Tips

Tips

• Best practices for using AI-enabled self-service

  AI in customer self-service is right behind robotic process automation in terms of growth. Here are some best practices to implement the technology in your organization.  Continue Reading

• 5 tips for an effective marketing automation implementation

  Successful marketing automation implementations require steps beyond those that go into the usual technology rollouts. Here are some tips to help businesses along the way.  Continue Reading

• IoT and the customer experience: What to expect in 2020

  Consumers are finding themselves increasingly surrounded by technology that talks to each other. See how retail is incorporating IoT and affecting customer experience.  Continue Reading

• 6 ideas to consider before making a C/4HANA SAP cloud migration

  Moving to SAP's C/4HANA platform may lead to improved CX. However, companies should make some considerations before starting an on-premises to SAP cloud migration.  Continue Reading

• 5 ways a chatbot for the contact center can help workflow

  AI and chatbot technology are constantly changing and gaining capabilities. Companies need to determine how to best use chatbots for their contact centers.  Continue Reading

• Video conferencing adoption a growing trend among businesses

  B2B and B2C video conferencing is on the rise as businesses strive to provide exceptional CX to customers. Nemertes shares some of its research results.  Continue Reading

• Business text messaging examples that engage customers

  Business text messaging is making its way into enterprise CRM. Texting is among the most personal contacts people receive, and with proper use, can enhance customer relationships.  Continue Reading

• Strategize a smooth contact center migration

  Companies are migrating from on-premises contact center software to the cloud. But before making the move, organizations must approve it from a strategic and practical perspective.  Continue Reading

• How to get value from customer insights data

  Gathering and acting on customer insights can make the difference between a successful and struggling business. Here's how businesses can use it to their advantage.  Continue Reading

• 4 steps to successful contact center technology implementation

  Before starting implementation of any new technology in a contact center, it is important to have a strategy to ensure both employee and customer satisfaction.  Continue Reading

• 5 marketing budget strategies to maximize your dollars

  Experts suggest that businesses build well-constructed budgets and create talent roadmaps to determine whether they are hiring the best people to reach their goals.  Continue Reading

• How to use low-code software platforms for digital experiences

  Low-code software platforms enable flexibility and faster development for digital experiences. Here's what content managers should consider before purchasing a low-code tool.  Continue Reading

• Contact center agent experience needs massive overhaul

  Research shows several areas in which contact centers are failing their agents and what changes organizations are making to improve the experience and reduce turnover.  Continue Reading

• Benefits of migrating customer experience apps to the cloud

  Nemertes research claims 75% of contact centers do some or all business in the cloud. As CX technology improves, businesses increasingly consider the benefits of cloud migration.  Continue Reading

• Best practices for initiating chatbot-to-human handoff

  Customers can become frustrated with chatbots, so it is important for contact centers to design AI that can recognize this and perform a timely handoff to live agents.  Continue Reading

• A strong CX technology spending plan can bring big returns

  The telephone won't cut it anymore. Customers expect digital services, and businesses need to think about spending more to update CX technology. It pays off in the long run.  Continue Reading

• How experience-based differentiation can be a CX fast track

  CX is a top priority within organizations, but successful adoption can take time. A framework called experience-based differentiation can help businesses speed up the process.  Continue Reading

• Businesses can achieve 360-degree customer view using AI

  AI can be a powerful tool to analyze large amounts of customer data and improve CX. Here are some areas in which AI can be of assistance in your organization.  Continue Reading

• 4 customer data collection best practices to follow

  Building a good customer data collection strategy can be difficult. These tips explain how to collect data and how to use it to improve customer experience.  Continue Reading

• 4 ways customer feedback benefits marketing strategies

  Leela Srinivasan of SurveyMonkey offered tips on using customer feedback data to inform enterprise marketing strategy during a session at Inbound 2019.  Continue Reading

• Humor in marketing can engage, retain customers

  Humor can be a powerful marketing weapon -- when used correctly. Here are some tips and examples that businesses can use to better connect with customers.  Continue Reading

• The difference between autodialers and predictive dialers

  Some people don't know that a predictive dialer is a type of autodialer. There are, in fact, five broad categories of autodialers contact centers need to know about.  Continue Reading

• 8 live chat best practices for organizations to consider

  Organizations find that live chat can be a means to improve customer experience -- when implemented correctly. Here are some best practices to put into action.  Continue Reading

