News

News

• 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.

• April 22, 2020 22 Apr'20

  Coronavirus CX strategy should be flexible, feedback-driven

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses should understand customer needs and prepare their customer service employees for remote work as a part of their adjusted CX strategies.

• April 20, 2020 20 Apr'20

  In COVID-19 economy, CX teams shrink despite greater need

  B2B companies realign sales and marketing efforts as the COVID-19 economy creates slowdowns and layoffs for some, opportunities and new leads for others.

• April 15, 2020 15 Apr'20

  LogMeIn launches CCaaS platform to complement GoToConnect

  LogMeIn releases GoToConnect call center as a service features during a high-demand period for supporting remote customer service work amid COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.

• April 06, 2020 06 Apr'20

  Pivot to remote call centers difficult for some; others roll with it

  Remote contact center tech easily supports agents working from home, experts say. It's the culture of each team that determines success in the current national health crisis.

• March 31, 2020 31 Mar'20

  Adobe AI tools coming to Experience Cloud

  This year's Adobe Summit, held online, marked the debut of the Adobe Analytics Digital Economy Index, a massively scaled gauge of online purchasing trends. That, and AI tools.

• March 31, 2020 31 Mar'20

  Salesforce Live web series offers tips for uncertain times

  Salesforce execs and celebrity speakers deliver advice to help customers rewrite the sales and marketing playbook while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• March 26, 2020 26 Mar'20

  Kansas City Royals spin up cloud contact center

  The Kansas City Royals closed its offices, but a telephony switch helped the call center address ticket holders' anxieties over baseball games affected by coronavirus shutdown.

• March 24, 2020 24 Mar'20

  Zendesk Relater primes customers for remote call center work

  Zendesk focuses on fledgling Sunshine and Sell CRM platforms, as well as helping its well-established customer service base switch to remote call center work.

• March 13, 2020 13 Mar'20

  Direct mail automation spikes in wake of conference cancellations

  Marketers are turning to CRM-ready e-gift and direct mail vendors to send postcards and swag boxes to prospective customers they would have met with at canceled conferences.

• March 11, 2020 11 Mar'20

  ServiceNow Orlando update adds tools for human and virtual agents

  ServiceNow Orlando update and new partnerships builds on strategy of reaching into new verticals such as telecommunications and banking.

• March 09, 2020 09 Mar'20

  Salesforce adds new features to Trailhead Live and Go mobile app

  Trailhead Live now features a live chat option and is available on Trailhead Go. While the mobile app fills a need, users still gravitate toward the desktop version.

• March 06, 2020 06 Mar'20

  Amazon chatbots to employ neural networks for CX

  Amazon tests neural network bots to help site customers and human agents more quickly identify answers to refund and order-cancellation questions.

• March 04, 2020 04 Mar'20

  Zendesk Sunshine CRM, social media upgrades released

  Zendesk upgraded Sunshine CRM and Support platforms to manage digital customer conversations, and added e-commerce tools that enable agents to work through order and payment issues.

• February 27, 2020 27 Feb'20

  Aprimo partners with Templafy on digital asset management

  The Aprimo Connector for Microsoft Office allows users to streamline data assets through a Templafy connector to applications like PowerPoint and Word.

• February 27, 2020 27 Feb'20

  Salesforce Vlocity acquisition to aid vertical CRM integrations

  As Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block steps down, the CRM vendor acquires Vlocity to spur growth in healthcare, energy, media, government, financial services and insurance.

• February 19, 2020 19 Feb'20

  Salesforce Sydney event moves online amid coronavirus concerns

  As coronavirus spreads, Salesforce changed its March 4 live World Tour Sydney conference to a livestream event, citing safety concerns for employees, customers and Trailblazers.

• February 19, 2020 19 Feb'20

  Microsoft CDP leads 400-plus features in Dynamics 365 update

  Microsoft's Dynamics 365 2020 Wave 1 release opens up the floodgates for outside data sources connecting to Customer Insights, its customer data platform.

• February 17, 2020 17 Feb'20

  Chief experience officers, chief customer officers on rise

  Since 2017, more CXOs and CCOs have shown up in Gartner's customer experience management survey. They don't always report to the CMO, but marketing's ownership of CX is growing.

• February 13, 2020 13 Feb'20

  Google's Meena AI chatbot to eventually find its way into CX

  Experts say Google's Meena chatbot is a leap forward in conversational AI. But using it for websites and customer service will require all-new deployments and training methods.

