News

News

• April 01, 2021 01 Apr'21

  Qualtrics adds XM tools for marketing, service, B2B sales users

  Post-SAP spinoff, Qualtrics moves quickly to give B2B sales users -- along with their marketing and customer service colleagues -- new features to sharpen post-pandemic business.

• March 26, 2021 26 Mar'21

  Twilio Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt on the future of CDPs

  In a wide-ranging Q&A, Twilio Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt discusses Twilio's $3.2 billion acquisition of the company he co-founded, and the future of CDPs.

• March 24, 2021 24 Mar'21

  Salesforce updates Sales Cloud for remote work

  Salesforce created CRM tools for its own sales team's pandemic shift to remote work -- and is rolling out the ones it found most effective to all the platform's users.

• March 24, 2021 24 Mar'21

  Acquia digital experience platform adds CX-friendly tools

  After two years of transition, Acquia users get a first glance at how all of its recent acquisitions and product introductions align to build digital experiences.

• March 23, 2021 23 Mar'21

  Optimizely shores up DX platform with Zaius CDP acquisition

  CMS and A/B testing vendor Optimizely, formerly Episerver, acquires the Zaius customer data platform to extend digital experience and personalization capabilities.

• March 16, 2021 16 Mar'21

  ServiceMax releases Engage field service management app

  ServiceMax Engage app gives users' customers a snapshot of their service contract benefits, and gives users vital updates for asset managements of property in the field.

• March 16, 2021 16 Mar'21

  Salesforce users get Einstein ABM tools for Pardot

  Salesforce adds Einstein AI tools for Pardot B2B account-based marketing to enable user sales teams to target entire customer account buying teams.

• March 11, 2021 11 Mar'21

  ServiceNow Customer Service Management grows in Quebec

  ServiceNow telecom and financial services users targeted for growth as the company expands customer service offering in Quebec, its latest platform release.

• March 04, 2021 04 Mar'21

  Sitecore makes personalization, e-commerce acquisitions

  Sitecore's $1.2 billion investment plan for cloud modernization kicks off with the acquisition of Boxever and Four51.

• March 03, 2021 03 Mar'21

  Upland Software acquires BlueVenn marketing automation CDP

  Upland Software buys BlueVenn customer data platform for $54.3 million in cash, adding to Upland's growing cloud platform of marketing and analytics apps.

• March 02, 2021 02 Mar'21

  Salesforce tackles B2B rebate management automation

  Salesforce's tool for manufacturer rebates may have applications in other verticals, as it automates typically spreadsheet-driven processes.

• March 02, 2021 02 Mar'21

  Microsoft Dynamics 365 adds customer journey orchestration

  Dynamics 365 users in marketing and sales get CX features forged from the pandemic economy that enable one-to-one digital experiences.

• February 26, 2021 26 Feb'21

  Salesforce Field Service spring release adds map features

  Salesforce dubs pandemic and post-pandemic times 'the appointment economy' for field service operations and builds mobile app features to accommodate it.

• February 24, 2021 24 Feb'21

  Digital queues avert COVID-19 vaccine registration crashes

  Q&A with Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince on how digital waiting rooms can help public health agencies register their constituents for COVID-19 vaccinations.

• February 18, 2021 18 Feb'21

  Qualtrics vaccine management gains steam among states

  Qualtrics lands Missouri's state vaccine registration site as the voice-of-the-customer tech vendor claims 200 county governments and public health organizations among its users.

• February 18, 2021 18 Feb'21

  Amazon bolsters e-commerce for small business with Selz buy

  Australian e-commerce platform Selz may have caught Amazon's attention because it employs Liquid, Shopify's template language, which will simplify migrations.

• February 16, 2021 16 Feb'21

  Email marketing tools sustain old channel with personalization

  Email is so 1990s. Yet as a marketing communications channel, it thrives into the 2020s with an assist from personalization technology and customer data platforms.

