Articles

  • The Evolution of African Rural University

    Co-Designed by Its Faculty, Students, and End-Customers (People the Grads Will Serve)

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    Discover how 29 young Ugandan women helped shape a unique innovative educational institution. Learn how necessity led them to create a new profession. Find out how a university should measure its success.
    Jan. 5, 2023
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  • How Customers Want to Get Their Products Fixed and Problems Resolved

    Identifying and Measuring the Key Moments of Truth in "Break/Fix" Customer Scenario® Patterns

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    When something breaks, customers want it fixed! And they want a common set of actions. Learn about this customer scenario pattern.
    Dec. 20, 2022
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  • How Customers Want to Find and Purchase Your Products/Services

    Identifying and Measuring the Key Moments of Truth in "Select & Buy" Customer Scenario® Patterns

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    Each customer’s context is different, but there are patterns to what they care about in common scenarios. Measure how well you meet these customer priorities to ensure success.
    Dec. 5, 2022
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  • Secret to Successful Customer Engagements

    Beware of These Four Things that Will Doom Your Customer-Centric Initiatives

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    If you want to involve customers in co-designing products, services, and/or customer-impacting business processes, you should know about, and avoid, these four common pitfalls.
    Nov. 15, 2022
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  • Customer Experience and Operational Excellence Success in B2B

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    Read why it's best practice to combine your Customer Experience initiatives with your Operational Excellence initiatives. You'll streamline business processes and reduce cycle time in the areas that matter most to customers.
    Jan. 26, 2018
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  • Salesforce Service Cloud Summer 17

    Enterprise-Class Case & Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Search, & Social Customer Service

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    Salesforce Service Cloud is a product in transition. By June, 2018, some of the newer features will be better integrated. This review of the current version of Service Cloud provides an accurate picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the current offering. Many Service Cloud features already use the new Lighning user interface. But other features, including apps for many mobile devices, are still awaiting Lightning support.
    Jan. 25, 2018
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  • Virtual Assistant Update

    Technologies, Products, Suppliers, Customers, Markets

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    What's hot in customer service? Virtual Assistants extend customer self-service options by providing accurate answers to context-rich questions that customers have. Today's virtual agents are omni-channel: they can be accessed via smartphone, regular phone, web, or texting. Here is an update covering 2017 market leading virtual assistants from [24]7, Creative Virtual, IBM, Next IT, and Nuance.
    Jun. 23, 2017
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  • Microsoft: Competitive in Customer Service

    Microsoft Now has a Serious Customer Service Offering: Dynamics 365 for Customer Service

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    Here's an overview of Microsoft's latest customer service offering: Dynamics 365 Customer Service. It can be deployed in-house or in the cloud.  It is only appropriate for enterprise accounts and large non-profits. Microsoft does not yet offer a competitive SMB offering for customer service.
    Dec. 5, 2016
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  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service

    Broad Cross-Channel Customer Service Capabilities

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    Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service packages case management, knowledge management, communities/forums, and social customer service capabilities on assisted-service, self-service, and social customer service channels for large and enterprise-class businesses. Read our evaluation in this report.
    Nov. 30, 2016
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  • Desk.com from Salesforce.com

    Customer Service for Small to Midsize Organizations

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    Desk.com is Salesforce.com's cloud-based customer service offering for very small to medium-sized businesses. Its strengths include case management and reporting capabilities, as well as channel and mobile device support. Desk.com’s knowledge model and knowledge management services support multiple languages very well.
    Jun. 15, 2016
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  • Salesforce Social Studio

    Listen, Analyze, and Interact across the Social Web

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    Salesforce Social Studio is a high value package that combines broad and deep social customer service and social marketing capabilities. Read our evaluation.
    Apr. 28, 2016
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  • Freshdesk

    Case Management, Knowledge Management, and Social Customer Service for SMBs

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    Freshdesk packages attractive and high value cross-channel case management, knowledge management, social customer service, and chat capabilities suitable for small, mid-sized, and large organizations. It competes with Zendesk and with Salesforce.com's Desk.com.
    Mar. 11, 2016
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  • Nuance Nina

    Virtual Assistants that Deliver Answers and Perform Actions

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    Nina Mobile and Nina Web, the virtual assistant offerings from Nuance, can deliver personalized answers to customers’ questions and perform actions for individual customers in speech or text in 43 languages on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. This 46-page report evaluates Nina against our Evaluation Framework for Customer Service Software,
    Nov. 21, 2015
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  • Zendesk

    Cross-channel Case Management, Knowledge Management, and Social Customer Service for SMB and the Enterprise

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    Zendesk, packages attractive cross-channel case management, knowledge management, and social customer service capabilities suitable for small, mid-sized, and large organizations. Read our evaluation.
    Oct. 15, 2015
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  • Identifying the RIGHT Customers for CABs

    You Want Customers with Insights and Passion for the “Jobs” They Do

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    Whom should you invite to be on your Customer Advisory Board? The answers may surprise you. Try recruiting insightful, strategic thinking end-users rather than purchasers or decision-makers.
    Aug. 21, 2015
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  • Top 12 CX Issues for Business Customers

    How to Improve Customer Experience thru your Customer's Lifecycle

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    What does it take to satisfy your business customers? A lot. First, you need to understand who they are, what jobs they are doing, and where your products and services fit in. Next, you need to know where the pitfalls are likely to be in the customer journey as they engage with your firm and your products throughout the lifecycle of their relationship with you. We have worked with thousands of businesses and their customers over the past three decades. We have identified recurring customer experience expectations and patterns from these co-design sessions. In this article, we summarize the dozen customer-critical customer experience issues that are cuurently the most prevalent in B2B accounts. Then we report on what customers' expectations are and suggest ways you could meet those expectations.
    Aug. 8, 2015
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  • Digital Transformation at Sears Holdings

    Data-driven Personalization Fuels a Member-Centric Strategy

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    Since 2009, Sears Holdings (Sears, K-Mart and related brands) have promoted a rewards program called "Shop Your Way" to turn shoppers into members. The loyalty program is supported by big data analytics and targeted, personalized marketing. At the same time, the retailer has innovated in cross-channel customer experience.
    Jul. 16, 2015
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  • Next IT Alme, Version 2.2

    Virtual Assistants Deliver Personalized Service through Simple and Complex Interactions

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    We evaluate Alme--a virtual assistant that supports single question-single answer interactions and complex, directed, goal-based dialogs in nearly any language. Alme delivers answers, resolutions, and actions.
    Jun. 24, 2015
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  • Un-Empowered Employee Limits a CX "Save"

    Microtel Tries its Best, but can't Completely Remedy a Bad Situation

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    A loyal hotel patron expects front line customer service rep to be able to reimburse for minor losses. How much leeway should a front line service rep be given?
    Jun. 3, 2015
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  • IBM Watson Engagement Advisor Update

    Virtual Assistants that Use Cognitive Technology to Think and Learn

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    How does IBM Watson Engagement Advisor stack up in providing virtual assisted-service across customer service channels? Its virtual assistants can answer many types of customers’ questions and, through usage, can learn to answer more of them.
    May. 22, 2015
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