• February 12, 2020 12 Feb'20

  New leadership, new features for LinkedIn Sales Navigator

  Sales Navigator adds features to create CRM contacts directly from LinkedIn, and content-tracking tools to see who's reading marketing materials salespeople send to customer leads.

• February 07, 2020 07 Feb'20

  Salesforce Trailhead Playground launches starter app to help users

  The new starter app features tips for new Trailhead Playground users, along with an easier way to install packages from AppExchange and receive login credentials.

• February 07, 2020 07 Feb'20

  New Antavo interactive kiosks push retail loyalty programs

  The kiosk features a prize wheel, treasure hunts and themed quizzes to engage and interact with shoppers while promoting in-store loyalty programs.

• February 07, 2020 07 Feb'20

  Google's third-party cookies ban bolsters new data tracking tools

  Google will cancel third-party cookies by 2022, and is already eroding their value. Analysts and vendors predict what data strategies and technologies will replace it.

• February 06, 2020 06 Feb'20

  Salesforce layoffs hit Customer Success at end of fiscal year

  Salesforce, a pioneer in customer success, has laid off what is rumored to be more than 1,000 Customer Success employees.

• February 04, 2020 04 Feb'20

  Experts: Salesforce Evergage acquisition for personalization, not CDP

  Salesforce acquires Evergage, which offers personalization and a customer data platform. Analysts say Salesforce bought the tech for the personalization -- not to add to its CDP.

• January 31, 2020 31 Jan'20

  Target CIO leads retailer's digital customer experience tech makeover

  Target rebuilt its technology stack from the inside under CIO Michael McNamara's watch, and plans to further refine its digital e-commerce experience.

• January 29, 2020 29 Jan'20

  Totango introduces customer success tool Dynamic Assignment

  Dynamic Assignment is a new feature in the Totango Spark that allows service providers to quickly sift through customer success managers to find one who will exactly fit a customer's needs.

• January 24, 2020 24 Jan'20

  Retail facial recognition and eye tracking the next tech wave, maybe

  Biometric data is the last frontier of the shopping experience, as eye-tracking and facial recognition technologies slowly weave their way into the retail tech stack.

• January 21, 2020 21 Jan'20

  HubSpot adds usability features to Marketing Hub Enterprise

  HubSpot launched new features to their Marketing Hub Enterprise tool that focuses on user-friendliness and ability, while maintaining the tool's powerfulness.

• January 16, 2020 16 Jan'20

  Google Cloud retail strategy provides search, hosting, AI for stores

  With new Google Cloud Platform tools for retailers, the search giant takes on Microsoft and AWS with its own flavor of AI and promises of better uptime.

• January 13, 2020 13 Jan'20

  Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle launch retail customer experience tools

  Retailers get new tools from leading customer experience platform vendors to better compete with online-only rivals.

• January 10, 2020 10 Jan'20

  Elastic Path acquires Moltin for headless commerce, microservices

  Elastic Path's headless approach to e-commerce takes a step in the SaaS direction as it acquires Moltin, which specializes in microservices to enable online sales.

• January 09, 2020 09 Jan'20

  Customer experience world catches up on CCPA regulations

  GDPR compliance has put many marketing, sales, e-commerce and customer service teams somewhat in line with the California Consumer Privacy Act. There are some differences, however.

• December 23, 2019 23 Dec'19

  Customer data platform tools top priority list for big vendors

  CDPs, which unify marketing, sales and customer service data in real time, became a huge priority for Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, Adobe and Oracle in 2019. Read about what's next for 2020.

• December 16, 2019 16 Dec'19

  Deloitte launches Adobe Experience Platform accelerator

  Deloitte-Adobe global joint strategic partnership for Adobe CDP deployments adds AI tools for Deloitte clients to measure customer experience on standard metrics.

• December 16, 2019 16 Dec'19

  Episerver expands B2B e-commerce footprint with Insite acquisition

  Episerver's latest purchase expands its DX platform. It follows a trend of web CMS companies moving into territory dominated by Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft and SAP.

• December 13, 2019 13 Dec'19

  Qualtrics XM adds mobile, AI, information governance

  SAP's influence is reflected in some new features Qualtrics revealed in its XM customer and employee experience measurement platform.

