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• customer lifecycle

  In customer relationship management (CRM), customer lifecycle is a term used to describe the progression of steps a customer goes through when considering, purchasing, using and maintaining loyalty to a product or service. Continue Reading

• customer acquisition cost

  Customer acquisition cost is the fee associated with convincing a consumer to buy your product or service, including research, marketing and advertising costs. Continue Reading

• How to use live chat for lead generation

  Live chat can successfully generate sales leads -- if done right. Here are four steps organizations can take to boost brand loyalty and close the deal. Continue Reading

• marketing-qualified lead (MQL)

  A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is a website visitor whose engagement levels indicate that he is likely to become a customer.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce learning resources include free and paid options

  While Salesforce offers a number of free and paid customer success tools to users, nonusers can also benefit through the use of Trailhead and the Trailblazer Community. Continue Reading

• Definitions to Get Started

  • speech recognition
  • Salesforce Work.com
  • contactless payment
  • Oracle Customer Experience Cloud (Oracle CX Cloud)

  • database marketing
  • omnichannel
  • CRM (customer relationship management)
  • contact center as a service (CCaS)

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• 7 customer segmentation methods to help connect the dots

  Customer segmentation is essential to marketing, enabling businesses to provide the right people with the right products -- and is a move away from bulk appeals.Continue Reading

• 5 things to know about Salesforce Customer 360

  Salesforce Customer 360 -- a tool that connects customer data stored in multiple silos -- is currently in beta and will be available to all users later this year.Continue Reading

• How do you determine the right point for chatbot-human handoff?

  Customer experience can be adversely affected when chatbots don't transfer the call to a live agent at the right time. Here are some guidelines and best practices for initiating that handoff.Continue Reading

• customer segmentation

  Customer segmentation is the practice of dividing a customer base into groups of individuals that are similar in specific ways relevant to marketing, such as age, gender, interests and spending habits.Continue Reading

• marketing automation

  Marketing automation is a type of software that allows companies to effectively target customers with automated marketing messages across channels including email, websites, social media and text messages to generate sales leads.Continue Reading

• 5 crucial ways to prepare for the CXO role

  Technophiles who have experience in sales and marketing, as well as social media awareness, may be best prepared for success in the role of chief experience officer.Continue Reading

• How to improve customer experience with mystery shopping

  Mystery shopping -- among other CX management tools -- enables businesses to collect the data necessary to identify customer pain points and improve CX.Continue Reading

• brand recognition

  Brand recognition is the extent to which a consumer can correctly identify a particular product or service just by viewing the product or service's logo, tag line, packaging or advertising campaign.Continue Reading

• needs assessment

  A needs assessment is an exercise that identifies the difference between a current condition/state and the desired condition/state. Improvements can then be made to improve performance or fix a deficiency.Continue Reading

• moment of truth (marketing MOT)

  A moment of truth is marketing lingo for any opportunity a customer (or potential customer) has to form an impression about a company, brand, product or service.Continue Reading

• showrooming (reverse showrooming)

  Showrooming is the practice of examining a product in a brick-and-mortar store, then purchasing it online for a lower price.Continue Reading

• Q&A: How to narrow down your CRM vendor choices

  SaaS consultancy Lunar goes over the dos and don'ts for choosing a CRM system, whether you're licensing one for the first time or migrating to a new system.Continue Reading

• 5 sales enablement best practices to drive growth

  Sales enablement consists of tools and processes that can help sales agents succeed in their roles, including training, resource availability and team involvement.Continue Reading

• Our rebrand: Customer experience strategy, platforms, best practices

  Customer experience strategy blurs lines between sales and marketing automation, customer service and e-commerce as they come together on next-generation customer experience platforms.Continue Reading

• What is the role and responsibility of a chief experience officer?

  The chief experience officer is an increasingly vital member of the C-suite who ensures that an organization's customers have positive interactions with the brand.Continue Reading

• Liferay digital experience platform helps company improve CX

  Jack Maina, group chief operations officer of Britam, talks about how the financial services group rebuilt the way it interacts with customers and partners using Liferay.Continue Reading

• 6 must-have roles on your customer experience team

  Customer experience is the most important differentiator between enterprise competitors today, and CX teams are essential to ensuring customer loyalty and retention.Continue Reading

• 6 tips for driving adoption of self-service platforms

  Self-service platforms should be visible to customers, emphasized across all channels of communication and well-promoted. These and more tips are discussed here.Continue Reading

• Salesforce.org's CRM for education helps UVA students succeed

  The University of Virginia is one of a number of institutions using Salesforce.org's Education Cloud CRM to recruit students, track student success and manage alumni relations.Continue Reading

• How do you create a chatbot and connect it to Salesforce?

