Gartner's predictions were not entirely optimistic. They estimate that 70 percent of social media initiatives in the next few years will not succeed, due to a failure to develop a well-planned social CRM strategy.

To avoid entering this population, businesses should consider developing long-term social CRM strategies sooner rather than later. When successfully implemented, social CRM strategies can increase consumer satisfaction and create brand advocates who will encourage others to consider a particular business' products and services.

Writing for Midsize Insider, Doug Bonderud argued that one of the keys to successfully incorporating CRM tools within an organization is that leaders take steps to incentivize their workers. If employees do not see any discernible benefit to using CRM tools, they will simply choose to continue using the systems with which they are more familiar.

According to Bonderud, to combat this problem, some CRM companies are developing "gamified" systems that incorporate video game mechanics to make them more appealing to use. Whether using such a solution or not, it is crucial for leaders to find ways to motivate employees to use CRM.

Additionally, business leaders must realize that CRM is not simply about sales, as CRM Buyer's Christopher Bucholtz recently argued. Too often, he explained, business leaders maintain this perspective, which limits the potential impact CRM can have on an organization. Only by embracing the possibilities of CRM can a business leader ensure that his or her company will gain all of the advantages the technology has to offer.

Small and medium sized enterprises have turned to Facebook for customer acquisition, with 36 percent of business using the social network to increase sales, according to BaseKit.

The social media giant has overtaken traditional forms of customer acquisition, such as the Yellow Pages, used by 27 percent of SMEs polled, and print advertising, which 21 percent of firms polled use. Not far behind is Twitter at 17 percent.

Social media is also changing the way customer support is conducted, according to Oracle.

The study revealed that more than half of Twitter users expect a personal response within two hours of tweeting a question or complaint, and 51 percent of Facebook users expect a same-day response to questions or complaints posted to the site.

"Whether the customer visits the company's commerce site or social media page, there must be a clear link to a customer service person that is informed and able to help," said Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Retail.

Now, a new study by American Express has found that social media users may value customer support and service more than non-users. While only 11 percent of consumers who have not used social media for customer service indicated they would be willing to spend more money in order to receive excellent service, 21 percent of those who did use social media-based customer service said they would pay a premium for better support.

In addition to valuing customer service more, social media users have a greater likelihood of sharing their feelings about a company's customer service performance. The survey found that, on average, a non-user of social media will tell 9 people about a good customer service experience and 17 about a poor one. Consumers who have used social media for customer service, however, tell an average of 42 people about a good experience and 53 about a bad one.

A bill introduced by Democratic lawmakers and highly supported by President Obama would provide a 20 percent tax credit to U.S. companies for the cost of bringing jobs and business operations back to America. The bill would also end tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas.

The bill follows suit with the President's January "Insourcing American Jobs" forum, which focused on the Administration's goal of creating jobs for America and incentives for American companies to "insource" business operations rurally.

Vice President Biden's comments at the forum indicate the Administration's focus and direction for 2012 outsourcing solutions, “Since day one, this Administration has been focused on encouraging investment and job creation here at home. The business leaders coming here from across the country today have looked at the facts and concluded what the President and I have been saying all along: that America is the best place in the world to do business and create jobs."

Now, E-Commerce Times' Christopher Bucholtz has offered a similar take, further reinforcing the potential value of CRM tools for customer support. According to Bucholtz, there are two primary ways in which CRM can prove valuable in this area.

Firstly, CRM can help companies establish strong relationships with their customers before any sort of mishap. By doing so, organizations can improve the possibility of retaining a dissatisfied customer. "People are more forgiving when there's a relationship in place," he explained. CRM tools can help companies address customer needs and wants, establishing a positive relationship.

Secondly, CRM allows companies to better understand their customers, which improves their ability to offer support. Instead of focusing exclusively on how valuable a customer is to the company, Bucholtz argues that companies should consider how valuable they are to their customers. CRM tools can help achieve this level of understanding, which can then be used to offer an optimal response to dissatisfied customers.

According to IDC's new Business Process Outsourcing market forecast, the U.S. BPO market is expected to grow at a five-year CAGR of 4.2 percent, to $92 billion in 2016.

U.S. BPO growth slowed a bit in previous years, in direct relation to the recession, but according to GIA research, the United States is now the largest regional BPO market. In fact, BPO is one of the fastest growing sectors in the IT services/outsourcing industry.

GIA  attributes the rapid growth to increased desire for global business and technological advancements.

Due to regulation in the post-recession United States, the banking industry is trending toward outsourcing processes such as cash management, custody, and treasury.

Of all the segments in the industry, customer services constitutes the largest sector.

In addition to U.S. growth, the worldwide BPO market is expected to grow at a five-year CAGR of 5.3 percent and reach $202.6 billion in 2016.

In the financial industry, companies have deeply integrated outsourcing models with traditional providers for core lending and retail operations, workflow, collateral tracking, client relationship management, and records management solutions for lending and leasing. Companies have built their infrastructures around these outsourcing arrangements, and now find themselves held hostage by provider services and existing fee structures.

This creates a provider-favorable range that allows providers to control pricing construction. In today's banking provider service model, there is a significant disconnect in pricing of services as well as the mechanisms for the way prices are structured.   

New pricing models, specifically in the banking industry, are expected to emerge as banking companies push harder for better service levels, descriptions, and pricing. As service models are deeply embedded in the banking service contract, it is possible that the industry will seek the advisement of outside consultants to evolve the construction of service and pricing models.

Technology expert John Everhard recently echoed these thoughts and offered his own take on this development. Writing for callcentre.co.uk, Everhard argued that integrating big data insights with CRM tools can increase the value of each customer interaction. By learning more about customer preferences, contact center agents and salesmen will be better able to upsell and cross-sell products and services, increasing companies' bottom lines.

Everhard further highlighted the value of CRM tools capable of predicting customer behavior. According to Everhard, the "next generation of CRM solutions will predict the needs of the customer and offer next-best action using advanced decision-making capabilities and data analytics." He believes that this will both drive up sales figures and increase retention, as customer satisfaction will increase as the time needed to solve issues decreases.

The banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector led the market in transaction volume, with an increase of 12 percent. In the BFSI sector, companies mainly rely on outsourcing providers for core lending and back-office operations, collateral tracking, customer relationship management, and records management solutions.

One area that has caused an increase in demand for outsourcing services in the BFSI is the 2010 Dodd-Frank regulation. The regulation requires documentation and processing reform that will affect nearly every sub-sector of the BFSI industry. This reform has resulted in increased administrative demands, creating a need for outsourcing providers who can service this documentation so companies can continue to function without a gap in service.

As Overby notes, in the past, the majority of contact center data analysis was predominantly quantitative, measuring call times, resolutions rates and other basic statistics.

However, with the advent of big data analytics, companies can now obtain significantly more insightful information. "Companies are applying text and sentiment analysis to this unstructured data, and looking for patterns and trends," said Deepek Advani, vice president of predictive analytics for IBM. With this information, contact center agents can better understand the best ways of dealing with various customer issues, improving overall customer service.

Big data analytics are particularly useful in the contact center due to the massive amount of data accumulated there everyday, as Daniel Ziv noted in a discussion with MediaPost. According to Ziv, the average contact center phone call consists of more than 1,000 words. With big data tools, these words can be analyzed to reveal subtle patterns that would otherwise be impossible to detect.

Everest Research Group has taken a deeper dive into the alternative of rural outsourcing, focusing on the benefits of achieving cost savings and retaining work onshore in its April 2012 - Rural Sourcing - An Emerging Alternative for Traditional Outsourcing?

Increased awareness and focus on rural sourcing has been further highlighted in the current economic environment, as the Obama Administration has promoted keeping jobs onshore.

In January 2012, the Obama Administration held an "Insourcing American Jobs" forum at the White House. Discussions focused around ways U.S. companies could source jobs onshore to help rebuild the U.S. economy. Rural sourcing these jobs to local technical college or university resources is one way to gain cost savings and develop rural communities through job creation.

The January forum included statistics on the U.S.'s insourcing trend. Statistics included real business fixed investment growth of 18 percent in the U.S. since the end of 2009, a gain of 334,000 manufacturing jobs in the past two years, and an annualized increase of 5.7 percent in manufacturing production since June 2009, all attributed to a focus on insourcing U.S. jobs.

The President's campaign has continued to build in this area, as new tax proposals have been developed to reward companies who source to U.S. service providers or bring jobs back to the United States from offshore locations and eliminating tax advantages for companies moving jobs overseas. With the Administration's focus on providing resources for growth of this sourcing trend, it is likely to become a more widely used outsourcing solution for U.S. companies.

Ivar Kroghrud, social customer relationship management (CRM) expert, echoed these sentiments in an interview with InformationWeek. By interacting with dissatisfied customers in a genuine, open manner, companies can turn these skeptics into brand advocates.

To this end, social CRM is crucial. With social CRM's sentiment analysis tools, he explained, the company can analyze an individual's comments to determine what he or she wants, and how best to respond.

Additionally, social CRM can help companies determine who they should respond to, and who should be ignored. It is impractical to attempt to engage every customer who writes about the company. Instead, Kroghrud recommends that companies develop metrics to determine which customers and what types of feedback they prioritize, and then use social CRM tools to isolate these situations.

Lastly, Kroghrud explained that companies should offer particularly irate customers the chance to address their issues in a different, more private channel. This way, the customers will receive personal assistance, and the company can minimize the number of people exposed to its negative publicity.

