CBM News: Giant Sea Slug "Option" for CRM, Social Media

A fine morning to one and all, thank you for tuning your dial to Radio CBM 98.6, all Gustav Holst all the time:

NGenera Customer Interaction Management says retailer Guess has selected the company's products to "quickly and accurately respond to the growing number of e-mails from customers and business partners."

"We understand that the Gen Y generation prefers to interact online," says Mike Relich, CIO at Guess.

Industry analyst Herbert A. Finkelstein said that this is true, and that by choosing this program, Guess is also betting that Gen Y also really likes automatic, pre‐scripted responses.

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In politics, the death of Democrat Sen. Edward M. Kennedy touched off a debate in Congress about how deceased members should be replaced, with the Democrat-controlled Senate approving a plan specifying that "only Democrats" may be appointed to fill "any vacant seat."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said leadership is also working on a plan to allow Republicans to field candidates pre-approved by Democrat leadership in "a quite generous" number of "carefully-selected" senatorial elections in the future.

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PRM vendor TreeHouse Interactive says new customer growth exceeds 20 percent so far this year, crediting their "productized Salesforce.com integrations for Reseller View PRM and Marketing View demand generation" SaaS products, as well as its Talk It Up social media integration for the success.

"Given the economic situation globally, coupled with our being privately funded, we've seen some amazing customer growth so far this year and stayed profitable doing so," says Erich Flynn, CEO of TreeHouse Interactive. "Our social media and Salesforce.com integrations have proven to be two key product development decisions that are driving adoption."

TreeHouse officials say the decision to report sales in Zimbabwean dollars has "really spiced up the ol' monthly reports" as well: "Heck, just this week we've made $45,098,712,488,633."

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United Planet, which sells enterprise portal software for mid-sized companies in Europe, has unveiled a new Web-based application, Intrexx Time Recording, letting employees track and record hours worked on the company intranet from any location.

Industry analyst Herbert Y. Finkelstein said the product should prove to be "an incredible boon" to bars and golf courses around Europe.

Employees can create customer and project records and allocate hours worked directly onto the intranet, either using a stopwatch or by entering hours worked manually. Time can be recorded immediately or at a later date, from the office, while with a customer or from any other location.

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In sports, Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella invited disgruntled Cub fans to "blame me" for the team's disappointing 63-61 record. An estimated 3,487,671 Cub fans took him up on his offer.

"This is unacceptable," said Cub fan Willy O'Toole. "We're used to championships around here, and 63-61 just doesn't cut it."

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Fuze Digital Solutions has announced that Trion World Network, publisher and developer of server-based video games including Heroes of Telara, its fantasy Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, has selected the Fuze Suite to power its customer care.

The suite offers multi-channel support through its modular self- and assisted-service components, which include a collaborative, searchable knowledge base with community content, e-mail and contact management and feedback management in seven languages, including Japanese.

After an extensive evaluation that included site visits to Fuze headquarters and a pilot program, Trion gave Fuze the nod over other prominent providers due to Fuze's ability to "zap particularly obnoxious customers into the seventh dimension on Planet Zeembo," according to industry sources.

"We'd consider dematerializing a customer and reassembling his molecules in the form of a giant sea slug on the bottom of Lake Erie as more of a last resort, not something we'd advise our agents to do early in the interaction process," industry analyst Herbert P. Finkelstein noted.

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That's the show for today, we're off to stop payment on that last donation check to the SPCA.