salesforce

Cleaning Up a Customer Relationship Mess: Going Back to Basics

By Drew Wilkinson on September 5, 2019

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People like shiny new things.

The same cannot always be said about pesky new software updates and releases to the platforms and apps that have become fixtures in both our personal and professional lives.

Good-natured developers and designers may have the best of intentions, arguing that their changes take us to a new, higher state of being where everything and everyone is better.

The problem is that these changes are often unpopular, sometimes to comedic levels – except that for the customer, it is no laughing matter.

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Vonage Acquires NewVoiceMedia – What Does it Mean?

By Shai Berger on September 27, 2018

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Big news in the call center world broke last week: NewVoiceMedia (NVM) was acquired by Vonage for $350M. What does it mean? Well, the obvious take-away is that cloud-based call centers continue to be a hot space and a great way to build value for investors.

Some commentators talk about a “wave of consolidation” as if it’s a time-limited event, but as I look back at the last decade, it seems more like a constant rhythm in the industry. As long as I’ve been following the space, this acquisition pattern has been ticking along reliably. The exits get the headlines but innovative new entrants are continuing to launch.

There are other takeaways, too: Vonage’s big plan, the Salesforce angle, the Twilio angle…

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5 Short Videos on the Contact Center’s Future

By Shai Berger on January 3, 2017

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5 Short Videos on the Contact Center’s Future We’re always on the look-out for new industry research and we try to point our readers at the best ones we find. But, just like you, sometimes we’re not in a reading mood and, for those times, videos can also provide great information in a “lean-back” mode. Companies put out lots of product videos these days. Sadly, they are often filled with stock video, unnecessary animation and generic, buzz-word filled dialog.

In today’s post, we’ve assembled some videos that are actually informative. They cover aspects of the contact center that are all connected somehow with this year’s main trends.

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4 Clips from Salesforce’s Call Center Keynote Reveal Their Strategy

By Shai Berger on November 1, 2016

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4 Clips from Salesforce’s Call Center Keynote Reveal Their Strategy It’s been clear for a while that Salesforce has strong aspirations in the contact center space. A few months ago, I wrote Salesforce Has Many Fingers in the Call Center Pie which talked about the introduction of Salesforce Lightning Voice and the many indirect ways that the company was getting involved in the call center.

The recent acquisition of Heywire, and further enhancements of Lightning Voice were logical steps along this path. At their recent Dreamforce event, the “Salesforce for Service” keynote showed examples of what customers are doing today as well as a few hints of where Salesforce is heading. You can watch the full hour here. But if you’re short on time, I’ve extracted 4 segments (2 minutes each) that were the most enlightening. If you’re interested in Salesforce’s collision course with the contact center industry these clips are well worth watching.

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Is a Call Center Just a CRM Feature?

By Shai Berger on June 2, 2016

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Is a Call Center Just a CRM Feature? Is the call center destined to be just a CRM feature? Or is it the other way around? Which is the cart and which is the horse?

There has always been overlap between CRM and call center systems. For customer service to function correctly both sides need to work closely together. But over the last decade, the line between the two has been increasingly blurred. It now seems safe to say that the CRM vendors will reap the benefit of this blurriness. Let’s see why this is the case and what it means for the big players in our industry. Continue reading →

Salesforce Has Many Fingers in the Call Center Pie

By Shai Berger on March 1, 2016

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There has been speculation for many years about Salesforce introducing its own call center. The argument is that Salesforce drove the conversion of CRM to a cloud-delivered service and, now that call centers have also crossed the cloud chasm, it’s a logical expansion path for Salesforce.

But there’s more here than just seeing two pieces of enterprise IT that have both “SaaS-ified”. After all, many other IT functions have followed that same path. There’s a special relationship between Call center and CRM. The former relies heavily on the latter and the two are getting deeper intertwined. In fact, some people have come to view the call center as simply one of many “front-ends” to CRM. CRM is eating the call center. (Hmmm, sounds like a good blog post title… )

The little-noticed announcement of “Lightning Voice” from Salesforce earlier this month gives another clue towards their strategy. More importantly, it reminds us that Salesforce already has many fingers in the call center pie. Continue reading →

Top 8 Customer Service Statistics for 2015

By Daniela Puzzo on April 30, 2015

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Customer service should always stay top of mind. And there’s no better way to get the inside scoop than by understanding the stats and trends affecting the industry at large.