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Too many loyalty marketers think they have to be all things to all customers; they design programs that are either too expensive or offer inadequate rewards. The far wiser course is to focus on the segments that will do them the most good, and not waste significant resources on the others. Researchers found that the best customers perceived the least value and were least satisfied with a company’s service.

UBS opened its service center in Hyderabad, India, recently. The center employs 500 people and is expected to provide knowledge process offshoring services such as financial research and analytics apart from the ubiquitous back office and infrastructure support. Wall Street brokering houses and investment banks such as JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs are increasingly offshoring financial research functions to India.

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Wondering where to find the nearest publicly available WiFi Internet access? Our global directory of 87,000 locations in 26 countries is a terrific tool for mobile computer users.

The future of multi-site contact centers is clear. Chances are, if the organization is not already using an Internet Protocol (IP)-based telephone system, it will likely need to consider implementing one in the next few years. The revolutionary changes introduced by the field of IP Telephony make it easy to get bogged down in its feature-hype, technology, and terminology. This paper provides a practical, business-oriented view of IP-based contact centers and will focus on the drivers, the challenges, and the keys to a successful implementation.

Traditional touch-tone Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platforms have been around and stable for many years, widely accepted by organizations as a cornerstone of self-service strategy. Speech recognition has also been around for many years, but until very recently had only found very limited and specialized use. But just over the last 18 months, adoption of speech applications has spread from virtual obscurity to the point where one in three large organizations are at some stage of implementation. Now every significant traditional IVR vendor, and a whole host of others – both well-known vendors and new vendors – are touting some version of the speech recognition story as the way to go.

Real estate improvements that payoff

Some improvements to property will help for short term turn around while others cost your profit because they don’t necessarily add value to the home.

A good way of remembering what you should and should not ‘improve’ on a home before selling is using the "L’s"

Lawns – This is the first thing a potential buyer sees.  Be sure it fits with the image of the home and is clean and well developed.  Don’t fall prey to the myth that it must cost a fortune.

Living – Living space is the essence of the house.  Keep decor and paint neutral with up-to-date fixtures but not contemporary.  Cleanliness is a must.

Leverage – Don’t give the house away.  Know what you have and continue to add value to the home.  Don’t install a pool, Italian flooring, and skylights.  They may be nice, but they won’t return their investments.

Luxury – Stay away from luxury items unless you can get them at a discount.  For instance, your countertops costing $5,000 isn’t going to raise the value of your home that much.  But a good $1,000 counter to replace an outdated or damaged counter will not cost you $2,000 in your sale price.

Keep it simple.  You want the house to be livable and ‘lovely’.  Ok, enough with the L words.  Go sell you a house!

See Also

• Mortgage Note Profits
  Make money selling mortgage notes
• No Money Down
  For sale by owner home deals

Cisco Systems has released the next version of its Unified CRM Connector. Like previous versions, it links into the Microsoft CRM application to provide integrated contact center-CRM functionality. Version 3.0 of the Unified CRM Connector, however, is much more appealing to users than its predecessors because it integrates into Microsoft’s latest CRM version — Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

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Our earlier post about the Excel Connector has attracted a steady stream of comments about it’s usage, so we decided to create a new discussion board just for it:The Excel Connector Discussion.

For all three of you who don’t know about it, the Excel Connector is a useful tool to easily import data, insert new records into both standard and custom objects, query data from salesforce and perform mass updates in Excel. It’s available for both, Professional and Enterprise Edition cutomers. Though it’s not officially supported, several Salesforce.com gurus, including Benji Jasik and Ron Hess (the original author of the connector), frequent the Successforce boards, making it a much better place to discuss it. I’ve also copied the comments from the earlier post onto the board so that everything is in one place.

Technorati Tags: salesforce.com, excel, open source, integration

Our earlier post about the Excel Connector has attracted a steady stream of comments about it’s usage, so we decided to create a new discussion board just for it:The Excel Connector Discussion.

For all three of you who don’t know about it, the Excel Connector is a useful tool to easily import data, insert new records into both standard and custom objects, query data from salesforce and perform mass updates in Excel. It’s available for both, Professional and Enterprise Edition cutomers. Though it’s not officially supported, several Salesforce.com gurus, including Benji Jasik and Ron Hess (the original author of the connector), frequent the Successforce boards, making it a much better place to discuss it. I’ve also copied the comments from the earlier post onto the board so that everything is in one place.

Technorati Tags: salesforce.com, excel, open source, integration

Vision casting requires creativity

Looking at a corporate image, slogan, byline, or company name should give you a total package on who the company is and what they are trying to portray.

Creativity is the main ingredient for good image marketing.  For instance the "Where’s the beef" campaign from Wendy’s in the 80’s gave them so much more than just telling the world that they had larger hamburgers.

Think about it… It actually didn’t promote Wendy’s at all but called the question for everyone else.  When you asked that question on where the beef was hiding, you immediately thought of ALL the fast food restaurants that had wimpy patties on their burgers.

Then your thoughts immediately were remedied by the pictures of the Wendy’s sandwiches.  Pure genius.

Consider this style of marketing when you desire to get a message to the public.  What do you have or can you provide that is an answer to a problem with all your competitors.

See Also

• Marketing Slogans
  Get noticed and make sales

How to keep your customers smiling and coming back for more

Joy, joy, joy… the old word that usually only comes around at Christmas.  Then by New Years it’s a different tune.

How can you ensure that your customers are pleased with your service and how can you get them coming back for more on a regular basis.

Superb customer service coupled with some smart marketing techniques can make all the difference for your ecommerce customers.

Remember these few truths about keeping customers:

1. Always follow up.  Don’t just let the sale be over when the product or service is delivered.  Call and let them know they are still important ‘after’ you have their money.
2. Send thank you information and a customer survey in the order.
3. When selling on eBay, be sure to send a personal email instead of just relying on the automated email system.
4. Provide positive feedback that is personal to the buyer.
5. Send promotional updates on other products that they may be interested in periodically.
6. Provide personal assistance with their purchase if needed.  This goes a long way.

Whatever the case may be, the bottom line is that you must value each person as a customer and truly care about their needs in relation to your service to them.

Passion goes much further than a planned program of customer service.

See Also

• Online Business Coaching
  Get a business coach today
• Wholesale Purchasing
  Finding wholesale lots online

Three areas to find a home business

Millions of Americans every day are involved in some lucrative earnings while working at home.  Unfortunately, there are companies looking for hungry families, and especially mothers, to take for a ride.

When you decide you are going to stay home and earn an income you’ll probably do one of three things:

• You’ll start your own business with a hobby or interest that you enjoy
• You’ll continue your current work but move your office to your home.
• You’ll look for opportunities for other companies to provide you the work.

All of these options are wonderful ways to make in come at home.  Just be careful when choosing the latter.  We’ll look at some issues on Monday.

See Also

• Home Business Start Ups
  Work At Home Income Streams
• Dealing With Success
  How to handle and manage the money and the stress

Customer events have replaced trade shows as the big-spend item in many software vendors’ and analyst and advisory firms’ marketing budgets. Implicit in this shift of spending is the precision possible for targeting CEOs and CIOs with relevant content. The challenge however is getting these senior executives to attend. Deluged with invitations and a bevy of vendor-centric pitch fests, many CEOs rely on their assistants to suggest conferences that are relevant to their business.