  There are two ways for Salesforce users to create a chatbot -- the easy way and the hard way. Read on to discover what your options are in the creation process.Continue Reading

• Which vendors make the best CRM for small businesses?

  Choosing a CRM for small businesses can be difficult, as the most well-known CRM vendors cater to large enterprises. Others, however, create products with SMBs in mind.Continue Reading

• customer service and support

  Customer service and support (CSS) is the part of a company's customer relationship management (CRM) department that interacts with a customer for their immediate benefit, including components such as the contact center, the help desk, and the call ...Continue Reading

• outbound call

  An outbound call is one initiated by a call center agent to a customer on behalf of a call center or client.Continue Reading

• How does Salesforce Einstein Bot differ from other AI?

  Salesforce's no-code bot authoring tool competes with Google, Amazon and Microsoft, but differentiating capabilities make it potentially more useful for the Salesforce user base.Continue Reading

• How does Salesforce lead scoring benefit Sales Cloud?

  Einstein lead scoring offers a customizable workflow and strives to get better at prediction over time, and Salesforce is one of the top three vendors in the field.Continue Reading

• Salesforce Circles of Success help SMBs get up to speed

  Circles of Success participants connect with other Salesforce users to swap challenges, tips and tricks for rolling out the platform in their businesses.Continue Reading

• chat channels

  Chat channels are technologies enabling companies to engage with customers in live conversations.Continue Reading

• 8 tips for a successful Einstein artificial intelligence rollout

  You'll fail a few times before you succeed with Einstein, Salesforce customers said at Dreamforce. Once you dial it in, though, success can follow. Here are eight ways to get there.Continue Reading

• conversational commerce (voice commerce)

  Conversational commerce is the process of interacting with a brand or making a purchase through a voice assistant or chat application.Continue Reading

• How does Salesforce Einstein Language NLP improve productivity?

  Salesforce NLP learns in a manner similar to that of the human brain, performing a variety of functions, such as semantic parsing, summarization and more.Continue Reading

• Customers buy more and more into voice shopping

  It's still early days for voice commerce and voice customer service channels. But companies are testing and investing in this new way to engage customers.Continue Reading

• Loyalty rewards program fuels convenience store's CX

  Since launching a loyalty rewards program last year, convenience store and gas station Yesway has driven 45.2% of loyalty members from the pump to the store.Continue Reading

• actionable intelligence

  Actionable intelligence is information that can be followed up on, with the further implication that a strategic plan should be undertaken to make positive use of the information gathered.Continue Reading

• Dreamforce 2018 conference highlights and key takeaways

  Salesforce will reveal new features, tools and platform updates at Dreamforce 2018 in San Francisco Sept. 25-28. Use this guide to stay up to date.Continue Reading

• revenue operations (RevOps)

  Revenue operations (RevOps) is the strategic integration of sales, marketing and service departments to provide a better end-to-end view to administration and management, while leaving day-to-day processes within the departments.Continue Reading

• lead scoring

  In the B2B industry, lead scoring is a methodology used by sales and marketing departments to determine the worthiness of leads, or potential customers, by attaching values to them based on their behavior relating to their interest in products or ...Continue Reading

• Albuquerque Amazon Alexa skill takes heat off call center

  Tens of thousands of Alexa skills -- voice-activated apps -- exist, with more to come. Learn how a city government's call center created one to help residents.Continue Reading

• partner relationship management (PRM)

  Partner relationship management (PRM) is a combination of the software, processes and strategies companies use to streamline business processes with partners who sell their products.Continue Reading

• Marketing automation platforms merge CRM and content

  Building a martech stack includes a main automation hub such as Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot or Pardot. Then comes the hard part: picking complementary applications.Continue Reading

• emotions analytics (EA)

  Emotions analytics (EA) software collects data on how a person communicates verbally and nonverbally to understand the person's mood or attitude.Continue Reading

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

  Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers, gathers information and routes calls to the appropriate recipients.Continue Reading

• call center agent (call center representative)

  A call center agent is a person who handles incoming or outgoing customer calls for a business.Continue Reading

• Virtual agents not yet ready for primetime customer service

  Chatbots may never replace humans at call centers. But they can alleviate high call volumes and route queries to humans when they're too thorny for automated responses.Continue Reading

• voice recognition (speaker recognition)

  Voice or speaker recognition is the ability of a machine or program to receive and interpret dictation or to understand and carry out spoken commands.Continue Reading

• What do GDPR principles mean for CRM data management?

