Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Mobile Social Cloud CRM for smaill business
Mobile Social Cloud CRM for smaill business , allows any business to interact with customers on any major social network , via a mobile device. The company said in a statement that the service is "so simple that any company, even one without an IT staff, can get up and running over a weekend."


With nearly a quarter of all time spent online being spent on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, has become a leader in integrating social networks into its customer service offerings.


The company envisions a scenario such as a customer posting a critical comment on Facebook about its newly purchased widget. While a desktop-based customer service worker for the widget maker might be the first stop for responding to the comment, the actual resolution might be better handled by a technical service person, who could be out in the field.


With Desk.com, that ticket can then be picked up by the technical service employee, and resolved via a mobile device. The ticket can be reassigned, have its status or priority changed, or have its customer information  modified.


Hes said that, according to its data , nearly three-quarters of small businesses use mobile applications in their daily operations. With Desk.com, SMBs can use a help desk that integrates social networks, e-mail, phone and other Web components, making social networks into what the company described as "first-class citizens along with traditional support channels."


Hourly for 'Casual' Reps


He runs on any smartphone that supports HTML 5, such as Android -based devices and Apple's iPhone. Reporting includes information on how many cases customer service agents have opened, resolved, replied to, reassigned, or reopened, and a dozen pre-built reports offer such data as handling time, time to first response, and first contact resolution rate.


CRM has priced the offering to appeal to SMBs. The first seat is free, and then it's $49 per agent per month. There's also an hourly model for what the company calls "casual" customer support reps, at $1 per hour.
He is based on the technology that yours obtained when it purchased social customer service startup Assistly last fall. Assistly's product allowed companies to organize customer conversations on social networks into a to-do list, and provided tools for support staff to respond, see customer histories, automate procedures and produce analytical reports.


Social, Mobile, Simple


In our interview with Alex Bard, vice president and general manager, Bard explained this service Cloud, a key part of its "social enterprise " efforts, had previously been optimized for the mid-market and large enterprises, but his extending the cloud toward the lower end of the market.


Bard said that, in researching smaller companies' needs, Sales "kept hearing three things -- it has to be social at its core, it needs to be mobile, and it needs to be simple." He added that thousands of Assistly customers have been moved to sale, and the response has been "overwhelmingly positive."


Laura DiDio, an analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp., said Desk.com represents "the ultimate in the consumerization of IT, and a recognition of how we're no longer tethered to an office with a traditional PC ."


She noted that Salesforce made "a pretty quick turnaround" in readying Assistly for the new product launch, adding that the model of customer support from virtually any mobile device "will absolutely become a standard."

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Salesforce Buys Radian for monitoring social networks.


More emphasis is being placed on social CRM by Salesforce as it buys Radian, which monitors hundreds of millions of social-media conversations. Radian6 monitors Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other sites, and Salesforce expects the acquisition to extend the value of its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com offerings Salesforce is increasing its position in social CRM  by buying social-media monitoring firm Radian6. Radian6 monitors hundreds of millions of social-media conversations every day on behalf of such companies as Dell, GE, Kodak, Molson Coors, PepsiCo and UPS . The acquisition involves about $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock. 
The environments monitored in real time by Radian6 include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other online communities. Salesforce said the acquisition will extend the value of its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com offerings by providing business  intelligence and capabilities related to social media. 
'New Norm of Customer Engagement' 
Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun told news media that his company's technology is "built for the new norm of customer engagement -- real time, two-way conversations that include social channels." 
The company's products include a monitoring platform that helps analyze social-media campaigns and an engagement platform to help companies connect  with online community members. These are intended to improve marketing and selling products, maintain customer service, and manage online reputations. 
Radian6 said more than half of the Fortune 100 companies use its products. In its announcement, Salesforce pointed to a shift to what it calls Cloud 2. In Cloud 1, according to Salesforce, technologies were leveraged to be inexpensive, fast, easy to use, and available on the desktop. In Cloud 2, the company said, technologies are "social, mobile  and open." 
Among other utilizations, Salesforce plans to use Radian6 to help create a bridge between public social networks, such as Facebook, and its private Chatter social network for enterprises. Chatter feeds will now contain information that reflects comments on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other environments. 
For Force.com, Salesforce sees Radian6 as offering an opportunity for developers to build the social web into apps. 
Integration with New Service Cloud 
Social media for the enterprise has emerged as a major emphasis for Salesforce's new products. Earlier this month, for instance, it announced "the next generation of social contact centers," Service Cloud 3. It positioned the updated software -as-a-service platform as "customer service for the social era." 
Service Cloud 3 was designed to let organizations more completely engage with customers in social communities such as Twitter or Facebook. To facilitate that, the platform included integration with a Radian6 app. 
A key selling point of the new Service Cloud upgrade  is that it allows companies to scale up quickly to analyze millions of conversations that involve their products or service. Real-time reports and customizable dashboards offer social-channel analyses, customer-conversation  analyses, and social dashboards for identifying trends. 
Comments in Facebook, for instance, can be filtered by the number of friends a commenter has, assumedly indicating how influential that person is. Facebook names can also be tied into customer records. 
Facebook wall posts and comments can be converted into cases with Service Cloud 3, and Twitter conversations can similarly become cases -- with agents joining in the conversation.
Low Facebook Customer Satisfaction May Boost Google