Some key aspects that should be focused on in the service level agreement and throughout the service relationship are the following: meeting year-over-year cost reduction goals, ability to adapt to changing market conditions and industry regulations, service capabilities during peak volume levels, corporate culture blending, speed in decision making, and communication during organizational changes.

This list of key points comes from a 2011 study of 26 successful BPO relationships done by the Outsourcing Center. These key service points can be pivotal for a service relationship. Specific to communicating on organizational changes and decision making, it is critical for companies and providers to establish a rapport between senior executives to ensure communication is appropriate and corporate cultures are blended to match the company's business needs.

According to Jay, CRM can yield insights as to why a marketing campaign was unsuccessful, thanks to CRM's ability to precisely track the behavior of potential customers and clients. For example, CRM may reveal that despite receiving a significant number of responses on a company's website, very few of those responses led to sales.

Upon discovering this phenomenon, the company may look more closely into the responses given by the organization's web management team, discovering that this team was not adequately briefed before the campaign, and did not respond to queries properly. The company will now know to increase internal communications before beginning a promotional push in the future.

Additionally, CRM can help companies turn dissatisfied customers into brand advocates, as Baseline Magazine recently highlighted. Consumers highly value companies that address their complaints. CRM can help to organize these complaints and improve the time and quality of a company's response.

However, simply understanding the importance of CRM is not enough to guarantee results. Proper implementation is critical, and achieving successful implementation requires that companies adopt the proper mindset.

This point was recently highlighted by M Muneer of Financial Chronicle. According to Muneer, many businesses in the past have invested in CRM without truly understanding what the technology is or how to use it, and subsequently failed to see significant returns.

Additionally, Muneer argues that understanding must not be limited to high-ranking executives. To be truly effective, CRM needs to be incorporated throughout an organization, and this can only be achieved if employees at all levels realize how they can gain benefits by using CRM solutions.

Horizontal business process outsourcing has long since been a valuable part of many business processes. Offloading non-core business functions to qualified service providers is a way for businesses to cut costs by capitalizing on economies of scale and efficiency expertise that these services can provide. 

However, as the economy recovers and businesses seek more progressive business management strategies, a new vertical business process outsourcing model has evolved. Vertical business process outsourcing calls for providers to manage a businesses more complex industry specific work.

Using vertical BPO services for new product development initiatives and enterprise service functions is becoming more profitable for companies as more providers emerge in the outsourcing space.

The financial services industry provides one example of a vertical business processing opportunity. The Dodd-Frank Act, released in 2010, provides an outline for regulatory reform that will affect nearly all sectors of the financial industry. These regulations will add significant administrative workloads for many firms and using vertical business process outsourcing to offset any business disruption and process this documentation efficiently is one way vertical business process outsourcing can be used in the industry.

However, as Jeff Zabin recently pointed out, issues regarding channel implementation should not distract contact centers from the more important area of focus: the customers. Writing for Tech News World, Zabin argues that customer concerns should always trump channel issues.

For this reason, Zabin writes that organizations should work to improve their customer prioritization, rather than channel prioritization. Too often, companies develop policies concerning what channel to respond to first. It is more important, he believes, to serve higher value customers first, regardless of channel. Customers who are classified as having a longer lifetime value should be served earlier, even if their channel of choice would otherwise push them down the list.

The benefits administration outsourcing market supports health and welfare, defined benefits, and defined contribution. In this niche business process outsourcing market, quick and seamless integration of provider service and technology is key to a good service relationship.

BAO clients are looking for benefit administration providers that specialize in the industry and can provide knowledgeable consultation about industry practices and regulation.

As business practices evolve, a provider with a consistent and efficient software implementation solution also adds to the value of an administration outsourcing provider. Companies are seeking BAO providers who can integrate efficiently with company processes and can also create a strong administration processing infrastructure that adds value to the company and allows them to focus on their core business lines.

Proven technology is critical to the success of a BAO provider and can be a key differentiator in the decision to outsource to a specific provider. As the BAO market grows and matures, providers with established administrative models and strong company relationships will likely receive greater contract renewals and referrals.

One of the areas in which social media has had and will continue to have the biggest impact is in the contact center. Customers increasingly demand the option of communicating with customer support, sales and other departments via Facebook and Twitter, leading many companies to strive to incorporate these channels into their contact center.

However, as Don Keane recently argued in Business 2 Community, companies should not attempt to adopt social media-based customer support in lieu of other channels. Rather, they should work to incorporate social media, IVR, email and the telephone into contact centers, training their agents to handle all forms of contact with customers. Doing so can significantly improve a company's overall quality of service, increasing customer loyalty and creating brand advocates.

One of the areas in which social media has had and will continue to have the biggest impact is in the contact center. Customers increasingly demand the option of communicating with customer support, sales and other departments via Facebook and Twitter, leading many companies to strive to incorporate these channels into their contact center.

However, as Don Keane recently argued in Business 2 Community, companies should not attempt to adopt social media-based customer support in lieu of other channels. Rather, they should work to incorporate social media, IVR, email and the telephone into contact centers, training their agents to handle all forms of contact with customers. Doing so can significantly improve a company's overall quality of service, increasing customer loyalty and creating brand advocates.

Firstly, companies should establish a process for document processes. If a standard process for documenting the relationship and metrics is not available, both parties should tightly manage this during the transition phase. Developing transition metrics is also important to a successful transition, and will clearly outline the expectations of both parties. Additionally, companies should work to maintain a good relationship with their provider, so setting intervals to report staff turnover and changes is critical. Lastly, both parties should prepare for the unexpected. For the outsourcer, this may mean planning extra budgeting dollars for unexpected costs. For the outsourcing provider, this may include planning for unexpected systems or staffing integrations.

In today's competitive environment, where outsourcers have many providers to choose from, ensuring that the outsourcing transition is done effectively and building strong working relationships during the transition period will likely lead to a successful business relationship and a high probability of contract renewal.

That is why it is crucial for companies to integrate social media into their contact centers.

As Tim Passios and Blair Pleasant recently argued on TMCnet, new developments in contact center technology make this possibility a reality. Now, contact centers can essentially treat Facebook posts and Tweets the way they treat phone calls and emails. Agents can respond to users immediately, thanks to tracking tools that monitor the company's social media pages, and alert agents to relevant activity.

Additionally, Passios and Pleasant argue that it is possible, and advisable, to implement a strategy that allows for social media interactivity across multiple departments. While many organizations leave social media solely in the hands of marketing, companies that incorporate the platform throughout the organization can reap significantly greater benefits.

However, despite increasing awareness of social CRM's importance, Gartner research director Adam Sarner recently claimed that approximately half of all Fortune 1000 companies will not see positive results from their social CRM projects. This, he explained, is due to these companies' failure to set clear objectives for or monitor the ROI of their social CRM efforts.

According to Sarner, many of these businesses are taking steps to monitor the social success of their CRM projects, such as tracking fan pages and Tweets, but this information is not enough to determine whether a social CRM project is truly yielding results. Without that crucial information, an organization has no way of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of its efforts, and cannot adjust its strategies to maximize results.

Gartner predicts social CRM use to grow significantly this year, with the global market for social CRM software expected to reach $2.1 billion. Last year, the market was valued at $850 million.

Another key note from the study infers that competition in the finance and accounting outsourcing market is increasing. This is evidenced by the decreased percentage of contracts held by top three service providers. This figure decreased from 65 percent in 2005 to 50 percent in 2011.

When surveying the finance and accounting market, there are a few key things that companies are looking for when they choose an outsourced provider. A few of the key criteria include location, track record, and cost. Onshore and nearshore outsourcing is becoming of greater importance to companies, because the location can alleviate many cultural and language barrier issues. Track record is also a differentiator for companies seeking finance and accounting outsourcing, as they appreciate seeing transition records and successful case studies on the provider, and how their processes have been effective in the past. Lastly, the cost of the service becomes a key component of the decision. Companies want to outsource to providers who are going to reduce their expenses and provide better overall service than businesses would receive through their own finance and accounting department.

According to Magellan-Solutions, a recent Forrester Research study found that 68 percent of participants had used the telephone for customer service in the past year. Another Forrester Research survey found that the telephone also offered the highest level of customer satisfaction. 

Considering its importance in providing customer support, it is crucial that companies maintain highly functioning contact centers. However, this can be an expensive prospect for companies with limited budgets.

To reduce costs without compromising service, Jeff Valentine recently recommended that organizations consider implementing hosted technology. Writing for Mashable, Valentine estimates that a 50-agent hosted contact center may be as much as 70 percent less expensive than an on-premises solution.

Additionally, a hosted contact center allows for cross-trained workers to act as agents on demand, rather than being dedicated solely to helping customers. As a result, a company can increase its overall efficiency.

To a large extent, success in this area revolves around customer support. As Inc Magazine notes, a company's reputation is highly dependent on its quality of customer service. However, maintaining a high level of customer service can be expensive, as it requires that the company handle large numbers of telephone calls in its contact center.

To help reduce the costs associated with maintaining a high quality contact center, PC World's Jason Kennedy recently recommended that companies consider switching to voice over internet protocol (VoIP).

According to Kennedy, VoIP can save money in several ways. For one, it reduces the need to maintain or install costly hardware, including new phone lines, since VoIP equipment connects directly to a company's existing broadband network.

Secondly, VoIP treats phone conversations as data carried through the internet. This means that companies are charged for VoIP services as if they were using the internet, which is significantly cheaper than what most telecommunications companies charge for phone services.

