Friday, April 15, 2011
Parature Spring Makes CRM Service More Social
The "Wild West" of social CRM has become more competitive with Parature Spring '11, designed to leave a better impression on customers and engage with target audiences. Parature's Duke Chung said Parature differentiates by integrating social channels that customers prefer to use. Client Vovici said Parature helps resolves issues quickly.
Related Topics Parature
CRM
Social Networking
Customer Support
Customer Relationship Management
Contact Centers
Business Intelligence
Market Research
Cloud Computing
SaaS
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Cloud-based customer engagement just got more competitive, with Parature unveiling its latest twist on social CRM software. The eleven year-old company, based in Vienna, Virginia, develops customer-service programs, available over the web in the form of software-as-a-service (SaaS ).
The latest addition to the company's software for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is Parature Spring '11, which is designed to help customer support teams in two important ways. First, by leaving customers with a positive impression, and second, by engaging the company's target audiences through social networking and other types of communication .
Parature Spring '11 ties together communications through Twitter, Lithium communities, Facebook, and chat functions, as well as the more traditional modes of customer service -- phone, e-mail and the web. Parature says the new version helps companies monitor, manage and resolve service issues more effectively across those channels.
Even as Duke Chung, chief strategy officer for Parature, launches Spring '11 and prepares to roll out Parature for Facebook as a stand-alone product, he sees plenty of competition on the horizon.
The Wild West of Social Software
"The social-software marketplace is still undefined to a large part -- it's like the Wild West out there," Chung said. "There are hundreds of companies that position themselves as social-software providers. Companies looking to make a purchase have to educate themselves so thoroughly and then make the decision that best fits their strategies and organization."
As Chung sees it, this process can be exhausting, confusing and lead to folks wanting to wait and see how the game pans out and who emerges as the leader. He is betting that by integrating social channels into the experience, Parature will stand out from the social-applications crowd.
With Spring '11, Parature expands its direct social-engagement model to Twitter and Lithium. The new version also offers auto-suggest and improved search features. Customers can automatically receive auto-suggested answers while submitting tickets. Parature also beefed up the analytics; developed the ability to view, report and automatically remove profane content from a Facebook page for brand security; and added rich media support and unified management of multiple Facebook pages.
"Since last year, Parature has been focused on integrating social networks and channels into its overarching cloud -based support solutions," Chung said. "The reason being that as the web evolves to be more social and collaborative, consumers and customers are looking to their preferred channel to find the answers they need. Facebook has over 500 million members, and members spend hours at a time on the network. Customers don't want to leave their preferred channel to head elsewhere to get the answers they are looking for."
Resolving Issues More Quickly
Vovici, a survey-software and enterprise-feedback-solutions company, is tapping into Parature to meet the increasing demand it sees for direct communication with its clients through social channels.
"Vovici is all about customers; it's not only our business but our internal philosophy as well," said Nancy Porte, Vovici's vice president of customer experience. "Delivering service with Parature's customer-support software enables our customers to quickly and independently resolve issues or directly engage with our support team via chat or a social network, which helps us differentiate ourselves, retain existing customers, and attract new ones."
Salesforce Buys To Monitor Social Exchanges
More emphasis is being placed on social CRM by Salesforce.com as it buys Radian6, which monitors hundreds of millions of social-media conversations. Radian6 monitors Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other sites, and Salesforce expects the acquisition to extend the value of its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com offerings.
Related Topics Salesforce
Social CRM
Radian6
Social Media
Sales Cloud
Service Cloud
Chatter
Force.com
Latest News RIM Fumbles Launch of PlayBook
Small Businesses Look To Get Bigger
PC Sales Fall as Consumers Shift
E-Mail Theft a Serious Security Danger
Senators Seek Privacy Bill of Rights
Salesforce.com is increasing its position in social CRM by buying social-media monitoring firm Radian6. Radian6 monitors hundreds of millions of social-media conversations every day on behalf of such companies as Dell, GE, Kodak, Molson Coors, PepsiCo and UPS . The acquisition involves about $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock.
The environments monitored in real time by Radian6 include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other online communities. Salesforce said the acquisition will extend the value of its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com offerings by providing business intelligence and capabilities related to social media.
'New Norm of Customer Engagement'
Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun told news media that his company's technology is "built for the new norm of customer engagement -- real time, two-way conversations that include social channels."
