Open source portal provider Liferay invites its global community of users, customers, and partners to participate in the development of new features for Liferay’s products. Liferay’s Ideation initiative is also looking at ways to develop new apps that can be delivered through the Liferay Marketplace. Read the rest of this entry »

The IBM Connect 2013 Opening General Session peeked into what the future will bring for IBM’s clients and partners. The company will launch a new suite for human resources (HR), and new versions of the IBM Connections social business platform and the Customer Experience Suite.

A series of applications meant to create collaborative work environments (i.e., community builder, video conferencing, activity streams, document sharing, whiteboard collaboration, etc.), will be central to the HR software solution. Read the rest of this entry »

The multi-channel customer experience management software market represents an attractive US$5 billion-plus market opportunity, which IDC recently forecast to grow at between 5 to 12 percent through 2015 (a 6 percent compound annual growth rate [CAGR]) within the larger overall customer relationship management (CRM) space. To that end, in July 2012, KANA Software, a longstanding customer service software provider, which has lately been on an impressive comeback and acquisition trail, announced that it has acquired the upbeat and innovative contact center customer service company Ciboodle from the Sword Group.

The official press release cites that this move creates a more powerful independent provider for multi-channel customer service solutions across agent, web, social, and mobile experiences. The acquisition is further evidence of consolidation in this attractive sector, as marked by Oracle’s acquisitions of RightNow, InQuira, and several smaller social computing companies, and salesforce.com’s acquisitions of inStranet, Radian 6, and other smaller companies. Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Yammer might also have some relevance to this CRM segment. Read the rest of this entry »

KANA Software is a global provider in customer service solutions delivered on-premise or in the cloud, and these solutions unify and maintain context for customer journeys across agent, Web, social, and mobile experiences. The vendor’s solutions have reduced handling time, increased resolution rates, and improved net promoter score (NPS) at more than 850 enterprises, including half of the Global 100 and more than 250 government agencies.

The KANA Service Experience Management (SEM) platform combines the realms of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Process Management (BPM), Knowledge Management, Text Analytics, and Social Media to support the delivery of good experiences on brands and on budget across multiple customer interaction channels. Most recently, at the IQPC 2012 Call Center Week event, the vendor introduced new capabilities in its enterprise customer service solution, designed to support the new strategic imperative in Web Customer Service (WCS) — customer acquisition. Read the rest of this entry »

The voice of the customer (VOC) concept has been around for decades, but the Internet and social media technologies have finally enabled it to its fullest degree. We have all heard of (and perhaps even contributed to) customers venting their anger or expressing their delight with some vendor’s service or some product’s characteristics and performance via online forums.

A company’s ability to spot market trends in a timely way and find competitive info such as good or bad sentiments about its products and brands should go all the way back to the design department (and its suppliers). Read the rest of this entry »