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6/21/06 - The Silver Bullet of Customer Retention
Recently, I was asked to speak to a group of CEOs about one of my favorite topics - customer retention. I am always happy to share my perspectives garnered from experience. I had originally agreed on the premise that I would talk about the business case for customer retention and the methodology to improve it based on analytics and business processes. Of course, there is a bit of retention culture that often enters the mix.
However, an interesting thing happened along the way. The organizers came back and suggested that I skip the focus on business case, methodology and culture in order to dwell on a "couple silver bullets." In other words, simply tell the audience what to do to improve customer retention. I immediately declined the speaking opportunity.
Why? Because my experience tells me that every business is unique and the retention strategies of one company cannot be universally applied to others. To suggest the existence of generally applicable best practices ignores the realities of each business and the opportunity for value differentiation. We all wish there was a silver bullet but if there were it would already be in use by every organization. Wouldn't it?
Gary Lemke, Publisher
(Share your thoughts)
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TODAY'S NEWS (more)
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Citrix GoToWebinar, the company's collaboration offering, gives marketing professionals a solution for conducting online events, such as large sales presentations and marketing events over the Web.
Perseus Development and WebSurveyor announced the merger of the two companies. The two entities will be combined under a newly formed holding company funded by Austin Ventures.
Most business executives suffer from "presentation fatigue," a direct result of the vast amounts of time they spend preparing for and giving presentations each month, according to a survey from Business Objects. The survey indicated that while executives have improved access to data, they need solutions that can help them quickly and easily present that information in a visually appealing format. A recent online poll of 382 executives found that over half of the respondents give one or more presentations per month. Of those respondents, 36 percent found presenting data to the board or senior management "tedious," with a further 24 percent stating they "dread it each time it comes around."
As a result of Westbury's many years of experience in implementing ITSM strategies supported by the service desk solution, Self Service Portal evolved from the service desk customer's need to for a web based service request management solution.
TrueAdvantage announced the availability of TrueAdvantage 4.0, its new qualified lead generation system. The subscription-based solution leverages TrueAdvantage's unique SmartTrigger technology to automatically mine the Internet and over 20,000 business information sources, structure that information, and filter it to deliver qualified leads directly to the salespersons.
In this live Web cast, John Ragsdale, Vice President of research for SSPA; Scott Johnsen, ATG Product Marketing Director; and Tim Crowder, former Senior Knowledge Management Program Manager of Symantec will discuss the expected growth in online service, practical ways to meet customer demand, and ways OnDemand service technology can help you optimize your business results through cross- and up-selling opportunities.
SupportSoft announced that Belgacom SA has purchased SupportSoft ServiceVerify and ServiceGateway software to provide service verification and remote CPE management capabilities for its triple play service offerings. Belgacom will begin deployment of the solutions with its newly launched IPTV service, Belgacom.TV.
VerticalResponse and salesforce.com announced that Salary.com has deployed VerticalResponse for AppExchange via the salesforce.com AppExchange. VerticalResponse for AppExchange provides Salesforce users with an integrated toolset for creating and launching email and direct mail campaigns.
Major Technology Resources has teamed up with Scherrer's Web Ally CRM offering for its front office, enterprise customer relationship management (eCRM) platform for its clients who are Registered Investment Advisors (RIA's), money managers, broker dealers, account managers, and assistants. This partnership and the added CRM functionality installation is part of the Major Technology continued expansion of its powerful Asset Book system.
Talisma announced a joint partnership with Japanese reseller Vital to sell Talisma's newly released Japanese products, Talisma CIM 7.0j, and CRM 7.0j. In addition to releasing the new solutions, Talisma is also announcing the launch of the company's first Web site localized in Japanese.
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 FEATURE WEBCAST (more) |
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"Understanding the Voice of the Customer"
Roger Lee, Director of Consulting Services, etalk
A lot has been said about listening to the voice of the customer to ensure that your business is delivering quality service. But what about understanding that voice? Roger Lee, etalk Director of Consulting Services, discusses how call recordings can contain a wealth of information that go beyond simply gathering data for quality monitoring. This presentation will deliver practical tips for customer service organizations to begin leveraging the data within customer calls for strategic business initiatives that can be felt throughout the organization.
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| CRMAdvocate Stock Index |
| CRMSI | 47.36 |  | 1.71% |
| Dow Jones | 10,974.84 | | 0.30% |
| Nasdaq | 2,107.06 |  | -0.16% |
| S&P 500 | 1,240.12 | | 0.00% |
| Top Gainers |
| Interact Intell | 12.72 | | 0.42 |
| RightNow | 15.14 | | 0.35 |
| eLoyalty | 13.3 | | 0.20 |
| Top Losers |
| Astea | 10.61 | | -0.98 |
| SPSS | 32.81 | | -0.87 |
| HP | 32.86 | | -0.71 |
| Complete Stock Index |
| As of close 06/20/06 | |
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August 14-16, 2006: ICCM 2006 - Find the customer contact management solutions and strategies to align your service center and business objectives to drive performance at ICCM 2006! Successful contact center professionals share two common traits: they drive performance excellence and they strive to be the 'best they've ever been'. Top performers constantly look for ways to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers, their staff, and their management. And they constantly look for new professional development opportunities.
|  | July 25th, 2006: Call Monitoring and Coaching Seminar - Get your caller to monitor, evaluate, and score the call! REGISTER TODAY! Dr. Jon Anton will share best practices. We will also have a guest speaker from a World Class company who will share how they implemented this emerging model of effective and efficient call monitoring...
As you already know, call monitoring is one of the biggest challenges we face today. This seminar will give you practical tips on a new and proven strategy to drive the right agent behavior while reducing the overall QA costs to your call center.
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