• February 10, 2021 10 Feb'21

  Oracle CX updates focus on loyalty tech, B2B selling, service

  Oracle releases Fusion Cloud Customer Experience suite updates that include tools for B2B selling, B2B customer service and loyalty programs connected to Oracle CDP data.

• February 08, 2021 08 Feb'21

  Adobe releases headless commerce developer tools

  At its developer conference, Adobe debuts Experience Manager features to enable faster headless e-commerce deployments and GraphQL functionality for content personalization.

• January 27, 2021 27 Jan'21

  Google DialogFlow CX brings industry-specific chatbots

  Google releases DialogFlow CX, a chatbot and voicebot platform geared for multi-channel enterprise customer service. It connects to leading telephony systems.

• January 27, 2021 27 Jan'21

  ServiceNow, Salesforce deliver vaccine management tech

  Salesforce releases Vaccine Cloud, tools that enable tracking and distribution of COVID-19 immunizations. ServiceNow also enters the technology space.

• January 21, 2021 21 Jan'21

  Acquia launches headless commerce integration

  Acquia adds cloud e-commerce to its expanding digital experience platform via tight integrations with Lucidworks' AI-assisted product recommendation engine and Commercetools' headless commerce.

• January 21, 2021 21 Jan'21

  AWS contact center AI services expand to Salesforce, Avaya

  Cloud contact center vendors that compete with Amazon Connect for customers will push AWS AI-powered intelligent search, speech recognition and language processing services.

• January 19, 2021 19 Jan'21

  Data privacy law is coming, big tech privacy officers say

  At the digital CES 2021 event, privacy leaders at Google, Twitter and Amazon said the time is right for a data privacy law.

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  Capitol riots spark e-commerce terms of service enforcement

  Shopify, Salesforce and Google take action in wake of Capitol riots, as adware and customer experience platforms play an uncomfortable role in political events and discourse.

• January 13, 2021 13 Jan'21

  National Retail Federation tackles political unrest, COVID-19

  Retailers at NRF discuss COVID-19 operations and how they changed retail forever. Also: the technologies that keep customer experience consistent during supply-chain disruptions.

• January 12, 2021 12 Jan'21

  Pegasystems acquires Qurious.io for Pega Customer Service

  Pegasystems acquires Qurious.io for its customer service-oriented AI, natural language processing and self-service automation tools.

• January 11, 2021 11 Jan'21

  Salesforce Ventures tops $3 billion invested

  Salesforce Ventures continues to invest heavily in partners to help build out its platform as the pandemic evolves customer needs. Q&A with managing partner Matt Garratt.

• December 23, 2020 23 Dec'20

  Salesforce's acquisitions lead CX tech buying spree in 2020

  Most CX vendors acquired new companies to enhance their platforms, none bigger than Salesforce buying Slack. Facebook's Kustomer buy might be the most intriguing.

• December 23, 2020 23 Dec'20

  Customer data platforms dominate CX technology headlines

  As the tech titans release their CDPs, it raises a question: Can this technology save itself from becoming another data silo in the marketing stack?

• December 22, 2020 22 Dec'20

  Content drives new B2B e-commerce

  COVID-19 forced B2B e-commerce companies to create and enhance new revenue pathways. Two Sitecore users share how investments in digital experiences kept their companies rolling.

• December 16, 2020 16 Dec'20

  Social media data practices land in FTC crosshairs

  The Federal Trade Commission is seeking information on how social networking giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube collect and use consumer data.

• December 10, 2020 10 Dec'20

  Standalone customer data platforms weather big competition

  Standalone CDP vendors got a years-long head start on Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP and Adobe. They stand firm in a year when online channels stayed open during the pandemic.

• December 02, 2020 02 Dec'20

  Salesforce workflow automation tools, Hyperforce debut

  Salesforce delivers new Einstein workflow automation tools and unveils what it calls the most significant tech advancement in the company's 21-year history.

