Dovetail Software Blogs: Harvesting Knowledge About the Customer
“Perfect
customer service should create perfect customer loyalty and retention,
but in trying to supply service, companies find that they don’t really
know their customer. It should be simple enough to pull this off, with
software and surveys and analytics all going at full steam – but it’s
enormously difficult, and here’s why…”
The IP Contact Center: The Top Three Capabilities that can Transform the Customer Experience
“Contact
center managers are recognizing that IP is more than just a cost and
management play. While IP can certainly generate savings, be easier to
manage, and create bandwidth and telecom transport efficiencies, there
are also three pivotal ways that IP can truly transform the customer
experience:
- Remote and home agents can deliver more dynamic, personalized service
- Multimedia, multi-channel capabilities let customers do business
through whichever channels they prefer – and receive the same quality
of service and ‘real-time’ response they expect with a voice call
- Storefront/call center integration brings the contact center,
neighborhood resources, and self-service capabilities into one
convenient call"
Customer-Driven Innovation: The Next Frontier
“Companies’
interactions with customers has expanded, transaction costs have been
reduced, and enormous customer data has been amassed. But to achieve
greater customer loyalty and profitability, firms will need to adopt
new approaches to managing customer relationships. They must also learn
how to exploit customer knowledge to drive innovation.”
SAP, Agassi, and the future
“Sometime
this year analysts say Toyota will overtake GM as the largest producer
of cars and trucks. The same kind of thing could happen in software
too. Smaller, more nimble companies armed with new technologies and
platforms as well as an army of partners could drive SAP, and Oracle for that matter, up market into irrelevancy unless it decides to fight the battle on SaaS turf.
“SAP
still has a chance if it continues to execute on an on-demand strategy
but it is now in need of a continuing vision. Agassi’s departure tells
me that the Old Guard at SAP never really
whole-heartedly bought into the vision that Agassi promoted. He was a
necessary change agent but also an outsider and when the kitchen got
too hot he was expendable.”
Manufacturers Focus on Supply Chain Management
“Joseph
says that McGuffie’s experience points to integrated warehouse
management becoming an increasingly common requirement. ‘To act smarter
they need to be able to track and monitor goods all the way from
production out to the branches so they know where they are and their
status at all times.’”
Citi Introduces Cell Phone Banking
“The
retail banking giant Citibank announced a new service that its
customers can download to their cell phones—to review balances and
transactions, transfer funds among accounts and pay bills, among other
features. The new mobile service will be free to consumers, although
they probably will have to pay data download charges from the cell
phone”
BPM’s Evolution
”
Business process management suites (BPMS) will be among the fastest
growing software markets through 2011, exceeding $1 billion in 2007 in
software revenues and will reach $2.6 billion by 2011, according to a
study by Gartner. The increasing importance of the customer loyalty and
the rise of the Internet is changing the dynamics of business, and will
lead to a renewed interest in the management of business process as
enterprises look to use software to better coordinate their processes.
Gartner predicts that BPMS software will exhibit a compound annual growth rate of 24 percent in the period from 2006 to 2011.”
Small Businesses Get IPcelerated
”’The
significant part of IPcelerate’s announcement is that they’ve figured
out how to do off-the-shelf vertical customization for smaller
businesses,’ says Nora Freedman, a senior analyst at IDC. ‘Previously, voice integration required expensive CTI;
tech specialists could create integrated applications with Visual
Studio but they weren’t voice enabled. This brings the two ends
together.’”