• 5 digital customer experience technologies for a winning strategy

  A strong digital CX strategy can help improve customer experience, drive revenue and reduce costs. Evaluate these five pillars to help you along your journey.  Continue Reading

• 10 things to know about Google Cloud Contact Center AI

  Google has partnered with more than 90 different companies to roll out its contact center AI. This article lists 10 important things you need to know about the program.  Continue Reading

• 5 Gen Z marketing trends for businesses to consider

  Those born after 1995 are driving trends online for themselves and older generations. These shared experiences are important for marketers to understand. Here are some tips.  Continue Reading

• 7 ways to improve your retail sales

  Retailers, especially traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, need to throw caution to the wind and follow these seven tips to spur sales and provide remarkable retail.  Continue Reading

• Customer success strategies stoke CRM engagement

  Salesforce and other CRM providers use active customer service to increase customer engagement, solve concerns, train users and -- eventually -- bring in repeat business.  Continue Reading

• Customer service vs. customer experience: What's the difference?

  Customer service is an age-old concept, but where does it fit into the customer experience? Here's how the two are different and where they intersect.  Continue Reading

• 3 call routing methods to consider in your contact center

  Contact center call routing methods include next-available agent, skill-based and predictive; however, each strategy has pros and cons. Learn what is best for your business.  Continue Reading

• Consumer behavior analytics makes the unpredictable predictable

  With AI's arsenal of machine learning, deep learning and NLP, consumer analytics can take some of the unpredictability out of predicting buying patterns and up conversion rates.  Continue Reading

• Businesses use AR/VR in CRM to boost customer experience

  Businesses are using augmented reality -- and its cousin virtual reality -- in applications across many industries. Where CRM is concerned, AR/VR may represent a big leap forward.  Continue Reading

• The right leader, team crucial for digital CX strategy success

  Having the right team in place can ensure digital CX success. Here are some leadership and team roles that organizations should consider when creating a plan.  Continue Reading

• Best practices for creating chatbot scripts

  The rules of good chatbot scripting are similar to those of application coding. Here are some best practices to creating a chatbot that users will approve.  Continue Reading

• 5 tips for creating customer journey maps from buyer personas

  Comprehensive customer personas are important tools in coping with the increasing complexity of customer journey mapping. Here are some tips on how to do it best.  Continue Reading

• 4 steps to create a digital marketing strategy

  This four-step approach will help organizations build a digital marketing strategy designed to increase their online presence and attract new customers.  Continue Reading

• Benefits and best approaches to B2B customer segmentation

  With the increasing focus on personalization in B2B marketing, customer segmentation is a more important strategy than ever for organizations that want to know customers better.  Continue Reading

• Compare pros and cons of live chat vs. phone support

  Customer experience is king, but it's up to businesses to decide what contact channels to use to deliver it. See how phone support and live chat stack up against each other.  Continue Reading

• 6 live chat benefits to consider in a CX strategy

  Live chat enables customers to solve problems quickly and agents to multitask, but it also can be difficult to implement well and requires synchronous communication.  Continue Reading

• What you need to know about Flow Designer vs. Flow Builder

  Salesforce Flow Designer is on the way out, Flow Builder is in -- sort of. The new update includes features that may not make a big difference for developers.  Continue Reading

• Prepare for California Consumer Privacy Act with these 5 questions

  At Oracle's Modern Customer Experience conference, a privacy professional shared tips on incorporating privacy into CX systems so businesses are ready for the CCPA.  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

• How to gather and evaluate customer sentiment

  Businesses can harvest customer sentiment from a number of places, including social media, surveys, likes, comment cards, contact centers and word of mouth.  Continue Reading

• 4 customer insights research techniques for your organization

  Organizations conduct customer research in order to understand customers, create new products and increase revenue, all of which can be overwhelming without a strategy in place.  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

• 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

• Gaming company boosts call center employee engagement

  Gaming company Electronic Arts boosts customer experience by using a design thinking strategy to improve the employee experience in call centers.  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

• 10 ways to improve the customer experience today

  Many organizations struggle with where and how to improve CX, as the focus shifts from CRM to customer experience. Here are 10 strategies to use for a successful journey.  Continue Reading

• 4 CX challenges facing organizations and how to address them

  There are many barriers to effective CX initiatives, but most revolve around communication, on both the consumer and enterprise sides of the equation.  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