• December 02, 2020 02 Dec'20

  Salesforce adds customer service management features

  Salesforce adds AI-powered features to enable contact center workforce management and agent staffing models for call volume, as well as email and messaging channels.

• December 01, 2020 01 Dec'20

  Salesforce to acquire Slack for $27.7 billion

  Salesforce acquired the Slack messaging platform for $27.7 billion. Experts weigh on in what Slack would bring to the Salesforce platform.

• November 24, 2020 24 Nov'20

  Adobe CDP adds B2B-friendly features

  Adobe CDP customers will get new features in 2021 that create workflows for marketing teams and connect to popular B2B marketing platforms -- starting with its own Marketo Engage.

• November 17, 2020 17 Nov'20

  Salesforce Customer 360 Truth services go live

  Salesforce releases a new bundle of services which includes ID management, privacy, security and compliance tools for Salesforce users' customers and employees.

• November 12, 2020 12 Nov'20

  Salesforce Revenue Cloud bolsters B2B e-commerce workflows

  Salesforce, moving deeper into revenue ops, releases Revenue Cloud. It enables B2B digital sales with new pricing, billing and contracting models, as well as revenue forecasting.

• November 10, 2020 10 Nov'20

  Adobe to acquire Workfront for $1.5 billion

  Adobe plans to acquire Workfront for $1.5 billion to gain ground in the customer experience management market.

• November 10, 2020 10 Nov'20

  Zendesk, WhatsApp cozy up with co-development partnership

  Zendesk and WhatsApp team up to break bottlenecks in customer service conversations over Facebook messaging apps -- including Instagram -- by building it into Zendesk Support.

• November 09, 2020 09 Nov'20

  Oracle CX suite adds tools for sales teams, digital commerce

  Oracle tackles sales rep and e-commerce experience in the latest update to its CX application stack, retuned for the pandemic's remote-work and digital sales uptick.

• November 06, 2020 06 Nov'20

  Adobe forges data partnerships for Experience Platform

  Adobe adds bidirectional feeds to Experience Platform to manage post-sale customer data from third-party sources such as customer service and loyalty program platforms.

• November 05, 2020 05 Nov'20

  SAP CX application stack grows with addition of Emarsys

  SAP scoops up a marketing automation platform with CDP capabilities, as well as personalization and the ability to reach customers across digital channels.

• November 05, 2020 05 Nov'20

  SAP customer data platform strategy comes into focus

  SAP acquires Emarsys, which has a CDP included in its customer experience data handling toolbox. SAP execs shed light on how it will fit in with the company's own CDP.

• November 02, 2020 02 Nov'20

  Twilio's Segment acquisition recasts UCaaS vendor as CX

  Twilio, a contact-center-friendly UCaaS vendor, has completed the purchase of the Segment CDP for $3.2 billion in stock. Together, experts said, they could challenge Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle.

• October 30, 2020 30 Oct'20

  Holiday e-commerce set to surge

  Adobe looks at e-commerce trends to predict holiday buying, while Salesforce surveys thousands of B2B buyers and consumers about what motivates their buying choices.

• October 29, 2020 29 Oct'20

  Oracle CX targets communications industry with new apps

  Oracle moves into vertical-specific digital experience customizations, starting with Oracle Digital Experience for Communications, with more to come.

• October 22, 2020 22 Oct'20

  CEOs discuss Twilio's Segment customer data platform buy

  Twilio plans to acquire Segment's customer data platform for $3.2 billion. The CEOs for both companies discuss the deal and 'the great digital acceleration' caused by COVID-19.

• October 20, 2020 20 Oct'20

  Salesforce Work.com gets customer, employee experience tools

  Salesforce continues to build out Work.com as a place for broadcasting pandemic-specific employee and customer communications, as well as to enable remote work.

