Opinion

Opinion

• 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

• Salesforce CX, AI, integration tools are 2019 trends to watch

  As the world pivots from CRM to customer experience management, Salesforce makes its own moves with research showing millennials value CX over the actual goods or services received.  Continue Reading

• Einstein Bot, Einstein Voice create new Salesforce channels

  Born to compete with IBM's Watson, the Einstein cloud AI is in its third year of life and is exhibiting all the traits of a typical 3-year-old.  Continue Reading

• Separating customer service chatbot hype from reality

  Vendors claim consumers want self-service chatbots. Turns out they'd rather scrub toilets or go to the dentist than converse with customer service in general, bots included.  Continue Reading

• AI for customer service at the peril of personal relations

  AI tools in CRM help companies deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences but prevent customers from actually having personal interactions with service agents.  Continue Reading

• Tell-all book puts HubSpot inbound marketing to the test

  Every startup's worst nightmare happened to HubSpot when 'Disrupted' hit shelves last year. The company put its own marketing tactics to the test and, by all accounts, it worked.  Continue Reading

• Tech vendors cite TOS violations to push hate groups off their clouds

  'Alt-right' groups put to the test marketing and CRM cloud vendors that promote employee diversity and forbid users from hosting hateful or offensive content on their platforms.  Continue Reading

• Recipe for lost customers: Flight cancellations and AI algorithms

  As companies enjoy the benefits that automation and AI algorithms bring to next-generation CRM, leaders must closely examine the legal and customer retention ramifications.  Continue Reading

• Chatbot technology raises ethical questions

  New AI platforms have given life to chatbots that decipher customer intents so well, chances are you've carried on an email conversation with one and were never the wiser.  Continue Reading

• Data insight combats poor customer experience

  The key to positive customer experience is using data insight to better understand customer behavior.  Continue Reading

• Digital marketing software market features dizzying array of M&A

  With a flurry of mergers and acquisitions in the digital marketing space of late, the question is whether the marketing acquisitions will truly augment existing platforms.  Continue Reading

• The trouble with predictive analytics tools

  Predictive analytics tools have been hailed as the latest cure-all for business woes. But they don't make cappuccinos, and they don't tell you how to make business decisions.  Continue Reading

• How to meet business needs with Salesforce AppExchange

  For a CRM platform to serve business needs, it should be flexible. How does Microsoft stack up against Salesforce when it comes to building on top of the platform? One expert weighs in, here.  Continue Reading

• Is the CIO a shoo-in for the chief digital officer role?

  The rise of the digital business has brought about an addition to the c-suite: the chief digital officer job. There are reasons for and against moving the CIO into the role.  Continue Reading

• Sales intelligence tools prevent tone-deaf sales efforts

  Sales intelligence tools are helping sales teams home in on truly valuable prospects, rather than waste time on duds. But they require some culture change.  Continue Reading