  Avoiding General Data Protection Regulation penalties means getting your CRM compliance program in order before the sweeping regulation goes into effect late this spring.Continue Reading

• market intelligence (MI)

  Market intelligence is the monitoring of specific data streams in order to provide stakeholders with a holistic view of an industry segment or customer base. The term market, in this context, is a specific category of potential buyers and ...Continue Reading

• Artificial intelligence technologies a boon for customer insights

  AI can help companies shrink the gap between customer data and actionable insight by feeding intelligence into CRM, marketing automation and other operational tools. Here's how.Continue Reading

• conversational user interface

  A conversational user interface is the ability of artificial intelligence-supported chatbots to have verbal and written interactions with human users.Continue Reading

• Customer data analytics a slam dunk for the Spurs

  The San Antonio Spurs adopted Kore Software to build on top of its CRM to help with customer experience.Continue Reading

• CRM analytics

  CRM (customer relationship management) analytics comprises all programming that analyzes data about customers and presents it to help facilitate and streamline better business decisions.Continue Reading

• virtual assistant (AI assistant)

  A virtual assistant is an application program that can understand natural human language, speak natural language and complete electronic tasks for the end user.Continue Reading

• AI in CRM scores big with sales and marketing leads

  It could take a lot of programming and maintenance to tailor a CRM system to a B2B or B2C company's market, customer base and seasonal swings. New CRM AI options are changing all that.Continue Reading

• Compare top CRM systems: SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle

  The 'CRM platform wars' aren't as hot as, say, the tech battle between smartphone OS vendors. But Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and Microsoft want your business.Continue Reading

• Microsoft Dynamics 365

  Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based business applications platform that combines components of customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), along with productivity applications and artificial intelligence tools.Continue Reading

• social CRM

  Social CRM, or social relationship management, is customer relationship management and engagement fostered by communication with customers through social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook.Continue Reading

• Six customer service channels you need to support

  The first step in determining which channels to use for customer service is to understand customer demands, and then supply those communications channels effectively.Continue Reading

• customer engagement

  Customer engagement is the means by which a company creates a relationship with its customer base to foster brand loyalty and awarenessContinue Reading

• Salesforce Solution Architect

  A Salesforce Solution Architect is someone who has been certified for demonstrating the capabilities to build and design solutions across Salesforce platforms.Continue Reading

• martech (marketing technology)

  Martech is the area of customer relationship management (CRM) concerned with creating, managing and using digital tools that make it possible for marketers to automate tasks and make data-driven decisions.Continue Reading

• Customer analytics techniques boost sales and service strategies

  While the technology of customer data mining continuously improves, organizations still need the human factor of customizing system outputs to drive business goals.Continue Reading

• programmatic marketing

  Programmatic marketing is best defined in two parts. In this case, 'programmatic' refers to a non-human decision-making process that can be initiated in real time.Continue Reading

• RFx

  RFx (request for x) encompasses the entire formal request process and can include any of the following: request for bid (RFB), request for information (RFI), request for proposal (RFP), request for quotation (RFQ) and request for tender (RFT).Continue Reading

• Salesforce e-commerce tools build multipronged customer strategies

  New technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and customer personalization bridge the gap between online and offline sales and create new e-commerce experiences.Continue Reading

• churn rate

  Churn rate is a measure of the number of customers or employees who leave a company during a given period. It can also refer to the amount of revenue lost as a result of the departures.Continue Reading

• contact center software

  Contact center software is a technology tool that increases the effectiveness and efficiency of a contact center, with specific focus on interactions between customers and contact center agents.Continue Reading

• Salesforce DX

  Salesforce DX is a Salesforce product in the App cloud that allows users to develop and manage Salesforce apps throughout the entire platform in a more direct and efficient way.Continue Reading

• Top five benefits of speech analytics tools for contact centers

  Learn the top benefits of speech analytics technology for contact centers, and how speech analytics tools can lead to a better customer experience.Continue Reading

• Strategic marketing software boosts inbound marketing tactics

  It's not enough to just purchase new marketing software. Your overall business strategy will determine your company's needs and steer you away from costly mistakes.Continue Reading

• CPQ software Salesforce tools support and speed the sales process

  Configure price quote tools in Salesforce save time for sales staff in creating quotes for customers -- even when a company may have complex pricing rules to determine quotes.Continue Reading

