CUSTOMER — October 2015

Beacons Move Back into the Spotlight

Apple famously brought the world smartphones and the mobile apps that account for a large part of their functionality. That helped create the empowered consumer, as we now have easy access to a wealth of information to do comparison-shopping. It also enabled what is now referred to as the on-demand society....Read More >>>

Four Key Points for Putting Customers First
How do you move from good intentions and partial solutions to the kind of company-wide customer experience foundation that produces meaningful results? It's an enormously complex question, but there are a few high-level principles and ideas that will help guide and inform your journey toward a more customer-centric business model. - 10/26/2015

How to Immediately Improve Customer Satisfaction and Save Money
CUSTOMER Magazine recently spoke with Mark Miller, contact center practice leader for J.D. Power, a leading market research company with data from more than 1,200 companies around the customer's experience with their contact centers. We asked Mark to talk with us about some keys to utilizing customer-based research to drive performance improvement. - 10/26/2015

In-App Messaging Meets Customers Where They Are
In one of the latest examples of meeting customers where they are, Sparkcentral last month announced its In-App Messaging solution, which enables end users to access - and brands to provide - customer service via secure messaging via smartphone apps. - 10/26/2015

Why Consumer Demand for Connected Home Products is on the Decline And What We Can Do About It
Amazon's Dash Button, Domino's emoji pizza ordering, and the widely lauded Nest home thermostat have the potential of making life easier for us. But some of the connected things in our homes seem to be having the opposite effect. - 10/26/2015

Amazon's Dash Button Removes the Friction of Online Ordering
Amazon's Dash Button is a small, consumer product-branded thing about the size of two thumb drives that lets consumers easily reorder from Amazon popular items such as Clorox wipes, Cottonelle toilet tissue, Kraft macaroni and cheese, Gatorade, Gerber baby formula, and Tide laundry detergent. Just touch the Wi-Fi-connected Dash Button, and the product-specific order is placed; the goods arrive on your doorstep the following day - 10/26/2015

Amex's Plenti Could Help Popularize Coalition Rewards Programs in the U.S.
The more the merrier. Then again, too many cooks spoil the broth. - 10/26/2015

Three Simple Ways to Prevent Abandoned Carts
Research suggests that only 3 percent of online shoppers actually complete a purchase. What can a concerned online shopkeeper do to secure those sales? - 10/26/2015

Lightning Strikes at Salesforce
CRM Giant Retools UI, Enables Responsive Design - 10/26/2015

Salesforce Unveils Service Cloud Lightning Console, Service Wave Analytics App
Salesforce in September unveiled two news offerings for the contact center - the Service Cloud Lightning Console, and the Service Wave Analytics App, both of which will be generally available by the end of the year. - 10/26/2015

CRM Giant Addresses the Internet of Things with Thunder IoT Cloud
Salesforce in September at Dreamforce also unveiled an Internet of Things solution called Thunder IoT Cloud. - 10/26/2015