• 6 reasons why self-service options fail

  Customer self-service platforms free up live agents for more complicated issues, but if this software is not kept up to date, users can become frustrated.  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

• Call center tips to ensure successful agents

  Once hiring managers find the right people for the job, contact center agents need both proper training and office tools to be successful in their roles.  Continue Reading

• Trusting marketing automation with CRM functions

  Marketing automation with CRM frees up resources and improves the efficiency and accuracy of campaigns and lead development, but it still requires a degree of oversight.  Continue Reading

• 6 customer intent metrics to prevent lead dropouts

  Learn about the key metrics marketing teams can use to analyze customer intent, detect leads in danger of dropping out and focus energy on nurturing those leads.  Continue Reading

• Is CRM with social media growing less trustworthy?

  Comments made on social media can sometimes give businesses a skewed perception of consumer sentiment. Learn how to correct the data to inform business decisions.  Continue Reading

• 8 tips for getting rich mystery shopping survey data

  Mystery shopping data is only as good as the overall strategy for collecting it and setting up realistic customer experiences. Here are eight tips for investing your resources wisely.  Continue Reading

• 5 tips for picking a call center customer experience platform

  Change comes to customer contact centers as cloud systems and the customer experience movement force IT leaders to rethink software stacks. Here's advice for choosing your next platform.  Continue Reading

• 3 call center improvement strategies that boost efficiency

  Call center agents must multitask like never before in this era of omnichannel service. How to increase efficiency with tech while relieving some of the load on the people.  Continue Reading

• Managers learn AI basics with Salesforce Einstein Discovery

  With many successes and failures, companies create their own AI apps with the use of Einstein Discovery. Users discuss their experiences along the way.  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

• 7 tips for improving marketing technology stacks

  Being deliberate about integrating a new tool into marketing technology stacks will help ensure they produce ROI and makes processes more efficient.  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

• Why sending personalized marketing emails is an effective strategy

  For some companies, personalizing email newsletter content still proves to be a highly effective marketing strategy for engaging customers and driving sales.  Continue Reading

• Tips to build a successful digital customer service strategy

  CRM pros from Wendy's, Chamberlain Group and DoorDash offer tips for integrating Salesforce AI and social media channels to create a successful digital CX strategy.  Continue Reading

• AI sales technology trends for 2019 and beyond

  AI automation tools for sales technology have the potential to lead sales teams toward certainty in their decision-making, grow pipelines and reduce risks.  Continue Reading

• How artificial intelligence in customer service improves CX

  AI in customer service enables products and services companies to respond to consumers before the customer experience breaks down and negatively affects retention.  Continue Reading

• 4 tips on getting up to speed with GDPR for U.S. companies

  When GDPR went into effect four months ago, some U.S. companies just shut down communications with EU customers, but compliance can benefit organizations and marketers.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce marketing automation tools close the data divide

  Marketing automation CEO offers tips on bringing together siloed data, spotting sales trends, analyzing sales funnels and allocating marketing campaign spending.  Continue Reading

• Assessing GDPR's data protection officer requirements

  The GDPR's data protection officer mandate gives the EU a point person for compliance complaints, but not all companies need one. See when DPOs are required and what they do.  Continue Reading

• Let customer acquisition costs steer marketing, service plans

  Customer acquisition and customer retention strategies start with people and marketing automation tools. How much you should invest in either area depends on a number of factors.  Continue Reading

• Designing chatbots with personality-plus and gift of gab

  Planning, patience, trial and error and a business-minded team approach are the keystones to developing chatbots with human-like qualities that seamlessly assist customers.  Continue Reading

• Sales Cloud implementation transforms sales tracking, analysis

  Salesforce Sales Cloud has made Thompson Pump's once manual, paper-backed tracking, analyzing and crediting processes fast and tidy, reducing order-processing time by about 20%.  Continue Reading

• Premium pay for technical CRM skills must reflect volatility

  Premium pay for skilled IT jobs remained largely unchanged heading into 2018, but workers will still be rewarded for CRM certification, according to Foote Partners' latest research.  Continue Reading

• Ten tips for honing social media customer service skills

  Navy Federal Credit Union ingrains customer service in social engagement, sometimes the only channel where sailors at sea can get critical questions answered. Here's how they do it.  Continue Reading

• GDPR call center compliance can be a sticky wicket

  GDPR compliance for call centers can be complex and require the collaboration of business execs, call center managers and outside lawyers to establish data protection policies.  Continue Reading

