CUSTOMER — May 2014

CRM: It's Getting Better All the Time

Hardly a day goes by without an item about how improving the customer experience is now the intense focus of C-levels globally. In fact, the job of chief customer experience officer, or a title very similar, is arguably the fastest growing C-level position in enterprises around the world. The reasons are obvious. They are also what are driving the adoption of new contact center solutions and the use of big data analytics as enterprises large and small seek to create sustainable advantage by enhancing how they interact with all of us....Read More >>>

WARNING: Benchmarking Can Be Hazardous to Your Operation's Health
CUSTOMER Magazine spoke recently to Mark Miller, the senior director of contact center solutions at J.D. Power, a leading market research company. We asked Mark to describe the benefits and pitfalls of benchmarking performance when building a world-class contact center.

Increasing Sales Opportunity Through Marketing Compliance: Gryphon Networks Tells Us How
CUSTOMER Magazine recently spoke with Gryphon Networks to get an update on what's happening in the important area of marketing compliance. Here's our interview with Melissa Bateman Fitzgerald, Esq., CIPP Vice President, Privacy Consulting & Counsel at Gryphon Networks.

A One-Stop Shop to Flexibly Address Any Customer Interaction Requirement
Traditionally, when selecting business applications, organizations feel restricted to a deployment model or deployment configuration, which often leads to them making compromises on feature and functionality. This directly impacts business processes and, in turn, customer experience.

WebRTC in the Contact Center
WebRTC in the contact center is the focus of the roundup in this issue of CUSTOMER magazine.

Why Government Contact Centers Must Look to the Cloud
Given the mix of antiquated equipment, needed updates and IT spending control, federal initiatives are steering government contact centers and agencies toward cloud communications. These "Cloud First" policies are a good call, for several reasons. Reduced OpEx, CapEx, and overall spending on underutilized infrastructure. With a cloud solution, the service provider is responsible for managing and running the services being used, thus bearing much of the cost of doing business. This enables government entities to reduce OpEx and CapEx significantly.

Tying a Bow on the Retail Shopping Experience
Whether the customer buying your sweater is a consumer or a retailer, chances are good that the individual in question has also used Amazon or other online portals in the past to make a purchase, so is a good target for a self-service buying experience regarding the sweater or sweaters.

Human Capital Management: A New Twist on How to Drive Employee Engagement, Lower Costs
Customer service means different things to different people. If you're an employer, you may even want to think about your employees as customers, given that you want to keep them and make them happy so you can get the best work from them in return.

TMC Congratulates CRM Excellence Award Winners
As discussed in this issue's cover story, CRM software revenue is expected to reach $23.9 billion this year. This space has seen strong investment in recent years and is positioned to represent the largest segment of enterprise software by 2017, increasing to a $36.5 billion worldwide market, according to Gartner.