Contact centres slow to respond

Customers today, particularly those under the age of 30, want to communicate with a contact centre using the same methods they favour in their day-to-day lives, says Destination CRM.

These include text messages, e-mails, and calls from mobile phones. But, according to research recently released by contact centre software provider Rostrvm Solutions, contact centres aren`t getting the message.

"Your customers are beginning to demand multimedia communications," the report says. "Twelve percent of all call centres, rising to 17% in larger call centres, report that a current problem is customers want to use multimedia communications."

In 2006, the global CRM software market was worth just under $3.6 billion in licence revenue alone and is forecast to reach $6.6 billion by year-end 2012, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.5%, according to a new Datamonitor report, says Marketing Vox News.

CRM licence revenue and maintenance revenue together are expected to surpass the $10 billion mark globally by year-end 2012, with maintenance revenue reaching approximately $3.6 billion.

The report: "Economic Outlook: Customer Relationship Management", attributes growth to increasing deployment of CRM in new vertical segments as well as new flexibility in modes of deployment.

Oracle today announced that The PNC Financial Services Group has upgraded to Oracle`s Siebel CRM to support new customer service capabilities and increase scalability to manage continued growth, states CNN Money.

PNC worked with IBM and Oracle to migrate to the upgraded Siebel CRM application infrastructure.

PNC`s retail and corporate and institutional businesses use Siebel CRM to provide a highly responsive, fully integrated client view across all sales channels.