Kate Leggett

Great customer service helps control costs as companies squeeze out operational efficiencies. It also fuels sustainable top-line revenue growth by providing differentiated experiences that keep customers loyal to your brand. We just finished assessing 20 of the most important technologies in customer service in terms of their maturity and business value. Here are some of […]

Three announcements affecting CRM came out of SAP’s SAPPHIRE NOW annual conference, held in Orlando on June 5–7: A renewed focus on CRM in order for SAP to be considered a viable player in the $45 billion CRM market. SAP’s cloud CRM (formerly known as SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer) is renamed SAP C/4HANA. The […]

I recently went to Verint’s Engage18 conference, held in Dallas from May 14 to 17. It’s not a big conference; it was attended by about 1,500 people who use one or more of the company’s customer service products: workforce engagement, self-service, voice of the customer, and fraud and compliance. What it lacks in size, it makes […]

I recently went to Verint’s Engage18 conference, held in Dallas from May 14 to 17. It’s not a big conference; it was attended by about 1,500 people who use one or more of the company’s customer service products: workforce engagement, self-service, voice of the customer, and fraud and compliance. What it lacks in size, it makes […]

I attended ServiceNow’s Knowledge18 conference, held in Las Vegas on May 7–10. It’s a well-attended conference, by 18,000 people who use one or more of the company’s cloud service management, HR, security, and customer service products, which are all built on an enterprise-grade platform. At the conference, there was a lot of emotion spent talking […]

Chatting, by definition, is meaningless, trivial talk – but web “chatting” is anything but; it is starting to transform digital customer experiences. And it works. Customers want to use chat. Forty-five percent have used it to interact with a live agent in 2017. The companies that get it are moving towards a holistic chat strategy […]

On March 12, Salesforce announced its intent to acquire CloudCraze, a B2B eCommerce application. This savvy and long-anticipated move nicely rounds out its broad CRM portfolio and supports B2B customers through their engagement journey. This eCommerce application is a fundamentally different one than Salesforce’s  B2C eCommerce acquisition of Demandware. This is because B2C engagement is […]

Great customer service is not just about cutting costs or making operations more efficient. Instead, it’s a systematic reinvention of established technology, data, and operations — leveraging automation, data, and agents together to exploit each of their unique strengths. This year, I see 3 broad customer service trends that organizations must consider as they fundamentally […]

You need a CRM vision to gather momentum around such a large – and potentially strategic initiative. The first CRM vendor that gave us the tools to do so was Oracle with their CX vision.  Oracle’s point of view was that CRM enabled companies to support their customers in their end to end journey – […]

Modern CRM is about better serving and supporting customers during their journey. It empowers companies to form an emotional bond with their customers by looking out for their best interests. It empowers customer-facing employees with the right data and information about their customers at the right time so that they can focus on nurturing relationships. Here’s […]

CRM is more than two decades old. Companies initially used it to provide “inside-out” efficiencies – operational efficiencies for sales, marketing, and customer service organizations. Companies would easily argue its’ business benefits by measuring operational metrics that were important to them – like reducing marketing costs, better forecasting or pipeline reporting, or decreasing service resolution […]

In the age of the customer, consumers have more information, more choices, more access, and more power. But they don’t have more time. That’s why the companies that attract, win and retain customers focus on delivering the tenets of great experiences: make it easy, make it effective, and build an emotional connection. But, customer service […]

Customers use an exploding number of communication channels to interact with a company, moving between them dependent on their context and preferences. They also use several channels at the same time – like web and phone – if it makes sense to do so. We know that customers use self service as a first point […]

AI will change the nature of work. Look at the rise of driverless cars and ridesharing — two services that are fueled by AI. Customer service for these services is going to look much different than it does now. AI today is still in its infancy; AI applications span discrete capabilities, all of which are […]

AI improves the economics and capabilities of everything around us. Amazon and Netflix recommend products based on our history, Yahoo and Facebook tag photos, Waze and Google get us to our destination more effectively, Lyft and Uber precisely communicate arrival times of our drivers. Consumers are starting to expect intelligent experiences – personal, contextual to […]

Consumers have more information, more choices, more access, and more power. But they don’t have more time. Customers want easy customer service experiences, that build emotional connections with the band – delivered as efficiently as possible. But enterprises struggle to deliver this kind of customer service because of the current state of customer service technology. […]

Today customers use self-service for straightforward interactions, leaving complex issues like account closure or claims disputes for a phone conversation. These questions often take longer to resolve and are opportunities to build positive customer relationships. Customer service organizations must look out for customers' best interests and support their emotional state. Take the example of Delta […]

Amazon just launched a preliminary cloud contact center offering, built on AWS. It offers an IVR, natural language understanding via Lex, queueing and routing and telephony infrastructure. It supports basic self-service interactions, and phone interactions. The best videos to explain what Amazon Connect does is at: Getting Started With Amazon Connect  and Introducing Amazon Connect.  Even […]

Customers hold the power in their relationships with businesses. Today, it's not enough for businesses to deliver products. Customers expect them to deliver outcomes and success. To do this, businesses must understand who the customer is, what their pain points are in achieving their business goals, and must help them choose the right products to […]