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  SAP CDP the latest customer data platform on a crowded block

  SAP released a customer data platform, following its CX platform competitors Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle. The SAP CDP extends outside of the common marketing use case.

• October 08, 2020 08 Oct'20

  Twilio adds video developer tools, field service app, Flex apps

  The developer-centric UCaaS vendor Twilio offers users new tools to support video chat, field service workers and aggregation of customer activity data.

• October 06, 2020 06 Oct'20

  Pega Value Finder marketing tool uses AI to find segments

  The Pega Customer Decision Hub adds an AI tool for marketers to uncover new customer segments and test campaigns for audiences that humans may have written off as not viable.

• October 01, 2020 01 Oct'20

  Microsoft CDP adds cross-channel analytics

  Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights CDP adds integrations with other CX systems that perform analytics, customer data governance and sentiment analysis.

• September 30, 2020 30 Sep'20

  Salesforce Vlocity acquisition gives rise to new industry clouds

  Four new vertical-specific clouds debut from Salesforce -- for media, telcos, government and utilities -- as fruits of its Vlocity acquisition earlier this year.

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  Adobe Experience Platform, Oracle CX add CDP connections

  Adobe bridges its CDP with Experience Cloud apps as well as third-party apps such as Salesforce. Oracle adds privacy compliance tools to its CDP stack and deepens hooks into Eloqua.

• September 23, 2020 23 Sep'20

  Salesforce delivers CDP, DXP and sales meeting tools

  Salesforce drops a customer data platform, new virtual sales meeting tools and makes the case for its own Experience Cloud to give users an Adobe alternate.

• September 22, 2020 22 Sep'20

  HubSpot CRM gets enterprise makeover

  HubSpot might not yet frighten Salesforce with its competing platform, which now includes enterprise CRM, but the company definitely pushes upmarket with its latest offering.

• September 22, 2020 22 Sep'20

  Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service to add voice channel

  Leading a host of CX releases, Microsoft plans to add native voice telephony and voice-channel hooks for chatbots and transcription into its contact center platform.

• September 18, 2020 18 Sep'20

  Oracle CX upgrades focus on field service, contact center

  Oracle adds self-service features, field tech tools and call center capabilities to its CX stack in response to customers' business needs in pandemic.

• September 08, 2020 08 Sep'20

  Salesforce e-commerce capabilities to expand with Mobify

  Salesforce beefs up its headless e-commerce platform capabilities for enterprise retail customers with the acquisition of Mobify, a Canadian headless commerce hosting vendor.

• September 03, 2020 03 Sep'20

  Emerging Genesys cloud strategy makes Amazon friend and foe

  Amid a leadership change, Genesys retools cloud strategy, adds partnerships with Infosys, Adobe and others as its relationship to Amazon and AWS veers toward 'co-opetition.'

• September 01, 2020 01 Sep'20

  Salesforce Field Service features added to Winter '21 Release

  Salesforce Field Service users can better pinpoint arrival times for their customers as well as other new capabilities coming in the Winter '21 Release.

• August 28, 2020 28 Aug'20

  Twilio Flex deployed for COVID-19 contact-tracing agents

  Tech teams supporting agents working remotely on COVID-19 surveillance efforts in several U.S. cities and the state of Illinois eschew traditional IT and opt for cloud platforms.

• August 26, 2020 26 Aug'20

  Salesforce confirms around 1,000 layoffs after monster quarter

  Salesforce says COVID-19 did not precipitate the layoff of about 1,000 employees, but the pandemic did show the company where customer needs are headed.

• August 25, 2020 25 Aug'20

  Zendesk Support, Sunshine CRM expand data sharing, analytics

  New Zendesk Explore Enterprise analytics and data visualization tools enable small and midsize users to create dashboards to share across organizations.

• August 19, 2020 19 Aug'20

  Salesforce pulls plug on Einstein Voice Assistant

  Salesforce's voice assistant made a big splash at Dreamforce last year, but the AI tool -- personified with the Einstein brand -- didn't survive the pandemic.

