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Customer-Centric CRM: Fully Optimizing CRM

Customers, after all, are your most important assets. Discover how to rethink your CRM processes from the outside in, and evolve your current CRM projects around a customer centric strategy. This white paper from the Yankee Group explains how Customer Lifecycle Care is a key driver for improved CRM performance, ensuring every touchpoint is effectively leveraged to produce maximum business value.

Successful CRM: Turning Customer Loyalty into Profitability

In this white paper, you'll learn why listening to the voice of the customer is so crucial to CRM success—and how genuine customer loyalty impacts corporate profitability. You'll also find out what the latest research indicates about the gap between potential and actual CRM benefits, and the four key drivers of ROI for CRM projects.

Customer Lifecycle Care: Leveraging Customer Service to Achieve CRM Success .

Discover an alternative to traditional CRM: Customer Lifecycle Care, an approach that leverages customer service best practices to fully integrate business processes across sales, marketing and customer service. Learn how you can ensure effective enterprise CRM with CLC, and how to appropriately manage customer relationships to maximize revenue, loyalty and lifespan while keeping operational costs low.

Marketing Automation

E-mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy: The Four Steps to High Impact E-mail Marketing

E-mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy is a guide for combining leading customer relationship strategies with the best practices within e-mail marketing. it begins with a look at the modern e-mail marketing landscape and an examination of its sharpest challenges. This is followed by "Four Steps to High Impact E-mail Marketing," designed to help decision makers surpass the challengesand achieve success. Throughout the report are examples of best-in-class e-mail marketing approaches, including a case study from Skechers USA, Inc.

Top Ten Success Secrets of Email Marketing

As a savvy 21st century marketer, you're looking to use the Internet more effectively to reach your prospects, customers and clients. Email is a fast, inexpensive and effective way to target and address your various audiences, especially when compared to direct mail, outbound call centers and other traditional marketing channels. This paper is a compilation of best practices of emailmarketing from some of the most successful industry practitioners. You'll also get a clear picture of trends and patterns to aid you in mapping your email marketing strategy.

Sales Automation

Ensuring a Successful Sales Organization: Aligning Sales Methodology and Technology

Discover how to reap the full benefit of your SFA system by integrating a sales process. This paper provides guidelines for choosing SFA systems, describes how a sales process can improve input, and suggests implementation approaches to accelerate the acceptance and benefits of SFA.

Customer Service

The New Government Agency Contact Center: Blending Phone, Email, Web and Chat to Expand and Improve Services within Existing Budget Constraints

For government agencies it has become critical to manager all communication channels in a more integrated way. The impact of the integrated approach is substantial. In this paper you will learn how cross-channel contact centers enable agencies to provide more responsive service, support more programs, and deliver consistently accurate information - within existing resource constraints. Learn the five reasons why every agency need a multi-channel contact center strategy.

Right-Channeling: Making Sure Your Best Customers Get Your Best Service

Regardless of the specific reason, your company should be able to selectively provide different levels of service to customers based on their value to your business. By giving your most valuable customers superior service, you keep them happy—significantly increasing retention of these high-value customers and maximizing the total business value they generate over time. Read this white paper to learn more about right-channeling.

Proactive Customer Service: Seizing the Initiative to Exceed Customer Expectations, Cut Costs and Out-Service the Competition

While most customer service organizations (CSO's) have traditionally operated almost exclusively in reactive mode—responding to customer queries as they arrive—it is also possible to address customer service issues proactively. With a simple shift in thinking and the appropriate enabling technology, CSO's can seize the initiative and become highly proactive in their communications and problem solving. This paper describes the mechanisms and techniques companies are using to deliver proactive customer service.

Multi-Channel Service: Boosting Customer Value and Loyalty

Customers are using both traditional and online interaction channels with greater frequency and they likely don't want to repeat themselves because one part of the service organization doesn't share information with another. A recent survey by Modalis Research Technologies found that 72 percent of respondents would stop doing business with a company if they experienced poor customer service. And multi-channel service often falls short of expectations. Learn how to integrate service processes through proven success strategies backed by industry research and customer experiences.

From Call Center to Contact Center: How to Successfully Blend Phone, Email, Web and Chat to Deliver Great Service and Slash Costs

Giga Information Group recently declared: "It is essential that companies communicate across organizational boundaries to develop a plan for supporting their customers across channels with intelligence information that recognizes individual customers and offers consistent levels of support." This white paper distills how easy it is transition from call center to complete contact center using one integrated knowledge base.

Insider's Guide to Selecting an ASP

ASPs are changing the way corporations buy and use CRM and other enterprise applications. However, it's critical to selecting the right one. The best ASPs are those that are fully committed to the ASP model, that provide comprehensive browser-based application functionality, provide robust security and offer appropriate business engagement terms. By selecting ASPs based on the criteria outlined in this white paper, organizations of all kinds can benefit from the fast deployment, lower operating costs and reduced management headaches that hosted applications offer.

Delivering UK Public Sector eService

As eGovernment targets move closer they look increasingly challenging: despite the proliferation of technology and usability of Web sites to convey council information, citizens persist in face-to-face and telephone contact. This white paper outlines the role an intelligent, self-learning information source plays in supporting call center staff, delivering online access to information and services and improving the perceived value of the organization. By creating this information source that supports all citizen interactions, councils can begin to attain a return on investment from eGovernment initiatives without being dependent upon high levels of Internet adoption within the community.