• December 05, 2019 05 Dec'19

  AppExchange, acquisitions key to the future of Salesforce

  In the first 20 years of Salesforce's history, acquisitions and products drove rapid growth. In the next 20, AppExchange partners will play a crucial role in the company's growth.

• December 05, 2019 05 Dec'19

  Salesforce Trailblazer community must keep pace to fuel growth

  Salesforce Trailhead's mission is to provide current and prospective customers with admins and developers. Growing that talent pool is crucial to Salesforce's health.

• November 26, 2019 26 Nov'19

  Aviso introduces version 2.0 of AI-guided sales platform

  Version 2.0 provides artificial intelligence tools that predict deal close probabilities, guide next best actions and limit typos and unsaved changes during entry of data.

• November 21, 2019 21 Nov'19

  Salesforce Trailhead app makes learning more convenient

  Learning Salesforce skills and boosting career potential gets easier with the new mobile app, Trailhead Go. Customers explore how they can take advantage of it.

• November 21, 2019 21 Nov'19

  Salesforce Dreamforce 2019 news, events and highlights

  Dreamforce 2019, Nov. 19 to 22 in San Francisco, promises a variety of announcements and events. Follow this guide for all the happenings during the conference.

• November 21, 2019 21 Nov'19

  New Salesforce Customer 360 aims to unify data sources

  In aggregate, the new Customer 360 features Salesforce added to its sales, marketing, e-commerce and service platform resemble a customer data platform. Customers, analysts and partners weigh in.

• November 20, 2019 20 Nov'19

  How Salesforce mobile Einstein Voice Assistant can improve CX

  The Salesforce mobile app’s Einstein Voice Assistant brings a variety of benefits to customers. The AI-enabled tool creates a more human interaction and could help improve self-service.

• November 19, 2019 19 Nov'19

  Salesforce Service Cloud Voice, Einstein Voice Assistant unveiled

  Salesforce unveils a voice assistant and call center tools to enable real-time natural language processing for agents to connect customer data and supervisor help on a single screen.

• November 18, 2019 18 Nov'19

  Oracle expands Customer Experience platform with Oracle Digital Sales

  Features of the new CRM tool include Oracle Digital Assistant and a user interface that brings tasks frequently done by sales reps into one place to reduce data entries and clicks.

• November 18, 2019 18 Nov'19

  Salesforce mobile app, Trailhead Go rebuilt for iOS

  Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Apple CEO Tim Cook take the Dreamforce stage as a rebuilt-for-iOS Salesforce Mobile, new Trailhead Go app and Swift-optimized mobile SDK debut.

• November 14, 2019 14 Nov'19

  Adobe Experience Platform CDP adds marketer-friendly features

  Adobe adds features for non-IT marketing users to more easily deploy the Adobe Experience Platform CDP. Photoshop-like layering tools for data sets, previewed earlier this year, go live.

• November 14, 2019 14 Nov'19

  Salesforce.org Education Cloud updates enhance student engagement

  New Salesforce.org Education Cloud features assist with degree planning, setting up adviser appointments and getting a more well-rounded view of students.

• November 11, 2019 11 Nov'19

  Upland Software extends its portfolio with CRO tool Altify

  Features offered by Altify include analytics with Salesforce Einstein and Tableau, relationship map visualizations and integrations with applications in the CRO tool ecosystem.

• November 07, 2019 07 Nov'19

  Small customer data platforms fend off big tech with service, features

  With Microsoft, Oracle and Adobe releasing customer data platforms, to be followed by Salesforce and SAP, small CDPs defend their turf with more features, better service and pricing

• November 06, 2019 06 Nov'19

  Inboundgeo Marketing Suite introduces new direct mail tool

  Clients' website visitors can receive direct mail with customized content within 72 hours of their visits with the new Content Derived Filtering tool, according to the company.

• November 01, 2019 01 Nov'19

  Adobe digital experience platform adds small businesses offerings

  Adobe is reaching out to small businesses with expansions to its product portfolio, which include Magento Commerce, Marketo Engage and Adobe Analytics Foundation among others.

• October 30, 2019 30 Oct'19

  Salesforce Trailhead to roll out live training videos

  By year's end, Salesforce will unveil a new set of live and on-demand video training classes to give users a new way to earn Trailhead badges and certifications.