To achieve this result, companies must strive to provide top-notch customer support. Numerous studies have found that consumers who are dissatisfied with a company's level of customer service are likely to leave that brand, and to inform friends and family of their displeasure.

As the economy continues to recover, more companies turn to business process outsourcing solutions that will improve their business processes and reduce business expenses. In the current market environment, companies are seeking human resource outsourcing services for payroll management, 401k plans, recruiting, workers compensation, insurance benefits, and other administrative tasks.

These outsourcing providers can bring specialized human resource processing services to an organization, which helps companies more efficiently recruit talented employees, process paperwork, manage employment regulation, and ensure that day to day process management issues are handled efficiently.

According to Everest Group Research's study on the human resource market, the industry is expected to grow at a rate of 27.2% year on year. With this growth in the industry, companies can be more particular about the services they are seeking. In today's market, companies want outsourcing providers that can adapt to their company's culture and present a consistent brand message to potential employees and clients.

The study, conducted by thinkJar, surveyed 400 employees from U.K. and U.S. companies, asking them about their organizations' use of social media in the contact center. The report found that 59 percent of participants' companies use Twitter and 60 percent use Facebook to respond to customer support issues. Altogether, 85 percent of respondents' organizations used at least one form of social media-based customer support.

As the survey made clear, customer demand is the leading factor behind the rise of social customer service. At 56 percent, customer request was the most frequently cited explanation for companies adopting the strategy, followed by a desire to keep up with competitors (40 percent).

These reasons are supported by another recent study, conducted by Coleman Parkes. Surveying 2,900 smartphone users from around the world, the study found that 54 percent of respondents had used social media to complain to their mobile service providers. However, of these, only 75 percent received a satisfactory answer, suggesting that organizations still have room to improve their social customer service practices.

First and foremost is the Service Level Agreement (SLA). The Service Level Agreement will include everything discussed leading up to the implementation of the service, and will also establish the guidelines and expectations for the entire working relationship. Having tightly managed lead-in discussions about the level of service needed and capabilities available will allow easier drafting of the SLA and a higher success rate for the service over the long term.

Once the SLA is in place, there are a few key things that both parties can do throughout the life of the relationship to ensure that the communication is successful and the service arrangement is profitable. One is maintaining the relationship between key management personnel. Having good one to one communication between key management contacts and building that relationship through regular interaction and professional networking will more likely result in a longer term contract and greater overall satisfaction with the service. Additionally, periodic review meetings in which both parties discuss the service level being provided and any new issues, changes or enhancements with the service will also make the business relationship more successful and profitable.

However, achieving success with a CRM solution is not automatic. Organizations must take the appropriate steps to ensure effective implementation. According to several sources, one of the  most important steps is training and educating employees.

Speaking to Sci-Tech Today, Marshall Perez, a partner with a marketing-recruiter firm, emphasized the importance of upper management communicating with every department in an organization to inform all employees of the utility of CRM. If employees do not see the value of CRM for their own work, they will not be motivated to make use of the tool. Consequently, companies will miss out on much of the value of the technology.

These sentiments are supported by CRM Solution's "An Executive's Guide to CRM Software." This report claims that failing to incentivize employees to use CRM is one of the most significant mistakes a company can make as it strives to implement CRM. They recommend using a combination of rewards and enforced procedures to encourage all employees, instead of just those who inherently see the technology's value, to use CRM.

In-house direct sales teams often turn to their lead generation pipeline when their contact or appointment list is running low. In-house lead generation and conversion can also be difficult because it is often based on cross-organizational inputs with a lack of accountability and analytics oversight. With in-house lead generation, firms often find that leads are not appropriately targeted, appointments are not followed up on and results are not clearly reported.

Industry outsourcing providers have identified this need for lead generation and have built outsourced teams and software applications to capitalize on demand. Some of the benefits of outsourcing lead generation include clear client profiling, accurate targeting, worthwhile meetings, guaranteed follow-up and feedback, and engaged responsibility with the sales contact for the entire lead generation process.

As the outsourcing industry trends toward increased demand for lead generation and core sales process revenue recognition, a large number of outsourcing providers are building strategies to accommodate this demand. Hewlett Packard's recent announcement of the company's enhancements to its Social Enterprise Services platform will further develop the customer relationship management services that the company can offer this demographic.

Hewlett Packard's Social Enterprise Services platform can offer providers a service that incorporates social media information into existing Hewlett Packard contact channels to provide organizations with a holistic view of their customers. Hewlett Packard's Social Enterprise Services will allow businesses to better target key influencers and track analytics, processes, and information. Building a lead generation system around this single platform allows users to draw from activity on multiple social media sites, as opposed to aggregating information from each site individually.  

One geographic area that has been improving its ability to provide revenue by recognizing outsourcing opportunities for business is the nearshore Americas region. This region is primarily
comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico, and Uruguay. These countries are in high demand for outsourcing services, as U.S. companies favor business process outsourcing efficiencies and ease of working with a country closer to U.S. borders.

These efficiencies come from the overlapping bi-lingual capabilities that Latin American countries can offer. Other areas of specialty that have emerged in the region include agile computing, product design, web enablement, and social media services. Companies in this region have the opportunity to leverage their geographic location, infrastructure, latency issues, and cultural affinity, making them more attractive for U.S. businesses and a region for booming future growth.

Considering these numbers, it is clear that Generation Y will play a significant role in the economy in the coming years. Consequently, it is important that businesses take steps to make themselves appealing to Generation Y workers.

To this end, a leading software company recently released a report offering advice as to how organizations can entice these people to work in a contact center. For example, they recommend that contact centers take steps to modernize their technological capabilities. Not only will this improve the contact center's functionality - it will also make working at that center more appealing for technologically-savvy Generation Y workers.

Another recommendation offered in the report is increasing flexibility in terms of management style. As a general rule, Generation Y members put a higher value on flexibility than do most earlier generations of workers. As a result, Generation Y members may resent a highly rigid management style, and will thrive when granted a greater degree of independence.

However, as CMS Wire's Chris Bucholtz recently highlighted, some companies are wary of pursuing a complete social CRM solution because of the potentially overwhelming amount of social media data available. With so many users participating in so many conversations, and with their own limited resources, it can be difficult for an organization to know when and when not to engage with customers.

Bucholtz went on to argue that big data analysis may mitigate this issue. Big data solutions can examine large datasets, filtering out irrelevant material and prioritizing useful data. By doing so, big data can allow companies to focus their efforts on social media users and conversations most likely to yield results. 

These sentiments were supported by Keith Dawson and D. Daniel Ziv on MediaPost. They claimed that big data solutions can provide near instantaneous analysis of social media data, allowing for improved decision making.

Considering social media's prominence, it is no wonder that businesses are increasingly interested in harnessing its power to promote their brands and increase their customers and clients. However, the IBM survey also found that most social media users do not use the medium to communicate with businesses. Of those that do, most indicated that they would not interact with a business unless they believed it was communicating honestly.

To overcome these obstacles and make social CRM effective, Tineka Smith of Computer Business Review argues that organizations must be outgoing and innovative. It is not enough to use a social media page for press releases and standard promotions. Rather, organizations must offer incentives, such as exclusive offers and discounts, to attract individuals to their pages.

Additionally, she recommends business strive to create innovative campaigns that are fun and entertaining. By doing so, new users will begin to comment on and discuss the organization, yielding valuable CRM data.

Writing for Sys-Con, Skrbina argues that this is achieved by reducing the time and effort required for a caller to reach an answer, or the appropriate representative. She notes that traditional, menu-based call service requires the customer to wait through long lists of options, then attempt to match the available options with his or her specific problem, which can be a formidable task.

IVR, on the other hand, lets the customer describe the problem him or herself, as the natural language understanding technology is able to direct the call appropriately. This saves the customer time{,} and can decrease call misrouting.

Additionally, by outsourcing IVR to a hosted technology provider, companies can transfer IT maintenance worries to a third party, allowing them to focus on customer service.

These advantages have not gone unnoticed. Last year, a Global Industry Analysts report predicted that the IVR market will reach $2.78 billion by 2017. As the report notes, technological advancements, among other factors, are driving this trend.

According to Wetteman, one of the keys to companies seeing such a high ROI is that it is being deployed in far more capacities now than when it was first developed. Initially, companies used CRM for limited purposes, such as sales and marketing. In recent years, however, companies realized that CRM can apply to a wide range of departments and applications, including market research and customer service. Consequently, businesses are gaining more value from the tool without spending more money.

This concept was recently highlighted by Sci-Tech Today. The source spoke to several business leaders about the benefits they gained from CRM. Mike Snyder of Sonoma singled out social CRM, claiming that it significantly improves an organization's ability to develop relationships with existing and potential customers through social media networks.

Writing for Business 2 Community, Gofton notes that companies' marketing and customer support departments often debate which of them "owns" the organization's social media, in order to claim a greater portion of the company's budget. This, Gofton argues, is detrimental, as it limits the potential effectiveness of social CRM.

Instead, Gofton believes companies should strive to institute a social CRM philosophy that spans across the company, incorporating many departments to improve the overall deployment of the technology. Such a policy can allow social CRM to operate on all levels, and for staff from different areas to collaborate to the company's overall greater benefit. Above all else, Gofton writes, the focus should always be on the customer.

