CUSTOMER MAGAZINE – July/August 2016

How Virtual Reality is Changing the Buying Experience

Organizations that can engage customers and prospects, the thinking goes, get more than a one-time purchase from those customers. They can win customer loyalty - meaning additional business in the long term both from those individuals and, potentially, from their friends and family members as those customers spread the word...Read More >>>

CUSTOMER, TMC Name CRM Excellence Award Winners
Delivering a positive customer experience has become an important call to action for many organizations. Customer relationship management solutions can help businesses get there. Here are some of the solutions in the CRM space that deliver on that promise. We congratulate these companies, which CUSTOMER and its parent company, TMC, have named our 2016 CRM Excellence Award winners. - 08/31/2016

CUSTOMER, TMC Reveal Speech Technology Excellence Award Winners
CUSTOMER magazine and its parent company, TMC, are happy to announce the winners of our annual Speech Technology Excellence awards. These awards recognize companies that offer innovative and cost-saving solutions for their clients. - 08/25/2016

Compliance Solutions
This month's Roundup features companies and products that address compliance related to the contact center. - 08/25/2016

How to Make the Build, Buy, or Outsource Decision
It's been said that the secret to company growth is customer service. Just look at the success of global companies such as Nordstrom and Amazon. - 08/25/2016

Partner Duo to Help Service Providers Deliver Contact Center Solutions
Communications services providers today are challenged with finding new revenue sources. Much of this discussion centers on tier 1 CSPs, but more medium-sized and small service providers are in the same boat. One new revenue source they may not have seriously considered is delivering contact center capabilities. But some of the CSPs that have already moved forward with cloud-based contact center solutions recommend taking the plunge. And three of them spoke recently about how Metaswitch and Telax have helped them do that. - 08/25/2016

Jetlore Helps Companies Make Closer Connections with Customers
Amazon and Google today dominate transactional commerce, which makes it difficult for any other brand to succeed in this realm, says Jetlore's Vice President of Market Dan Buckstaff. That's why Jetlore, a startup founded in 2011, has turned its attentions to relationship commerce, he says. - 08/25/2016

How to Reach High-Growth Customers with In-Depth Big Data
If marketers are not focused on finding consumer segments that offer the highest growth, they are doing something wrong. These segments offer not only the chance to increase profits, but also the opportunity to develop long-term relationships with customers whose value is rapidly increasing. Truth be told, it can be hard to find these fast-growing segments. What do you look for? How do you know that they are the right group? Are they worth the investment? - 08/25/2016

How to Design Retail Experiences for the New Shopper Brain
Retail today is in flux. By 2017, Amazon will overtake Macy's as the largest clothing retailer in the U.S. Sears is sinking a half a billion dollars into its click and collect model to bring shoppers back to the store. It seems every day another traditional retailer declares bankruptcy. Brick and mortar is dying a not-so-slow death. Right? - 08/25/2016

Calabrio CEO Emphasizes the Importance of Work & Play
CUSTOMER magazine has been reporting about workforce optimization company Calabrio for some time now, but we wanted to find out more about the company's leader, Tom Goodmanson. Below is an excerpt of our recent conversation with him, during which he opened up about his youth, shared his early work experiences, and reflected on his time at Calabrio. - 08/25/2016