March 18, 2013
Bo knows but eGain (powered) agents know far more..
Some of you might be familiar with Bo Jackson, the multi-faceted sports star that could excel in both American football and baseball at the professional level. Nike was so impressed they did a commercial with the slogan ‘Bo knows’, meaning he knew -- and could do -- lots of different things really well. Today’s contact center agents need to be a brobdingnagian version of Bo...
February 26, 2013
We were Argo on February 7th!
Don’t get us wrong -- the Oscar Awards ceremony was really exciting and we congratulate all the winners! But, to be honest, we confess we were more excited about the Oscar Awards in IT – the Gartner Magic Quadrant. This year’s MQ for CRM web customer service applications came out on February 7th, and here’s the spoiler alert -- we were Argo! Learn more about our Oscar and s...
February 05, 2013
NFL’s Super Bowl and eGain SuperChat™ – the similarities go beyond the name!
Super Bowl features top teams with best-in-class players in each position—quarterback, receiver, linebacker, defensive end, offensive tackle, etc.—playing together as a unified, cohesive team and creating the "Wow" effect for spectators. eGain SuperChat is not very different. It’s a solution that is comprised of award-winning products for customer engagement—virtual assista...
January 16, 2013
Please don’t blame us for your speeding tickets!
eGain has been innovating at warp speed for over a decade. Here’s a sampling of our industry-firsts: First-ever provider of enterprise cloud customer engagement software (more than 15 years ago!) First knowledge management solution for guided customer service, based on patented Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) technology First conversational virtual assistant with human intelligence First custome...
January 04, 2013
Want to excel in customer engagement? Go “Dolly” in your contact center!
Those of you that are old enough like me might remember “Dolly,” the first-ever sheep to be cloned. Did you know that your best sales and service agents can also be cloned to maximize performance? We’ve perfected that process and it’s all legal and ethical, and it even benefits the business and society at large! Let’s go part by part: First, you need to clone th...
January 03, 2013
Even ‘Triskaidekaphobes’ Can Keep an Impossible New Year Resolution: Love 2013!
It’s that time of the year again when you have to make those inevitable New Year resolutions. Here are some that we’d like to suggest – resolutions that you can make and keep without fail in 2013 – with our customer engagement hub solution! 1. Orchestrate smart, connected multichannel journeys for my customers 2. Make these journeys delightful for my age...
December 17, 2012
With a shopper engagement hub, you can thrive on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and even Social Saturday, Tablet Tuesday, or Anything Any day
If you are a click-and-mortar retailer, why would you not want your cash register to ring loudly on any one of these days? You can even have hybrid blockbuster days like a Black Cyber Friday or Cyber Black Monday! Word play aside, the point we’re trying to make here is that if you deliver smart, connected, multichannel (or omnichannel, as they sometimes call it in the retail world) jou...
October 11, 2012
When it comes to consolidating CRM systems, remember President Bush Senior’s advice: “Be Prudent”
Yes, without some level of system consolidation in CRM, you’re going to have chaos. However, you don’t want to go from chaos to vendor bondage by rationalizing too much. This would mean putting up with the tyranny of product mediocrity and going through the bait and switch roller coaster, where you were offered a mediocre product at low cost, only to be hit with sticker shock when the ...
October 09, 2012
When it comes to customer experience, take a “whole-chain” approach for success
Businesses pay a lot of attention to their supply and demand chains as they make and take products to market – and for good reason. What they often forget is the experience chain, or how the experience of in-house or partner sales and service agents (including outsourcers) affects the end-customer experience. Instead of taking a “whole-chain” approach to ...
October 04, 2012
Sam Jackson (and now Martin Scorsese), you are easily impressed
If your DVR has been malfunctioning lately, you might have actually seen some TV ads rather than skipping them with a vengeance. Ergo, I happened to see an ad that featured Sam Jackson, getting impressed with Siri. Sam, I invite you to take a look at our chatbot. Sure, Siri is a fun toy that can do some simple things—read off your iPhone calendar, tell you about the restaurants near yo...
October 02, 2012
Think Steve Perry and you’re on your way to transforming customer experiences
You might remember Steve Perry as a prominent member, if not the leader, of the rock band “Journey.” As you design customer experiences for today’s multichannel digital customer, think of Steve, since it’s all about the customer “journey” and not one particular interaction or channel. Today’s customers might research products on the web, touch and feel the...
June 20, 2012
Wonder why your product returns are up? Hint: Hot weather in Timbuktu could spur job growth in Michigan!
Timbuktu weather and Michigan job growth? An asset management firm claims to have such clairvoyant insights that have enabled them to maximize returns for its customers (although most 401K account holders might dispute such claims from any asset management firm these days!) The link between the ability of your contact center (and web self-service site) to effectively solve customer problems...
June 19, 2012
Overheard at our recent customer summit: “Tastes Great, Less Filling!”
We had a great customer summit last month in Las Vegas. When I heard success stories presented by our clients and some hallway conversations among them, I got reminded of the memorable ad slogan for Miller Lite – “Tastes Great, Less Filling”. Most were saying that our products had best-of-breed functionality and how our unified customer interaction hub – eGain's platform &n...
May 25, 2012
Want to turbocharge web sales this holiday season? Go on a (mystery) shopping spree now!
If you are a retailer, the holiday season is when the rubber meets the road. I’m sure your sales and market share goal has been upped a notch or two this year and you are expected to pull it off no matter what, while keeping costs down, of course. You know that you can only get this done by investing in technology, process, practices, and people. You need to do something real soon since summ...
May 24, 2012
You need the shopping cart and the findability horse to move product on the web!
Web retailers justifiably focus on reducing shopping cart abandonment. Real-time customer engagement tools like proactive offers, chat, and cobrowse can surely help here, and so can best practices outside technology. However, you need the shopping cart and the findability horse to “move” product (no pun intended) in a big way. Shoppers go through three distinct steps in their purchase...
December 16, 2011
I just plunked down millions of dollars but have not been able to move the needle on brand equity - what now?
Companies, especially those in B2C, spend a lot of money on building their brands. They do everything right – invest in expensive ad agencies, craft and hone their brand messages, and wow viewers with compelling ads, perhaps even winning awards in the process. But at the end, they often find that their brand is still stuck at the cellar in brand equity surveys. While brand equity is im...
November 10, 2011
Desperately Seeking Findability
I’m not a big fan of Madonna’s acting talent - I have not even seen any of her movies. However, I get reminded of one of her 80’s movies titled “Desperately Seeking” someone or the other, when I see contact center agents or sales reps desperately trying to find answers with the time-constrained and often irate customer waiting on the line. When agents venture to use k...
October 29, 2011
A Midautumn Day's Dream
Imagine your prospects and customers engaged in meaningful conversations with you across channels of their convenience - Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Web, Email, Chat, Phone, or Face-to-face. Anytime, Anywhere, Anyway. Imagine all conversations powered by a rich knowledge base that finds the best process-compliant content to fit the conversation and informed by customer context drawn from across the ...
