Selecting customer service technology can be a daunting task. Technology buyers have to consider their customers’ needs, their company’s needs, and how well a vendor can meet those needs. What makes the selection process even more difficult—particularly this year—is that many of the leading customer service vendors have made great technological strides in social media, mobile technology, big data, virtual assistants, the cloud, analytics, and other areas. This is why we bring you our annual Service Awards issue (now in its 11th year).
As always, we never assume to know each of our readers’ specific customer service needs, as they vary widely. Therefore, we’ve taken a broad view of the major vendors in eight customer service categories and asked our judges to evaluate and score the companies based on the following important criteria: reputation for customer satisfaction, depth of functionality or services, company direction, and technology costs over a five-year period.
It’s a pretty rigorous process that requires a lot of researching and reporting. Once the numbers are in, we enter them into our proprietary scoring formula and come up with our esteemed list of Service Leaders. It is our hope that, combined with your own due diligence, our Service Awards issue can help you make the right customer service technology purchases for your company.
By the editors of CRM magazine
For the 11th year in a row, the editors of CRM magazine would like to offer their deepest gratitude to those who participated, in varying degrees, in evaluating the candidates for our Service Awards. This issue, and the awards themselves, would not be possible without the generous contributions of the following judges, commenters, assessors, and raters: Leslie Ament, senior vice president and principal analyst, Hypatia Research; Dick Bucci, founder and president, Pelorus Associates; Donna Fluss, founder and president, DMG Consulting; Paul Greenberg, president, The 56 Group; Johan Jacobs, independent consultant; Vicki Jenkins, CMS outsourcing consultant, NelsonHall; Esteban Kolsky, founder and principal analyst, ThinkJar; Mitch Kramer, senior vice president and analyst, Patricia Seybold Group; Ken Landoline, principal analyst, Current Analysis; Kate Leggett, principal analyst, Forrester Research; Michael Maoz, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner Research; Sheila McGee-Smith, principal analyst, McGee-Smith Analytics; John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research, Technology Services Industry Association; Peter Ryan, principal analyst, Ovum; TJ Singh, research vice president, Gartner Research; Paul Stockford, chief analyst, Saddletree Research; Ray Wang, principal analyst and founder, Constellation Research; Rebecca Wettemann, vice president, Nucleus Research.