Michael Maoz

1 December 2008
Memo to project managers
From: Office of the CIO
Over the past seven years we have had a number of initiatives in place to improve customer processes. We are still fully commited to the principles behind each of the four initiatives in customer service, data analytics, marketing and sales. We are going to have to [...]

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Software as a Service in the CRM arena is still used for the easy stuff 90 percent of the time: account set up, customer information, definition of opportunity, sales lead and pipeline management. The really hard stuff remains on premise: helpdesk, field service, technical support, process-intensive contact centers (examples: consumer retail banking, telecommunications, insurance). These [...]

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The calls come in: how can we do more for less money? There are lots of processes that can be approved, sure, but what happens when you want to automate these processes or support them with technology and software applications? What happens is: you spend money. There is a tug of war that goes on [...]

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I am on the prowl for a large, complex contact center that has its GUI and core functionality delivered in the cloud using Software as a Service. I have looked across Europe, Australia, and North America. Every time a client or a SaaS solution provider tempts me with a reference, I’m on the case. But [...]

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One of my first jobs after university was with a commercial glass manufacturer. My first day on the job I was summoned to the office of the founder and CEO. He was a tough businessman and nobody could say they were happy to be called to his office. As it was my first day, I had [...]

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When do you get satisfaction and dissatisfaction during the same process? Try telecommunications. Anyone looking at the telephone providers and the many hybrids in between (phone, television, internet services) can see that it is a fast changing and difficult business. It doesn’t help to have different types of employees incented to act inconsistently. Let’s look [...]

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Sometimes it is the little things that make a huge difference in the customer experience, and the first difference is around managing customer expectations. A few days ago a colleague of mine forwarded an email that he had received from his airline that gave him a ‘heads-up’ saying that as they (the airline) changed the [...]

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Process efficiency is the next focus for Customer Service Strategies. I have written about the Intent Driven Enterprise for six years now, but it hasn’t really caught on as a term or discipline. It is the idea that we need to capture the main reasons that a customer has for doing business with us. What, [...]

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I both attended and spoke at my first Salesforce.com dreamforce event. Almost 9,000 customers and partners from 40 countries came to attend over 250 sessions. Mine, on the future of customer service, was standing-room-only, which demonstrates that Salesforce.com has solidly outgrown its roots in sales force automation. The company reports 47,000+ paying customers and added [...]

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I am betting that I have had more poor customer service interactions this week than in the past six months, and several of them had to do with the use of, or overlooking of, proactive customer service alerts and tools. You’d think that with the economies around the globe falling to one knee, that now [...]

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