OUR TAKE -  Apathy Disguised as Loyalty     Recent Editions of CRMAdvocate 11.18.09    No Worse Than the Next 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?     Lasting Impressions: Smile, breathe, and go slowly - Thich Nhat Hanh Yesterday, I offered reasons why guitar man might continue flying the airline that had so wrong him (see no worse than the next). One possible reason - he did it for the miles. And my take is these so called loyalty programs are anything but loyalty generators.   One reader wrote: "I loved your observation that he may be in the death grip of United's frequent flyer program. My response is a definite NO - it is not a loyalty program! I can think of no instance in human behavior where the receipt of a tangible reward instills loyalty. What is derived from this form of bribery is a reaction by the recipient based solely upon what the recipient wants to achieve, period. Products bestow an emotional relationship of loyalty by remaining true in performance."   Another wrote: "Loyalty programs are really Customer Entrapment Programs. I'm trapped in my airline. In that 2x2 matrix contrasting repurchase intent and satisfaction, I lie in the highly likely to repurchase and highly dissatisfied quadrant."   It makes me wonder how many businesses mistake repurchase behaviors as loyalty when it is really apathy to invest in the switching cost. 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 Interactive 18.67      0.42 Astea 3.35      0.05 NICE 29.98      0.3 CDC 2.52      0.01 Microsoft 30.11      0.11 LivePerson 6.51      0.02 Rainmaker 1.5      0 Oracle 22.8      0 Sykes 26.12      0 Selectica 0.3      0 ICT 16.49      -0.03 SAP 48.98      -0.11 Pegasystems 32.11      -0.24 NCR 10.3      -0.08 NetSuite 14.72      -0.12 Amdocs 26.78      -0.23 RightNow 15.78      -0.16 Teletech 19.49      -0.2 APAC 5.79      -0.06 Epicor 7.34      -0.08 SupportSoft 2.32      -0.03 Jacada 1.44      -0.02 Tekelc 15.04      -0.21 HP 50.48      -0.84 Convergys 11.73      -0.2 Unica 6.84      -0.12 ClickSoftware 5.68      -0.1 ATG 4.21      -0.08 Chordiant 3.36      -0.07 Salesforce 63.61      -2 eLoyalty 7.13      -0.24 As of 4:00 p.m. on 11/18/09         NEW IN CRM   News:    Salesforce Unveils Chatter - Collaboration Meets Social Salesforce.com unveiled Salesforce Chatter, a new collaboration application and social development platform. Salesforce Chatter will leverage the social networking models made popular by the consumer Web, allowing a company to collaborate with a secure, private social network for their business. Content, applications and people will now have profiles, feeds and groups, enabling them to be connected. In addition, developers will now be able to use the Salesforce Chatter platform to build social enterprise applications.(Salesforce )   News:    Aprimo Unveils Aprimo Marketing Studio – On Demand Aprimo announced today its digital release of Aprimo marketing software, Aprimo Marketing Studio, a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution. Aprimo Marketing Studio is an online approach to digital marketing. Marketers can expand their breadth of interactive marketing vehicles and bring campaigns to market faster while decreasing reliance on outside agencies and internal IT departments by providing a common interface to manage search campaigns, campaign metrics integrated with Web analytics and optimization across marketing programs. (Aprimo )     News:    Sunquest Taps Bluewolf to Transform its Customer Care Process Sunquest Information Systems tapped agile consulting firm Bluewolf to create a Cloud-based solution that covers the full customer lifecycle, from the initial customer order, to implementation to customer care. Leveraging Salesforce CRM and Force.com, Bluewolf moved Sunquest’s entire customer lifecycle process to the Cloud in four months, for more than 1400 users. As part of the Salesforce-based solution, Bluewolf worked with Sunquest to integrate all of its processes into one system, including BigMachines for contracting/ quoting service, and QuickArrow for Professional Services Automation. (Bluewolf )   Article:    Self-Service Software Demands a Strong Knowledge Base There is nothing like a global recession to get organizations interested in self-service technology. "There are very few people in your organization that have gathered as much knowledge about the company as call center agents," said Johan Jacobs, analyst with Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. "If you can find a way of harvesting that information and placing it in self service, you can almost cut out the call center itself." Yet self service requires a knowledge base, and launching a knowledge base to extract full value from customer communication channels like IVR, chat and email response requires a careful approach.(SearchCRM )   News:    Xactly Adds Self-Service Application For Sales Compensation Xactly announced Xactly Incent Express, a sales compensation solution for small-to-medium (SMB) businesses that use Salesforce CRM. Built natively on salesforce.com’s Force.com platform, Xactly Incent Express helps create sales compensation plans, calculate commissions, and export payments to payroll, all from a single application. As a self-service solution, Xactly Incent Express can be deployed on-line by a non-technical user in a matter of hours.(Xactly )   Didn't read the last edition of CRMAdvocate? Click here to see what you missed.

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