Using technology to improve your customer focus
[Roger Strain] Quick, think of something you wish you could do to manage your relationships with your customers better. Offer them more self-service options? Remind them tactfully and cheaply when bills are due? Get more useful feedback about their experience of your product or service? Make sure whoever deals with them always has access to all the relevant information and is properly empowered to deal with whatever issue comes up? 16 Jul 2008 09:09

Music is money - creating the right customer experience
In the current gloomy economic conditions, businesses have to create the unique in-store experience to attract and retain customers and most importantly - get the biggest share of the customer's shrinking wallet, says Craig Cesman, CEO of audio branding experts DMX Music Africa. 15 Jul 2008 14:23

Securing test data in line with international legislation
MigrationWare, the local partner of the UK-based Micro Focus, recently began selling Micro Focus Data Express, a suite of tools used to create a robust and secure test environment for production data. According to João de Oliveira, MigrationWare sales director, Data Express will not only help local companies to fall in line with international legislation, but also with legislation which is scheduled to be introduced locally. 15 Jul 2008 08:32

What is the cost of shoddy customer service?
[Patrick Deale] Do you know how much poor customer service is costing your company in terms of direct sales as well as bad publicity? In this day and age, with consumers even more careful about where they spend their hard-earned rands, improved customer service can give you the edge over your competitors. 8 Jul 2008 10:19

Consumers only want to call once
Organisations must emphasise maintaining customer satisfaction in order to ensure that they retain good customer service. This means improving the way contact centre agents handle calls and reducing the need more than one call to resolve an issue. This was the key message from Craig Gibson, MD of Merchants, the contact centre division of Dimension Data, as he spoke at the recent launch of the annual Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report for 2008. 8 Jul 2008 08:35

The good, the bad and the smugly - A question of talk and walk - Don't Forget George
[Gavin Mills] In a world of soaring prices, dwindling resources, rampant unemployment and the early stages of global socio-economic decline, one would expect brands, companies and individuals to be giving their all to hold on to whatever they can of the consumer buck. Sadly this is not the case - especially in South Africa, at the moment... 30 Jun 2008 17:09

Three-way partnership on in-store media
As part of vida e caffé's ongoing expansion into the local coffee market, an alliance has been created with publishers 8 Ink Media and Tagon Media to sell in-store media for the cult coffee company. The partnership includes loyalty cards, take-away coffee sleeves, stirrers, serviettes, tags, vida-fi (free in-store wi-fi), as well as a number of new initiatives. 26 Jun 2008 08:42

The best time to send an email
[Aaron Smith] The email messages you send out will be much better received if they arrive at a time when the recipient is more likely to be in the right frame of mind to read them. If they arrive at any other time - particularly if they arrive along with a raft of other messages - there is a good chance they will end up being deleted ... unwanted and unread. 23 Jun 2008 11:34

Nissan shifts service in Africa to the next level - Conexus
Breaking into new territory, the African Regional Office of Nissan South Africa is setting the standard for measuring customer sales and service satisfaction in the automotive industry in sub-Saharan Africa. 11 Jun 2008 17:43

Conexus paves the road for automotive sales and service standards in Africa - Conexus
Conexus, a leading outsourced call centre company, has successfully extended their capabilities across Africa, having completed a challenging multi-country project. The venture into the continent continued when Conexus was tasked with implementing a large-scale customer satisfaction study for a leading, international automotive client in African countries. 3 Jun 2008 16:11

Do more with less during a recession
Over the years, hundreds of studies have been conducted to prove you should maintain your advertising during an economic downturn. “Research on the recession of the early ‘80s showed a steady growth in businesses who maintained their marketing spend. In fact, by 1985, sales of companies that were aggressive recession advertisers had risen 256% more than those that didn't keep up their marketing,” notes Michael Gullan, MD of Guerrilla Marketing. 30 May 2008 08:40

Critical need to bridge sales, marketing divide
A new global survey of more than 500 sales and marketing professionals by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council shows many companies still lag in their ability to integrate and align sales goals with marketing activities, thus reducing the overall business performance of their organisations. 29 May 2008 08:50

CRM drives perceived value
[Glen Ansell] Where exactly is value created for a customer or consumer? Particularly in competitive commodity markets, there are at least two centres of value - the first is the simple, quantitative value which is linked to the price paid and the goods received. The second is linked to the perceived value, which is a more nebulous notion which is linked to how that customer feels about his service provider or supplier. 27 May 2008 08:49