Welcome to another Friday edition of the CRM Week In Review. We'll call this the "Almost October" edition, primarily because…well, it's almost October.
Never heard the name Panasonic used in the same sentence as "call centers"? Neither had the CRM Week in Review, until this week. The electronics giant is venturing into the call center space with the announcement of a new ACD Report Server, in conjunction with its also newly announced hybrid IP-PBX (News - Alert) business phone. Susan Campbell wrote a more in-depth report on the announcement for TMCnet.
What are "intent-driven customer interactions?" In a nutshell, any customer interaction in which the customer hopes not to be ignored, abused, fleeced, insulted or otherwise put off from the transaction. Shockingly, many customers are starting to believe that's not too much to ask, and some forward-thinking companies are starting to catch on the practice. TMCnet guest columnist Colette Yee described the concept more in-depth in her article this week called, "Intent-Driven Customer Interactions: The New Differentiator."
Every sort of customer interaction has its own unique set of requirements. Car dealers, who are selling a high-priced commodity product, have perhaps a bigger set of challenges than many retailers. CRM vendor FireSocket has announced an upgrade of its CRM solution deliberately tailored to the auto retail industry.
RightAnswers launched its RightAnswers Unified Knowledge Suite to improve the support experience for end-users, accelerate problem resolution and control support costs. And, presumably, to lower the incidences of help desk personnel leaping out the window in despair when they've had one too many stupid questions come into the help desk.
What's "the third wave of CRM"? Well, if we ignore the somewhat embarrassing first wave of CRM and accept that we're currently in the second, we can conclude that the third wave is what's ahead in the near future for CRM technologies. (How's that for sharp business analysis? Cut me some slack…it's Friday afternoon). This week, David Sims wrote about German software giant SAP's (News - Alert) next release of its on-demand CRM products.
Does your call center use home agents? Have you ever considered it? Think about this…some of the most highly-rated companies in terms of customer service are working with exclusively home-based agents. Call center workers who work out of their homes tend to be better educated, more motivated and more mature than brick-and-mortar based agents. This week, I got a chance to speak at length about the home agent model with Chris Carrington, the CEO of home-agent provider Alpine Access.
First Research Inc. and salesforce.com this week announced the availability of First Research for salesforce.com’s AppExchange, wrote TMCnet contributing editor Anuradha Shukla. Since First Research now can be seamlessly integrated into Salesforce on-demand business applications, users can compare their business-level prospecting data side-by-side with industry intelligence written specifically for sales and marketing professionals. And if there's one thing today the business world needs more of, it's intelligence.