• August 18, 2020 18 Aug'20

  E-commerce business growth slows, but still a boom period

  As the world partially reopens businesses shuttered due to the pandemic, new e-commerce tech investments may make gains from earlier this year permanent.

• August 03, 2020 03 Aug'20

  Adobe AI-based Predictive Audiences added to Marketo Engage

  Adobe adds Predictive Audiences to Marketo Engage. The personalization tool is geared for users who manage marketing messaging to live and online event attendees.

• July 29, 2020 29 Jul'20

  Oracle CX head Rob Tarkoff: Acquisition integrations complete

  The executive vice president of CX and Oracle Data Cloud discusses how acquired technologies have been fully integrated into Oracle's customer experience SaaS application stack.

• July 23, 2020 23 Jul'20

  Tech virtual conferences plagued by problems, boredom

  Tech vendors staging virtual events during the pandemic have stumbled in trying to reproduce the in-person conference experience. Some have succeeded.

• July 21, 2020 21 Jul'20

  Microsoft releases voice of the customer platform

  Microsoft takes on Qualtrics with Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, a customer experience feedback tool native to its platform for retailers and B2B users.

• July 21, 2020 21 Jul'20

  Salesforce beefs up e-commerce order management features

  Salesforce adds B2C-friendly order-management features to support internationalization of e-commerce, as well as pre-built integrations to channels such as Google and Instagram.

• July 16, 2020 16 Jul'20

  Salesforce Pardot, Interaction Studio get feature boosts

  Salesforce adds Einstein AI, as well as personalization and data visualization features from its acquisitions of Evergage, Datorama and Tableau, to Marketing Cloud.

• July 14, 2020 14 Jul'20

  Broken Pega RPA bots can heal themselves with new AI feature

  Pegasystems robotic process automation tools, popular in contact centers, add AI capabilities that allow some RPA bots to fix themselves.

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  CCPA regulation enforcement begins; Salesforce an early target

  Users of marketing, sales and e-commerce clouds -- and vendors, too -- are vulnerable to legal action under the CCPA, as enforcement begins and civil suit plaintiffs cite the data privacy law.

• July 02, 2020 02 Jul'20

  Voice biometrics for CX detects customer age, fraud

  As of now, Nuance voice age-detection features are for security teams that want to prevent fraud and to route service calls. Analyst sees potential for marketing personalization.

• June 30, 2020 30 Jun'20

  Zendesk CRM adds email automation features

  The Zendesk Sell CRM platform adds email automation features for customer engagement as the pandemic cuts off sales rep users' access to in-person customer meetings.

• June 26, 2020 26 Jun'20

  Act-On now a growth marketing platform, launches upgrades

  Act-On's product upgrades include a partnership with Zapier and enhancements to SMS and email messaging to customers, as well as new creation tools for edits on landing pages.

• June 25, 2020 25 Jun'20

  Salesforce pushes forward with DNS security standard

  A Salesforce-backed DNS security model to prevent downtime could become standard for multi-tenant cloud providers.

• June 25, 2020 25 Jun'20

  Salesforce collaboration gets mobile boost with new app

  Salesforce integrates chat, text and video collaboration into a desktop interface and a new mobile app, Salesforce Anywhere. It tracks and logs conversations and transcribes videos.

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  Salesforce Trailhead adds Einstein AI for learners

  Salesforce's free training site, Trailhead, got AI features based on its products recommendation engine to guide admins, developers and consultants on personalized paths.

• June 19, 2020 19 Jun'20

  SAP C/4HANA leads discuss future of CX platform

  New leaders of SAP's customer experience platform discuss its future direction, with a retrospective look at how CRM's past evolved into customer-centric CX technology.

• June 17, 2020 17 Jun'20

  SAP C/4HANA users describe e-commerce pivots amid COVID-19

  SAP's customer experience application suite still a priority after a year of senior leadership upheaval at the enterprise cloud vendor, thanks to the COVID-19 economy.

