The reason customer service at retail is so poor, according to a new survey by consulting firm The SALT & Pepper Group, has a lot to do with what sales associates don't do, rather that what they do do. In more than 25% of interactions measured, employees failed to see a service opportunity that was at hand or ignored the customer, Alex Palmer reports. Only 53% offered a store greeting, for example. "Associates started to struggle in situations where customers needed advice," says Rick Miller, consulting analyst at The SALT & Pepper Group. "Most of them really weren't …

Next-generation CMOs must help their organizations to truly understand their customers and act as the customer advocate within the organization, writes Dave Frankland, a principal analyst at Forrester. He says that marketers have to get consumer data out of the hands of the "propeller-heads" in the direct marketing department and into the "strategic command center for the business" where it can drive decisions across the enterprise. Forrester finds, however, that fewer than 15% of firms have a strategic customer-intelligence operation. The ones that do transform customer data into actionable intelligence see a lot of benefits as a result, …

Horsepower is taking a backseat to horse sense among Ford and Chevy dealers, who are shifting gears from pitching trucks and SUVs to moving the new compact and subcompact cars being produced by Detroit, Matthew Dolan and Sharon Terlep report. Dealers are remodeling stores and going online to capture tech-savvy younger consumers who have to be weaned of their fixation on Toyota, Honda and other small-car imports. Small cars made up 19% of light vehicles sold in the U.S. in the first 10 months of the year, while pickups and SUVs composed 46%. Three years ago, small cars represented …

Like the current National Geographic and the "I Am. Jeep." spots, a new Chrysler ad that calls for Myanmar dissident Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest "perpetuates a trend in advertising of what might be called nonsense affirmation, a la Eckhart Tolle," writes Dan Neil. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Forget some copy-editing problems with the script and the fact that most American car buyers don't know Myanmar from a moon circling Jupiter. And so what if the cause has little to do with a couple of tons of metal propelled by an …

GlaxoSmithKline wants people to know that it "sucks" to quit smoking, but there's a way to make it "suck less," Laurie Burkitt reports.

Mercedes is expected to announce today that it is signing a 10-year deal to sponsor a new $280-million basketball and entertainment venue on the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China. The facility is being developed by Los Angeles-based entertainment titan AEG, the National Basketball Association and Oriental Pearl Group, a division of Shanghai Media Entertainment Group, Roger Vincent reports. Terms were not disclosed. The arena will be about the same size as Staples Center in Los Angeles and will be used as the performing arts center for the six-month World Expo fair starting in May. It will become Mercedes-Benz …

Gunther Volkswagen in Coconut Creek, Fla., may look like it's stuck in the Sixties with three psychedelic VW Microbuses near the entrance and a huge poster of Jimi Hendrix on the wall, among other retro window dressing, but the grooviest thing about it, as far as VW Group of America is concerned, is that it sells more cars that any other dealership in the U.S., Diana T. Kurylko reports. And so, headquarters is willing to overlook a few of the rules that the 52-year-old owner, Casey Gunther, is breaking en route to selling an estimated 3,300 to 3,500 new vehicles …