains an emerging set of best practices gleaned from quantitative data from two CRMGuru.com surveys on CEM.
CRM Guru Connecting Your Executives to the CRM Effort Having trouble getting the CRM buzz going? The expert opinions in this white paper will help you make the business case for the new strategy at your organization. Then it outlines the steps to take to get everyone on board.
Intelligent Enterprise Automating Customer Treatment Decisions - The Next Leap in CRM Considerable resources have been spent implementing CRM technology. However, current circumstances suggest that CRM is not being used to empower customers, that many CRM executions fail to respond to customers in a focused and targeted way, and that many call centers are being neglected.
Customer Satisfaction
Harvard Business Review What is your company's signature experience? Your company's signature experience is what you do especially well; it's the odd or unique process that makes your company stand out in people's minds. The benefits of identifying your signature experience extend beyond customers. This article presents ways to clarify and communicate your company's signature experience--to the benefit of customers as well as to job candidates, who can easily determine whether you offer the kind of environment that excites them and that will win their loyalty.
Harvard Business Review Beating the Market with Customer Satisfaction by: Christopher W. Hart Hart explains how a growing body of research conclusively shows that higher customer satisfaction leads to higher share prices.
1to1 Media The Customer-Driven Innovation Series: Part 2-Let Customer Feedback Do the Driving Discover how to use customer feedback to create customer innovation in your organization. Learn how brands such as Yamaha and Cablecom utilize enterprise feedback management (EFM) to obtain more relevant, complete, and actionable insight into customer behaviors. And, learn three best practices that will help your organization make EFM a reality.
Ipsos Loyalty Determining Your Share (PDF)
Ipsos Loyalty Impact of Customer Satisfaction on Share of Wallet in a B2B_Environment (PDF)
CRMBuyer Personalized Customer Care: It's More Important Than You Think It's the great companies that are going a step further, adopting approaches that listen to the often overlooked voice of the customer, leveraging this feedback to implement more tailored strategies into the resolution process and, as a result, making the move from simple case management to complete, personalized customer care.
Voxify Better Customer Satisfaction with Speech Self-Service Learn how Voxify's conversational speech self-service applications can dramatically improve caller satisfaction, handle unpredictable call spikes, and reduce costs all without hiring additional agents.
Lippincott Mercer Commentary Keeping the Customer (Profitably) Satisfied
CUSTOMER CALL-CENTER
TMC.net Delivering Value to Small Business - Increasing Sales and Retaining Customers Increasing sales while keeping the bottom line intact - two things that all businesses, especially small businesses, struggle with on a daily basis. Advances in Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony have now reached a point where, in order to remain competitive, small businesses should re-examine how they could benefit from this technology. This paper outlines some of the ways in which VoIP and telephony can be utilized to improve the way your small business operates.
TMC.net Transform Incoming Calls into Sales Opportunities If you're looking to maximize your ability to handle inbound call volume, while making sure you take advantage of every opportunity to sell, you need the right call center on demand solution. This white paper from five9 shows you how easy it is to get started.
1to1 Media C-Level Wake Up Call: Extending the Customer-Focused Contact Center When 85% of consumers say that negative customer service experiences would lead them to change providers, it's little wonder that extending the contact center has become a top priority for managers and the C-level executives they report to. Read the white paper and learn three strategies to deliver contact center customer experiences that lift current-period sales, strengthen loyalty and drive repeat purchases.
Customer Centricity, Inc. Reduce the stress of selecting your call management systemby: Bill Tobin Throughout this paper, Bill will provide you with a methodology he has successfully utilized both as an employee and a consultant to select and implement the best technology for the client's need. Bill's goal is to provide you with a framework to progress through the process in an organized way, resulting in an educated decision based on your research. Let's eliminate the need to make a decision on your "gut feel" with the salesperson or the vendor. Along the way, he will also include some valuable tips, which he discovered the hard way.
TMC net C-Level Wake-Up Call - Extending the Customer-Focused Contact Centerby: Mitel This whitepaper breaks down the business case behind managing the customer experience, explains why multi-channel convergence is climbing the executive to-do list, and defines the "extended, customer-focused contact center."