• June 17, 2020 17 Jun'20

  Magento e-commerce content tools get Adobe AI boost

  Adobe connects its Product Recommendations engine to Magento Page Builder to give users a no-code AI tool that offers different products to different customer segments.

• June 09, 2020 09 Jun'20

  Pandemic e-commerce trends point to massive growth

  The pandemic caused consumers and businesses to form new online buying habits; now e-commerce is booming. That trend will hold for a year, or maybe forever, experts said.

• June 02, 2020 02 Jun'20

  Pegasystems debuts Pega Process Fabric CX integration tools

  Pegasystems makes a play to be a 'platform of platforms' with Pega Process Fabric, which orchestrates processes between applications in mixed-vendor CX tech stacks.

• May 29, 2020 29 May'20

  Facebook Shops, Salesforce deliver quick e-commerce tools

  During pandemic stay-at-home orders, Salesforce, Facebook and Instagram capitalize on the digital sales boom that resembles a three-month holiday surge that hasn't let up.

• May 28, 2020 28 May'20

  Pega Academy goes free with Trailhead-like badges

  On the eve of his company's user conference, Pegasystems CEO Alan Trefler discussed COVID-19, RPA tech, free Pega skills training and a new appreciation for old rival Salesforce.

• May 20, 2020 20 May'20

  RevOps strategy keeps B2B sales moving during pandemic

  Revenue operations purports to orchestrate the technologies governing marketing and sales and measure their effectiveness. During the pandemic, the strategy is put to the test.

• May 15, 2020 15 May'20

  Talkdesk adds virtual agents, rebrands CCaaS suite as CX Cloud

  Talkdesk refocuses it CCaaS suite on customer experience by adding 20 features, including virtual agents and remote work features for contact center agents.

• May 14, 2020 14 May'20

  Adobe releases AI tools for sales, marketing and e-commerce

  Adobe beefs up its AI tools for Experience Platform, including a customer intelligence tool and ones for leads, content matching, channel monitoring and customer journeys.

• May 12, 2020 12 May'20

  Salesforce coronavirus contact tracing platform goes national

  Salesforce gets involved in state and local health authorities' coronavirus contact tracing efforts in New York City, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, California and Louisiana.

• May 08, 2020 08 May'20

  Pega adds unified messaging to customer case management

  Pega Customer Service Unified Messaging Edition, built from last year's In The Chat acquisition, adds omnichannel messaging to the company's customer support cloud platform.

• May 07, 2020 07 May'20

  Salesforce Lightning App Builder adds low-code forms features

  Salesforce Lighting App Builder will include oft-requested low-code features for building complex forms that previously required developer coding to create and update.

• May 05, 2020 05 May'20

  ServiceNow CSM navigates pandemic, partners with Adobe

  ServiceNow connects its Customer Service Management environment to Adobe Experience Manager to improve support experience through deeper personalization.

• May 04, 2020 04 May'20

  Customer service agents, chatbots dial up empathy in pandemic

  AI virtual assistants can provide help for embattled customer service agents during the pandemic, but adapting them to changing customer needs and new business models isn't simple.

• May 01, 2020 01 May'20

  Conversational AI to help with high demands in contact centers

  Replicant and Nuance Communications have announced tools aimed at curbing the influx of calls during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has limited the number of customer service reps.

• April 30, 2020 30 Apr'20

  Live conferences shift to virtual events, yield surprising results

  Digital events can't replace live conference experiences, but organizers who quickly shifted to virtual event platforms report surprising benefits and expect to use them long-term.

• April 24, 2020 24 Apr'20

  Martech budgets slashed, more layoffs loom amid COVID-19

  The COVID-19 economy has hit marketing jobs hard. As spending for advertising and martech stall, layoffs mount and still-employed marketers fear the worst.