Big data is here! And, marketers are one of the professional groups that stand to gain the most from these new-found capabilities to analyze data that, until recently, would have been too complex to capture, store and make sense of. Behind the hype lies a golden opportunity for marketers and customer service to help their organizations get ahead of the competition. Cutting through all the noise can be a challenge, so it's important to understand what big data can achieve, what data is most useful, and how to go about using it.

If you've been following the trends recently in Social Media you are no doubt watching a new revolution taking hold; brands and retailers creating customer tools using SCRAM and reaping the benefits of the data it provides.

I've been talking a lot lately about chatter marketing (I literally wrote the book on it!) and I'm still often taken aback when I see companies that are not using the easiest component of chatter marketing to put the R back in CRM: the concept of website reengagement.

Years ago, CRM was merely the management of a Rolodex. In fact, one's Rolodex was one's badge of honor. Good sales people were characterized as "having a good Rolodex." People were hired away from competitors because of their Rolodex. If you had a new boss, it was decided whether they were good or bad based on their Rolodex, and, ultimately, if you were given access. Your Rolodex became part of your bio, your CV and even your professional DNA. I once heard a colleague say that someone had a Rolodex so big it would "choke a horse"; that was a …

Integrate your customer care and collections operations to enhance customer relationships, reduce collection costs and improve your bottom line.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, punish me with telemarketer calls! Forget everything you have read about CRM needing to be a tool you install, a program that you launch, or a team of "experts" you need to hire. After watching the Facebook "fMC" webcast and the new FB tools launching, Facebook is likely your best investment for CRM.

It's not just a Paul Simon song. Part of the job of doing good customer relationship management is making sure that everyone is, in fact, satisfied and-hopefully-happy.

I always joke that in my next life, I will come back as a customer. Earlier in my career, I was almost always the "sales guy," the "vendor" or the "supplier." I would like to think I was viewed as a partner, but I'm sure that was not always the case. Along the way, we have all encountered the "crazy" customer. A crazy customer is not necessarily a bad customer, and in many cases, they can actually be good customers. A "good" customer is narrowly defined by sales management and the finance department as "someone who buys stuff and pays …

Many agree that listening to the voice of the customer is becoming more critical, but sometimes it's not clear where to begin when launching a broader corporate initiative. Organizations that have successfully implemented a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program often started by looking to the Voice of the Employee (VoE) first. This move makes perfect sense, as it's difficult to achieve an excellent customer experience if your employees are unhappy.

Taking your CRM efforts and creating personas around user behavior is not a new idea. In fact, most marketers have already earned their stripes creating deep, targeted user profiles based on data they have and trends they see; the user falls into a particular bucket and they are marketed to accordingly, end of story.