TMC net Implementing a Unified Desktop Interface: Best Practices for Contact Centers by: Attachmate The modern contact center agent is tasked with ever-expanding responsibilities that can range from handling basic customer inquiries to performing complex sales transactions. To ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty, agents must consistently deliver efficient, real-time service and provide an overall positive contact center experience.
AT&T The IP Contact Center: The Top Three Capabilities that can Transform the Customer Experience AT&T Contact center managers are recognizing that IP is more than just a cost and management play. While IP can certainly generate savings, be easier to manage, and create bandwidth and telecom transport efficiencies, there are also three pivotal ways that IP can truly transform the customer experience.
Destination CRM CRM Total Cost of Ownership – Comparing Open Source Solutions to Proprietary Solutions sponsored by: Sugar CRM Identify and compare the TCO between 3 CRM generations based on inherent costs in acquisition (pricing), implementation (integration control), and maintenance and upgrades (deployment flexibility).
Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C. Monitoring Isn't Enough to Answer the Quality Questionby: Dr. Jodie Monger We are continuously asked how well the contact center is serving the corporate asset - how well is service delivered to customers who call to resolve a problem or to ask a question? In many centers, we must rely on a summary of operational metrics with the assumption that certain metric levels answers this critical question. We also rely on quality monitoring scores to answer the question.
Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C. Agent-Level Customer Feedback and the Impact on First Contact Resolutionby: Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Cherie Keen Contact center leaders are deluged with different Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions that promise to reduce costs, heighten customer satisfaction and loyalty, improve productivity and do more with less. But no matter which CRM solution or program you choose to implement, you must remember the most critical factor to your contact center and for your company's existence -- the customer.
Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C. Maximize your ROI on Contact Center Surveyingby: Dr. Jodie Monger As the marketplace is moving from a service economy to an experience economy, contact centers are being vaulted from the position of being considered a back-office operation that has little strategic impact to the competitive differentiator that can be a weapon in a commoditize marketplace. With this shift and the realization that the contact center has access to more customer contacts and intelligence than any other part of the enterprise, measuring and enhancing the customer experience is in high demand and is highly visible within organizations.
Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C. Real Time Survey Alerts: A Voice of the Customer "Must-Have"by: Dr. Jodie Monger Where within your customer experience engineering plans do you meet head-on the failed service experiences? Is it only after multiple complaints? Is it only after your company President shows up in the contact center? Is it after you are on the 5:00 news? Do ignore the ones that are not loud? Do you make an attempt to gain back loyalty points that were lost during a failed call experience?
Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C. 4-Question Surveys: Short and Dangerousby: Dr. Jodie Monger Contact centers are rapidly adopting real-time post-call surveys. Research proves, measurement of the service experience should be done immediately upon completing the service to accurately measure the contact center experience. Essentially.the customer is quality monitoring the call.
TMCnet Implementing a Unified Desktop Interface: Best Practices for Contact Centers by Attachmate The modern contact center agent is tasked with ever-expanding responsibilities that can range from handling basic customer inquiries to performing complex sales transactions. To ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty, agents must consistently deliver efficient, real-time service and provide an overall positive contact center experience. In effect, the contact center has become the nervous system that connects the customer to the enterprise.
TMCnet C-Level Wake-Up Call - Extending the Customer-Focused Contact Center by Mitel Strategies and tactics for extending the contact center across the enterprise and channels to provide a best-in-class customer experience.
TMCnet No More Limits: CRM On Demand Goes Strategic by Oracle On demand is fast evolving into a more strategic, more capable CRM technology option. Today you can have the best of both worlds: a cost-friendly, easy to use solution with many of the functionalities that were once only available on premise This FREE paper covers What's New in On Demand, Why Baxter Medication Delivery ultimately chose on demand, plus the Six Questions Every Buyer Should Ask and more, register now.
TMCnet Seven Questions Most CRM Vendors Are Afraid You'll Ask by Onyx Software There are two ways to evaluate customer relationship management (CRM) applications. Both the feature-checklist approach and problem-solving approach, along with their results, are poles apart, but the intent is the same. The goal is to select a platform for improving the way you do business, driving profits and reducing risks, while minimizing IT resource requirements. Analyzing applications for their problem-solving acumen is a way of preparing for the future. In this white paper we explain that process and provide a new kind of problem-focused checklist that examines seven areas that are common elements of successful customer management projects.
