News

News

• August 12, 2022 12 Aug'22

  Third-party cookies remain as Google advertising in DOJ's sights

  If Google gets sued by U.S. antitrust authorities on the grounds its advertising network is a monopoly, marketers need to plan for how it may affect their operations.

• August 10, 2022 10 Aug'22

  Oracle CX layoffs: What customers should do right now

  After the turmoil that has hit Oracle's customer experience division, here's what current enterprise customers need to do next to preserve their technology investments.

• August 10, 2022 10 Aug'22

  Salesforce adds headless commerce capabilities

  Salesforce enables 'composable commerce' -- headless e-commerce, where users bring their own interface designs -- for large brick-and-mortar retailers and online-only sellers.

• July 26, 2022 26 Jul'22

  Oracle releases major Fusion Sales CRM update, facelift

  Oracle Fusion Sales users get a new UX and new features, including microsites called 'digital sales rooms,' which parallel Microsoft and Salesforce sales collaboration features.

• July 25, 2022 25 Jul'22

  SAP green CX tech aids sustainable retail, B2B sales

  SAP users can tackle sustainable e-commerce -- and be accountable to customers wary of 'greenwashing' -- with a bundle of Qualtrics, CDP, e-commerce and other tech tools.

• July 19, 2022 19 Jul'22

  Microsoft releases cloud contact center platform

  Contact center platform technology buyers have another option: Microsoft assembles a CCaaS from Nuance, Power Platform, Teams and -- for those who need it -- Dynamics 365 tech.

• July 12, 2022 12 Jul'22

  HubSpot releases free CMS with marketing, CRM integrations

  HubSpot small-business users are the focus of free CMS, marketing automation and CRM features, after the company spent several release cycles wooing enterprise customers.

• July 11, 2022 11 Jul'22

  Optimizely CEO talks roadmap plans, A/B testing and DXP

  Optimizely CEO explains why the company bet big on digital marketers' perpetual need for A/B testing. Also: how content management systems morphed into experience tech.

• June 29, 2022 29 Jun'22

  Salesforce users get more low-code automation, including RPA

  Salesforce integrates MuleSoft RPA and Composer with Salesforce Flow, which avails low-code process automation and bot creation to line-of-business users.

• June 23, 2022 23 Jun'22

  Microsoft Viva Sales takes on Salesforce-Slack tandem

  The Salesforce-Microsoft rivalry reignites as CRM applications vendors focus on employee experience by automating tasks that subtract selling time from a sales rep's day.

• June 23, 2022 23 Jun'22

  Salesforce Financial Services Cloud features focus on EX

  Salesforce for Financial Services adds employee experience tools -- a nod to evolving digitization of banking, wealth management and insurance users' operations.

• June 20, 2022 20 Jun'22

  AWS Amazon Connect adds case management tools

  The AWS contact center as a service, Amazon Connect, previews tools to manage cases. The features will drive more self-service workflows based on case data.

• June 16, 2022 16 Jun'22

  Salesforce Sales Cloud Unlimited Edition adds AI, automation

  Pricing stays the same for Salesforce Sales Cloud's highest-level subscription, but formerly a la carte tools are now included that span AI-powered analytics and automation.

• June 14, 2022 14 Jun'22

  Adobe adds CDP functionality for B2B use cases

  Adobe catches up with the competition with the release of new customer data platform features for marketers, including a 'data clean room' and tools for B2B users.

• June 08, 2022 08 Jun'22

  Salesforce moves forward with controversial NFT Cloud pilot

  Salesforce integrates with TikTok and adds marketing and e-commerce features to its platform -- including NFT Cloud, which sparked controversy earlier this year.

• June 06, 2022 06 Jun'22

  Contact center orchestration features on tap from Genesys

  Genesys is set to productize contact center technology from LogMeIn Bold360, Exceed.ai and Pointillist acquisitions to better compete with Microsoft, Zoom and Salesforce.

