Ask Wendy
Ask Wendy
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On-Demand versus On-Premise CRM: There Are Proven Performance Differences
Jun 14, 2006
Over the past five years, CRM users have aligned themselves into one of two camps; those organizations that have implemented, administered, and maintained their CRM systems in-house (On-Premise) and those who have leveraged the services of software as a service (On-Demand) solution providers like salesforce.com to meet their CRM needs. According to recent research conducted by CSO Insights, based on user experiences, On-Demand CRM holds the edge over On-Premise CRM in key areas. If your organization is still debating On-Premise versus On-Demand CRM, this independent research by CSO Insights and available compliments of salesforce.com, is a must read. -
Best Practices in Business Process Automation and CRM
May 16, 2006
Business process automation (BPA) is a big part of CRM and for good reason. Winners in CRM analyze and redesign customer-facing processes that provide real value to the customer.Truly customer-centric enterprises will redesign and automate customer processes as necessary, even when they cut across business functions and/or the back office. The goal is to examine all customer-related processes, remove those that are not needed, and rework those that could be improved with technology.
The challenge, according to Scott Nelson, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner (and our recent Secrets of Successful CRM Practitioners Webcast guest), is that most organizations have 600 to 1,000 processes that need to be examined.
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Improving Customer Self-Service: Analyst Research and On-Demand Webcast
May 8, 2006
Are you creating great customer experiences? According to research firm Yankee Group, customer service is one of the few differentiators that a company possesses. And, self-service is increasingly the customer's first choice for interacting with your business. Join us for a complimentary on-demand Webcast ‘Five Steps to Improving the Customer Self-Service Experience' including myself as host, Wendy Close, Salesforce.com CRM Success Expert; Yankee Group Director of Customer-Centric Strategies Sheryl Kingstone; and salesforce.com customer Steve Petrofsky, VP of Support Services at m-Qube. Learn 5 key steps for creating great customer self-service experiences from auditing your current service and support operations to developing a 360-degree, real-time, cross-channel view of the your customer. And, hear how m-Qube deployed Salesforce Service & Support to immediately scale its support center to handle more than 10,000 inquiries a week without adding any new staff. View the Five Steps to Improving the Customer Self-Service Experience Webcast now and get Latest On-Demand Software Eases Self-Service Experience, a Yankee Group research report by Sheryl Kingstone, compliments of salesforce.com. The Webcast is about 50 minutes of easy listening packed with actionable advice. It is well worth the time for all those with a keen interest in improving customer self service. As always, comments and questions welcome. Have a CRM question? Askwendy@crmsuccess.com. -
Improving the Customer Experience with Self-Service
Apr 27, 2006Based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) scores, we were amazed to discover for the fourth year in a row, the online retail industry within the ecommerce sector (companies such as Amazon and eBay) continued to satisfy customers better than any other industry --- including the traditional offline retailers.
This means customers are getting a better customer experience online then they are in stores with live human help. This shocking statistic certainly makes a strong case for organizations to provide really great web self-service sites for their customers. Want to know how? Read on.
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Best Practices in Evolving Your Customer Feedback Programs
Apr 6, 2006We spent the last two days at CustomerSat's Customer Leadership Conference meeting with many visionaries driving their businesses to new levels of customer loyalty and satisfaction. Attendees had titles like Director for Worldwide Customer Operations, Senior Director of Customer Advocacy, and Director of Customer Care. These folks worked for some of the most admired and prestigious businesses in the world today. What they all had in common was a driving passion to evolve their organizations to produce even greater customer experiences. They articulated very detailed customer experience management processes and programs designed to measure and improve key business performance indictors like customer loyalty, including if the customer was rationally loyal (loyal because of the tangible attributes of products or services), or emotionally loyal (loyal because they love the business). To learn their secrets, read on.
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Secrets of Successful CRM Practitioners
Mar 20, 2006Enterprises with a successful CRM strategy truly reap the benefits:
"Through 2010, enterprises that deploy CRM strategies will return at least 25 percent better financial metrics than those that don't."---Source: Gartner, Inc., "Ten Secrets for Creating a Customer-Centric Enterprise" by Scott Nelson, VP and Distinguished Analyst, December 2005.
Put your company in that category! Set aside a few minutes to take stock of your CRM efforts and recharge your CRM strategy.
Join us for a complimentary on-demand Webcast 'Secrets of Successful CRM Practitioners' including myself as host, Wendy Close, Salesforce.com CRM Success Expert; Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Scott Nelson; and salesforce.com customer Wes Benwick, CEO and CIO of Bennett's Business Systems.
Listen as we divulge secrets you can immediately apply to your own business including:
- Four guiding principles for successful customer-centric strategies
- Best practices in CRM process automation
- A CRM generational framework for evolving your organization to become even more customer-centric
Download the Secrets of Successful CRM Practitioners Webcast now and get Ten Secrets for Creating a Customer-Centric Enterprise, a Gartner research report by Scott Nelson and the framework used in our Webcast —compliments of salesforce.com.
The Webcast is about 40 minutes of easy listening packed with actionable advice. It is well worth the time for all those with a keen interest in differentiating their organization with customer-centric strategies. The potential payoff is big.
To learn more about how Salesforce has helped create customer-centric sales organizations you can visit our Customer Section. For further information about our CRM solutions visit the CRM software as a service pages.
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How to Calculate SLA Response Times and Report on Compliance
Mar 1, 2006
Here are instructions for how to use Salesforce to calculate service level agreement (SLA) response times and report on your compliance. Special thanks to David Holmes, of Salesforce.com's EMEA Consulting organization for contributing this work to the community. -
Leveraging Your Most Valuable Asset: Customer References
Feb 21, 2006
If you ask a room full of sales and marketing executives, “what is the ultimate sign of customer loyalty?” repeat business and referrals are the most common sought after signs of loyalty. However, without a good system and process in place, managing and leveraging customer references are often challenging. First you need to identify your best customer references using a good set of criteria. The attributes should enable you to match current customer references with prospective customer requirements. Then you need the ability for your sales organization to easily identify the best references for any given sales situation and secure the resource. Most important is preventing over using any one customer reference and properly acknowledging and rewarding customers that serve as a reference for you. Therefore, all reference activities need to be tracked in a central system. Building a strong customer reference program can be one of your most strategic weapons when it comes to winning new business. If your organization has yet to develop tools and processes for managing customer references, here is a great presentation with screen shots on how to easily customize Salesforce to Manage A Thriving Customer Reference Program for your organization. -
Building a Brilliant CRM Business Case
Feb 15, 2006 -
Customer Loyalty/Retention Ranks Fifth in Top 10 CEO Challenges for 2006
Jan 20, 2006
We were curious just how important CRM was to CEOs from around the globe and from all size firms, in 2006. Did CEOs of successful firms consider the management of customer relationships as top of mind for 2006? Did those that were less successful rank customer loyalty/retention as less important? Do CEOs in general really care about CRM and are their implementations of salesforce.com helping them achieve their goals? If you want to know the answers, read on.
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