The question of how best to use social CRM is likely to become increasingly important in the future. In a recent study, Gartner found that CRM is CEOs' "favorite IT capability." Discussing this result, Jorge Lopez, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, concluded that this is due to CRM's ability to improve customer retention. As Gofton argues, however, only collaborative deployment of social CRM can lead to an optimal customer experience.

Gene Alvarez, for example, a research vice president and ecommerce analyst at Gartner, explained that the rise of social media places extra pressure on organizations to make a positive first impression with customers. In the past, consumers were limited in their retail options, as well as their means of disseminating their displeasure with a company. Now, a dissatisfied customer can quickly and easily tell thousands of people about his bad experience by posting on social media, and he can switch to a different online store.

These major shifts in the world of retail force companies to use CRM in different ways. Specifically, they need to communicate with their customers via social media networks, and to use CRM-gathered data to improve their customer support and other services.

As CRM continues to evolve, its potential applications increase. To highlight the new ways in which organizations are using CRM, Sci-Tech Today recently spoke to a number of CRM experts to determine what uses they were discovering for the technology.

Barry Givens of Avanade claimed that CRM solutions are "absolutely essential" to combining the resources needed to successfully market, sell, and deliver products and services. Unlike older CRM, which was used exclusively to analyze data in the wake of a business' success or failure, current CRM solutions allow different departments to access vital information as work is being done, which lets them collaborate together to improve business processes.

Mike Snyder of Sonoma highlighted the value of social CRM. According to Snyder, this technology is critical for managing the relationships a business develops with potential and existing customers among social media networks, a critical component of modern marketing and customer service.

However, not all companies are successful in implementing CRM. Without an understanding of how to take advantage of its offerings, organizations may struggle to effectively use the information CRM provides.

Writing for Forbes, CRM expert Gene Marks recently argued that simplicity is the key to success. At its core, CRM is essentially a database, he maintains, and a database is only useful as long as it is accessible.

To emphasize this point, Marks provides the example of a client of his who wanted nothing more than four reports delivered regularly. This was the only information he needed to improve his sales team's performance.

According to Marks, the key to successful CRM is customizing the information to ensure it is easy for the client to access and understand.

However, while many companies take advantage of IVR in the contact center, far fewer use another of IVR's most useful abilities: outbound services.

As a leading telecommunications company recently highlighted, outbound IVR can provide a significant competitive edge to businesses. It has the potential to integrate different support channels into a single platform, including SMS and social media. Additionally, it can easily be customized to offer personalized interactions. This makes IVR more likely to effectively deliver a company's message than less responsive forms of automated dialing.

As TMC Net's Stefania Viscusi points out, outbound IVR can also improve customer service. By contacting customers to inform them of upcoming appointments or other reminders, as well as sales and promotions, she writes, outbound IVR offers the potential for an improved customer experience.

Because social media customer service differs significantly from more familiar channels, it requires new service agent tactics. As Frost & Sullivan recently highlighted, there are several challenges inherent in the form, such as anonymity cloaking consumers and security concerns. Additionally, because most conversations are available to the public, contact center agents must adopt different tones and approaches when responding to consumers.

For these reasons, Frost & Sullivan advises contact centers to create a single department to handle all customer engagement strategies.

This recommendation echoes a recent Interactive Intelligence Group report on social media in the contact center. They ultimately supported a strategy in which the marketing department, which presumably has more social media experience, works closely with customer support staff to improve a company's overall handling of social media interaction.

To help improve their level of customer service, many contact centers use call quality sheets to help guide their customer support agents. Theoretically, these sheets ensure that the caller receives an optimal customer experience. As Jack A. Dempsey of Business 2 Community points out, however, these call sheets are centered solely on the agent, rather than the customer, too often. Consequently, a call may score perfectly on a call quality sheet, yet still leave the client unsatisfied.

Dempsey recommends businesses rely instead on customer-centric call quality sheets. Rather than asking questions like "Did the agent say 'thank you for calling?'" or "Did the agent mention the company's name?" he advises companies to create sheets with questions such as "Did the agent respond with enthusiasm?" and "Did the agent listen for a complete understanding of the reason for the call?"

With this customer-centric focus, call sheets will guide agents to provide a more satisfying customer experience for callers.

De Clerck cites a recent study by Harris Interactive that found customers who leave negative comments on a social media pages tend to respond favorably when their feedback receives a response. Of the more than 2,500 respondents surveyed, 68 percent of those who posted a negative review following a bad experience with an online retailer received a response from the company in question. Of those, 34 percent deleted their original negative reviews, 33 percent wrote positive reviews and 18 percent bought more merchandise from the retailer.

As De Clerck argues, this data shows how a company can turn a negative review into a satisfied customer by demonstrating concern for the customer experience.

He further argues that even if they do not respond to negative feedback, companies should not hide its existence. According to De Clerck, consumers become suspicious when they see only positive feedback on a company's social media page, which may cause them to distrust genuinely favorable reviews.

However, while social media is now a major component of most promotional strategies, customer support departments have yet to widely adopt it. That is why Interactive Intelligence Group's recent report, "A Realistic Look at Social Media and the Contact Center," recommends that organizations interested in implementing social media into their contact centers make use of their marketing departments, as well as their customer service staff.

With their higher degree of experience in the medium, advertising executives can play a key role in shepherding social media processes into the contact center. By leaving marketers in charge of the early stages (responding to customer requests and comments on social media platforms) and gradually transferring responsibility to support staff, companies can ensure they are ultimately able to provide a high-quality social media-based customer experience at every level.

However, while social media is now a major component of most promotional strategies, customer support departments have yet to widely adopt it. That is why Interactive Intelligence Group's recent report, "A Realistic Look at Social Media and the Contact Center," recommends that organizations interested in implementing social media into their contact centers make use of their marketing departments, as well as their customer service staff.

With their higher degree of experience in the medium, advertising executives can play a key role in shepherding social media processes into the contact center. By leaving marketers in charge of the early stages (responding to customer requests and comments on social media platforms) and gradually transferring responsibility to support staff, companies can ensure they are ultimately able to provide a high-quality social media-based customer experience at every level.

As Ray explained, by using social CRM, a company can learn a significant amount about its customers without relying on surveys or interacting with consumers directly. By making use of social media platforms that encourage discussion, such as Facebook and Twitter, and implementing social CRM software and practices, companies can learn how particular clients feel toward the company and its products and services.

This information can be pooled together in a database and made available to customer support staff. As a result, contact center agents will have a much clearer idea of the best means of responding to that client's call or email, and can provide better overall support.

High quality customer care can play a major role in determining a company's success. Last year, WaterRemarks looked at the stock performance of companies with high-rated customer service. It found that these companies outperformed the general stock market by 23 percent.

The study, which included surveys from more than 50,000 consumers, found that a user's degree of satisfaction with a news or entertainment website would significantly impact whether he or she would visit that website again in the future, or recommend the website to others. Satisfied users were 43 percent more likely to revisit a website than unsatisfied users and 77 percent more likely to recommend the website to a friend, colleague or family member, both of which actions can help a website increase its visitor count and sell advertising space.

Additionally, satisfied visitors were more likely to give money directly to the websites. For websites offering paid subscriptions for increased content, satisfied visitors were 73 percent more likely than unsatisfied users to subscribe to the full site. Even more notably, a satisfying customer experience led to a 147 percent increased likelihood of clicking on an advertisement.

For websites interested in improving their visitors' experience, Inc.com recommends a number of best practices. One of the most important is asking for feedback and responding to it quickly. Inc.com also advises websites to personalize their content and displays, and to test features to ensure they work as intended.

That's where outsourcing comes in. As not all companies have the resources to devote the needed brainpower to innovate and development new products on a consistent basis, hosted services are stepping in to fill demand.

This is especially apparent in the clean energy market. Leaders such as Germany are beginning to offer expertise and services to developing economies, reflecting a reversal of the traditional outsourcing model. China, for example, is one of the largest investors in German wind power production.

Jade Werke, a Chinese subsidiary, will begin production of steel fundaments for offshore wind parks in Germany early next year. The company is also investing EUR 50 million in a production plant in Wilhelmshaven, with construction planned to begin this summer.

"There are still technical hurdles, and the biggest challenge remains upgrading the energy grid," said Anne Braeutigam, wind energy expert at Germany Trade & Invest. "Given the current market conditions and new financing and R&D programs, it's an excellent time for companies to invest in Germany to help resolve these remaining issues."

Furthermore, ISG reported 184 contracts were awarded during the January-March period, reflecting a 31 percent year-over-year drop and a 18 percent quarterly decline. One of the reasons growth was slower in the first quarter is that only one so-called "mega-deal" was completed, which is defined as a contract valued at more than $1 billion.

The first quarter data stems a record-setting second half of 2011, in which global TCV increased 29 percent year-over-year to a reach record $55.8 billion.

"This first-quarter slowdown follows the strongest half for outsourcing in a decade, making for difficult comparisons," said John Keppel, partner and president of research and managed services at ISG. "We saw this same hangover effect in early 2010 as well as in early 2006. So there is historical precedent for the industry taking a breather after two robust periods."

To avoid succumbing to this statistic, Kerry Bodine, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, recommends organizations work to ensure a quality customer experience throughout the customer lifecycle, not solely at the beginning. The customer lifecycle includes every step of a consumer's experience with a company - evaluating a product or service, purchasing it, using it and seeking support in the event of a problem.

She compares this sequence to a dramatic arc, arguing that as a good film with a disappointing ending leaves the viewer dissatisfied, a client who has a disappointing experience with a company will harbor negative feelings and likely move on to another business.

