CODiE Award for Best Relationship Management Solution – Follow Up

Last month we were honored to receive the CODiE Award for Best Relationship Management Solution by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).  DreamSimplicity, a virtual community for business applications and industry professionals, was onsite at the awards ceremony in San Francisco and recorded a brief interview with our own Michael Gagnon, Regional Sales Manager for CA. Watch the video and comment…

I’ll Take My Customer 360 Info “To Go” Please

According to Gartner Research, the field service market encompasses 20 million mobile field service workers worldwide. Field service workers are a company’s “feet on the street”, represent the company’s brand, and are an extension of the customer service organization. They’re ultimately expected to provide great service and have an accurate, holistic view of the customer to help capture additional service revenue.

Sales reps constantly on the road also need similar access to customer information to truly know all aspects of a customer relationship, even in the minutes leading up to a critical meeting to close a customer deal, to help increase cross-selling, optimize the customer experience, and maximize revenues.

Yet all too often, field service workers and sales reps don’t have a complete, 360 degree view of the customer, their products, plans, parts, open cases, call history, and upsell opportunities, when out in the field. This lack of a holistic view of the customer leads to delayed resolutions, repeat service calls, missed cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and more. In a market where shrinking service response times are demanded by customers, this only leads to lower customer satisfaction levels and lost revenue.

Due to the demand we’re seeing in the market, thanks in large part to the focus on customer-centricity across organizations today, we just announced expanded mobile apps for our Knowledge 360 Solutions and Enterprise Search 2.0 platform, including support for Blackberry OS 6.0, the iPhone, iPad and Android. Field service and sales organizations can now easily and securely access all customer information from any enterprise system via these mobile devices.  Gartner Analyst Michael Maoz, quoted in the news release we issued, said:

“Devices such as all forms of Tablets and smartphones will continue to change the dynamics of customer support and field service as organizations look for innovative ways to better serve and understand their customers. Tablets and mobile devices are showing strong business benefits to field technicians. This comes from areas such as real-time information on parts and plans, customer cases, and upsell opportunities. It is critical for enterprises to efficiently equip these mobile workers with a 360 degree view of the customer, in particular as businesses focus on sustainability, lower costs, and improved customer satisfaction. With 20 million mobile field service workers worldwide, we are already beginning to see the measurable benefits.”

In a recent survey we commissioned with Omega Management Group, companies with 10,000 or more employees reported that customer data resided in more than 20 different systems. Think of the time and expense it would take to move all that data into a central repository, or integrate those systems! We say – leave the data where it is, in those best of breed systems, and provide ubiquitous, anywhere, anytime access to it, regardless of where it’s stored – whether behind the firewall or in the cloud, including social media.

And now, we say take that access with you on the go.