• May 31, 2022 31 May'22

  The Readability Consortium's lessons for marketing content

  The University of Central Florida, Adobe and Google band together to study digital readability. Those who create marketing content can get an edge if they pay close attention.

• May 25, 2022 25 May'22

  Lob launches direct mail automation platform

  As direct mail makes a comeback, longtime API vendor Lob launches a web front end to automate physical mail campaigns directed by marketing automation data.

• May 20, 2022 20 May'22

  Oracle plugs customer data platform into customer service

  Oracle Service adds Unity CDP integration to afford contact center agents a historical view of customer interactions and new features.

• May 16, 2022 16 May'22

  Customer experience technology's next phase as teams regroup

  In this Q&A, Eastern Bank CX head Rich Dorfman discusses how the pandemic shifted approaches to tech, transformation, and measurement of customer and employee experience.

• May 11, 2022 11 May'22

  Zendesk enhances CRM, low-code customer service chatbots

  Zendesk's Answer Bot moves past the knowledge base and gets a low-code interface so that business users can orchestrate automated conversations.

• May 10, 2022 10 May'22

  SAP reboots Service Cloud, adds retail recommerce

  SAP venture-backed Feather by SAP integrates marketplaces for retail users to give their customers a place to resell goods they've bought from them.

• May 06, 2022 06 May'22

  Square exec discusses metaverse, electronic payment trends

  Millions of physical and online merchants use Square's payment processing services. We discuss retail tech trends with Roshan Jhunja, Square head of retail.

• May 02, 2022 02 May'22

  Metaverse shopping 101, from Forever 21's Roblox store creator

  The founder of the agency behind Forever 21's Shop City explains what it is -- and what it isn't -- and what retailing in the metaverse will eventually look like.

• April 29, 2022 29 Apr'22

  Contact centers struggle to improve employee experience

  AI, better workforce management tools and conversation intelligence are key technologies to help customer service teams get through the current rough patch.

• April 27, 2022 27 Apr'22

  Salesforce-Slack sales, marketing, service integrations in beta

  Slack integration apps for Salesforce Service Cloud, Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud move into beta; MuleSoft takes on API management and governance.

• April 27, 2022 27 Apr'22

  Qualtrics hardwires sentiment analysis into contact center tools

  Qualtrics beefs up its contact center offering by embedding new sentiment detection tools as well as social listening across review sites, social media and other digital channels.

• April 25, 2022 25 Apr'22

  AI virtual assistant grooms skier experience at Snowbird

  Using an AI-powered chatbot designed with the friendly likenesses of avalanche dogs, the famed Utah ski resort is able to quickly respond to customers' questions.

• April 22, 2022 22 Apr'22

  Retailer: Informed humans still the hottest e-commerce trend

  Sweetwater, the largest online audio gear and musical instrument retailer, uses AI to augment -- not replace -- its agents. Mike Clem, chief growth officer, explains why.

• April 15, 2022 15 Apr'22

  Marketing to Gen Z takes new tech, channels, strategies

  Gen Z consumers will change the world. Savvy, nimble brands know to give them digital platforms for sharing their values as corporate America catches up to their worldview.

• April 12, 2022 12 Apr'22

  'CRM Analytics' Salesforce's new name for Tableau CRM

  Salesforce refreshes the sales analytics package formerly known as Einstein Analytics by adding CRM-native features, a Slack app and vertical-specific integrations.

• April 06, 2022 06 Apr'22

  Salesforce Marketing, Service Clouds add, rename features

  Salesforce partners with Genesys, Google for telephony; adds AWS Contact Lens natively, among a raft of new features. Some are available now; some are coming in Summer '22 release.

• March 30, 2022 30 Mar'22

  New Google Cloud retail tool targets search abandonment

  The new tool is aimed at providing better results for online shoppers. It understands user intent and context, provides results for broad inquiries, and includes semantic search.