Low Facebook Customer Satisfaction May Boost Google
Are users satisfied with e-business  on the web? A new survey tries to answer that question -- and discovered that Google+ may be in a position to overtake Facebook.
According to the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, conducted in association with customer -experience analytics firm ForeSee Results, Facebook has the lowest score of any company measured. The score, 66, is three percent over last year's survey, while Google is one of the highest-scoring companies.


'No Longer a Safety Net'


ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed said that, while it's not possible to project how Google's new social -networking service, Google+, will do in the marketplace, he noted that Facebook is vulnerable. "An existing dominance of market share like Facebook has," he said, "is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience."


The top rung for customer satisfaction with social media is occupied by Wikipedia, whose 78 percent score is one percent higher than in last year's survey. Second place went to YouTube at 74 percent. But it's a tough job satisfying customers in this category. The report described social media in general as "one of the lowest-scoring industries," with only airlines, newspapers and subscription-television services scoring lower.


Social media is only one area of e-business covered by the survey. It also measures customer satisfaction with portals and search engines, and online news.


In portals and search engines, Google has an 83 percent satisfaction rate, an increase of four percent, but Microsoft's Bing is moving up fast. Bing now has an 82 percent score, a substantial seven percent increase from last year. ForeSee said 80 or higher is considered "excellent." It also noted that Bing's market share has nearly doubled in the last year, to 17 percent from nine percent.


'Anybody Is Vulnerable'


So while Facebook's users could be open to a new social-networking service such as Google+, Google's search engine needs to keep a wary eye on the approaching Bing. According to Freed, Google's customer-satisfaction score last year was three points higher than Bing's. "Bing is showing it can challenge Google in terms of revenue, market share, and customer experience," he said.


Among news sites, News Corp.'s increasing troubles haven't yet impacted its FOXNews.com site, which showed an 82 percent customer-satisfaction rate. The second highest is ABCNews.com, which increased three percent this year to 77 percent. HuffingtonPost.com makes its first entry into the survey at 69 percent, and NYTimes.com comes in a 73 percent, a four percent drop. The survey noted that it measured satisfaction with the Times at the same time the company was implementing its pay wall.


Information Technology Intelligence Corp.'s Laura DiDio said it's not just Google or Facebook that have to keep a constant eye on their competitors. "Anybody is vulnerable in this market," she said, adding that, "no matter how successful, there is always a competitor coming up."

Google+ Pages Are Open for Businesses


Google+ Pages Are Open for Businesses
If you're a business that uses social networking, it's time to add Google+ to your campaigns. The software  giant said commercially oriented Web pages on its service were open for business.
Using Google+ Pages, companies can deliver content, build a community and reinforce a brand. Google said 20 businesses, including Macy's and Pepsi, have set up company pages in its trial period, and the service is now being made available to other businesses. Previously only individuals could set up a page.


The  + Brand Badge


Other business based pages currently include CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Angry Birds, Burberry, Dallas Cowboys, Good Morning America, The Muppets, Toyota, and Zen Bikes.


On the Official Google Blog, Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra wrote that Google+ Pages now allow members to "hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour."


Customers and fans visiting a company's or product's page can recommend it with a +1, or add the page to his or her circle. A +1 is the Google equivalent of Facebook's Like button, and a circle is a user's own set of relationships, enabling direct conversation between circle members.


Bradley Horowitz, Google+ vice president for products, told The New York Times Monday that he expects to see a "+ brand" badge in corporate advertising and products. This would include, he said, a + Pepsi on every one of its soda cans and in its TV spots, along with other social media references, such as the Twitter hashtag, plus, of course, the old-fashioned Web site address. As with Facebook's corporate pages, Google will be able to provide the demographics of visitors to + Pages.


Direct Connect


Gundotra also noted that potential customers can reach company pages on Google+ via its search engine, and then add them to their networking circle. One way to promote that, of course, is to make those pages available to Google search, and they will come up as part of the results when the brand is searched.


The other is through a new feature called Direct Connect. A user searches for a company or a band, but with a + before the name. Thus, + Angry Birds takes the user directly to that game's Google+ page, and lets a user add it to their circles. Currently, Direct Connect is still being rolled out, and doesn't yet work for every Google+ page, nor can every user access  Direct Connect. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said it would add these capabilities over time.


