Digital Lifescapes

Leaders of Customer Care and Support teams have discovered that the legacy approach of designing and building call centers with rows upon rows of agents in tiny cubicles is obsolete. Staff turnover is typically very high in these environments. Now, there's a better approach on the horizon, as a result of experience gained from the COVID-19 pandemic era. Contact center as a service (CCaaS) will likely reach full mainstream adoption in less than two years, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Some customer service and support early adopters of CCaaS have overcome the initial hurdles and are beginning to experience the benefits. "CCaaS is a growth market," said Drew Kraus, vice president at Gartner . "The technology offers greater software agility with a lower cost of ownership, making it a key area of investment in innovation and customer service applications that surpasses the offers of legacy premises-based or server technology." Contact Ce...

Do you remember the time when it was in vogue for nearly all upcoming marketing consultants to claim that they were "experts" in search engine optimization (SEO)? I remember it well.  After most of these folks discovered the social media trend, then they quickly shifted their focus. Regardless, today search remains a key component of savvy digital marketer campaigns. Perhaps the huge flock of self-proclaimed social media experts will rediscover search, once the current "social everything" fad has lost its appeal -- we'll have to wait and see. According to the latest market study by eMarketer , search can help to build strong brands by bettering their brand-health metrics. But creating long-term relationships with their valued customers is usually the top priority. eMarketer says "even though a majority of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers now believe that search affects brand-building, digital marketing executives sometimes still find it tough t...

Today's technology-centric business success often hinges on the ability to inform and guide prospective customers who are entering the buying-cycle for complex products and services. However, few marketers have mastered this essential skill -- informing and guiding via digital multimedia content -- in a meaningful way. That said, eMarketer reports that findings from Focus Research indicate business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers are more likely to direct their attention to improving client understanding and retention this year than their business-to-business (B2B) counterparts, who are placing a higher emphasis on filling the sales pipeline. Among B2B marketers, lead acquisition was the top priority for 55 percent of respondents, followed by lead conversion (45 percent). Both B2B and B2C marketers were equally focused on building brand awareness. The inherent complexity of the B2B buying process often requires better sales support tools -- that facilitate and accelerate the ...

Being a truly distinctive online business marketer in North America may actually be less difficult than you might imagine. Despite social media marketing's supposed popularity, many business-to-business (B2B) companies are apparently laggards. Moreover, eMarketer reports that according to a recent market study few marketers have mastered the required skills -- 73 percent of B2B respondents who utilize popular online tools have less than two years of social media marketing experience. March 2010 research from marketing automation firm Genius.com and BtoB magazine found that about one-half of business-oriented marketers are not using content marketing tools -- such as blogging and microblogging platforms. The consumer-focused Facebook social network site was more popular, with nearly three-fifths of survey participants -- and business-focused social network LinkedIn was used by three-quarters of B2B marketers. Researchers say social networks offer B2B companies a variety of...

eMarketer reports that business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers actively adopted social media in 2009. According to research from Business.com, however, the two types of marketers have very different social site usage patterns. The market study found that those B2B companies already using social media were much more active in the space than their B2C counterparts -- especially microblogging, discussions on third-party sites, blogging and monitoring company mentions. B2Cs were ahead in a few areas -- such as social media advertising, user ratings and reviews, and online communities for target customers. B2B firms were more likely overall to maintain a social network profile. They were also managing profiles across more social sites and were significantly more likely to be present on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. In contrast, B2C companies were more likely to use Facebook and MySpace. B2B was more active in measuring most social success metrics as well. B2C f...