TMCnet Top Call Center Challenges by SoundBite Communications Today, outbound call centers find themselves in a circular situation when it comes to efficiency. Often times, centers are faced with several operational challenges with limited resources to change and increase their output. The pressure to perform better has become a priority, except that it's often coupled with downward pressure on profit margins. Outbound campaigns are successful when agents spend the bulk of their time connected with live, qualified customers performing relevant tasks, and when redundant tasks are handled with agent-like proficiency, but without agent involvement.
TMCnet Faster Call Resolution With Browser-Based Remote Control: Hands-On Customer Support by Netopia Remote desktop access and control software dramatically increases the quality of a customer support interaction, speeds issue resolution and improves customer satisfaction. Learn more about the challenges facing customer care centers and a cost-effective solution for improving agent productivity and increasing customer satisfaction and retention
TMCnet The 6 Myths of On-Demand Contact Centers by Contactual Today, many companies are adopting the on-demand model for their contact centers, abandoning the older premise-based systems. Nevertheless, several myths about the superiority of on-premise solutions still exist. These misconceptions prevent many businesses from taking advantage of on-demand contact centers. "The 6 Myths of On-Demand Contact Centers" White Paper busts the most common myths.
TMCnet SIP Technologies: Creating a Breakthrough Customer Experience by NortelUse SIP - Session Initiation Protocol - to tap into the power of multimedia collaboration. SIP capabilities simplify dynamic response using any device to open limitless communication avenues.
CRM Advocate Call centers and customer service: The good, the bad, and the cluelessWe always hear about how everyone is implementing best practices at their organization and how they have the greatest customer service center for their product or service.
Customer Loyalty
1to1 Media Business Continuity and Customer Relationships: What's Your Communications Strategy? Customer retention is critical. Prepare for modern threats and vulnerabilities - create a distributed network with built in redundancy. Ensure your company is continuously available and customers stay connected with you.
Harvard Business Review Reputation and it's Risks By: Robert G. Eccles, Scott C. Newquist, Roland SchatzRegulators, industry groups, consultants, and individual companies have developed elaborate guidelines over the years for assessing and managing risks in a wide range of areas, from commodity prices to natural disasters. Yet they have all but ignored reputational risk, mostly because they aren't sure how to define or measure it. That's a big problem, say the authors. Because so much market value comes from hard-to-assess intangible assets like brand equity and intellectual capital, organizations are especially vulnerable to anything that damages their reputations. Moreover, companies with strong positive reputations attract better talent and are perceived as providing more value in their products and services, which often allows them to charge a premium. Their customers are more loyal and buy broader ranges of products and services.
Harvard Business Review The Mismanagement of Customer LoyaltyBy: Reinartz, W. and V. Kumar Loyal customers cost less to serve! They pay more than other customers, and attract new customers through word-of-mouth. These loud claims prompted one high-tech service provider to launch a $2 million-per-year customer-loyalty program. Five years later, the company made distributing discoveries: Half of its loyal customers barely generated a profit. And half of its most profitable customers bought high-margin products once-then disappeared.
Journal of Integrated Communications Taking Customer Lifetime Value Analysis to the Next LevelBy: Kumar, V. and G. Ramani
Journal of Interactive Marketing Customer Lifetime Value Approaches and Best Practice ApplicationsBy: Kumar, V., G. Ramani and T. Bohling Each customer varies in his/her lifetime value to a firm. A firm would like to estimate the lifetime value of each customer and use this information in planning differential marketing initiatives targeted at each customer. Customer lifetime value computations require different approaches depending on the business application that a firm is looking at.
Journal of Marketing A Customer Lifetime Value Framework for Customer Selections and Resource Allocation StrategyBy: Venkatesan, R. and V.Kumar The authors evaluate the usefulness of customer lifetime value (CLV) as a metric for customer selection and marketing resource allocation by developing a dynamic framework that enables managers to maintain or improve customer relationships proactively through marketing contacts across various channels and to maximize CLV simultaneously. The authors show that marketing contacts across various channels influence CLV nonlinearly.
Journal of Retailing Building and Sustaining Profitable Customer Loyalty for the 21st CenturyBy: Kumar, V. and Denish Shah The concept of customer loyalty is conspicuous by its ubiquity. Therefore, there is no surprise that is it one of the most widely studies areas by researchers and one of the most widely implemented marketing initiatives by practitioners. This article draws upon past research to review important findings related to customer behavior and attitude in the context of customer loyalty.