The Insider's Guide to Customer Service Knowledge Bases: Technical Guidelines and Best Practices for Answering Customers' Questions Quickly, Accurately and Cost-Efficiently

Great customer service is all about answering customers' questions quickly and accurately every time. An effective knowledge base can be extraordinarily useful in fulfilling this critical business requirement. In fact, many companies have achieved dramatic business results through the use of customer service knowledge bases. These results include: significant cost reductions, happier customers, consistent answers across all channels, super-scalable capacity, greater staff productivity and increased revenue.

The Best Practices for the Web-Enabled Contact Center: 17 Lessons from RightNow's 1,100+ Implementations That Can Help You Maximize the Quality and Cost-Efficiency of Your Company's Customer Service

The Web has clearly proven to itself across virtually every market segment to be an ideal channel for delivering quality customer service at a much lower cost-per-incident than any other communications channel. The Web can also be effectively integrated with those other channels to create highly efficient contact centers that make optimal use of the Web, email, phone and chat. But no one can create a state-of-the-art multi-channel contact center without taking the first step. That first step is the most important best practice of all.

Multiple-Tenancy Hosted Applications: The Death and Rebirth of the Software Industry

While most of the software industry is struggling, one sector is experiencing strong growth: multiple-tenancy hosted applications. These applications allow multiple customers to be hosted securely on a unified host, while individual clients still maintain control in a scalable atmosphere. Corporate customers will benefit from the newly conceived hosted models because they will get the results they seek sooner and more reliably at a lower cost.

The Insider's Guide to Customer Service on the Web: Ten Secrets for Successful Customer Service

This white paper distills the experience and best practices of successful customer service offerings from a wide range of industries. It also provides a simple test you can use to determine your company's "Service Quotient." With this information, you'll be able to plan and implement your own web-based customer service strategy, and then join the ranks of successful companies who consistently delight customers by giving them the power to find their own answers.

Insider's Guide to the Key Elements of a Complete Internet Customer Service Solution

Today's Internet-savvy customers expect you to be able to quickly answer their questions, whether they contact you via the web, email, phone or chat. They expect you to give them consistent answers regardless of which channel they use to contact you. And they expect you to be able to handle any given incident in a common manner even if they bounce between channels during the life of that incident. Read this white paper to learn the key elements of a complete contact center solution.

The Savings of Web-Based Self-Service: Delighting Your Customers While Reducing Support Costs

The imperative of customer retention and loyalty, in tandem with an increased emphasis on cost reductions and the bottom line in the current economic environment, puts rapid ROI into sharp focus. Leading service solutions are dedicated to exceeding customer expectations for access to meaningful, accurate data and easy-to-navigate web sites, while reducing costs.

Communicating with Constituents: Proven High-ROI Technology for Government Agencies

The bottom line is that government agencies must improve and streamline their communication with constituents in order to meet service-level objectives within increasingly tight budget constraints. Service technologies have already proven themselves to be extraordinarily effective in addressing this growing challenge. Thiswhite paper describes this technology and its benefits. It also includes real-world examples of agencies that have seen substantial improvements in the quality and efficiency of communications with their constituents.

Internet-Based Location Finders: Linking Your Virtual Presence to the Real World

This paper discusses the business opportunities associated with the newest innovation in customer service—location finder software. In today's economy, closing the gap between customers' online purchasing or service needs and their ability to find offline locations has become a necessity. Comprehensive, easy-to-navigate Internet-based location information helps CRM systems satisfy customer needs and help companies gain competitive advantage.

Winning Service Strategies for Colleges and Universities: How to Optimize Recruitment, Retention and Operational Efficiency by Providing Easy, Immediate Access to Institutional Information

The right knowledge base technology properly implemented can significantly impact communications with students, the quality of campus life and the operational efficiency of multiple departments. Prospective students, current students and internal constituencies all need a reliable, centralized source of information they can access whenever they need an answer to a question. University staffs need a way to get out from under the relentless deluge of questions they receive every day. Knowledge base technology addresses both of these needs in a highly efficient and elegant manner.

eService: Strategies for Success in the Customer Age

Internet-based customer service, or eService, enables smart businesses to improve service levels and increase loyalty, while saving money. Companies large and small are adopting innovative Internet-based technologies such as web self-help, email response, live chat, and voice over IP. But technology is only part of the puzzle. This paper provides concrete strategies to maximize the success of an eService initiative.

The Future of Customer Service: The Road to Top-Line Impact

Data Mining

A Practitioners Viewpoint on Data Mining and Privacy
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Analysis Across the Border
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Analyzing CRM Results - It's Not Just About Software and Technology
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Building Your Model - A Primer For Choosing Variables
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Data Mining - It's Not As Difficult As You Think
By Larry Filler, The Boire Filler Group

Deconstructing Data Mining - The Key to Customer-Level Profitability
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Demystifying Segmentation - Part 1
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Demystifying Segmentation - Part 2
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

History of CRM - Data Mining and its Growth
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Integrating Market Research Information with Customer Data Information
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Measurement and Tracking - The Tactical Perspective
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Model Muddle
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

The Lighter Side of Data Mining
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Using External Data Sources to Optimize Data Mining Solutions
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Using Market Research Information to Impute Actual Customer Behaviour
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

Using Predictive Modeling to Optimize Business ROI
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

A Practitioner’s Viewpoint on Data Mining and Privacy - Part 1
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group

A Practitioner’s Viewpoint on Data Mining and Privacy - Part 2
By Richard Boire, The Boire Filler Group