Wednesday, May 5, 2010

What's Your Secret Sauce?

Today I had the opportunity to speak with a Gartner analyst who covers customer-centric Web strategies. One of the questions he asked was, "What is your secret sauce?" In other words, what would make an executive choose our technology over someone else? How do we differentiate ourselves from other vendors in the support service space?

I think these are great questions and companies should be jumping at every opportunity to divulge what goes into their secret sauce. I'm Italian and I find it helps to relate things to food. If you think of a companies' innovation and technology like your grandmother's best pasta sauce... It's no matter who knows the ingredients, no one can make it like grandma.

This is the motivation for the current post. noHold's customers and prospective customers deserve to know what's in the "secret sauce." This is not an attempt to rattle off a list of things noHold products can do. The following six ingredients make noHold's technology the best Virtual Agent solution on the market.
  • Confederated Knowledge™ - Customers can leverage knowledge from existing Virtual Agents and avoid content maintenance for third-party products.
  • Easy Implementation - One Knowledge Base Specialist and one Project Manager is all it takes to begin providing customers with an interactive and diagnostic experience.
  • Content Management - Administrators can upload and edit content easily with ArticlesManager™. Programming skills not necessary.
  • Reporting - Customizable and off-the-shelf metrics reports are available to an administrator 24/7.
  • Integration - CRM Packages like Salesforce, Live Chat, and other APIs can connect to various channels including Social Media.
  • Intuitive - Diagnostic capabilities can help guide an end-user through a process and address problems that require a customer service feel.
I believe that with these ingredients noHold is able to achieve "secret sauce" status. The only difference here is that we're sharing our secret sauce with the world. No matter who knows the ingredients, they cannot make grandma's secret sauce.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Integrating Social CRM and noHold Virtual Agents

Jeremiah Owyang wrote a very interesting piece called "Social CRM: Not Your Father's CRM." Just like the title suggests, times are changing in the Customer Relationship Management world. Customers are now utilizing Social Media channels to project their voices and echo (often times), discontent with businesses.

It is of high importance for companies to pay attention. Look at each customer as a potential partner who can refer their friends and family to your products. If you have this outlook, tapping into Social Media to listening to customers becomes very appealing. There are literally millions of people who can promote your product, and vice versa.

But it is not just the ability to listen that is important. Conversing with your customers and addressing their needs is key. Integrating current CRM strategies with Social Media is all the rage now. It is easy to understand the importance of having a conversation with your customers. But is the Social Media model scalable? How can integration help your company better manage its relationships with customers, the millions of people using Social Media?

What are your thoughts?