• March 29, 2022 29 Mar'22

  It's coming: The wild world of metaverse shopping

  Gap and PacSun lead the way in NFT experiments, as retailers and analysts ponder the revenue potential of selling virtual products in the metaverse.

• March 28, 2022 28 Mar'22

  Recommerce, rebuilt digital experiences top of mind for stores

  Brick-and-mortar retailers look to technology to compete with online counterparts and mold digital experiences to what resonated with consumers during the past two years.

• March 23, 2022 23 Mar'22

  Oracle amps up field service management mobile app support

  As customer service and field service converge, software giants still build functionality for techs visiting homes and businesses to work on devices and machines.

• March 22, 2022 22 Mar'22

  Amazon Connect updates contact center workforce management

  AWS's Amazon Connect contact center as a service platform adds machine learning workforce optimization to predict customer contact volume, as well as staffing numbers to cover it.

• March 21, 2022 21 Mar'22

  Google, Twilio release CCaaS tools and integrations

  Google Contact Center AI Platform bundles its own tech with partners' for a complete contact center package. Twilio, meanwhile, releases Flex Conversations.

• March 16, 2022 16 Mar'22

  Adobe Experience Cloud messaging collaboration in the works

  Adobe reveals potential roadmap features in development, which include a chat client that might span Adobe Experience Cloud apps and foster collaboration across teams.

• March 15, 2022 15 Mar'22

  Salesforce AppExchange revamps user search, discovery

  Salesforce updates AppExchange partner marketplace to add more effective search and surfacing of more appropriate results for users, as the app count tops 7,000.

• March 15, 2022 15 Mar'22

  HubSpot gives customer service platform a makeover

  HubSpot's refreshed contact center platform features self-service automation and Twilio telephony. The company hopes a fragmented market and user loyalty will spur its growth.

• March 09, 2022 09 Mar'22

  Adobe Target adds more granular personalization features

  Adobe's personalization engine adds AI tools and CDP connections for marketers to experiment with their cross-channel marketing campaigns for specific audiences.

• March 02, 2022 02 Mar'22

  Salesforce releases Tableau CRM telco churn prediction AI

  For telcos that use Communications Cloud, Salesforce adds an AI-powered tool that predicts customer churn, part of its vertical strategy in the wake of its Vlocity acquisition.

• February 14, 2022 14 Feb'22

  Salesforce Safety Cloud debuts for event vaccination proof

  Salesforce launches new cloud to aggregate COVID-19 testing and vaccine information for users hosting customer and employee events, with more to follow later in 2022.

• February 11, 2022 11 Feb'22

  Google boosts AI customer experience

  Two bits of CX news from Google: Cloud Platform expands customer success operations globally, and users find the search behemoth's AI a fit for customer experience deployments.

• February 09, 2022 09 Feb'22

  Adobe Journey Optimizer adds mobile marketing capabilities

  Adobe adds marketing personalization and messaging orchestration capabilities to Experience Cloud for B2B and B2C users whose customers favor smartphones.

• February 08, 2022 08 Feb'22

  Pegasystems releases contact center agent-assist tools

  Pegasystems adds voice recognition and natural language processing agent-assistant 'copilot' tools for contact centers, based on 2021 acquisition of Qurious.io.

• January 26, 2022 26 Jan'22

  Salesforce expands CRM maps for sales-team territories

  New patterns for selling -- salespeople travel less and use more digital channels to meet with customers -- drive new map features for Salesforce Sales Cloud.

• January 25, 2022 25 Jan'22

  Google debuts Topics, its latest third-party cookie replacement

  Topics, a replacement for browser tracking cookies, is Google's latest idea to preserve browser privacy while preserving the value of its digital ad platform.

• January 21, 2022 21 Jan'22

  Adobe, Salesforce release tools to enhance retail experience

  Adobe to open beta program for store-pickup features developed in partnership with Walmart; Salesforce debuts Datorama features for retailers.

