OUR TAKE -  No Worse Than the Next     Recent Editions of CRMAdvocate 11.17.09    Customer Service Conspiracy? 11.16.09    Can You Put That in a Data File? 11.13.09    Courageous is the Company 11.11.09    A Winning Hand 11.10.09    Where's Your Customer Experience? 11.09.09    Turned On and Tuned In     Lasting Impressions: Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. - William James I didn't get many bites to yesterday's column suggesting some sort of customer service conspiracy between United Airlines and the guitar man. However, quite a few readers offered reasons why guitar man would continue to fly the airline that so wronged him.   Some offered that he may be in the death grip of his frequent flyer program unable to give up the miles? Which brings me to the question - is it really a loyalty program? Others suggested that maybe he had no other choice of airlines. I checked, eight airlines provide service to his destination city. And perhaps price and/or schedule dictated a repeat performance. Many suggested it is simply a matter of complacency.   One reader wrote: "Maybe he has just reached a point of flying apathy. Really, can you tell me stories of an airline on which you haven't had a bad experience? I have bad stories from so many airlines. If I choose never to use them again, I won't be able to fly anywhere. They are all pretty bad these days. So the moral is... As long as you are not significantly worse than your competitors, people will put up with your bad service. Sad but true."   Another wrote: "We may beg for better customer service, but we don't always get what we want." That's my take. Do you agree? What's your take?   Gary Lemke, Publisher          Action Center         Free Subscription         Submit Content         Industry Events         Webcasts         Archive   Stock Ticker LivePerson 6.49      0.28 Selectica 0.3      0.01 Microsoft 30      0.59 NICE 29.68      0.48 HP 51.32      0.51 Astea 3.3      0.03 ICT 16.52      0.07 Sykes 26.12      0.11 ClickSoftware 5.78      0.02 SAP 49.09      0.16 Convergys 11.93      0.01 Rainmaker 1.5      0 Amdocs 27.01      -0.03 Oracle 22.8      -0.03 NCR 10.38      -0.02 Interactive 18.25      -0.06 Unica 6.96      -0.03 RightNow 15.94      -0.07 Chordiant 3.43      -0.02 APAC 5.85      -0.04 Tekelc 15.25      -0.11 Pegasystems 32.35      -0.24 Epicor 7.42      -0.06 Teletech 19.69      -0.19 CDC 2.51      -0.03 SupportSoft 2.35      -0.03 ATG 4.29      -0.07 Salesforce 65.61      -1.24 eLoyalty 7.37      -0.17 NetSuite 14.84      -0.37 Jacada 1.46      -0.04 As of 4:00 p.m. on 11/17/09         NEW IN CRM   News:    Ribbit Brings Unified Mobile Communications to Sales Ribbit announced the latest version of Ribbit for Salesforce CRM. Built using the Force.com platform, the new version of Ribbit for Salesforce CRM will be available for a free test drive and deployment on the AppExchange. Ribbit allows users to keep the same phone number, CRM system and email account, and now offers new SMS functionality, stronger voice-to-text features, integration for mobile access to salesforce.com, "find me, follow me" technology and an upgraded user and administrative interface.(Ribbit )   Article:    Sales Discovery Requires More than Asking "Killer Questions" Every day, salespeople receive gobs of well-intentioned advice about listening to the customer. But simply asking questions and listening won’t solve our most vexing sales challenges. If only it were that easy. Probing questions followed by patient listening as the magic keys to sales success. But here’s a plain fact that many people ignore: Conversations carry questions. And sales questions minus conversation equals interrogation. Hard-sell hype about the power of questions drives many people to website altars in search of A Better Way. (CustomerThink )   News:    AIG Edison Life Insurance of Japan Selects Salesforce AIG Edison Life Insurance in Japan has selected salesforce.com for an enterprise-wide cloud computing implementation. By implementing Salesforce CRM and Force.com, AIG Edison intends to streamline its front and back office business processes and dramatically improve the quality of its customer service. AIG Edison plans to deploy salesforce.com's Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to more than 5,000 users, who will have access to these applications via their iPhones. (Salesforce )   News:    Nexidia and Merced Partner to Enhance Contact Center Performance Nexidia, a provider of audio search and speech analytics solutions, and Merced Systems, a provider of sales and service performance management software, announced that the companies will be partnering to address demand for improving agent performance in the contact center. The partnership includes integration of Nexidia’s Enterprise Speech Intelligence (ESI) product with Merced’s core offerings Merced Performance Suite and Merced Incentive Compensation Management. The integration will help more accurately identify the root cause of performance issues and then rollout targeted improvement campaigns based on accurate “voice of the customer” analysis. (Nexidia )   Article:    8 (More) Ways to Accelerate Sales in a Down Economy In a challenging economic environment, making the most of resources and opportunities is essential. Finding ways to generate more qualified leads with fewer people and less budget is the key to survival. This article covers eight tips, or back-to-basics ideas, to help accelerate lead flow and sales without breaking the budget. Many of the following ideas are quick and easy to execute and best of all, require little to no cost.(DestinationCRM )   Didn't read the last edition of CRMAdvocate? Click here to see what you missed.

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