By providing a consistently high level of customer care, businesses can improve customer satisfaction and retention.

Leading the Filipino BPO sector is a market-wide focus on information technology. This week, the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) reported the IT-BPO industry employed 638,000 people by the end of last year - 22 percent more than in 2010.

Now it is optimistic it will reach revenues of $25 billion by 2016, making for a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20 percent and a 9 percent share of the total Filipino economy. It would also account for 10 percent of the global IT-BPO market.

"We hit the targets projected in our Road Map 2016," said BPAP president Benedict Hernandez in a statement. "This is a good start to our five-year plan to grow at an average of 20 percent a year - above the projected global annual growth rates of 10-15 percent."

Savitz argues that social media-based customer service can improve a company's response times while reducing individual service agent's workloads. As a result, customer satisfaction will grow, resulting in more loyal clients.

This is possible, he writes, because social support uses a variety of different forms of customer service. Users can often find the information they seek by viewing others' resolved cases, or even by contacting each other directly. When a new question is posed and remains unanswered by other users, social-based programs can alert the service agents, ensuring that no issues are inadvertently overlooked.

The importance of using social media for customer service is further emphasized by the fact that consumers, particularly young ones, increasingly expect it as an option. A recent TNS study of consumers in the UK found that 15 percent of 16 to 24 year olds choose social media-based customer service over any other method. Only 8 percent of 25 to 34 year olds and 3 percent of 35 to 44 year olds feel the same way.

However, as Tibco recently highlighted, one benefit to CRM is often overlooked: determining whether a particular customer is worth retaining.

While it may seem counterintuitive, a business does not always benefit from gaining a customer. Sometimes, the costs associated with either acquiring or maintaining a client outweigh the benefits of his or her patronage. However, it can be difficult to accurately gauge which customers will ultimately prove to be drains on a business.

As Tibco points out, CRM analytics can provide valuable insight in this area. With a variety of metrics and data analysis functions, CRM analytics can produce a fairly accurate impression of how much revenue a company can expect to see from a given client. This can then be compared to the costs associated with obtaining or maintaining the customer - time spent on the phone by contact center agents, postage for mailings and so on - to determine if the client is worth the investment.

The survey polled more than 24,000 Consumer Reports readers about their recent grocery store shopping habits, collecting information from more than 42,000 supermarket experiences. In total, one-third of respondents indicated that they had switched grocery stores. Unsurprisingly, the pursuit of lower priced food and merchandise was the primary factor driving shoppers from one store to another.

However, the survey found that the quality of the customer experience was also a major deciding factor. Approximately one-fourth of those who changed stores did so because of poor selection, poor quality food or long waits for checkout services. Another 17 percent cited employee rudeness as their reason for switching.

These results align with those of a recent British study that found 88 percent of participants claimed they would leave a store without purchasing anything if the service did not meet their standards.

Both studies suggest that if shoppers have options, customer experience will play an important role in customer retention.

The study, conducted by Dynamic Markets, surveyed more than 2,000 businesses and customers throughout Britain. It found that only 7 percent of participating businesses offer an online live chat function for customers looking to contact them quickly via the internet. However, despite the small number of organizations offering the service, the study found that live chat was used by 28 percent of surveyed consumers in the past year. This indicates that customers will largely choose this option whenever it is presented to them.

However, the study also found that British firms oftentimes offer poor quality when it comes to traditional phone-based customer support. Nearly three-fourths of those surveyed indicated that their biggest complaint was a long delay while waiting on the phone for service. This suggests that by improving their contact center capabilities and training, British firms may be better able to provide satisfactory customer experiences.

Conducted by IDG Research Services, the study surveyed 150 participants from a variety of B-to-B sectors on their perception of the use of social media for CRM purposes by their vendors and suppliers. The results indicate that far too few B-to-B suppliers currently use social CRM, but those that are reap sizable advantages. Approximately one-third of respondents indicated they would perceive their supply chain vendors in a more positive light if those vendors used social media.

The survey also found that more than 40 percent of respondents rely on social media to monitor industry trends and news, as well as to stay up-to-date for information on their vendors. Consequently, those vendors that used social media were better able to engage with their customers, creating more open communication channels and a better customer experience.

The results of this survey are further buoyed by another recent study concerning buyers and social media practices. Supply Management polled 100 buyers as to whether they use social media to perform their day jobs, and more half indicated that they do.

Earlier this year, Nice Insight reported that big pharmaceutical companies are currently outsourcing more than biotechnology firms. And this week, research service Frost & Sullivan released a report showing a major leap in contract manufacturing outsourcing (CMO) in the U.s. pharmaceutical sector.

Specifically, the market earned revenues of $10.73 billion last year and estimates this to reach $15.97 billion in 2016, making for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.3 percent.

"The continued expansion of the U.S. pharmaceuticals industry and the big pharma's increased outsourcing to improve cost structure and focus on core competencies will significantly augment the market's revenue growth," said Frost & Sullivan consultant Jesse Sullivan. "The pharmaceutical companies that had used their excess capacity during the downturn to retain in-house manufacturing are expected to gradually outsource as the economy improves."

The positive outlook comes even as U.S. firms reported an overall dip in R&D investment between 2010 and 2011. This may slow the pace of pharmaceutical outsourcing in coming years.

This, in turn, led to a swelling of debt loads, particularly in the U.S. and Canada. In order to recover these debts, many collectors and indebted organizations have turned to business process outsourcing.

Ron Rittenmeyer, an expert in the field of outsourcing and accounts receivable management, recently told Forbes magazine that key to successful outsourcing of debt collection is developing a strategy for how processes are hosted.

"Not only what you do - not just having an expectation to perform - but how you perform. Why are these laws being written?" Rittenmeyer told the source. "And why is [ARM] becoming an area of interest for government regulators and various other groups? I think it's because people realize that there are individuals out there who are having [financial] problems."

Managers need to create teams of professionals who are able to provide services that the industry provides, and to have a level of "granularity" in how they approach a problem, which means understanding that one size does not fit all, he added.

Speaking to FoxBusiness, marketing consultant Peter Shankman explained that as businesses become caught up in the importance of increasing their number of followers on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, they sometimes lose sight of an even more important audience: their pre-existing customer base.

Shankman further explained that businesses would be better served by focusing on delivering a top quality customer experience to those who have been fans of the company for a long time, as this will lead to word of mouth recommendations that are more persuasive than even the most effective marketing campaign. "If you focus on the customers you have, new fans will follow," he said.

These strategies are becoming even more important as companies learn to appreciate just how big an effect customer experience has on a business's success. A recent study estimated that top British companies may each lose as much as £100 million annually as a result of providing poor quality customer service.

Writing for Voxilla, Marcelo Rodriguez recently highlighted the benefits of VoIP emergency calling services. He argues that while some people hold the mistaken impression that Emergency 911 is not compatible with VoIP, the truth of the matter is that the two work extremely well together, and have for many years now. He further claims that VoIP-specific Emergency 911 can oftentimes provide a wider range of services than larger, more stationary carriers.

As Government Technology reported earlier this year, many 911 call providers agree with Rodriguez's assessment. Citing the advantages offered by VoIP, such as flexibility and affordability, many 911 call providers have begun to transition to VoIP as soon as their current contracts expire.

That report also highlighted a particular case which effectively illustrates one of the key benefits of VoIP for emergency call services. The previous summer, a construction crew in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, accidentally severed fiber-optic cables, which shut down the city's public safety answer points (PSAPs).

However, because the city had made the transition to VoIP service, the call traffic was rerouted to a neighboring city's emergency response system. The only immediate consequence was a 30-minute lack of service, which the PSAP manager, Lt. Lori Dreier, called "fantastic for an unplanned event."

One of the most active markets for outsourcing is in human resources. The global economic recession took quite a toll on labor markets worldwide. Consequently, employers have suffered talent crises, high turnover rates, job dissatisfaction, recruiting challenges or some other HR-related hindrance.

But savvy, forward-thinking companies looked to outsourcing as a means to handle their talent and personnel demands, allowing them to focus on core practices and specialities.

"My view is that HR should be small and lean and they need to be focusing only on business partnering and strategic and value-add activities," Christina Turner, past president of the Australian Human Resources Institute, told The Australian. "Transaction needs to go to places that do transaction well. Recruitment is in many ways a transaction."

The transactional element of HR, Turner adds, can be a major distraction. Outsourced HR functions as a means of letting go of the nitty-gritty details to focus more on core business strategy.

A recent report from Ventana Research found that 60 percent of surveyed organizations believe that sales analytics are very important to their companies, yet 46 percent indicated that they are somewhat or not at all confident in the utility of the data their analytics systems gather. Sixty-two percent of respondents stated they have trouble collecting the information they need for creating useful metrics.

Writing for CIO, Jeff Vance suggested that customer relationship management (CRM) may provide the solution to the problems faced by these and other businesses struggling to successfully create and take advantage of their sales pipelines. CRM, and particularly social CRM, has the ability to gather significant amounts of useful data on customers and clients, which can then be used to effectively create an accurate sales pipeline.

If companies are able to use CRM in a way that incentivizes their sales agents, they will quite possibly improve both efficiency and profits.

According to industry experts, well-established contact centers realize that the implementation of best practices help them stay ahead of the curve while gaining a competitive edge.

"Generally, it is not too difficult to get hold of private information, and most systems are not secure enough to stop copies [from] being made and removed from the organization," Andrew Kellet, senior analyst of IT solutions at Ovum, told ZDNet Asia.