• Contact center software features help fulfill the customer's journey

  Contact center infrastructure evolves quickly and updates are inevitably necessary. Here's how to identify and make the changes your organization needs to ensure customer success.Continue Reading

• sales funnel

  A sales funnel, also called a purchase funnel, is the visual representation of the customer journey, depicting the sales process from awareness to action.Continue Reading

• What to expect in the Salesforce Administrator certification exam

  Looking into what it takes to become a certified Salesforce Administrator? Prepare for the 60-question exam with insight into subjects covered during the 90-minute test.Continue Reading

• marketing campaign management

  Marketing campaign management is the planning, executing, tracking and analysis of direct marketing campaigns.Continue Reading

• sales forecast

  A sales forecast is a projection of achievable revenue. The terms sales forecast and sales budgets are sometimes used as synonyms, but budgets are projected before the fiscal year begins and forecasts take place once the fiscal year is underway.Continue Reading

• How customer service analytics enhances the customer experience

  Customer service is arguably as important as sales in the enterprise when it comes to maintaining and expanding the business; here's how analytics can help.Continue Reading

• viral marketing

  Viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces websites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect.Continue Reading

• Why you should embrace sales analytics tools

  Many sales reps still take a traditional approach to sales, and they reject sales data. But here's how sales analytics can make organizations more efficient and improve sales.Continue Reading

• Get started with Salesforce certification training

  As the Salesforce platform expands, getting your Salesforce certification training can increasingly make you an asset to your business.Continue Reading

• agile marketing

  Agile marketing is an iterative approach to marketing strategies that models methodologies used in agile software development. With agile marketing, teams identify and focus their collective efforts on high value projects, complete those projects ...Continue Reading

• Amazon Go

  Amazon Go is an e-commerce mobile application that enables consumers to purchase items in physical stores without waiting in lines or checking out with registers.Continue Reading

• Salesforce.com

  Salesforce.com is a cloud computing and social enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider based in San Francisco. It was founded in March 1999, in part by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff.Continue Reading

• What to look for in marketing automation software

  If you're looking for marketing automation software, go beyond the basic features and consider new capabilities for mobile, location-based services, omnichannel and more.Continue Reading

• account-based marketing (ABM)

  Account-based marketing (ABM) is a business-to-business (B2B) strategy that focuses sales and marketing resources on targeted accounts within a specific market.Continue Reading

• contact center infrastructure

  A contact center infrastructure is a framework composed of the physical and virtual resources that a call center facility needs to operate effectively.Continue Reading

• technology buying team

  A technology buying team is a committee within a company whose members are responsible for making software and hardware buying decisions.Continue Reading

• Oracle Commerce Platform

  Oracle Commerce Platform is omnichannel technology that integrates customer data into a 360-degree customer view. Find out more in this definition.Continue Reading

• clickstream analysis (clickstream analytics)

  On a Web site, clickstream analysis is the process of collecting, analyzing and reporting aggregate data about which pages a website visitor visits -- and in what order. The path the visitor takes though a website is called the clickstream.Continue Reading

• direct marketing

  Direct marketing is a type of advertising campaign that seeks to elicit an action (such as an order, a visit to a store or website or a request for further information) from a selected group of consumers in response to communication from a marketer.Continue Reading

• SAP Beyond CRM

  SAP Beyond CRM connects a customer's interactions and data, regardless of where transactions take place.Continue Reading

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud

  Salesforce Commerce Cloud, formerly called Demandware, is a cloud-based service for unifying the way businesses engage with customers over any channel or device.Continue Reading

• Salesforce Einstein

  Salesforce Einstein is an artificial intelligence (AI) technology that has been developed for the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. Salesforce's AI product, Einstein, is now available across the company's core cloud products, as part of its ...Continue Reading

• Apex Connector Framework

  The Apex Connector Framework is a set of classes and methods in the DataSource namespace for creating a custom adapter for Salesforce Connect.Continue Reading

• Salesforce Knowledge Sidebar

  A Knowledge Sidebar in a Salesforce Console displays titles of Salesforce Knowledge articles that are related to the specified subject. The sidebar only displays for Salesforce Knowledge users after administrators set it up.Continue Reading

• Four features of contact center evolution

  Contact center evolution is explored through four key features, identifying how contact centers have changed through the past, present and future.Continue Reading

• show-me marketing

  Show-me marketing is the practice of telling a brand's story and engaging consumers through pictures, videos and other visual media.Continue Reading