JT on EDM

I was pointed to a post today on the topic of customer service (Another Day, Another Customer-Service Nightmare on the EconoWhiner) that pointed out that companies
need to provide quality service and quality customer service if they’re going to survive an economic downturn as severe as this one?
Now I am not going to pick on AOL [...]

Great comment from monkchips on twitter today:
the key to customer relationship management is to treat your clients as people rather than accounts. everything else follows from that.
Of course the challenge is how to make sure that all the people who work for you and all the systems your clients use do this. While you can [...]

Randy Saunders had a great post over on the Perfect Customer Experience -Can I please speak with a live agent? In it he has a great quote:
Forester’s study finds that 45 percent of consumers prefer to speak with a customer service agent to answer questions and resolve service issues, yet most walk away from customer [...]

Ginger Conlon had a little piece on mobile marketing that caught my eye. This post highlighted the growing importance of mobile devices as both a customer support channel and as a marketing vehicle. I completely agree with this assessment but I think it means that, for both customer service and marketing, we will have to [...]

David Rance had a nice piece on CustomerThink called Great Service Has to Be Institutionalized if It Is to Become the Norm. In this post he identifies decision making as important, which I think is true. Now his focus is on culture (very important) but mine is different. What if you used your systems to [...]

I have been an iRobot customer since Christmas. Much as I like their products, their customer service decision making leaves a lot to be desired. This particular post was prompted by their inconsistent warranty decision management. iRobot has outsourced its call center, as many companies have, and sound like they want to deliver excellent customer [...]

The same reader who asked yesterday’s question had a second:
Do you see the terms “Enterprise Decision Management” and “Smart Enough Systems” concerned mostly with the automation of decisions — which means really only covering strictly operational and appropriate tactical decisions.
The term “Enterprise Decision Management” to me suggests a broader definition, one that I would expect [...]

Chordiant announced Recommendation Advisor 6.1 today, a “real-time conversation and interaction management solution”. This Next-Best-Action engine is built on Chordiant’s Decision Management platform and designed to both improve self-service channels and support call center staff.  It uses rules and analytics to make the best recommendation and dynamically adapts during a conversation, for instance if the [...]

Three articles on loyalty caught my eye this week. First 1:1 had a nice piece on Loyalty Equals Growth for Sony. Sony is a company to which many people are already loyal so it was interesting to see that a formal loyalty program was still a priority for them. Talking about their combined CRM and [...]

Reading 1:1 today I saw a great story about Gulf Bank called Overcoming Customer Interaction Roadblocks. This bank has a problem because it’s customers can’t get mail. How does it address this? By using it’s ATMs as a delivery device for messages! Putting relevant, timely, personalized information on the ATM when you use it. No [...]