Top o' the morning to you, friend, thank you for dropping your radio dial into Radio CBM 98.6, all swing all the time, the pride of the Taranaki:

From the We Didn't Have To Tell You That, Did We? Dept. comes the news that the eTravel Benchmark survey from online research firm eDigitalResearch found the online travel industry "has some way to go in order to compete with 'best in breed' companies for Web site engagement and customer service."

"Some way to go." Maybe they can book that trip on United, huh? That'll punish 'em.

"The recipe for a successful site is a simple one," the study's authors conclude. "What customers want is a clear step-by-step process. They want a site that is easy to purchase from but at the same time that has the inspirational 'wow' factor to keep them engaged. Add to that transparent pricing, great customer service, and of course a great trip and you've cracked it."

There you are, piece of cake—do everything perfectly and make sure they have "a great trip." Who says this is rocket science? Radio CBM doesn't see the problem.

Using a "net promoter score" to find which sites are most likely to be recommended through word of mouth, the study found the online travel sector as a whole achieved score of +5. For comparison purposes retail scored +27,finance +18, car manufacturing +7, and "my ex's slimeball divorce lawyer" +6.

Derek Eccleston, Head of Research at eDigitalResearch, said in a sector whose customers are "particularly promiscuous, switching brands for a better deal, looking for recommendations and picking the purchase channel that most suits them at that particular time, failing to perform well across the board is more than a missed opportunity, it is commercial suicide." No doubt companies should use protection against such dangers.
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In politics Congress pushed towards a compromise health bill, with a coalition of Blue Dog Democrats in the House of Representatives, largely from more conservative Southern states, insisting the final bill include requirements that "the copies of Bass Fishing and Guns 'n' Ammo in doctor's waiting rooms be not more than two months old."
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Cerado has released Scanaroo, an iPhone application—great, another iPhone app: 65,001 and counting.

"Using the phone's camera, Scanaroo takes the loyalty, insurance, membership and other cards people carry in their wallets, and converts them to digital form that is stored on the iPhone for easy retrieval exactly when needed," company officials explain.

Paul Greenberg, CRM analyst and ZDNet blogger, and author of CRM at the Speed of Light, said "what makes Scanaroo great is that it does what mobile applications need to do—aggregates and manages the information and programs that most of us use as consumers."

Early reports are generally positive. However, customer Henrietta P. Waterhoover reported problems when a clerk at a Cluck's Coffee outlet in Goat Pen Harbor, Maine punched a hole in her iPhone when she purchased a large cappuccino. "He said it was company policy, they have to punch out those little squares every time, otherwise we don't get credit towards the free coffee," Waterhoover explained, adding that she thinks she'll "go back to paper for that one."
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EGain Communications has announced that Ivobank, a banking organization specializing in online payments and money transfers, picked eGain Service suite for customer service and support. EGain officials say the Ivobankers wanted the "unified multichannel and multilingual service experience" for their customers.

Terry Chow, Senior Analyst at Ivobank, said "comprehensive multilingual capabilities were another must, because multilingual customer service adds another layer of service differentiation... we've even got the incoming e-mail workflow doing some clever stuff like working out the inbound language for itself in order to send an auto-acknowledgement in the same language."

According to industry analyst Wilbur P. Finkelstein, who test-drove the technology and sent Radio CBM a report using the system, the language sensor "could use some minor tweaks, as vodmatski lok se je od zasavske proge odcepil pri koncu danasne Ribniske ulice."
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In sports somebody not named "Lance Armstrong" won the Tour de France. Armstrong promptly announced the formation of a new racing team sponsored by Radio Shack to compete in next year's tour, promising to "test out" some "really cool new Radio Shack technology for them under race conditions. Bwahahahahaha!"
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Contact center vendor Altitude Software has unveiled its new Fast ROI Initiative designed, according to the Altitudinarians, to let partners and customers "pre-determine the return when considering Altitude uCI products for new technology investments."

The Fast ROI Initiative provides business partners and prospects with ROI assessment tools and methodologies to build a business case and "understand the potential business value" of an Altitude uCI tool, company officials said. The Altitude uCI is a suite of contact center software supporting both open and proprietary VoIP products.

One customer, Frank d'Angelo, owner of Frankie's Sporting Goods in East Hackensack, New Jersey pronounced himself "dissatisfied" with the initiative: "We had the dad-blame thing set for 6,298 percent return on investment. I dunno, maybe we need to get us one of them consultants or something, 'cause I sure don't understand what the problem is here."
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That's the show for today, we're off to thank Paul, Ringo, Mick, Keith and Pete personally.