Q&As

Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox, Pepsico’s Mountain Dew and a handful of videogame makers hit the road today with the Game Live on Xbox college tour. The tour hits 25 campuses with a pavilion of gaming stations and a suite of new games for students to sample. …

Shelley Rawlings had her work cut out for her when she joined Network Solutions in 2002. As the new vice president of customer operations and support for the Web solutions provider, she needed to find some solutions of her own for the company’s poorly performing call centers.

About 1,000 health clubs are gearing up for a first-quarter 2006 sampling campaign.

Keeping 30 million customers happy is a tall order. But Borders Group, Inc. has taken on that challenge—with information to back it up.
In an effort to increase customer satisfaction in more than 460 superstores in the U.S., Borders is conducting customer satisfaction surveys.

If the $10.9 billion marketers spent on customer management applications in 2004 didn’t sate the appetites of vendors, fret not: By 2009, this market will grow to more than $15.7 billion, according to a report from AMR Research Market Analytix.

At a recent database marketing conference, several exhibits featured automatic or semi-automatic data mining systems. Each vendor claimed his or her particular approach provided the user with a multitude of algorithms to deploy to aid and abet the analysis outcome.

For years enterprises have tried to combat customer service issues with technology. But technology doesn’t work unless you have engaged in some process planning.

E-mail service provider Bigfoot Interactive and loyalty marketing company Alliance Data Systems Corp. launched a counter offensive in the e-mail CRM wars by announcing that Alliance Data’s Epsilon unit will acquire Bigfoot for $120 million.

An editor at my company once called a meeting to present a stunning magazine redesign. All went well until a sales type asked the inevitable question: “Did you do any surveys or focus groups to find out if this is what readers wanted?”

The editor responded: “I’m the focus group.”

I believe the real problem here has nothing to do with Comcast’s call center. The root of the problem is much earlier in the process.