Michael Maoz

The senior CRM product managers at some of the prominent software houses have abandoned their positions for ‘other opportunities’ in the past nine months. Why is 2008 such a grueling time to be a product manager at a software company working on CRM-related applications? Or to be a professional proposing CRM products and processes at [...]

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Coming back today from the Nuance “Conversations” conference that was held in Orlando, I had time to absorb what the attendees had been saying. They talked about improving customer processes over the course of the two days – during Q&A, at Universal Studios, in the karaoke bar, after breakout sessions. They are a committed bunch, [...]

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CRM is the Rodney Dangerfield of business processes. For anyone denied exposure to this master of the funny phrase he was an American stand up comic during the 1960’s and ’70’s. He felt that all of the other comedians were younger and better looking, but not better. He accepted the underdog position, and in one [...]

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The web that I am interested in is the corporate website. I’m with Sir Walter Scott on this one (if you have trouble sleeping, read his work, Marmion, at least the first six Cantos). I have spent many hours the past few days analyzing websites of all sorts. Gartner has written extensively on the topic [...]

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We’re going to have to be careful with our social networking experiments that are customer facing. Resist the temptation to go unleashing the dogs of war. If you remember the Frederick Forsyth novel by that name, these were mercenary soldiers paid to overthrow an unsavory government. I may sound harsh here, but some of the groups [...]

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 There is a potent convergence of social software, monitoring systems, and metrics-based performance that will change the way many workers experience work. How so? Social software lets us Tweet, post, chat, author, opine, diss, collaborate, find or poke, both in business and non-business realms. We should be better informed, and have quicker access to a [...]

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I just met with a software vendor who has a terrific idea, and product, that allows better delivery of content and services to mobile devices. They have a nice set of tools to allow businesses such as banks or retailers to deliver voice, voice response, visual images and applications to any device. A consumer (or sales person [...]

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As regards CRM projects, I have had three types of responses from clients to the financial meltdown/panic. They are as interesting for what they say about the types of decision makers as they are for what they say about the decisions they are making. What do I mean? Well, CFOs, CIOs and comptrollers seem to be leaning [...]

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I don’t hear much disagreement about the need to communicate more with the customer. But there is far less consensus around the question of WHO within the organization should be in charge of making this happen in a well planned and executed fashion. Instead I am seeing multiple departments each spearheading their own initiatives. Each describes [...]

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So many of the calls that I receive that start something along the lines of, “What are the top five applications I should be considering for my customer service contact center?” That is a little like asking for the price of the average house in London – it depends where. For CRM applications the answer is [...]

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