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In mid-May, Byram Healthcare Centers Inc. officially launched automated voice assistant (AVA), an interactive voice response (IVR) system that's expected to greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its customer response.

"We take thousands of calls each day and want to make sure that each time a customer calls in they are answered promptly and routed to the customer service team that can best assist them," Jeff Mignone, the company's senior vice president of operations, stated in a press release.

The obstacles

A distributor of disposable home medical supplies and services to patients at home, Byram Healthcare's livelihood depends on how fast and effectively it can respond to queries and orders from customers across the country. While the company supports some Web-based ordering with healthcare organizations, it deals with hundreds of thousands of customers over the phone.

"Making sure every detail of their interaction with AVA is exactly right has been a monumental undertaking," notes Philip Mutino, Byram's manager of telecommunications.

The solution

Indeed, the company has spent about 18 months and just more than $1 million designing and deploying a network infrastructure to support... More...

We have some performance problems in Microsoft CRM 4.0; for example, sometimes we are unable to access the contact list. How would you suggest we go about diagnosing the problem and getting support?   In recent performance tests, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 delivered sub-second response times with thousands of concurrent users and database sizes of several... More...

Why would a user convert a lead so that it was moved to opportunity, contact and account simultaneously? I thought the logical process would be lead > opportunity > account but I can't see a way to convert a successful opportunity into an account. Once I have closed an opportunity that is won, it doesn't give me the option to turn it into an account. Please help me to... More...

How can I create a custom contact template that better suits my business? We are a fiber optic company and we want to be able to set up different fields in Microsoft CRM 4.0. We don't need all of the fields. Is it possible to create checkboxes or just dropdown lists?

Each business has unique processes and requirements, and when the Microsoft Dynamics CRM team designed... More...

Creating Customer Value, Maximizing customer interactions to build customer equity with Don Peppers, July 2009.

Measuring and building customer equity is important in any economy, but it can be especially challenging during difficult economic times. It all starts with leveraging the time spent interacting with customers and making the most of customer data. In this installment of our Creating Customer Value podcast series, Don Peppers gives tips and best practices for maximizing customer interactions to build customer equity and how to establish call center metrics that encourage customer satisfaction and profitability.

Visit the Creating Customer Value podcast archive.

  Maximizing customer interactions to build customer equity 

Recognized for over a decade as a world-renowned expert, entrepreneur and thought leader on customer-focused relationship management strategies for business, Don Peppers is an acclaimed author, influential speaker and a founding partner of the customer-centered management consulting firm, Peppers & Rogers Group.

Highlights:
Fast forward to questions that interest you most.

00:20 What are some effective ways to build customer equity for a customer that has been loyal for a few years but has not increased the amount they are spending?

06:10 If a customer threatens to take their service elsewhere, how can companies determine if the customer is worth keeping and at what cost?

09:13 How can call center managers set up metrics that encourage call center agents to build customer satisfaction that will lead to profitability?

   Related resources on customer equity 

Read Peppers and Rogers' latest book, Rules to Break & Laws to Follow.

Get tips for managing customer equity.

Ask your own customer equity questions of Peppers and Rogers to be answered on an upcoming podcast.

If you prefer to read rather than hear Peppers and Rogers' answers, visit SearchCRM.com's Ask the Expert pages:

Ask the Expert: Customer equity: Long-term and short-term
Ask the Expert: Building trust with customer strategy

Get expert advice on how to maximize customer interactions to build customer equity. Learn effective ways to measure customer value, determine the cost of keeping a customer and how to set metrics that encourage call center agents to build customer satisfaction and also lead to profitability.

How can you make social media and Web 2.0 work for your business? As we discussed last time, social media sites and models are really just ?channels? from a marketing and CRM perspective -- requiring targeted approaches, expectations and even owners. But while experimenting with public social media and marketing campaigns is an essential first step for most businesses, simply having a presence on Facebook or Twitter does not mean you have a true social media business strategy.

So... More...

Avaya this week outlined its product roadmap for integrating the technology of Nortel Networks, but while both companies had unified communications (UC) and contact center technology, the combined technology is unlikely to bring the two closer together.

"Avaya's roadmap announcements, while touching on UC quite often, seemed likely to shift the debate more towards the role of SIP," Ian Jacobs, senior analyst at Ovum, wrote in an email interview. "Avaya had already been throwing... More...

A long time ago, I wrote a white paper about how on-demand technology would change business. The paper covered all of the ideas you?d expect, including lowering costs and improving access to on-demand applications. But there was another part of the paper that speculated that if technology was that easy to come by, then the next thing to look for was enhanced service based on the technology.

In other words, technology access would cease to be a gating factor in executing business... More...

Like many of its competitors, SAP has begun integrating social networks into its CRM product. And, like many of its competitors, SAP has started with Twitter.

SAP CRM 7.0 has all key objects exposed as Web services allowing SAP to connect the Twitter API to SAP CRM. Additionally, the Business Objects Text Analyzer serves to provide sentiment analysis.

Combined SAP is enabling users to monitor and interact with their customers who want to connect to the company through the rapidly... More...