The secret to creating an excellent customer experience isn’t so secret: segment customers by service levels, set and reinforce expectations, proactively fix problems, and practice up-selling and cross-selling.

CRM smackdown. Salesforce.com. Chatter. Siebel. Upgrades. Integration. Sales Leadership. It’s the end of the year: cue the annual recap of top CRM stories and trends.

Want to have a great call center and world class customer service practices? Every three years or so, send your customer service group on strike and have management sit in, instead.

Many companies want their service teams to generate new sales from existing customers. Here is one example of a high technology company succeeding by taking a slightly different approach.

Do companies listen to their customers? Sometimes yes, oftentimes no. And in many cases, organizations that do end up mistaking excellent case management with having a complete customer service program. Learn what it takes to excel at cost-effective yet successful customer service.

Turns out that Bob’s company is going to be implementing CRM, but they haven’t really thought it through enough.

What keeps pharmaceutical executives awake at night, and how can CRM help?

Can these five cocktails really increase the success of your CRM program? Join us for a cocktail party on Tuesday of Oracle OpenWorld 2010 to find out.

Everyone wants to build a 360-degree view of their customers. But in most cases, having a 360-degree view is overkill. Instead, ask what information your customer-facing employees need to be more productive in their jobs. Because just throwing endless amounts of customer data at marketing, sales and service personnel won’t deliver business results.

What are your CRM program’s unknown unknowns? When it comes to planning, to ensure that projects don’t fail, you need to find out.