1to1 media Beyond ROI In LoyaltyWhat does a successful loyalty program look like? Most marketers will tell you: One that delivers a positive Return on Investment (ROI). But dig a bit deeper and the answer is not so simple. For example, even if ROI is positive, the goals of your loyalty program may be competing with one another. It may sound far off, but consider this: Have you ever spent significant dollars to acquire customers into your program knowing full well that the vast majority won't be profitable? How many times have you sacrificed bottom-line profit just to hit year-end revenue numbers? The truth is success means different things for different programs. It's up to marketers to define what success means for their program and design a measurement plan for evaluating program performance accurately.
1to1 media Building Customer LoyaltyBusinesses today realize that an increase in customer retention can have a massive effect on profitability, and that they need to maximise the value created with each customer. Numerous studies, such as a December 2004 McKinsey report, have shown that on average, it costs 10 times more to acquire than to retain a customer. This thinking has led businesses around the globe to embrace loyalty programs in recent years as a trusted tactic to achieve their business objectives.
Ipsos Loyalty Loyalty Myths: Make Customer Loyalty Pay (PDF)
Ipsos Loyalty Strategic Insights for Optimizing Customer Loyalty (PDF)
Search CRM Ensuring Customer Loyalty: Designing Next-Generation Loyalty Programs Do loyalty programs really work or are these companies just wasting their investment? Can a loyalty program change how people behave and get them to spend more money with one company while reducing the likelihood that they will move their business to a competitor? This white paper takes a detailed look at the current environment for loyalty programs and the strategies businesses are using when implementing these programs.
Customer Centricity, Inc. Customer Advocacyby Craig Bailey & Kurt Jensen
Customer Manufacturing Group Brand Insistence vs. Brand Loyalty
Marketing Sherpa How a Luxury Retailer Mines Customer Base to Improve ROI with Limited Analytics Even some of today's fastest-growing companies don't have their Web divisions set up the way they want or need them to be. How can you compensate if you don't have precious data on visitors because you don't have a proper analytics program? Discover how email helps an emerging luxury retailer produce enviable results while overcoming their data deficiencies. Multiple campaigns, creative samples and open rates, clickthroughs and conversions. Plus, a valuable lesson learned when reaching loyal-vs-VIP customers.
Marketing Sherpa How Whirlpool Raised Customer Loyalty by 68% by Revamping its Site Using Persona-Based Design Like many major consumer brands, Whirlpool's website originally sprang from a talking-to-the-masses approach rather than truly engaging each individual consumer. How can you design and copywrite a website that truly, individually appeals to consumers with very different psychographic profiles? Discover how the team researched and created eight specific visitor-type personas.
Customer Services
Gartner Research A Customer Experience Team Can Enhance Customer Service In this research, Gartner explains how ongoing customer service improvement projects will be most effective when a cross-organizational customer experience team is formed to design the service technologies and processes.
TMC.net Customer Service Strategies: Creating A Great Customer Experience Learn about the impact a superior customer experience can have on your business-and how to bridge the gap between satisfaction and loyalty.This strategy guide is intended for customer-facing business and operational decision makers interested in maximizing the value of customer interactions across all channels. It examines:
Harvard Business Review Leadership that focuses on the customer - really. Many executives and managers exhort their followers to make the customer the center of everything they do. Yet for all the passion and conviction of their words, genuine customer focus remains theory rather than practice. What can you do to make customer focus a reality in your organization? In this article, HMU distills expert wisdom on building customer satisfaction and loyalty.
1to1 Media Tame the Two-Headed Monster: Cost Efficiency and Revenue in Customer Service Does your company provide customers with a consistently excellent experience across all departments and all communication channels? Can your customers quickly and easily get answers to their questions, whether they call you, email you or search your web site? Do you have mechanisms in place for continuously measuring and improving your customer experience?
Customer Centricity, Inc. Distinguishing your business through excellent customer service In today's business environment, more than ever, you are required to focus on your SINGLE source of revenue: the customer. The challenges that most business leader's face include:
How do you respond to these challenges? Provide excellent customer service.