Businesses started using Google+ from the beginning in June, but the software giant removed businesses from regular accounts until now, when it could set up pages designed for businesses.


Google+ opened its social network  to any user in September, following a field trial of less than 90 days. To date, the company said, more than 40 million users have signed up for the service -- a huge wave of membership, but one that is still small compared with Facebook's membership of more than 800 million users.

Dreamforce 2011 Focuses on Post-PC Revolution


Dreamforce 2011 Focuses on Post-PC Revolution
Salesforce.com is getting ready for Dreamforce 2011, its hallmark cloud -computing event. This year's conference is planned for Aug. 30 through Sept. 2 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, and will focus on something that's been in the news plenty in recent days: The post-PC  revolution.
As Salesforce sees it, the post-PC revolution will further accelerate the social  enterprise . There is clearly a rise in companies working to improve the way they collaborate, communicate and share information with customers and employees in the cloud. That rise, Salesforce said, is transforming companies into social enterprises, which it defined as those that build social profiles of customers, create internal social networks, and listen to and engage with customers over the Internet.


Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, offered a bold statement with which his competitors likely disagree. "Each year at Dreamforce, we set the agenda for the cloud-computing industry, and this year will be no exception," he said. "At Dreamforce 2011, we will showcase customers that have embraced innovation and transformed themselves into social enterprises."
Cloud Battles
The gestalt the technology market is wandering through is moving to an ever more web-centric world, a world that surrounds companies like Salesforce -- and favors them, according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.


"Salesforce is not really known as a social-networking company by any stretch of the imagination," Enderle said. "Both Salesforce and IBM are having a little trouble grappling with it as a result. On the other hand, it's not like the social networks are flooding into the businesses overtly, it's more covertly and carried by the employees."


As Enderle sees it, Salesforce's take on the market is correct. But He questioned whether the company can position itself to leverage the evolution. While Salesforce was initially one of the biggest enterprise cloud players, he noted, cloud leadership has shifted to the likes of EMC and IBM.
Tapping Relevant Trends
"To a large extent I think Salesforce needs to return to being more relevant in the trends that they themselves helped create," Enderle said. "Salesforce is doing a marginal job riding these trends. The right thing to do is to get back and start talking about yourself as a leader. But the danger is that they aren't anymore, and they need to address that."


Salesforce will work to trumpet its cloud leadership at Dreamforce with sessions on government, healthcare and the social world. Special guests at the annual user and developer conference include Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. The event aims to teach attendees how their companies can take advantage of Salesforce's cloud offerings. The company expects more than 25,000 people to attend the 450 sessions.
Results Software Unveils CRM Business Suite 2012


Results Software Unveils CRM Business Suite 2012
Results Software, developers of the award winning Results solution, today announced rollout of the 2012 Results CRM  Business Suite product. Product rollout includes the Small Business and Enterprise Editions of the Results CRM Business Suite desktop  & hosted versions, Results for the Web, and the Results Time Management Portal. Powerful new features, such as enhanced QuickBooks and SmartVault® integration  and an updated and highly intuitive user interface, enrich the user experience and make Results the go-to CRM and business management solution for improving operational efficiency and accelerating business growth while supporting working from anywhere at anytime.
"Our focus continues to be on helping users streamline workflow and improve their bottom line. As such, we consistently listen to client feedback and implement suggestions into the Results products that help businesses better manage  operations," said Sam Saab, President and Founder of Results Software. "We also continue to expand and enhance integration between Results CRM and other industry-standard applications and platforms such as QuickBooks, Outlook®, Constant Contact®, SmartVault, and SharePoint®, creating a single data  hub for the whole organization to work from. Centralized data visibility across the organization offers empowerment and the convenience that we want to provide to our users."


Results CRM Business Suite 2012 includes the following enhancements:


Addition of a full Purchase Order Data Entry module along with support for bi-directional synchronization of Purchase Orders with QuickBooks.


Expanded project/job integration with QuickBooks to automatically capture job costs for labor, material, and other expenses.


Ability to instantly convert quote/estimate line items to assignable activities and tasks for professional services organizations.


Expanded SmartVault integration, including support for SmartVault Notes and placing SmartVault Docs and Notes buttons on every data entry screen.


Expanded support for QuickBooks price levels in Results, including ability to directly assign a contact to the appropriate price level.


Ability to instantly view complete order history for any product being added to a Quote, Sales Order, Invoice, or Purchase Order.


Results for the Web (R4W) 2012 and the Results Time Management Portal enhancements include:


New, highly intuitive user interface.


Streamlined menus with familiar, easy-to-use Microsoft  2010 "ribbon" view.


Redesigned Data Management Centers (DMCs) to include column filtering and grouping.


Compatibility with all standard browsers-Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.


Full support for the iPad  and all other tablets.