July 2004

Magazine Features

Customers for Life

Capture the mythical creature known as The Lifelong Customer.

7 Strategies for Profiting From Customer Data

These seven strategies illustrate some of the best ways to apply the information you may already have in your contact center to improve your standing with customers.

Schooled in CRM

Following is a list of universities, their CRM programs, and their current enrollment.

CRM.GOV

Industry pundits maintain that the biggest growth area in CRM over the next three years will be in the public sector, especially within state and local governments.

Front Office

CRM: Alive and Kicking

As long as companies have customers they'll need strategies to manage those relationships; whatever name you prefer, in the end it's CRM.

Reality Check

Whose Portal Is It, Anyway?

The complexity lies in the decision of whose portal should run the desktop: the CRM portal or a more application-agnostic portal?

Customer Centricity

Other People's Customers

There are at least five major issues that prevent us from execution. Acting requires recognizing and addressing them.

Insight

What Do CRM Users Need? Just Ask Them

It's not surprising that many CRM vendors formalize interaction using customer advisory boards that have direct input into product development.

Market Watch: Marketing Tools Emerge as Comprehensive Solutions

Vendors are combining MRM with campaign management to leverage a broad spectrum of functions, including planning, execution, and measurement.

Who's Who in CRM

In May CRM magazine presented a list of some of the industry's key players. This month we continue that recognition with a look at three executives from midmarket leader E.piphany.

Tracking Marketing Performance

MPM is just one of a growing battery of disciplines that aims to give substance and accountability to marketing activities.

Heard and Overheard

Market Watch: Making Sense of Workforce Optimization

At its core, workforce optimization prepares a staff to manage the ebb and flow of daily call volumes into a call center.

Required Reading: How to Find Out What Customers Really Care About

CRM magazine's Emmy Favilla spoke with Acuff to discuss his approach.

The Pulse: Does Your CEO Use the CRM Tools Your Company Has in Place?

REAL ROI

The Sweet Taste of Success

The company's knowledge base has remained essentially static, aside from a few regular promotional events, which means efforts to maintain or update the FAQ can be kept to a minimum.

5 Ways to Ensure CRM Success

According to the results of a recent survey conducted by IBM Business Consulting Services, the quality of your technology won't be the deciding factor in predicting whether your CRM project will falter or thrive.

CRM in Action: Getting Resolution Right--on the First Call

Two of the most tangible results are a 90 percent first call resolution rate, and the reduction of customer call handling time by 20 seconds.

How to...know when to upgrade your CRM tools

You don't necessarily need to pay top dollar for every new revision and incremental improvement the vendor offers up.

CRM in Action: Understanding Customers' Various Buying Roles

The company now has the ability to track campaigns and responses to determine which campaigns are generating the most profit.

Customers Serve Each Other in Online Communities

The company is now able to be more responsive to customer needs, as software upgrades are based on customer feedback from the site.

CRM in Action: Thinking Out of the (Shoe) Box: Olan Mills's Reps Switch From Index Cards to PDAs

Olan Mills is now better able to identify profitable prospects.

Cummins Revs Up Its Marketing

Cummins had an undisciplined process for direct communications with customers, virtually no direct marketing via email, and customers could not provide feedback.

Secret of My Success

Ingrian Networks' Strategy for Successful Data Access and Integration

The biggest issue was the initial process of migrating historical marketing information.