• January 13, 2022 13 Jan'22

  Genesys CEO on the future of contact center tech

  In this interview with Genesys CEO Tony Bates, we discuss the intersection of empathy and technology, as well as the future of video in the contact center tech stack.

• January 12, 2022 12 Jan'22

  Customer data platform market heats up again

  As companies plan for the post-pandemic reality, customer data platforms are expected to be a bigger part of marketing workflows and other emerging use cases.

• January 11, 2022 11 Jan'22

  Instacart, McDonald's, Target share digital marketing strategies

  Customer experience leaders discuss strategies to accommodate customers who want contactless shopping, those who want in-person sales, and everything in between.

• January 10, 2022 10 Jan'22

  IBM ports weather data to AWS Data Exchange feed

  Marketers can now tap IBM's Weather Company data feed at the AWS Data Exchange. The question is, will they know how to use it proactively to execute timely campaigns?

• December 29, 2021 29 Dec'21

  Why marketing personalization has yet to pay off

  Forrester analyst discusses why personalization investments aren't paying off, what marketers can expect in 2022 in technology -- and in the job market.

• December 29, 2021 29 Dec'21

  How bad writing, templates and chatbots kill customer service

  Leslie O'Flahavan, a writing coach specializing in contact center communications, discusses how humans, AI and bots can work together to provide good customer service.

• December 16, 2021 16 Dec'21

  Biden targets federal CX improvements with executive order

  President Biden issues a detailed executive order that lays out agency-by-agency federal digital experience improvement mandates -- and builds accountability into the process.

• December 15, 2021 15 Dec'21

  ServiceNow-Qualtrics partnership tackles total experience

  ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott bought Qualtrics when he ran SAP, which spun it off after he left. McDermott renews his pursuit of Qualtrics, this time with a partnership.

• December 03, 2021 03 Dec'21

  Amazon Connect adds quick bot setup, call summarization

  AWS' Amazon Connect CCaaS offering comes into sharper focus with new features for contact center managers, agents and data scientists setting up bots.

• December 02, 2021 02 Dec'21

  More marketing personalization from AWS, Pegasystems

  AWS and Pegasystems add AI tools to their cloud offerings that enable deeper personalization and journey orchestration for marketers and e-commerce sellers.

• November 29, 2021 29 Nov'21

  Technology drives holiday shopping for retail, e-commerce

  Black Friday e-commerce sales maintained 2020 gains. Retail traffic is up but hasn't rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. Technology, supply chain, COVID-19 variants all factors.

• November 22, 2021 22 Nov'21

  Cisco customer experience manager: What makes good tech CX

  Cisco users buy its hardware and apps through partners, mostly. Cisco's customer experience architect discusses how the company forges customer relationships.

• October 12, 2021 12 Oct'21

  HubSpot CRM adds B2B online payments processing

  HubSpot CRM adds no-code Stripe online payments as well as data governance and enhancements to Operations Hub such as analytics and a Snowflake integration.

• October 06, 2021 06 Oct'21

  Qualtrics releases Experience ID customer profile platform

  Qualtrics Experience ID isn't labeled as a customer data platform, but it's not far off from one, as it aggregates customer info into individual profiles.

• October 02, 2021 02 Oct'21

  Contact center agents' post-pandemic future

  The pandemic changed how contact centers operate and the technologies used to provide customer service. In this Q&A, ICMI's Brad Cleveland predicts what's next.

• September 30, 2021 30 Sep'21

  Amazon Connect adds voice ID, agent assist features

  AWS adds tools to search knowledge bases for answers based on terms picked up via in-call voice recognition, as well as voice ID to confirm identities of callers.

• September 22, 2021 22 Sep'21

  Benioff: Salesforce-Slack merger supports hybrid workforce

  Just 1,000 of the typical 180,000 Salesforce users attended Dreamforce 2021, but it was enough to get CEO Marc Benioff fired up about the future of hybrid work opportunities.