The company's products include a monitoring platform that helps analyze social-media campaigns and an engagement platform to help companies connect with online community members. These are intended to improve marketing and selling products, maintain customer service, and manage online reputations.
Radian6 said more than half of the Fortune 100 companies use its products. In its announcement, Salesforce pointed to a shift to what it calls Cloud 2. In Cloud 1, according to Salesforce, technologies were leveraged to be inexpensive, fast, easy to use, and available on the desktop. In Cloud 2, the company said, technologies are "social, mobile and open."
Among other utilizations, Salesforce plans to use Radian6 to help create a bridge between public social networks, such as Facebook, and its private Chatter social network for enterprises. Chatter feeds will now contain information that reflects comments on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other environments.
For Force.com, Salesforce sees Radian6 as offering an opportunity for developers to build the social web into apps.
Integration with New Service Cloud
Social media for the enterprise has emerged as a major emphasis for Salesforce's new products. Earlier this month, for instance, it announced "the next generation of social contact centers," Service Cloud 3. It positioned the updated software-as-a-service platform as "customer service for the social era."
Service Cloud 3 was designed to let organizations more completely engage with customers in social communities such as Twitter or Facebook. To facilitate that, the platform included integration with a Radian6 app.
A key selling point of the new Service Cloud upgrade is that it allows companies to scale up quickly to analyze millions of conversations that involve their products or service. Real-time reports and customizable dashboards offer social-channel analyses, customer-conversation analyses, and social dashboards for identifying trends.
Comments in Facebook, for instance, can be filtered by the number of friends a commenter has, assumedly indicating how influential that person is. Facebook names can also be tied into customer records.
Facebook wall posts and comments can be converted into cases with Service Cloud 3, and Twitter conversations can similarly become cases.
Related Topics Salesforce
Social CRM
Radian6
Social Media
Sales Cloud
Service Cloud
Chatter
Force.com
Latest News RIM Fumbles Launch of PlayBook
Small Businesses Look To Get Bigger
PC Sales Fall as Consumers Shift
E-Mail Theft a Serious Security Danger
Senators Seek Privacy Bill of Rights
Salesforce.com is increasing its position in social CRM by buying social-media monitoring firm Radian6. Radian6 monitors hundreds of millions of social-media conversations every day on behalf of such companies as Dell, GE, Kodak, Molson Coors, PepsiCo and UPS . The acquisition involves about $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock.
The environments monitored in real time by Radian6 include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other online communities. Salesforce said the acquisition will extend the value of its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com offerings by providing business intelligence and capabilities related to social media.
'New Norm of Customer Engagement'
Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun told news media that his company's technology is "built for the new norm of customer engagement -- real time, two-way conversations that include social channels."
The company's products include a monitoring platform that helps analyze social-media campaigns and an engagement platform to help companies connect with online community members. These are intended to improve marketing and selling products, maintain customer service, and manage online reputations.
Radian6 said more than half of the Fortune 100 companies use its products. In its announcement, Salesforce pointed to a shift to what it calls Cloud 2. In Cloud 1, according to Salesforce, technologies were leveraged to be inexpensive, fast, easy to use, and available on the desktop. In Cloud 2, the company said, technologies are "social, mobile and open."
Among other utilizations, Salesforce plans to use Radian6 to help create a bridge between public social networks, such as Facebook, and its private Chatter social network for enterprises. Chatter feeds will now contain information that reflects comments on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other environments.
For Force.com, Salesforce sees Radian6 as offering an opportunity for developers to build the social web into apps.
Integration with New Service Cloud
Social media for the enterprise has emerged as a major emphasis for Salesforce's new products. Earlier this month, for instance, it announced "the next generation of social contact centers," Service Cloud 3. It positioned the updated software-as-a-service platform as "customer service for the social era."
Service Cloud 3 was designed to let organizations more completely engage with customers in social communities such as Twitter or Facebook. To facilitate that, the platform included integration with a Radian6 app.
A key selling point of the new Service Cloud upgrade is that it allows companies to scale up quickly to analyze millions of conversations that involve their products or service. Real-time reports and customizable dashboards offer social-channel analyses, customer-conversation analyses, and social dashboards for identifying trends.
Comments in Facebook, for instance, can be filtered by the number of friends a commenter has, assumedly indicating how influential that person is. Facebook names can also be tied into customer records.
Facebook wall posts and comments can be converted into cases with Service Cloud 3, and Twitter conversations can similarly become cases.