Welcome friends, to Radio CBM 98.6, your source for all the latest 'n' greatest CRM news, all Dave Brubeck all the time here in the tri-state area.
Kana Software has announced the availability [1] of Kana 10, a service experience management platform for "managing the entire customer service experience."
It's billed as giving corporations and institutions "the control needed to help ensure their customers receive exceptional service," and has been selected by online travel service provider priceline.com.
The Kanians say it can replace "traditional approaches" by letting companies model and deploy their customers' entire service experiences: "For example, in this scenario, where the customer's experience includes seeing that her husband has already ordered this particular garment and sent it to a woman whose name she doesn't recognize as a Valentine's Day present, the customer service rep can notify local 911 services remotely."
NGenera Customer Interaction Management, a division of nGenera Corporation, has introduced [2] nGen CIM Suite 8.3. This release is billed as letting companies handle "high volumes of customer interactions" through selfâservice, assisted service, and proactive service offerings.
A key theme of nGen CIM Suite 8.3 is "increased integration capabilities," company officials say, adding that other themes considered were "nGenera: Not a Misprint!" and "something in teal."
Version 8.3 can support connectors as a result of their partnership with Cast Iron, the nGenerites say, since the partnership lets them "provide integrations of the nGen CIM Suite with existing applications from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, BMC Remedy and Salesforce.com in addition to other applications and Web services."
It also offers Universal Queuing though an integration with Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Management, which allows for routing in the cloud to deliver an interaction to "the right agent at the right time," company officials say. "Not the wrong agent at the right time, not the right agent at the wrong time, and definitely not the wrong agent at the wrong time. Our feedback shows those aren't high on our customers' wish lists."
File this under "Cluebat Hits Old Bat." In politics, veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas (1673-1821) railed against the Obama White House [3]'s attempts to control media coverage, saying "What the hell do they think we are, puppets?"
A chuckling White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs replied "Considering how you, Helen, and the rest of the press corps have acted since the day Obama announced his candidacy? Yes, we do. Now siddown and shoddop."
The press conference resumed with reporters asking Gibbs to please continue naming the "neatest, coolest things" President Obama did that week, "slowly, so we can get them all down. Thank you Mr. Gibbs."
Parature has announced the release of the latest version of Parature Customer Service software, focusing on "support representative usability, robust chat routing and escalation, the ability for support team members to multitask across multiple support channels, comprehensive premium reporting and supervisory oversight of all chat activity."
The product seems to be impressed with its chat—"Completely Redesigned & Fully Integrated with the Parature Service Desk!" to "meet the needs of the IM generation."
The Paraturians say communicating with the IM generation means "being able to focus for not longer than three seconds at a time. We can do that, we can focus on a whole bunch of things at once, as the new release proves. Hey, you hear that Johnny Depp's playing Dillinger? Lookit that over there! Shiny!"
In sports, at Wimbledon, Venus and Serena Williams each advanced to the final of the Grand Slam tennis tournament. In related news, the sun rose in the east this morning. The Williams sisters disputed that their dominance of the sport—this will be the eighth time they've met in a Grand Slam final—shows up the lack of depth in the women's tour, with Serena saying "a couple players out there can take a set off us if we're having a bad day."
BroadVision and Celebros have announced a partnership [4] to sell what they call an "integrated product of advanced site-search and incentive offering to the e-commerce market."
"It's not really a marriage," officials of both firms said. "But we're definitely committed to an indefinite partnership, yes. We're thinking of the children."
It's supposed to let e-tailers boost online sales by delivering "real-time, context-aware" incentives at the search results page, company officials say. Evidently it lets visitors find what they are looking for and see "dynamic pricing incentives" along with search results. The Celebrians say it shortens the time and distance (clicks) between browsing and buying, "increasing the final transaction value for customers and merchants alike."
Itai Bass, VP of Business Development, Celebros, said "shoppers using search convert 3-10 times more compared to those that only browse."
That's the show for today, we're off to pay more attention [5] to Air New Zealand's in-flight instructions.