Kellet added that this has more to do with the availability and amount of data than the actual contact center environment.

This also highlights the importance of employee engagement and satisfaction. As Kellet explains, the risk of data theft tends to increase when agents feel undervalued or overworked.

The world is now much more more digital with vast amounts of consumer data housed on CRM databases. While contact centers have been around for decades, the rise in customer-centric services demands enhance security procedures.

1to1 Magazine writer Cynthia Clark recently explained that one of the most significant of these decisions is whether to use scripting for contact center conversations. There are pluses and minuses to both sides of the issue, and it is up to the individual company to determine which solution is the best fit.

According to Clark, one of the benefits of scripting conversations is consistency. By scripting, a business can ensure that its message and policies are employed in every customer interaction. Additionally, scripting is an effective means of maintaining compliance with legal requirements, which is an important issue for businesses in healthcare and other industries.

However, there are benefits to non-scripting, as well. When agents converse at their own discretion, callers may feel that their customer experience is more customized, leading to greater satisfaction.

1to1 Magazine writer Cynthia Clark recently explained that one of the most significant of these decisions is whether to use scripting for contact center conversations. There are pluses and minuses to both sides of the issue, and it is up to the individual company to determine which solution is the best fit.

According to Clark, one of the benefits of scripting conversations is consistency. By scripting, a business can ensure that its message and policies are employed in every customer interaction. Additionally, scripting is an effective means of maintaining compliance with legal requirements, which is an important issue for businesses in healthcare and other industries.

However, there are benefits to non-scripting, as well. When agents converse at their own discretion, callers may feel that their customer experience is more customized, leading to greater satisfaction.

The Insight Research Institute's report, "VoIP and the SME: CableCos, Telcos, and the Rise of Hosted Service Models, 2011-2016," analyzed trends that attempt to predict the future of telecommunications for small businesses. The report found that while companies with less than 100 employees currently spent approximately $500 million on hosted voice over internet protocol (VoIP) in 2011, they are expected to increase that spending to around $1.2 billion by 2015.

As the report explains, hosted telecommunications offers a number of benefits for small businesses. Perhaps most notably, it is typically less expensive than landlines and other, older forms of telecommunication technology. Yet despite this cost decrease, industry experts largely agree that hosted technology provides a level of service that is at least equal, if not superior, to traditional communications.

Additionally, by using hosted technology like VoIP, small businesses can save a great amount of physical space. Whereas old forms of telecommunication technology require hardware to be installed and maintained on the premises, the physical components of hosted technology are housed by the service provider.

There is a growing consensus that social media will play a key role in many, if not most, companies marketing and overall business strategies in the near future. However, despite this awareness, many companies have yet to adopt social media-based strategies. This means that those companies willing to embrace social CRM may enjoy significant advantages over their delaying competitors.

Writing for TechNewsWorld, CRM expert Christopher J. Bucholtz recently offered several pieces of advice for companies who have not yet made the move toward social CRM. For example, he recommended that businesses use their imaginations when envisioning the best means of applying social CRM to their specific situations. Too many businesses, he said, see how social CRM works for a different industry and simply assume that the methods used there could not possibly apply in their own field. But by utilizing a healthy dose of creativity, businesses may discover social CRM lessons even from vastly different contexts.

He also recommended that businesses come to terms with the notion that social CRM may require reorganization and/or restructuring. It represents a new paradigm for customer relations, and as such will require organizations to adopt new approaches. This should not be a reason for hesitancy, but rather motivation for revitalization.

The latest Global Patent & IP Trends Indicator by inovia found fewer organizations are facing budget reductions, which may be behind the greater portion of IP tasks that companies are outsourcing in order to reduce costs.

This year's study showed a 300 percent increase in organizations outsourcing foreign patent filings compared to last year. The report demonstrates how U.S. patent holders are being more strategic about their approach to foreign filing, focusing particularly on the need to contain IP costs.

Most surveyed organizations don't expect to increase the number of patent families filed this year, suggesting they are taking on a "do-more-with-less" attitude in light of the recovering economy.

"The cautious optimism first identified in the 2011 Indicator is back this year, with U.S. patent owners taking a prudent, yet strategic, approach to foreign filing with a huge jump in outsourcing as a means to keep IP rates low, reduce overall costs and maintain control," said inovia founder and patent attorney Justin Simpson.

According to ZDNet, a leading analytics company has conducted research to determine the effects of customer satisfaction with a contact center on that customer's future interactions involving the company. They polled customers and rated their satisfaction on a 100-point scale, then used this data to ascertain how the individual felt about the company and how this attitude would translate into actual actions.

The study found that customers who scored above 70 on the customer satisfaction scale were 238 percent more likely to recommend the company to family, friends or coworkers. Additionally, highly satisfied individuals were 154 percent more likely than less satisfied customers to make another purchase from the company, and 174 percent more likely to contact the company again in the future.

As ZDNet indicates, all of this data shows the inherent value in contact centers providing high quality customer experience. Customer satisfaction translates into loyalty and positive associations, both of which may lead to increased company profits in the future.

Writing for CBS News, Hess highlights a number of key empathy-related questions that a customer service agent should ask him or herself in order to improve customer care. One significant example is, "What would I expect to be done for me if the roles were reversed?" Another is "What would make this customer satisfied…and is there any reason I can't do it or find someone who can?"

By asking these questions, a service agent may better understand the customer's mindset, and this may lead to a greater overall interaction.

While important in all customer-service interactions, empathy may be a particularly crucial element for a contact center. Because contact center agents do not typically see the client they are assisting, it can be more difficult to develop an empathic bond with that individual. A conscious awareness of the importance of empathy can ensure that a contact center agent always keeps the customer's needs and desires at the forefront of his mind.

In a list of recommendations for improving utility billing and payment methods for the upcoming year, Intelligent Utility highlighted the benefits of IVR for utility companies. By implementing IVR, companies can provide options for customers to self-pay. This, as Intelligent Utility reports, can make the collection of outstanding balances significantly more efficient. Additionally, IVR offers service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without the cost of maintaining a staff of agents around the clock.

Consequently, the publication argues that by implementing IVR and other technology upgrades, utility companies can increase their collection abilities, which leads directly to a rise in overall profits.

Utility companies are but one of the many industries that can and, in many cases, already have taken advantage of the services IVR makes possible. Many research studies have demonstrated the value which people place upon customer experience, and by offering service at any time, day or night, companies using IVR can significantly improve their overall customer service.

Using this tool, financial experts have determined that the top 100 companies appearing on the FTSE Index may each lose as much as £100 million annually by failing to provide each of their clients with a successful customer experience.

The tool's calculations are determined by crunching a variety of business data, such as company profits, revenues and levels of customer satisfaction. According to its metrics, even relatively minor improvements in customer care can lead to huge rewards. For some companies, the calculator estimates that profits can even double by improving customer service.

While these conclusions may seem extreme, recent research indicates that a poor or successful shopping experience can be a main determinant in whether a potential customer purchases a product or service. Studies have shown that as much as 88 percent of individuals claim that they will leave a store without buying anything if the retailer's customer service does not meet their standards.

Conducted by a leading developer of social health networks, the survey data was gathered during the recent Managed Care Executive Group Forum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Of all participating managed care executives, 94 percent indicated that social networking technology is a crucial component of their business's ability to interact with customers, and 56 percent believed that it is a "must-have" for managed care organizations.

The significance of these figures is further reinforced by how highly those surveyed prioritized consumer engagement. Just over three-fifths of participating executives stated that engaging with customers is one of the five most important priorities for CEOs at their organizations.

By using social networking technology and other social CRM tools, organizations are able to improve the quality and degree of their interaction with customers and clients. And as social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter continue to grow, industry experts expect businesses' reliance on social CRM to increase in the coming years.

A recent report from STELLAService highlights the degree to which some companies are ignoring customer feedback delivered via Facebook. As a test, STELLAService posted general service questions on 20 major retailers' Facebook pages, as well as within the comments section of entries posted by the retailers themselves.

The results indicate that the majority of these companies do not place a high value on interacting with or satisfying customers who contact them through social media. Of the 20 retailers, five did not respond to the posted questions within 48 hours. More notably, seven of the retailers edited their Facebook pages to remove any trace of the question.

Speaking to TIME, STELLAService CEO Jordy Leiser said the results indicate that while companies have quickly come to understand the value of Facebook for reaching out to customers, they have not yet grasped that effective social CRM means acknowledging social media as a two-way street.

With the arrival of new technological capabilities, agents are leveraging live online chat, email, mobile services, and even social media to ensure delivery of service according to customer demands. Depending on the sorts of customers being served, contact centers may automate as many conversations as they handle personally.

These trends reflect one of the most important pillars of effective contact center management: efficiency. Customers generally have tolerance for about five minutes of downtime once they've established a sales relationship with a brand, reports Tron Jordheim for Inside Self-Storage. Meanwhile, he adds, company executives have tolerance for about five seconds of downtime once a year.

Once again, technology has been the primary solution to the changing demands of the contact center industry.

"Even in a boutique center, you need a wide and deep technology foundation to provide the services that make your clients and stakeholders money," Jordheim notes. "It all starts with Internet and telephony connections. These communications connections must have tremendous bandwidth. Then you need server capacity to handle the layers of software that power … systems."

