Customer Service

In our high-powered, win-at-all-costs business environment, the word "empathy" often evokes derision and scorn. Who has time to be a squishy, touchy-feely wimp overflowing with empathy? We're all busy closing deals and kicking butt! Kicking, closing, etc., is great -- but empathy has genuine busines...

EarthLink and IHL on Tuesday released a joint study that shines a light on the specific ways different types of localized WiFi networks are helping businesses, and how enterprises are adapting to the realities of a more mobile and data-centric world. Companies are changing their point-of-sale system...

The Federal Reserve Board has released its fourth annual study of consumers' mobile commerce behaviors. The report shows a continued boom in banking on mobile phones and other devices rather than at a teller desk. Central to the report's findings is the growing number of "banked" consumers -- those ...

Self-service is generally considered a good thing, especially in CRM, where there has been significant investment in empowering people to take on more responsibility for provisioning service or making purchases. But it's not all great, and there is some interesting blowback that is causing vendors t...

Remember all those hours you spent at the mall just hanging out, not buying a thing? Well, a lot of us just never grew up. We just moved our hangout from the local mall to the Internet. We meet our friends online, we order food online, and we window-shop online. It's a good life. That is, it's good ...

If you dislike your insurance company, you are not alone: Worldwide, less than 30 percent of consumers have positive experiences in dealing with their insurers, according to Capgemini's World Insurance Report 2015. North America saw the largest decline in satisfaction -- 8.3 percentage points. Capg...

You may have heard of a company called Geek Squad, but what about PlumChoice or SupportSpace? Even if you don't know their names, you may very well be doing business with them right now. Who are they? PlumChoice, SupportSpace are both relatively small companies that do business with larger companies...

Roughly a year after it acquired Parature, Microsoft last month unveiled the Spring '15 release of Parature from Microsoft. The new application, the first major release since the acquisition, adds to Parature's self-service and knowledge management functionality. The feature set focuses on increasin...

Ever built a house of cards? It's critical to start with a sound foundation to support your later efforts. No matter how sturdy your start is, however, a wrong move anywhere along the way can bring down the house and cause all your work to be for naught. Delivering good customer experiences is lik...

I have sympathy for customer service representatives -- really, I do. I know that customers can be ignorant, demanding and ill-mannered. On the other hand, CSRs should be trained to deal with bad-tempered customers. Also, CSRs should be trained to avoid provoking pleasant and agreeable customers to ...