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Customer Service & Support

• Designing a Customer-In CMR Environment

  Start by Making it Easy for Customers to Manage their Relationships with Your Firm; Then Worry about Managing Your Relationships with Them

  by Patricia Seybold

  We have a unique opportunity to rethink our own information systems from scratch, we start from the outside in: with customer self-service, customer profile management, and customer transaction management.
  Jan. 22, 2004

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• CRM in 2004

  Our Predictions for the Year Ahead

  by Mitchell Kramer

  This report presents our prediction for CRM in 2004. We think that CRM will be a growth area.
  Jan. 8, 2004

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• Customer Data Warehouses

  Closing the Loop on Customer-Centricity

  by Mitchell Kramer

  A customer data warehouse is a data warehouse designed to support the customer-centric analysis of your business. This report discusses what data they contain and how they’re used.
  Dec. 18, 2003

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• Siebel Acquires UpShot and Motiva

  Strengthening SFA Functionality, Technology, and Packaging

  by Mitchell Kramer

  This report presents our take on Siebel’s October 15, 2003, acquisitions of UpShot Corporation and Motiva, Inc.
  Oct. 23, 2003

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• The Top 10 Reasons that CRM Projects Fail

  and Our Prescription for Ensuring that Your CRM Project Won’t

  by Mitchell Kramer

  We’ve heard over and over again that 80 percent of CRM projects fail. We’re not sure that this is the right number, but there’s been a lot of commonality in the reasons for this failure. So much so that we offer in this report the top 10 reasons for thos
  Oct. 2, 2003

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• Going! Going! Gone?

  Will Customer Service and Software Problems Topple Internet Auction Leader eBay?

  by Robert Eugene Shelton

  Although eBay is a phenomenal success in the online auction business, the company seems to be ignoring its primary customers, forcing buggy and time-consuming technology on them.
  May. 22, 2003

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• How to Approach Multi-Channel CRM

  Walk In Your Customers' Shoes and Identify the Services that Customers' Need across Channels

  by Mitchell Kramer

  Your customers demand a seamless experience when they do business with you—seamless across multiple channels. We call this multi-channel CRM. We created the Multi-Channel CRM Workshop to help you design this CRM approach.
  May. 22, 2003

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• Epiphany E.6

  How E.piphany’s CRM Suite Stacks Up against Our Framework for Evaluating Multi-Channel CRM Solutions

  by Mitchell Kramer

  This report assesses the functionality, administration, and Architecture of E.piphany E.6 against our evaluation and comparison framework for multi-channel CRM.
  Mar. 20, 2003

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• Supporting the Partner Channel

  Education and Services Can Help Partners Truly Add Value, Keeping Them and Customers Satisfied

  by Patricia Seybold

  A well-educated and well-supported partner will help you make more sales.
  Mar. 13, 2003

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• Multi-Channel CRM Architecture

  An Architecture for Ideal Customer Experience

  by Mitchell Kramer

  This report defines an Architecture for Multi-Channel CRM. This Architecture can help define your CRM requirements and evaluate CRM products.
  Feb. 6, 2003

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• American Express Comes Through for a Member in Need

  Solving a Problem Leads to an Easy Up-Sell

  by Ronni Marshak

  When a customer is in crisis, solving the problem on the spot makes the sale!
  Jan. 16, 2003

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• Challenges in Supporting Customer Scenarios® Across Multiple Touchpoints

  Following Up on Fleet’s Focus on Customer Service: Personnel Doing a Fine Job, but Voice Response System in Desperate Need of Enhancement

  by Ronni Marshak

  FleetBoston has real problems with cross-touchpoint consistency in customer service.
  Dec. 13, 2002

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• Portal Framework

  Our Framework for Evaluating and Comparing Portal Platforms

  by David Marshak

  We present our framework for evaluating portal platform products. The framework enables product-to-product comparisons on functionality, services, and architectural levels.
  Dec. 12, 2002

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• Common Pitfalls to Avoid in CRM

  Think Customer-Managed Relationships (CMR) First and You’ll be On the Right Track

  by Patricia Seybold

  Many CRM initiatives aren't gaining traction because they've been implemented poorly. We've found eight common problems that keep CRM efforts from taking off.
  Oct. 24, 2002

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• Good, Old-Fashioned, Customer Service

  Just Keep Your Promises, and You’re Almost There!

  by Ronni Marshak

  Even a no-tech example can showcase best practices in providing customer service.
  Oct. 3, 2002

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• BPR for CRM?

  Whose Business Processes Are You Redesigning? Make Sure It’s the Ones that Customers Care About!

  by Patricia Seybold

  Best practices in CRM are an alluring goal, but make sure you start with processes that the customers care about.
  Sep. 19, 2002

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• The Future of Contact Centers

  Rather than Going Away, They Will Be a Point of Consolidated Information and Functionality

  by Ronni Marshak

  Contact center solutions today provide a key set of capabilities which will, in the future, need to be enhanced to meet customer needs.
  Jul. 18, 2002

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• The CRM Paradox

  When a 360 Degree View Doesn't Give a Complete Picture

  by Ronni Marshak

  There is an emerging paradox: customers frequently can get more information than can the employees whose jobs are to help them.
  Jun. 20, 2002

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• Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield Delivers Customer-Centric Services over the Web

  Using E-Business Portals to Transform Relationships with Members, Physicians, Brokers, and Employers

  by Geoffrey Bock

  Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield has now introduced four customer-focused self-service portals, targeting the needs of members, physicians, brokers, and employers.
  Apr. 4, 2002

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• What’s Important in CRM Architecture?

  A Framework for Evaluation and Comparison

  by Mitchell Kramer

  This report describes our framework for evaluating the architecture of CRM products, an important factor in CRM product selection.
  Feb. 7, 2002

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