Bloomberg Businessweek, citing an Everest Group study, reports that 54 companies in Eastern Europe and Latin America established new outsourcing facilities in 2011, edging out the 49 created in India last year. And industry experts expect this trend to continue into the foreseeable future.

There are several underlying causes to this shift away from India, the most significant being that companies are beginning to outsource higher-level positions. The primary reason behind India's prominence within the outsourcing industry has always been that it is home to a huge pool of inexpensive labor, and many if not most of its citizens speak English. This makes India the ideal source for workers to staff contact centers and similar openings.

However, the positions being outsourced now frequently require a higher degree of skill and training than India's labor market can provide. Consequently, American businesses are turning to countries such as Poland, The Philippines and Brazil for their outsourced customer care and financial services.
 

Bloomberg Businessweek, citing an Everest Group study, reports that 54 companies in Eastern Europe and Latin America established new outsourcing facilities in 2011, edging out the 49 created in India last year. And industry experts expect this trend to continue into the foreseeable future.

There are several underlying causes to this shift away from India, the most significant being that companies are beginning to outsource higher-level positions. The primary reason behind India's prominence within the outsourcing industry has always been that it is home to a huge pool of inexpensive labor, and many if not most of its citizens speak English. This makes India the ideal source for workers to staff contact centers and similar openings.

However, the positions being outsourced now frequently require a higher degree of skill and training than India's labor market can provide. Consequently, American businesses are turning to countries such as Poland, The Philippines and Brazil for their outsourced customer care and financial services.
 

Customer profiling is the process of understanding a business's customer base and categorizing those customers into various demographics. These demographics can then be used to better understand both who is patronizing a business and, just as importantly, why. This allows a business to streamline and improve its customer service, resulting in a better customer experience. Additionally, the knowledge gained through customer profiling may be utilized for marketing purposes.

IVR is useful for customer profiling because it allows businesses to accumulate and then classify customer feedback more efficiently without sacrificing customer service. Yet success in this area is not automatic. The key to successful integration of IVR systems with customer profiling is customization. Organizations must adapt their IVR offerings to align with the nature of their business and, crucially, their customers.

The study, conducted by market research firm Vanson bourne, included 200 senior-level IT professionals from a diverse group of medium and large UK-based businesses. Three quarters of those surveyed indicated that their organizations are currently pursuing a UC strategy. They further indicated that VoIP is the most crucial form of communication within these strategies, followed by video conferencing and instant messaging.

There are numerous benefits to pursuing a UC strategy. Most notably, it has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of a business's telecommunications - the reason cited by 60 percent of respondents for their move toward UC. Additionally, telecommunications experts argue that UC can reduce costs and improve customer and user satisfaction.

The combined effects of these benefits can be significant. To illustrate this point, an InformationWeek article cited the example of Japanese retailer Mitsukoshi. After adopting UC capabilities in its inventory processes, the company was able to reduce its sales cycle time by 20 percent.

According to a CompTIA survey of business and IT executives, 68 percent of responding organizations had a LinkedIn page, another 68 percent had a Twitter feed and 82 percent maintained a presence on Facebook. Yet while this data indicates a growing appreciation for the value of social media for businesses, the survey also demonstrates that this appreciation is underdeveloped. Despite heavily using social media, less than 20 percent of organizations surveyed used any form of social enterprise tools.

This is a significant statistic, as social enterprise tools are a crucial component of successful social CRM. Seth Robinson, director of technology analysis for CompTIA, said, "Social enterprise tools incorporate the characteristics of social media into business processes." This, he added, encourages "stronger internal collaboration" and "deeper understanding of customers."

As a relatively new marketing tool, it is perhaps not surprising that social CRM is still not fully incorporated into most businesses' marketing strategies. However, as social media becomes more and more embedded into the average consumer's life, it is inevitable that a growing number of companies will begin to explore the full potential of social CRM and social enterprise tools.
 

Most of the new offers are likely to be awarded to private suppliers of work welfare programs, reflecting the British government's decision to replace a disability allowance with a new personal independence payment.

"Under the government's welfare reforms, more than 3.2 million people will be assessed by private companies as to whether they can rejoin the workforce," reported Gill Plimmer for the FT. "The five year contracts - with option for two-year extensions - will be divided among regions, with the winners announced in July for implementation from April 2013."

Both private and public companies alike have been broadening their outsourcing activity in recent years. Higher operational costs and commodity prices have forced firms to seek out more efficient methods of completing tasks, and outsourcing is often seen as a key solution.

Driven by a demand for improved customer experience, contact center development in the United States and Canada is growing significantly. As industry experts have noted, creating domestic contact centers provides job opportunities and therefore contributes to local economies.

An additional factor driving the growth of contact centers in the U.S. and Canada is improved technology. More and more, contact centers are using alternative forms of communication to accommodate customer desires, such as texting, voice over internet protocol (VoIP), and Twitter. Such developments are increasing the importance of contact centers to both businesses and the customers who utilize their services.

As contact center technology continues to improve, and contact centers themselves become increasingly vital for a wide range of companies' customer service tasks, it is likely that such facilities will continue to spring up throughout the United States.

As the E-Commerce Times recently explained, far too many businesses invest heavily in a social CRM strategy and then proceed to use that strategy statically, without ever attempting to dig deeper into the technologies technology's functions.

Consequently, that specific form of social CRM ultimately ceases to provide benefits and the business concludes that it has reached a dead end. In reality, though, the social CRM strategy might still have numerous advantages to offer. The business is simply unaware of them.

Social CRM is generally acknowledged as an emerging tool which can benefit a wide range of industries. Many companies, recognizing this trend, have begun to invest significantly in social CRM technologies and strategies. However, only those companies which match their financial investments with the commitment to explore and adapt their chosen social CRM platforms will reap its advantages.

In a report conducted by market intelligence firm Global Industry Analysts, the global speech technology industry was described as having "displayed remarkable resilience during recession" and has proved itself to be "one of the major revenue grosser for the software industry."

In addition to technological breakthroughs in VoIP and IVR, the report credits the speech technology industry's projected success to its incorporation into an increasing number of products and services. Specifically, the report identifies search engines, healthcare providers and handheld devices as areas of rising use for speech technology.

This report comes at a time when more and more mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones, are releasing apps and data-plans for the use of mobile VoIP. The proliferation of these and other, similar advancements is expected to continue driving the speech technology market into the foreseeable future.

Ivana Taylor recommends in the blog Get App that decision-makers begin by drafting a list of key goals they'd like to accomplish over the next several months. It may be something as broad as expanding into a new market or as narrow as adopting a new payroll processing service. Whatever it is, the next process involves running through the list and determining, precisely, what's needed to meet these goals.

Which of these processes can you handle yourself? What kinds of skills are needed to complete them? Which will require hired help? In answering these questions you should develop a more clear picture of where your outsourcing needs are.

"Whatever the reasons, you need to be clear and honest," Taylor explains. "Time savings comes from focusing on what you want to accomplish, only doing those things and then making a list of all the other things that you've been doing, but that someone else could do better, faster and probably cheaper."

The trend toward online services and communications platforms seems applicable to customer service, too, as 75 percent of surveyed consumers say they would prefer to use online support if it were reliable. However, only 37 percent claim they even try to use self-service options.

But the lack of available online resources drives many consumers to contact centers. According to the survey, more than 40 percent of respondents call customer service if they cannot find answers to their question through self-service.

Furthermore, an overwhelming majority of consumers - 96 percent - expect to be notified of problems without having to ask, preempting calls to a contact center.

"We are seeing a major shift in customer behavior," said Ian Parkes, director and co-founder at Coleman Parkes. "Consumers prefer to seek answers to common questions through online resources. However, many end users believe service providers' online services cannot solve their problems, so they gravitate back to the call center."

Surveying more than 220 CRM decision-makers from North America and Europe, the study found that "providing sales people with mobile device access to CRM" leads to a 14.6 percent rise in sales productivity, and using social CRM tools leads to a further 11.8 percent increase in productivity. When both were implemented, the overall sales productivity gain was 26.4 percent.

Of all those surveyed, less than 2 percent did not acknowledge any productivity benefits from mobile CRM access.

As customers increasingly rely on their mobile devices for a host of uses, it can be inferred that the rewards businesses reap from social and mobile CRM implementation will continue to grow. It is not surprising, then, that a recent Constellation Research study found that 85 percent of surveyed executives plan to improve their CRM systems in the next two years.

The Constellation Research report concluded that such upgrades will be a crucial factor in determining a business's success or failure leveraging CRM.

The study, conducted by TechNavio, found that only a small percentage of all international voice traffic stems from mobile devices. This is primarily due to the expensive rates charged by cellular networks for the service. As a result, most individuals turn to landlines, computer networks and calling cards for their international calling needs.

Several trends contribute to the market potential for mobile VoIP providers. One is the increasing prevalence of social media, and especially the use of social media on mobile platforms. As users rely more heavily on this technology, desire for affordable VoIP options will likely rise.

In addition, businesses utilizing contact centers will likely continue to incorporate VoIP into their service options. It is likely that a typical contact center will soon offer a multitude of communication services for its clients, including text messaging, Twitter and videochatting.

As demand for mobile VoIP options is poised to increase, organizations now have an opportunity to gain a strong foothold in an emerging market.
 

One of the areas this collaboration has been most evident is in business process outsourcing. BPO services can dramatically cut down on operating costs and improve efficiency. They also require the involvement of tech professionals to gauge which processes should be outsourced and through what channels.

