For the past five years, during the first weekend in August, I have participated in a fund raiser (the Pan Mass Challenge) where approximately 5,000 cyclists pedal a 192 miles over two days and raise $34M for cancer research. As a resident of New England, USA, August is the perfect time for long bike rides [...]

At one point in time, the Singer Corporation had more than 12,000 people working in a single plant. They were selling more than a million sewing machines a year and had hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. They were one of the most important manufacturers in America. It was fun …while it lasted! When [...]

A few months ago I wrote about ‘People Power’ and how it’s people that make companies successful. Now, years ago, I used to get pulled up by my bosses for being ‘too friendly’ and was told it was ‘unprofessional’ to be on first name terms with vendors or clients. I was supposed to be more [...]

Social Media Monitoring or Social Listening is the rage these days, but what’s the payback? Every new technology must, in the end, justify its existence by delivering tangible business value. Of course, ‘Listening’ is one of those rare activities where little justification is required. In fact, as I found when googling for a nice pearl [...]

On April 27th 2011 US President Obama issued an executive order to heads of federal departments and agencies to streamline service delivery and improve customer service. The agencies were given 180 days to develop their plans and publish them on their Open Government webpage. Learning from industry In the order, the President exhorts government managers [...]

In the race for most over-used and abused Marketing-speak, ‘agile’ is gaining rapidly on smart/smarter/intelligent. How can we make Agile customer service real, rather than just facile jargon? Our answer: insure that KANA SEM is Agile, rather than just another technology fluttering aimlessly towards the abstract idea of ‘agility’. To that end, Service Experience Management (SEM) is designed [...]

I work in a business that invents cutting edge technology. It’s powerful stuff and it makes a tremendous difference to a company’s efficiency and customer satisfaction. Does all this happen by software alone? No… none of this is possible without the involvement of people. To deliver an outstanding product you need outstanding people. I firmly [...]

wud ur customer listening system uderstand this sentence. how do u identify important convos and respond 2 ur customers wen they talk about u?? did u catch the SB…i cant beleive she messed up the words. That’s really how people speak, honestly. Well, at least when we’re talking about user-generated text like that found in [...]