There’s certainly no shortage of technological revolution affecting the way organizations serve their customers. For example, much of the industry buzz in 2010 and 2011 revolved around the impact of social customer care (net: low volume, high brand impact) and the continued adoption of SaaS-based customer service (net: still gaining momentum but migration taking longer than most thought).
Today, under the headline “The End of Hold As We Know It”, Fonolo introduced a commercial offering that representing new packaging and pricing of its services.
A remarkably high percentage number of C-level executives indicate their companies’ lack of a defined strategy to deal with all the “personal data” provided by customers and prospects through a multitude of channels. Yet they also tell us of their plans to incorporate that data into “understanding intent” and forging better communications links that promote loyalty, profitability and product refinement.
Today’s acquisition of RightNow Technologies shows Oracle’s deep appreciation of the power of cloud-based resources to provide a better “user experience.”
Nuance Communications launched a “portfolio” of software products and services to address every enterprise’s need to deliver on the promise of a mobile strategy.
At G-Force Melbourne, Alcatel urges companies to “make smartphones and the mobile Web tools for customers or prospects to define where, when and how to toggle from self-service to assisted service.”
Thanks to advances in reliability, capacity and security, “The Cloud” has become the general destination for applications, storage and computer power that used to live almost exclusively within enterprise firewalls. This creates a new playing field where old-guard, voice application service providers (like Voxeo, Convergys, Microsoft/Tellme, Nuance) are on a par with Amazon.com, Salesforce.com, IBM and other “giants” of cloud computing.
TheSocialCustomer.com has issued a report entitled “Rethinking Customer Service: The Call Center as Information Hub.” I contribute a section about new roles for Customer Service Reps (CSRs) in support of Conversational Commerce.
Doc Searls, Drummond Reed and I participated in the closing keynote and panel at Sugarcon 2011, which is SugarCRM’s annual customer and developer conference.
I’ll be joining Doc Searls and Connect.me’s Drummond Reed at Sugarcon 2011, the fifth annual get-together for customers and partners of SugarCRM.