• September 21, 2021 21 Sep'21

  More Salesforce-Slack integrations to come

  Salesforce unveiled a total of 16 Slack integrations to its platform, some available now, and some to come next year, following the blockbuster acquisition.

• September 20, 2021 20 Sep'21

  Oracle Fusion Marketing enables campaign orchestration

  Oracle has announced plans to release Fusion Marketing in 2022. The middleware app will more deeply integrate customer data to marketing initiatives and CRM.

• September 16, 2021 16 Sep'21

  Salesforce automation tools for 2022: RPA, document ingestion

  Salesforce Einstein Automate tools to come next year include RPA, document intake and drag-and-drop process automation.

• September 15, 2021 15 Sep'21

  Salesforce Marketing Cloud to get analytics boost

  Salesforce to add analytics capabilities and AI tools that spider Salesforce CDP data; Commerce Cloud adds shipping and logistics integration through a FedEx partnership.

• September 09, 2021 09 Sep'21

  Infosys releases headless commerce services bundle

  Infosys breaks down Skava, an e-commerce startup it acquired in 2015, into e-commerce, marketing and merchandising microservices, and renames it Equinox.

• September 09, 2021 09 Sep'21

  Salesforce Service Cloud to add Servicetrace RPA, Slack

  Salesforce plans to release features that increase Service Cloud's flexibility for contact centers to manage agents working remotely either part time or full time.

• September 02, 2021 02 Sep'21

  FACE Act aims to improve government CX

  The bipartisan bill that would codify the measurement of customer experience for federal agencies cleared the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

• September 01, 2021 01 Sep'21

  New features coming for Salesforce Sales Cloud

  Salesforce adds CRM features to support remote-work models for sales teams born in the pandemic and continuing -- possibly permanently -- through 2022 and beyond.

• August 25, 2021 25 Aug'21

  Qualtrics adds BrandXM experience management tool

  Qualtrics adds Brand Impact Simulator, which BrandXM users can use to model how changes in a customer experience might entice new customers to make purchases.

• August 17, 2021 17 Aug'21

  Initial Salesforce-Slack integrations: Sales, service, marketing

  Salesforce unveils the first Slack integrations. But it could be Slack Connect -- which extends Slack's reach outside the Salesforce user's organization -- that is the killer app.

• August 16, 2021 16 Aug'21

  Meet the CIO who keeps the Salesforce platform running

  Salesforce EVP and CIO Jo-ann de Pass Olsovsky embraces the pivot to remote work, low-code appdev and the role of alpha tester of upcoming Salesforce products.

• August 10, 2021 10 Aug'21

  Adobe, Salesforce expand health clouds

  Adobe releases Experience Manager for Healthcare and plugs its CDP into marketing and clinical data; Salesforce releases healthcare features.

• August 03, 2021 03 Aug'21

  Salesforce automation strategy sharpens with acquisition

  The CX giant plans to fold RPA technology from an acquisition into some of its platforms. The move comes after Microsoft and other big tech firms bought RPA vendors.

• July 28, 2021 28 Jul'21

  Nice expands contact center AI offering with ContactEngine buy

  Nice acquires ContactEngine conversational AI technology to support customer self-service and live agent conversations across multiple digital channels.

• July 27, 2021 27 Jul'21

  OpenText releases customer data platform

  OpenText customers get a natively integrated runtime CDP to drive marketing personalization and other customer interactions; AI content security features debut.

• July 20, 2021 20 Jul'21

  Redpoint Global moves into data quality as a service

  Redpoint Global users get tools to manage first-party partner, product and customer data quality, identity and governance with In Situ feature bundle.

• July 15, 2021 15 Jul'21

  Salesforce to pull plug on Audience Studio DMP

  Salesforce Audience Studio DMP is no longer being sold, Salesforce confirms. It could signal the beginning of the end of programmatic digital ad sales.