• Check off those GDPR call center requirements

  With GDPR about to go into full force, there are last-minute details and loose ends to tie up to ensure that your call center complies with the necessary regulations.  Continue Reading

• Don't forget agent training in your GDPR call center plan

  The General Data Protection Regulation will affect call center agents. A GDPR plan for call center agent training should cover the expanded definition of PII and more.  Continue Reading

• GDPR customer data compliance for service and support teams

  Getting your Salesforce-powered customer service and support staff ready for GDPR involves more than just the free Trailhead training module. But it's a start.  Continue Reading

• Ten tips to help Salesforce teams prepare for GDPR

  The General Data Protection Regulation implementation date is closing in. Salesforce experts have some advice for companies tasked with complying with the EU guideline.  Continue Reading

• Cohesive AI in CRM strategies requires a singular 360 view

  Implementing and upgrading AI CRM marketing and sales capabilities requires a holistic, multipronged strategy that encompasses all departments and customer engagement channels.  Continue Reading

• How Conversational Queries aims to ease using Einstein Analytics data

  A new AI conversational feature from Salesforce lets users enter sales, service and marketing questions about timely customer data and build charts on their own in less time.  Continue Reading

• How Salesforce teams will feel the impact of GDPR

  With less than a month until GDPR has to be implemented, both B2B and B2C sales teams must be prepared to properly protect or even dispense of customer data, according to experts.  Continue Reading

• MindTickle, Salesforce speed sales learning in merger

  Last year's Blue Coat-Symantec merger posed a dilemma: getting salespeople up to speed on the reshaped product line. MindTickle with Salesforce paid dividends in sales learning.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce GDPR marketing compliance involves rethinking lead gen

  The bigger -- and more complicated -- your marketing tech stack, the more complex your Salesforce GDPR compliance will be, vendors and experts say.  Continue Reading

• The importance of GDPR best practices for Salesforce customers

  The new EU General Data Protection Regulation has far-reaching consequences that extend beyond European nations, according to experts.  Continue Reading

• E-commerce GDPR for Salesforce: Watch what data you capture

  Making your Salesforce GDPR compliance strategy for e-commerce starts with monitoring the customer data you collect, starting with cookies -- and we don't mean the Keebler kind.  Continue Reading

• Helpshift offers five Salesforce GDPR tips for customer support

  How much does the service and support team affect GDPR privacy mandates? Turns out, more than a little. A chat app developer's compliance journey uncovers some compliance tips.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce Classic vs. Lightning: How the CRM versions stack up

  With migration becoming unavoidable, you should understand the different features available between Salesforce Classic vs. Lightning. Here is a chart to help you do just that.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce Pardot certification opens doors, boosts salaries

  Pardot consultant Stacey Cogswell talks about the opportunities and challenges when obtaining Salesforce certifications.  Continue Reading

• Comparing Salesforce Einstein AI across the clouds

  What do you get when you pay for Einstein features in the Salesforce Sales, Service and Marketing clouds? We put it all in one chart.  Continue Reading

• Ten tips for implementing virtual agent chatbots

  Think you're ready to turn over some of your customer service responsibilities to virtual agents? An expert offers 10 tips for implementing chatbots.  Continue Reading

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud certification helps Aussie make bank

  When considering which credentials in the Salesforce universe are the best investments, one marketing consultant makes the case for Salesforce Marketing Cloud certification.  Continue Reading

• Survey marketing leads to sales insights for outdoor association

  After decades of catering to the needs of known customers, outdoor retailers now see the light and are targeting old and new customers with data-driven marketing and sales initiatives.  Continue Reading

• Adding voice, text channels in CRM for apps

  When SpotHero wanted to create text and voice channels to enable agents to assist app users with parking their cars, Ujet was the ticket that made it work.  Continue Reading

• How to define Scrum team roles in a Salesforce world

  Organizations could find greater efficiencies and finish projects faster by assigning Scrum roles to members of their Salesforce teams, advises expert Geneva Stephens.  Continue Reading

• Natural language driving proliferation of FB Messenger

  Companies are incorporating chatbots with natural language capabilities to help improve customer experiences, and they are starting to reap the rewards.  Continue Reading

• In the cloud, tools for data integration gain importance

  Integration software has become a necessary tool for companies that use cloud-based software.  Continue Reading