The lines were sometimes blurred between the products and solutions on display at SpeechTEK, Customer Service Experience and CRM Evolution. Some exhibiting companies were listed as participants in two of the three joint events and many of the applications being demonstrated might well have fit in any of the events. But a number of exhibitors at CRM Evolution did offer some compelling new applications and brought us up to date on their success stories, which are summarized below. 

Cloud-based Software Solutions 

BPMonline, a UK-based CRM and business process management solution provider with a strong European client base, has plans for increased expansion into the North American market.   

An innovative SaaS tool for managing processes and customer relationships,  BPMonline CRM can be customized on the user level without additional programming.  Using an integrated component library, agents can change the look of the interface and change the location of windows on their desktop to suit their individual way of working.  "By combining CRM with BPM, we can improve the customer experience while also increasing productivity,”  notes BPMonline Business Development Executive Helen Iron. “The automation of internal tasks and more streamlined processes provide companies with far greater potential for growth.”  As more as more mid- to large size companies implement BPM strategies to improve efficiency, effectively merging business process management with CRM is one of BPMonline’s key points of differentiation.   

BPMonline is strong in the financial services sector with expertise in banking, asset management, credit and collections and has also made inroads in telecommunications and HR recruiting. The company currently has 3,000 installations in place, serving over 100,000 end users for a client base ranging from small firms to enterprise companies. 

BPMonline has made a commitment to creating effective methods to handle the tasks and processes that are the main concerns of their clients. The company’s brand promise is ‘customer success management’, treating each client as a separate business and focusing on their unique needs to take them from “good” to “outstanding.”They offer free after-sale training and ongoing support. “One customer who initially transferred to us based on price called to say how gratified he was to call and get a live person to handle his question,” said Iron.  

KANA Software Inc, a global leader in both on-premise and cloud-based solutions, is integrating their recent corporate acquisitions— Ciboodle, a provider of customer experience management software and Trinicom, which offered cloud-based web and customer interaction management solutions—to create a formidable independent provider of customer service solutions.    

The company is taking a bold initial step in its evolving business plan with the imminent launch of KANA Express, a competitively priced SaaS solution that will address what KANA CMO James Norwood calls the “underserved” mid-market sector. “We want to replicate Trinicom’s success serving mid-market companies in the Benelux countries on a global basis,” said Norwood.  ”We’ve already signed our first customer and also have a substantial number of prospects in the pipeline before the announcement.  Our goal is to have 100 new customers for KANA Express worldwide within 18 months.”  

KANA has built new inside sales teams for the US and UK—separate and distinct from their enterprise sales force--to gain traction for KANA Express. Implementations should be done within a 6-to-8 week cycle. The solution can accommodate sites with up to 600 agents, but the real targets are operations with 150 seats or less; some with as few as 20.  Pricing for KANA Express is set up on a transactional basis, with clients paying for their volume of usage. The suite includes agent experience, web experience, social and mobile experience components. Clients can choose pre-packaged combinations of these solutions depending on their needs.  

Engineers have been added so that KANA Express will be in a quarterly development cycle, with new releases in each upcoming season allowing features to be added based on customer demand. Targeted vertical markets include retail, travel, financial services such as credit unions and B-to-B applications.  

Progress is also being made on integrating Ciboodle’s expertise in business process management, dynamic case management and agent desktop solutions with KANA’s Web Customer Service that includes email response management, knowledge management, web self-service and live chat.  

LiveOps Platform gives users flexibility, intelligent mulitichannel routing, real-time reporting and interaction recording across every channel –voice, email, web chat, social and SMS. All of the benefits of LiveOps Platform are delivered using the highest cloud security standards and all are integrated in one easy-to-use multichannel agent desktop through a comprehensive suite of LiveOps Applications.  Intelligent multichannel routing is a particularly important capability, routing every customer interaction to the right channel and the most appropriate agents, regardless of their location.    

LiveOps Social enables agents to continuously monitor Twitter and Facebook.  Using it in conjunction with the company’s channel pivot feature enables agents to respond across different channels which is vital in developing rapid and appropriate social media responses.  

According to American Express, socially engaged customers spend 21% more with a company that provides great service. While global management consulting firm AT Kearney found that 83% of customers who tweeted a complaint about a company were gratified when they received a response, their research also revealed that 70% of such complaints still go unanswered.  American Express also found that 83% of people who have used social media for customer service have walked away from purchases due to a poor customer service experience.  

Social media is no different than other customer communications,” said Ann Ruckstahl, CMO at LiveOps, “but when you mess up, the whole world is watching. We help companies create one central hub with the ability to pivot to the appropriate department to solve customer’s problems quickly.”  When complaints appear in public forums, agents employ the channel pivot feature to redirect customers into a private conversation. The Wokingham Borough Council in England, a community information resource, used the feature to redirect the ongoing complaints of a resident into a more appropriate forum. 

LiveOps was recently cited as one of the OnDemand Top 100 winners, chosen by the staff of AlwaysOn, a business media brand networking the Global Silicon Valley, along a group of corporate leaders and industry experts. The designation recognizes leadership in providing technologies that are pushing outside the bounds of existing markets and entrenched players. 