• July 14, 2021 14 Jul'21

  Salesforce Industries' Media Cloud adds ad management

  Salesforce Media Cloud adds a multimedia ad sales platform for media companies to manage their customers' ad spend. Also: AppExchange partner marketplace adds chat, user reviews.

• July 12, 2021 12 Jul'21

  Brands opt for headless e-commerce vs. traditional commerce

  For large enterprises, headless commerce breaks down websites into user-friendly modules marketers can update. SMBs can also use it, paired with WordPress and other simple tools.

• July 01, 2021 01 Jul'21

  Google gives third-party cookies a stay of execution

  Experts -- and Google -- tell us why 'The Cookiepocalypse' for which advertisers are braced is delayed until at least 2023, and what it means for internet advertising.

• June 29, 2021 29 Jun'21

  E-commerce giant Shopify upgrades Liquid, dev tools

  Buoyed by the pandemic e-commerce boom, Shopify rolls out upgrades for no-code, low-code and pro-code offerings for its web platform -- and rewrites APIs to make stores faster.

• June 23, 2021 23 Jun'21

  Salesforce previews low-code, pro-code developer tools

  Salesforce to release new low-code and pro-code tools for developers, as well as DevOps Center, which catalogs app dev efforts and offers a planning platform.

• June 22, 2021 22 Jun'21

  Retail tech propels stores past the pandemic

  At NRF Converge, speakers discuss technologies to propel recovery from the recession of 2020, and how social media becomes a minefield for companies that don't have a strategy.

• June 17, 2021 17 Jun'21

  Salesforce adds more HR, employee tools to Work.com

  Salesforce to release more employee experience tools on Work.com to support the onboarding and well-being of workers who remain remote after the pandemic passes.

• June 15, 2021 15 Jun'21

  SAP Spartacus, headless and Commerce Cloud take center stage

  In the wake of the pandemic, SAP users focus on e-commerce, and SAP puts new emphasis on headless configurations as well as its Upscale Commerce package.

• June 09, 2021 09 Jun'21

  Salesforce Industries rolls out banking AI compliance tools

  Salesforce now claims cloud customizations for 12 different vertical industries. Can this help them win new users from competitors who have released their own industry clouds?

• June 02, 2021 02 Jun'21

  Salesforce plugs CDP, WhatsApp into marketing, e-commerce

  Salesforce connects its CDP to its platform's customer loyalty tech; Marketing Cloud integrates WhatsApp, SnapChat ads and Datorama advanced analytics reports.

• June 02, 2021 02 Jun'21

  SAP Upscale Commerce gets reboot

  SAP relaunches its Upscale Commerce, first released three years ago to little fanfare, to a broader midmarket base to compete with Shopify's top-end offerings.

• May 28, 2021 28 May'21

  Post-pandemic digital customer experience: What will change?

  Overstock.com, FTD and Giant Eagle all revamped their CX tech stacks during the pandemic to meet the demand for online service, and upgrades continue.

• May 24, 2021 24 May'21

  HubSpot embraces competitor CRM systems, adds RevOps features

  With HubSpot Operations Hub, users -- typically small and medium-sized businesses -- can access cloud tools most often used by large enterprise sales teams.

• May 19, 2021 19 May'21

  ServiceNow's vision for AI, customer service management

  ServiceNow's John Ball discusses the Now Platform's approach to AI, customer service and field service management, and why he left Salesforce as EVP of product for Einstein.

• May 14, 2021 14 May'21

  Salesforce rebrands CDP, adds marketing features

  Salesforce finally calls its customer data platform a CDP with its latest release, adds marketer-friendly segmentation features and MuleSoft, Tableau integrations.

• May 12, 2021 12 May'21

  Salesforce low-code features in beta; GA slated for winter

  Salesforce gives users a taste of Dynamic Interactions low-code features to come with a beta release of features planned for its next major platform update.