• October 30, 2019 30 Oct'19

  Public sector's customer experience strategies analyzed, ranked

  Some U.S. government agencies use technology to earn high marks for CX. Others need improvement in areas that corporate marketing teams can learn from.

• October 29, 2019 29 Oct'19

  Salesforce Financial Services Cloud adds mortgage tools

  Salesforce pushes deeper into financial services with tools to make mortgage data collection easier, and to find upsell opportunities for customers looking for home loans.

• October 24, 2019 24 Oct'19

  Salesforce email marketing gets Einstein AI infusion

  Salesforce adds Einstein AI features to email marketing tools to find images and keywords and provide keyword analysis to help email campaigns succeed.

• October 23, 2019 23 Oct'19

  Rent the Runway CEO discusses IT challenges, CX strategy

  Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman shares the company's CX strategy, describes its customer data collection and use, and addresses recent IT upgrade challenges.

• October 23, 2019 23 Oct'19

  Ex-Salesforce exec Bob Stutz takes the reins of SAP C/4HANA

  Ex-Salesforce Marketing Cloud CEO Bob Stutz, known for jump-starting stagnating CRM and CX software at Siebel, Microsoft and SAP, returns to SAP to bolster C/4HANA CX cloud.

• October 22, 2019 22 Oct'19

  Digital experience projects balance CX, data privacy concerns

  Users want hyper-personalized, convenient experiences when they shop or stay at hotels, but brands must balance the thin line between convenience and invasion of privacy.

• October 22, 2019 22 Oct'19

  Adobe updates Magento Commerce, adds Amazon and Azure hooks

  Adobe continues to support Magento Open Source but adds Azure support and AI tools only to the commercial version of the vendor's e-commerce platform.

• October 21, 2019 21 Oct'19

  SAP launches Qualtrics CoreXM customer research tools

  SAP renames Qualtrics Research Core Qualtrics CoreXM and adds AI, enterprise analytics, dashboard tools and admin controls for data access.

• October 18, 2019 18 Oct'19

  Microsoft CDP pricing might prove attractive to midsize retailers

  With entry-level pricing of $1,500 a month, the new Microsoft CDP could attract midsize retailers.

• October 14, 2019 14 Oct'19

  Adobe's Marketo-Magento staff merger reveals midmarket push

  Adobe positions itself for the midmarket in the year following the acquisitions of marketing automation platform Marketo and e-commerce platform Magento.

• October 10, 2019 10 Oct'19

  Calabrio rolls out contact center self-scheduling technology

  The new technology aims to enable flexibility in scheduling for contact center agents and to reduce managers' workloads in monitoring and requests handling.

• October 10, 2019 10 Oct'19

  Salesforce Lightning Order Management boosts e-commerce

  Salesforce extends Customer 360 capabilities with a bundle of APIs to help users manage and track e-commerce orders and provide more detail to the customer as orders are picked, packed and shipped.

• October 08, 2019 08 Oct'19

  New website helps identify use cases for Salesforce AI

  Einstein's Guide to AI Use Cases is designed to help people identify use cases and Salesforce products for AI in different industries by determining which KPI is most important.

• October 03, 2019 03 Oct'19

  Zendesk Sell apps marketplace extends Sunshine CRM platform

  Zendesk's Sunshine CRM gets an apps marketplace built on its Sell sales force automation platform, adapted from the 2018 acquisition of FutureSimple's Base.

• September 26, 2019 26 Sep'19

  New Salesforce clouds focus on manufacturing, consumer goods

  Following the success of the Health Cloud, Salesforce is releasing new industry-specific cloud services for the manufacturing and consumer goods sectors.

• September 24, 2019 24 Sep'19

  Microsoft challenges Amazon with Dynamics 365 Commerce

  Microsoft broadens Dynamics 365 retail apps suite by introducing an e-commerce platform, as well as tools to track product data and intermingle physical and online retail data.

• September 24, 2019 24 Sep'19

  Salesforce rolls out new security add-on for Quip

  The new security add-on, called Quip Shield, offers encryption and customization capabilities tailored to companies' specific security and compliance needs.

• September 18, 2019 18 Sep'19

  Oracle CDP moves beyond marketing data

  As digital advertising and marketing leaders dig in on the importance of the CDP, others aren't so sure they need yet another tool to support and secure customer data.

• September 18, 2019 18 Sep'19

  Salesforce search about to get smarter with Einstein AI

  Salesforce will add Einstein AI to its cloud search functionality in hopes of better assessing context, personalization and reducing false hits for end-user queries.