Enterprise Software  

Infor, a leading provider of enterprise software serving more than 70,000 customers, is focused on user efficiency, concentrating on what their products can do for their partners and how their clients’ customers can gain added benefits.  “Each touchpoint is a unique, and sometimes critical, moment to deepen your relationship with a customer,” said George Wright, SVP and GM at Infor.  “The minute a customer or prospect engages, you need to consider their unique contextual history and then communicate the best message, whether it’s an offer or a savings opportunity.”  

To better serve their clients emerging needs, Infor has added more than 700 developers over the past two years and has invested UI specialists in New York City to focus on new user interfaces across all of their product lines. Infor 10 (Epiphany), both powerful and scalable, is the foundation platform for all of their CRM solutions. The company website cites an increase of up to 50% in sales per hour, a 48% gain in products per household, and a 400% rise in average response rates for Infor clients in financial services, communications, retail, hospitality, travel and leisure, and manufacturing.  

Navy Federal Credit Union (NFCU) employed Epiphany in a cross-servicing program called "Above and Beyond," which blended technology and training to help contact center agents raise member awareness of Navy Federal offerings.  NFCU also uses the Interaction Advisor feature of the software to track life changes among their members and create the most appropriate offers to suit their current status. NFCU attributed their association with Infor as a factor in helping them generate incremental revenues of over $1 billion over the past 3.5 years.  

Busy customers--who are often frustrated when they receive outdated offers -- appreciate the added consideration made possible by Infor 10’s Interaction Advisor. When a time-sensitive multichannel outbound offer reaches a recipient after the original deadline has passed, the solution has the capability to automatically add replacement offers to the original communication. 

Infor 10 has enabled Wells Fargo to effectively and consistently disseminate mortgage information on multiple channels to users. In one interesting onsite application, Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun casino uses the software to make offers to loyalty card holders that are displayed directly on the slot machine on which the customer is playing. 

Infor plans to roll out a new cloud-based program called InForce Marketing Cloud in association with SalesForce in December, providing inbound and outbound CRM, BP management and MRM capabilities. 

Moxie Software connects multichannel customer communication with internal collaboration. Spaces by Moxie, a software suite with components that are also available individually,  enables companies to engage customers via their communication channel of choice, connect employees with collaboration, and consistently deliver the right answers across all channels with a powerful social knowledgebase.   

Customers are becoming more demanding. They are increasingly online and expect responses in real time — often via their mobile devices and social media.  With 70% of online consumers expecting businesses to try harder to provide superior online customer service, Spaces by Moxie provides capabilities that help organizations compete. The suite converges customer communications with employee collaboration applications into a single solution which improves the way businesses interact, understand, and deliver superior customer experience. Robust analytics in Moxie’s Spaces Connect inform companies how their customers are engaging with them. 

The first step for most clients is integrating Moxie’s Knowledge Spaces solution which ensures that everyone involved in customer care has the right answer available to provide to customers. Once a specific answer is approved for use in an organization, it is placed in the knowledgebase and is instantly accessible in both self-service applications and in the hub of cross-channel information.  Knowledge Spaces combines with the Collaboration Spaces solution to connect employees within the organization and reduces the time needed to respond to customers. 

Companies are looking at the suite as a whole or its other individual components, which include Phone Spaces, Chat Spaces, Email Spaces, Community Spaces, Click-to-Call Spaces, Co-Browse Spaces, and Sales Chat Spaces.  Many organizations are integrating the Social Media Spaces solution, especially in environments where customer interaction on the channel has become the province of the contact center as opposed to a marketing function.  

Spaces by Moxie is available as both on-demand and on-premise solution, except for the Collaboration Spaces solution which is only available on-demand. Target markets are high-volume B-to-B or B-to-C organizations. Verticals include financial services, as well as high-tech consumer goods and services where the solution provides the differentiation that is vital to high-tech companies.  

Social Analytics  and VOC  

QuestBack's Listen & Act contributes to making Voice of the Customer a more well-rounded solution that can both generate revenue and better ROI for users. The solution enables businesses to quickly sift through messages and levels of influence of the people who submit them. The organizations using it can then employ engagement tools such as surveys and communities to create unique experiences for their customers based on their inquiries and preferences.  

Combining insights gained from evolving touchpoints, such as social media, enables businesses to act more quickly, provide more targeted offers, accelerate problem resolution and ultimately increase market share by cultivating more satisfied and loyal customers. Listen & Act can improve response time to posts on social media. Client comments on social media are tagged with either a red or green flag to enable agents to quickly generate appropriate responses and redirect negative comments to a private forum. 

The Bridgeport, CT based firm was recently cited as top performer in Social Analytics and Intelligence in a 2012 Galaxy Vendor Evaluation Report by Hypatia Research. “Notable among the capabilities demonstrated by QuestBack is the ability for companies to bring customers out of Twitter postings into structured feedback patterns via survey links to qualify, identify or route issues requiring resolution or response,” said the report’s author Leslie Ament, VP of Research and Senior Analyst at Hypatia. 

QuestBack is all about engagement,” said Jill Ransome, Marketing Director at QuestBack. “We are also addressing the mobile channel where 25% of all surveys are now taken. Our surveys now automatically adapt to the mobile environment in which they are received.”  QuestBack’s Enterprise Feedback suite includes survey & data collection, social media monitoring & engagement, community & portal, mobile optimization, people data hub, analytics and reporting and CRM integration.