At the beginning of the year I wrote analyst perspective outlining why I think Salesforce.com is a vendor to watch during 2013. I followed this up with a post noting that Salesforce has shifted its headline messaging from becoming the “collaborative company” to becoming the “customer company” – a message that resonates better with me. During a recent analyst event, the theme of becoming a customer company remained the main message, but this time the emphasis moved to marketing, as the...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Voice of the Customer,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM
Like all analysts, I have a series of classifications to help group together vendors with similar capabilities. My challenge is to create categories that align with most users’ expectations so I don’t confuse readers when I define which category a vendor falls into. My “big five” are WFO or agent performance management (quality monitoring, workforce management, training and coaching, remuneration, and agent-related analytics); contact center infrastructure, including cloud-based systems...
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Topics:
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Voice of the Customer,
Mobile Apps,
Self-service,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Cloud Computing,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Interactive Intelligence,
Unified Communications
IBM recently announced its new Customer Experience Lab. During a briefing I learned that the lab is a response to what IBM discovered by interviewing more than a thousand CMOs, who are concerned about the explosion of data companies collect about their customers. This explosion is being driven by changing customer communication preferences and the way customers now interact with organizations, which I recently highlighted in my post about the 2.0 world. My research into the contact center in...
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Topics:
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Mobile Apps,
Self-service,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
IBM,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Force Optimization
I recently wrote that Salesforce.com was a vendor to watch during 2013, and during a recent briefing I heard more messages that support this view. First there was confirmation about financials. Even though the company is only 14 years old and the overall economy is not exactly booming, revenues for 2012 were up 35 percent to $3.05 billion, with Europe matching this with a 37 percent year-on-year growth. This not only shows the company is here to stay, but that the cloud is now well and truly...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics
Like me, you have no doubt spotted the propensity for software vendors and consultants to call anything new “2.0”; for example, we have ERP 2.0 and CRM 2.0. Just recently during a joint Aspect and Microsoft presentation, the companies went one step further and introduced the concept of the 2.0 customer meeting the 2.0 company. My first reaction was one of horror, but as I thought about it, it became clear that customers have changed and so companies need to change to keep up – welcome to the...
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Topics:
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Mobile Apps,
Self-service,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Vendor(s),
Workforce Force Optimization
I recently attended the Unified Communication Expo exhibition and conference in London to find out how much communications has been changing. As I entered the exhibition center the first thing I noticed was the huge variety of vendors on show, everything from major brands in the telecommunications industry (Aspect, AT&T, BT, Cisco, Mitel, Nokia and Siemens Enterprise Communications) to some major brands perhaps not so associated with telecommunications (Dell, Citrix, Google and Microsoft), to...
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Topics:
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Mobile Apps,
Self-service,
Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Vendor(s),
Workforce Force Optimization
The first positive signs for the “the new Genesys” emerged just 100 days after its sale by Alcatel was completed last year, and those positive signs have continued. The company has not only maintained strong development of its core products but has also made an aggressive move into the contact center mid-market, the contact center in the cloud market, and the multichannel communications management market. It strengthens its position now with the announcement of its acquisition of Angel.com.
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Topics:
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Customer Feedback Management,
Social CRM,
Speech Analytics,
Voice of the Customer,
Genesys,
Mobile Apps,
Self-service,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM,
Desktop Analytics,
Text Analytics,
Unified Communications,
Workforce Force Optimization
My recent research into the contact center in the cloud shows the typical agent’s life is not an easy one. Agents are expected to handle more types of interactions that arrive through more communication channels as found in our research with inbound, email and outbound in use by more than 74 percent of organizations, meet an increasing number of performance metrics, and leave each caller feeling happy with the interaction. And they have to do this with a desktop that my research shows can only...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Social Media,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
LiveOps,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
CRM,
Workforce Force Optimization
Intradiem is a vendor that not many people have heard about, for the simple reason that it is actually Knowlagent, which recently announced a complete rebranding. The company says the new brand better reflects its product and service capabilities. Knowlagent was all about allowing companies to automatically manage how agents utilize their time in those often very short periods when they are not answering calls or carrying out other fixed tasks, such as taking a training course. The latest...
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Topics:
Sales Performance,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Intradiem,
Operational Performance,
Analytics,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
CRM
NewVoiceMedia recently announced it has raised $20 million of investment funds to aid its expansion overseas, including offices in North America. The company was founded in the UK in 2000 and originally offered telephony and call management in the cloud. It now has a close partnership with Salesforce.com, which has allowed it to expand into a multichannel contact center in the cloud. During the last 12 years it has achieved considerable success, both financially and in acquiring prestigious...
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Topics:
Salesforce.com,
Social Media,
Customer Analytics,
Customer Experience,
Social CRM,
Mobile Apps,
NewVoicemedia,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Customer & Contact Center,
Customer Service,
Call Center,
Contact Center,
Contact Center Analytics,
CRM