• September 17, 2019 17 Sep'19

  Oracle CX Unity goes live, adds voice to digital assistant

  As Oracle CX Unity arrives, analysts debate whether it will be an upsell to current Oracle customers, or a challenger to Adobe, Salesforce and SAP CX platforms.

• September 16, 2019 16 Sep'19

  Nectar launches Customer Experience Assurance platform

  The new product includes features like auto-discovery and real-time alerting intended to enable contact center teams to test and discover network issues in a timely manner.

• September 12, 2019 12 Sep'19

  Oracle CDP coming in CX Unity, along with video cloud

  Oracle goes after Adobe and other CX platform vendors with new CDP-oriented sales, marketing, e-commerce and service hub, and adds a video platform to CX Unity.

• September 11, 2019 11 Sep'19

  Security, management updates made to LogMeIn Bold360

  LogMeIn has updated the search optimizer, monitor view and workload organization features in its live agent and chat bot customer engagement and AI software platform Bold360.

• September 11, 2019 11 Sep'19

  Adobe brings graph database to customer journey touchpoints

  With a graph database to track touchpoints from different devices -- and a Photoshop-esque interface -- Adobe Customer Journey Analytics avails data science tools to marketers.

• September 06, 2019 06 Sep'19

  HubSpot Marketplace updated to get free CRM users to buy apps

  HubSpot introduces new features to marketing automation and CRM platform, and revamps its apps marketplace in hopes of driving revenue from newfound free-CRM customers.

• August 30, 2019 30 Aug'19

  CleverTap, Phiture launch customer engagement analytics framework

  AIC framework for customer experience analytics, developed in collaboration between CleverTap and Phiture, promises to give marketers actionable insight and improve CX.

• August 28, 2019 28 Aug'19

  RollWorks updates its account-based marketing platform

  New RollWorks features include account suggestions, Salesforce syncing and account groups to better align sales and marketing teams' efforts for potential customers.

• August 27, 2019 27 Aug'19

  Cisco to acquire CloudCherry for contact center CX

  Cisco plans to integrate CloudCherry's customer experience software with its contact center offerings. The acquisition is expected to occur by the end of October.

• August 22, 2019 22 Aug'19

  SAP Product Content Hub underpins CX initiatives in C/4HANA

  SAP SaaS tool integrates AI, APIs for pushing updated product content to e-commerce sites. It also gives sales, marketing and service teams using C/4HANA access to the content.

• August 21, 2019 21 Aug'19

  Salesforce DNSSEC project aims to boost site security, speed, uptime

  Salesforce, which juggles multiple DNS providers to serve customers while complying with global data-privacy regulations, spearheads new DNS models to enable deeper encryption.

• August 19, 2019 19 Aug'19

  LivePerson Inc. adds new capabilities to Maven AI

  Maven AI's updates are aimed at enabling new conversational commerce use cases. The new capabilities include Maven Assist, Maven AI-Powered Routing and Maven Developer APIs.

• August 16, 2019 16 Aug'19

  Marketing, sales tighten in LinkedIn Sales Navigator features update

  Lead lists and content-sharing features added to LinkedIn Sales Navigator give frontline salespeople more leads -- and more tools to engage them.

• August 15, 2019 15 Aug'19

  Metadata.io updates boost marketing personalization, automation

  Updates to Metadata's AI marketing platform include new usability features and improved automation to bolster its marketing personalization to target new and existing clients.

• August 15, 2019 15 Aug'19

  Salesforce-SNHU partnership helps students earn college credit

  A new partnership between Salesforce and Southern New Hampshire University enables students to earn college credit by completing guided learning modules through Trailhead.

• August 12, 2019 12 Aug'19

  Conversica AI platform receives upgrades for productivity

  Conversica's AI platform, Conversica AVA.ai, received upgrades that are intended to personalize communication with customers and improve productivity.

• August 09, 2019 09 Aug'19

  PromoteIQ acquisition diversifies Microsoft Advertising platform

  Microsoft expands its advertising platform to vendor marketing with the PromoteIQ acquisition.

• August 09, 2019 09 Aug'19

  Planned $1.35B Salesforce ClickSoftware buy beefs up field service

  Salesforce's ClickSoftware acquisition is aimed at improving Salesforce's field service management offering against SAP and Oracle.