CUSTOMER — September 2015

Opening the Next Chapter on Customer Care: New Book Explores How to Elevate CX

Companies spend big money and significant resources to acquire new customers while they tend to give little thought about how to hold onto clients who are heading for the exits. That's a mistake...Read More >>>

Data-Driven Marketing: Why Data Management Platforms Have Not Reached Their Full Potential
The constant evolution of digital devices, content, and channels is adding unprecedented complexity to the customer journey for marketers. Getting the right content to individual consumers on their laptops and smart devices at the right time has never been more critical to engage them in meaningful and lasting ways. This is why data management platforms have become key for marketing success. DMPs help marketers control and harness the increasing influx of data to keep pace with the non-stop digital customer and ensure messages stay relevant to consumers' daily lives. - 08/31/2015

How to Get Your Head Around Data-Driven Marketing
Earlier this year, the 2015 edition of the Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic was released. At that time there were 1,876 marketing technology vendors represented across 43 categories. That means there is a lot of choice, but also a lot of confusion. What do you need? Do you need any of it? - 08/31/2015

CUSTOMER TMC Labs Innovation Awards: Here Are Some of the Latest and Greatest Solutions in the Customer Experience Arena
We have a diverse group of winners this year. Drishti-Soft wowed us with tech innovations, the RightAnswers Knowledge Hub supports seamless video, HP Qfiniti 10 boosted browser support and analytics, NICE Systems is making contact centers more efficient, SAP is really bringing it in the war on Salesforce, Five9 is taking design cues from Facebook, and there's so much more that's interesting here. This is perhaps one of the most diverse groups of winners we have had, and we especially were interested in the new category created by Cyara. Read to the end to learn more. - 08/31/2015

Modernizing the Role of Contact Center Workers Through the Use of Virtual Agents
According to the 2013 Global Contact Center Survey by Deloitte, 62 percent of organizations said they view customer experience provided through the contact center as a competitive differentiator. Many understand that exceptional service breeds brand loyalty, which helps to ensure future purchases or patronage. At the front line of this battle is the customer service agent. - 08/31/2015

Don't Leave New Opportunities on the Table: Machine Learning Lets You Branch Out with More Personalization
Data volumes are booming, right alongside customers' soaring expectations for more personalized engagement across your entire organization. You want to improve how you convert, segment, and continually delight customers, but how and where do you start? - 08/31/2015

Why You Need More in Your Toolbox Than Cart Abandonment Emails
Of all the tools marketers use to rescue ecommerce sales, cart abandonment, emails have become the proverbial hammer. Study after study suggests that cart abandonment emails work, so marketers quickly implement these emails to remind shoppers about what they almost purchased. However, marketers that rely strictly on cart abandonment emails are ignoring many other digital behaviors, and thereby leaving money on the table. - 08/31/2015

WebRTC Update: NY Times Creates Privacy Hubbub
Just in case you missed all of the commotion this summer, WebRTC was placed right at the center of an interesting privacy problem as a result of its use by the venerable New York Times on its Nytimes.com website to track the private IP address of visitors. While NYT apparently is not using the information gathered for nefarious purposes, unless you consider building better visitor profiles for marketing reasons nefarious, there are two obvious problems here. - 08/31/2015

A Vote in D.C. is Stifling to Contact Centers
A party-line vote by the Federal Communications Commission in June means everything to contact centers and the employees who rely on them for jobs. The decision is exactly as the FCC's very own commissioner described it: a "farce," and rooted in one of the worst documents ever seen by industry professionals. - 08/31/2015

InfoCision Chief of Staff Talks About 'Taking Your Customer Care to the Next Level'
Nadji Tehrani, founder of Technology Marketing Corp., the parent company of CUSTOMER magazine, and Steve Brubaker, chief of staff at InfoCision, recently set out to publish a book. That effort resulted in the tome "Taking Your Customer CareTM to the Next Level". CUSTOMER spoke with Brubaker to learn more about how the book - and the relationship between its authors - came about, and what readers can learn from it. - 08/31/2015