"Shared services and business process outsourcing can be used to reduce the operating costs of finance," Paul van Kessel, an advisor at Ernst & Young, told the Financial Times. "The key benefits of business process outsourcing are obvious. It allows organizations to focus on their core activity and, in addition, cost savings can be achieved."

However, van Kessel added, the key to BPO success is in the effective management of supplier relations management and third-party reporting. In developing an effective outsourcing strategy, CFOs have to rely on thorough risk assessment.

The study, which tracks and analyzes the anticipated marketing, sales, and media strategies of a wide range of businesses, also identified "market intelligence research" and "competitor intelligence research" as the other primary areas for investment.

This data supports the growing evidence that CRM is becoming a more and more important aspect of many businesses' marketing strategies. Industry experts have widely touted CRM for improving organizations' ability to provide a better customer experience and leveraging that relationship into increasing profits and market presence.

In addition to identifying areas of investment, the ICD study also analyzes the expected degree of investment for companies in the coming year. Overall, total money allocated to marketing budgets is expected to increase 5 percent for the next year. This modest rise is attributed to the improving yet still damaged global economy. In last year's survey, the anticipated increase in marketing budgets was just over 7 percent.

One of the more sensational developments in the call center industry is the emergence of emotion detection technology. These devices are able to gauge how a caller feels based on factors such as how loud they're talking, their tone, pitch, and pace of speech.

"We are seeing more of this technology being adopted because of its positive impact on the caller experience and call center key performance indicators (KPIs)," writes Omar Zaibak for Customer Think. "Some call centers prioritize callers in their queue based on how angry they are. The system will intuitively listen to the caller while they are on hold."

If he or she is vocally upset they will receive a higher priority in the call queue and connect to an agent faster. This can help allay the more frustrated customers while managing call volumes in a more efficient way.

In this component of the study, known as the Practice-based Opportunities for Weight Reduction (POWER) trial, 365 obese patients participated in a self-managed weight-loss and hypertension-reduction program for a two-year period. During this time, patients monitored their own progress with an IVR system and website, and participated in 18 counseling sessions via phone. They were also given the option of participating in 12 group support sessions.

The results of the study indicated that remote monitoring was at least as effective as more traditional obesity-reduction programs. On average, participants lost a kilogram more of weight than those undergoing the standard treatment, and lowered their BMIs by an additional 0.38.

"I actually think these types of systems are the wave of the future," Lawrence Appel, head researcher and a professor of medicine, epidemiology and international health at Johns Hopkins, said of the programs utilized in the study.

While some businesses have scaled back their outsourcing to foreign markets, the Asia/Pacific BPO sector remains a vibrant location for hosted technology, IT outsourcing, shared services and other market horizontals.

Currently, the Philippine BPO sector employs roughly 450,000 people, mostly in contact center facilities. This figure make the country the world's leader, ahead of India.

"In recent years, however, industry leaders have begun to emphasize a shift in the local industry from call center work to higher value-added work like outsourced engineering, animation and IT services," reports Alex Ferreras for LoanSafe.org. "Wells Fargo's Philippine operations would serve only the needs of the U.S. bank in terms of customer support."

Customer service is one of the pillars of the global outsourcing market, but with rising demand for high-skill positions the dynamics of outsourcing demand may begin to shift. In January, Information Services Group reported that 2011 was the busiest year on record for the global outsourcing industry.

The survey, conducted by British customer intelligence firm Market Force, also found that the biggest factor in shaping customer experience is employee interest. Over 40 percent of those surveyed identified a lack of interest and engagement from store employees as the most frustrating aspect of in-store shopping, therefore making it the most likely source of customer dissatisfaction.

On a similar note, over 80 percent of customers indicated that they appreciate being physically led to a product they're inquiring about, rather than being pointed in the product's direction, and a further 59 percent appreciated product recommendations. As the numbers indicate, though, such a level of customer support is lacking from many retailers.

Yet despite these numbers, the report also indicated that an overwhelming majority of consumers prefer in-store shopping to online shopping, primarily due to the human interaction.

Tim Ogle, CEO at Market Force Europe, said that these results should inspire retailers to modify their practices, as "good customer service doesn't have to be expensive."

It helps to have an well thought-out plan for your outsourcing strategy from the get-go. Collaborate with service providers to communicate that strategy and make clear what you expect from their offerings.

Lydia Vogtner, a contributor for Business 2 Community recommends leveraging the advice of experts to influence your management of hosted technology and services. You shouldn't feel like you need to do all thinking yourself, but it's important make your hosts at least a small part of the team from the early stages.

"Once the work begins - create a positive working relationship that allows for open communication, including the ability to challenge and ask tough questions," Vogtner adds. "Also be mindful of their workload and competing priorities - don't treat them like order takers or put them in constant reactive mode just because you are paying them.

The recurring high placement of social CRM apps on GetApp.com surveys is yet another indicator of the increasing importance of such products within the wider context of CRM and social media-based business. Industry experts have noted the gradual evolution of social CRM apps from point applications to more integrated products offering a wider range of benefits for businesses.

In order to maximize the potential advantages of this technology, businesses must continue to develop their approaches to all social CRM, including apps. Writing for Forbes, R Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, recently emphasized the importance of integrating CRM strategies that incorporate "tangibles, intangibles and contingencies in the calculations of business value." Only such a balanced approach to CRM modernization will ensure competitiveness as social media's role in CRM continues to expand.

According to the report, the IVR technology utilized by case managers provided constant updates on patients' statuses by utilizing biometric and other data, all gathered remotely and automatically. Additionally, patient compliance with the IVR-based program was 85 percent, thereby providing an even greater degree of health information for case managers to work with.

This information allowed case managers to implement proactive, preventative strategies for maintaining patient well-being. The ultimate result was that IVR-monitored patients required re-admittance to hospitals at a significantly lower rate than patients whose health was monitored solely through self-reporting and case manager followup.

This finding comes at a time when more and more hospitals and healthcare providers are beginning to utilize IVR technology, thanks to advancements in natural language and speech recognition technology. These developments are allowing doctors and case managers to monitor patient health at a lower cost while increasing efficiency and ease-of-access to crucial information.
 

While the reasons for IT outsourcing vary from business to business, the popularity is such that it's become difficult to find a service that hasn't been outsourced. One is also hard-pressed to find a company that has not outsourced at least one function.

Some companies credit the potential to scale back capital expenditures. Dustin Andaya, founder and managing director of flower retailer Island Rose, cites flexibility and scalability as the key advantages of outsourcing and hosted technology services.

"IT outsourcing enables our company to remain small and flexible while being able to concentrate on our core competencies," he told CFO World. "It gives us the ability to pool resources from other companies on a per need basis, allowing our operations to grow bigger or smaller as the need arises."

Yet while these schools are demonstrating a move toward further incorporating mobile learning into their programs, the report concluded that much of the educational potential remains untapped, and that schools must demonstrate a greater willingness to explore its possibilities.

Commenting on the report in the Financial Times, Carina Paine Schofield, a research fellow at Ashridge Business School, maintains that the move toward mobile learning is inevitable, and claims that this shift can transform students into more active learners. However, in order for such a change to occur, executive programs must stop viewing mobile devices as distractions and instead see them as learning resources.

Incorporating organizations from both North America and Europe, the report reveals that 25 percent of all respondents are now aggregating and studying data culled from social media networks, and nearly 50 percent monitor open social media networks. Furthermore, more than half of respondents intend to increase their investment in social media tools and services in the next one to two years.

As this trend continues to expand, it can be expected that businesses will need to develop their social CRM strategies. Historically, many organizations have underutilized the potential of CRM by focusing primarily on ways of selling to customers, rather than developing mutually beneficial relationships.

As Adam Sarner, a director of research at Gartner, points out in Forbes, the key to successful social CRM is offering perceivable benefits to customers. By doing so, businesses can encourage customers to voluntarily work with them to improve their operations. Failing to do so will greatly limit the amount of usable data accumulated, thereby reducing the effectiveness of social CRM strategies.

Charles Schwab's 2011 RIA Benchmarking Study even found 52 percent of surveyed investment advisers agreed that devoting sufficient staff time to business development was their greatest obstacle to growth. This is one of the reasons why many companies turn to outsourced customer care and services to fulfill their duties and facilitate growth.

One of the chief advantages of outsourcing, particularly in regards to the financial services industry, is that companies can pick and choose which processes to administer externally and which to maintain in-house.

"You don't have to invent your own solution," adds Marion Asnes for Investment News. "Outsourcing reduces the amount of time and stress devoted to operations, data management and backup, reporting and reconciliation, re-balancing and more. By making you more effective and simplifying your life, it expands your time."

In a recent interview with 1to1 Media, Adobe marketing executive Kevin Cochrane suggested that site design, personalization, and key performance indicators (KPIs) are not receiving the attention they deserve in online customer experience strategies.

"[Companies] don't do enough research into who their customer are and what they're trying to accomplish," Cochrane explained to the news source. "If I engaged you previously, you need to know so I don't have to rehash who I am and what I'm trying to do."

One uniquely effective way to address all of these concerns is through the integration of social media in customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Social CRM utilities help companies make sense of the wealth of information exchanged in online environments and leverage it to build deeper, more accurate customer profiles.

In addition to interpreting implicit feedback expressed in blog posts and online forums, social CRM can provide ways for businesses to gather explicit feedback as well. According to InformationWeek columnist Debra Donston-Miller, directly soliciting customer input through online surveys and similar methods can help uncover unique insights that would have otherwise remained hidden.