Search CRM Customer Process Management Drives Profitability in Financial Services As competition in the financial sector continues to increase, banks, insurance companies and other financial services providers are actively seeking ways to improve customer service and profitability via process efficiency. This approach, know as customer process management (CPM), represents a merger between customer relationship management (CRM) and business process management (BPM).
eTalk Understanding the Voice of the Customer Using Real Customer Data to Drive Product and Service Improvements
Customer Centricity, Inc. Becoming Customer Centric - Finding the Voice of the Customer by Craig Bailey & Kurt Jensen
Customer Centricity, Inc. Rewarding and Incenting Customer Service Representatives
Customer Manufacturing Group Building a Customer-Oriented Business
Peppers and Rogers Group and RightNow Customer Service White Paper - Turning Customer Experiences into Competitive Edge Does your company provide customers with a consistently excellent experience across all departments and all communication channels? Can your customers quickly and easily get answers to their questions, whether they call you, email you or search your web site? Do you have mechanisms in place for continuously measuring and improving your customer experience?
Intelligent Enterprise Putting the Customer Back in Customer Service: Three Principles for Customer-centric Support Companies have long relied on investments in people, processes and technology to provide more effective customer service. They have implemented knowledge management practices to capture, organize, manage and analyze the content and resources used to resolve customer problems. Invariably, such support optimization initiatives are company-centric, focusing on the service variables within a company's control. They often miss the mark on incorporating the most important variable in every support interaction: the real-time need of customers. The implications speak for themselves.
Customer Experience
1to1 Media Making Every Interaction Count: GameFly Aligns its Customer ExperienceYou'll take away:
TMC.net Top 8 Trends Shaping the Customer Service Experience Companies embracing new trends in customer service are achieving unparalleled profits, competitive advantage, and customer loyalty. Discover:
Harvard Business Review Understanding Customer Experienceby: Christopher Meyer, Andre Schwager Customer experience is shaped by customers' expectations, which largely reflect previous experiences. Few CEOs would argue against the significance of customer experience or against measuring and analyzing it. But many don't appreciate how those activities differ from CRM or just how illuminating the data can be. For instance, the majority of the companies in a recent survey believed they have been providing "superior" experiences to customers, but most customers disagreed. The authors describe a customer experience management (CEM) process that involves three kinds of monitoring: past patterns (evaluating completed transactions), present patterns (tracking current relationships), and potential patterns (conducting inquiries in the hope of unveiling future opportunities).
Customer Centricity, Inc. Customer Advocacy Many companies have enquired about Customer Advocacy. This is an essential component of becoming customer centric - especially if the products and services you offer are complex and customer interfaces spread among various units within your organization. In this whitepaper, authors discuss what Customer Advocacy is (and isn't), a framework for implementing it, and how to go beyond reactive behavior and get into the hearts and minds of your customers.
Windward Solutions Deploying an Effective Customer Experience Management Program This paper covers a number of critical success factors to consider when deploying a customer experience program that deliver results. While many of the best practices can be applied in both a BtoB and BtoC model, the authors primary focus is on BtoB.
1to1 media Turning Customer Experiences into Competitive Edge: Nikon's Journey to Leadership
Customer Manufacturing Group Improve the Order Experience to Drive Growth: Putting Customers and Partners in Charge For the first time, decision makers from the business and IT sides are looking at managing orders from a whole new vantage point: the customer's. They're starting to uncover the direct connection between how a company manages its orders and the customer experience it delivers. Start turning orders into profitable experiences by putting your customers and partners in charge. Learn key online strategies, tactics and best practices. Read this new white paper from Peppers & Rogers Group and Comergent.
Customer Manufacturing Group Think Like Your Customers (PDF)
Customer Manufacturing Group Being Customer-Centered (PDF)
Customer Manufacturing Group Customer-Focused Brand Positioning (PDF)
MarketingSherpa How People's Bank Uses Internal Search Analytics to Turn More Browsers into Customers Do your visitors find what they are looking for when they use your internal site search? According to expert Ross Jenkins, "90% of site searches are horrible, horrible." Hear how a large regional bank stole ideas from external search marketing to apply it internally to their own search results -- including adding in PPC-like text-ads for their own products. Includes results data and creative screenshots.
CRM .................................... Customer Satisfaction .................................... Customer Call-Center .................................... Customer Loyalty .................................... Customer Services .................................... Customer Experience