PSG Latest Research

Customer Service Company and Product Update, 4Q2009

Mitchell Kramer — 3/10/2010 12:00:00 AM

4Q2009 was a very good quarter for KM-based customer service. Customer growth improved and/or good financial performance resulted for eight of our ten suppliers. Product activity was very high as seven of our ten suppliers made significant announcements and introductions. We see four key product trends: integration of social media, support for assisted-service, mobile computing, and cloud computing. From a company perspective, the biggest news is that KANA went private. Attensity Group and IntelliResponse earned Customers.com customer service stars, demonstrating strength and balance across customer, product, and company performance. KM-based customer service is positioned for a very good start in 2010.

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About Mitchell Kramer.

Unisfair Helps Enterprises Increase Lead Generation Activities

Ronni Marshak — 3/10/2010 12:00:00 AM

With the Unisfair Virtual Engagement Platform, companies can create always-on, multi-venue, virtual environments that mimic the feel and navigation of trade shows. Customers attend sessions, download collateral, and can chat with company reps, partners, and other attendees in the environment. Because customers’ online activities are tracked, you can see what sessions the customers choose to attend, who they spoke to, and, in general, where their interests lie. With the new Smart Reporting and Engagement Index features in the newly-released Version 9.0, your sales and marketing team will get more and better leads based on what your customers really want to know.

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About Ronni Marshak.

AIP UniPHY: Creating a Professional Social Network

Patricia Seybold — 3/4/2010 12:00:00 AM

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) publishes 12 scholarly journals for its member organizations as well as many scholarly journals for other associations. Like all publishers, AIP needs to find new ways to deliver value to its customers to retain and delight them. So AIP created a social network of 275,000 experts—authors and co-authors who have published at least two papers in peer-reviewed journals in the last 10 years. UniPHY addresses critical scenarios that professional physicists have: I want to find others who are experts in the topics that I care about; I want to be recognized as an expert in my field; I want to stay abreast of the latest research related to my field.

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About Patricia Seybold.

2009 Ecommerce Product and Supplier Update

Mitchell Kramer — 2/25/2010 12:00:00 AM

This report is our first annual ecommerce product and supplier update. In it we examine the customer growth, product activity, and company activity of the leading ecommerce platform suppliers. 2009 was a very good year for all six of the leaders. All had good, very good, or excellent customer growth. Most introduced significant new product versions. And all delivered financial performance reflecting their customer growth. Going forward into 2010, ecommerce will build on its 2009 success, strengthened by enhanced products and improving economic conditions.

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About Mitchell Kramer.

Provide a 360-Degree View of Each Customer's Context

Ronni Marshak — 2/25/2010 12:00:00 AM

Customers do business with you to fulfill their scenarios and reach their goals. To do this, they need full access to all the information you have about them, as well as the ability to access, update, organize, and enhance that information. Companies that support their customers’ successes by providing a 360-degree view of the customer context to the customer can reap rewards including increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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About Ronni Marshak.

Will Amazon Lose Marketshare to Apple in Digital Content?

Patricia Seybold — 2/18/2010 12:00:00 AM

The Kindle eBook reader pales in comparison to Apple’s sexy iPad. What will keep Apple from eroding Amazon’s marketshare and profits in e-books, magazines, newspapers, and other digital goods? Among the ideas our clients came up with: 1) Amazon should sell content that is portable across platforms, 2) Amazon should make it easy to buy digital goods for all platforms from all platforms, 3) Amazon should sponsor an Open Source e-reader platform, 4) Amazon should embrace ePub and other popular e-book formats.

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About Patricia Seybold.

Venda Enterprise

Mitchell Kramer — 2/11/2010 12:00:00 AM

Venda Enterprise is the ecommerce software plat-form offering of Venda, Inc., a privately held, New York, NY-based software supplier and ecommerce hoster that was founded in 2001. Release 5.3.38 is the current, monthly release of the platform that was introduced in 2001. To date, Venda claims that 140 customer organizations, mostly retailers in the US and Europe, have deployed ecommerce sites based on Venda Enterprise. If you are a brand-conscious retailer or a manufacturer that sells directly to consumers with online revenues of up to $100 million, then Venda Enterprise could be your ideal ecommerce platform. It combines rich packaged services and easily configurable facilities with hosted multi-tenant deployment to make ecommerce stores easy and fast to implement and easy to manage. IT skills and resources are barely needed.

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About Mitchell Kramer.

Streamline Customers' Critical Scenarios

Ronni Marshak — 2/11/2010 12:00:00 AM

A customer’s goal isn’t to spend money with you. He wants to get his stuff done! By figuring out his scenarios, you help him be successful and win his loyalty in the process. The article explains how to understand customer scenarios and how to identify the ones that are most important for your target customers.

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About Ronni Marshak.

RichRelevance Recommendations

Susan Aldrich — 2/4/2010 12:00:00 AM

Recommendations can improve customer experience, improve search results, and boost Web site KPIs. RichRelevance’s RichRecs stacks up very well against our evaluation criteria. If you are in retail ecommerce, RichRelevance’s RichRecs should be on your short list. Its automated optimization of its myriad recommendation strategies gets retailers closer to their specific goals, with the least possible manual effort. RichRelevance’s service delivery gets very high marks from us as well.

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About Susan Aldrich.

Five Steps to Success in Designing a Customer-Centric Business

Patricia Seybold — 2/4/2010 12:00:00 AM

How do you ensure that customers love your brand, your company and your products? They will if you follow these five steps: 1) Focus on your end-customers; 2) Make it enjoyable for customers to get things done; 3) Measure what matters to customers, 4) Align your ecosystem to deliver customers’ ideal end-to-end experiences; 5) Profit from customer engagement and loyalty.

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About Patricia Seybold.