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As far as lessons for business from the democracy tsunami sweeping the Middle East (see last post), I'd suggest the following. Note that like Egypt and Tunisia, individual companies such as Dell have suffered flash revolts by disgruntled customers which created immense reputation damage, defeating the old school corporate PR... read more →

The historic popular uprisings that are sweeping the Muslim world, from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya, spreading to Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, even Iran and throughout the Middle East may contain lessons for businesses. Why are people who've been oppressed for decades--centuries really--suddenly rising up throughout the region? Here's my... read more →

From Reference Point newsletter, March 2011. To subscribe, please contact me (contact info is in upper right corner). First let's me be clear on the difference between a sales reference and a referral. A sales reference helps a salesperson move a deal or close it with a prospect with whom... read more →

Here's a look at the winners of the World's Best Customer Video Contest. They were announced at the recently completed 2011 Summit on Customer Engagement. They include the Citrix Systems video, "Citrix Innovation Award Winner - SNR Denton (formerly Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP)," and the Intel customer video, "DreamWorks is... read more →

We have just 12 seats left at the 2011 Summit on Customer Engagement. If you or your team members haven't already registered, please do so soon. You can register here.We're getting a terrific diversity of customer engagement professionals, which will greatly enrich the learning that occurs. Here's a sampling of... read more →

Here are some major opportunities for customer reference programs in the new world (we'll explore these more at the upcoming Summit in March). You'll notice that most of these involve important roles reference programs can play by collaborating with other customer engagement programs. 1. Building referrals "Referrals" may seem like... read more →

Just a heads up (we haven't even posted it to the Presenters Page yet)--that we've added two new presenters at the 2011 Summit on Customer Engagement, one for our Customer Reference Programs track, and one to our Customer Communities and Social Media track. Creating Product Leadership Through Industry Customer Councils, by... read more →

 Earky registration discount is about to expire for the 2011 Summit on Customer Engagement. If you plan to attend and haven't already registered, you can do so here. Join your peers from many of the world's great customer engagement programs--including Salesforce.com, Research in Motion, Cisco Systems, Blackboard, Microsoft, IBM, AmerisourceBergen,... read more →

I'm thrilled to announce that Tom Wong, one of the most creative as well as accomplished marketing executives I've encountered--and mastermind of Dreamforce, SFDC's hugely successful customer conference--will be keynoting the 2011 Summit on Customer Engagement. This is breaking news--we don't yet have his abstract up on the Website yet,... read more →

Stay tuned on this. The 2011 Summit on Customer Engagement is going to have an increadible keynote from arguably the most successful technology firm over the last ten years, whose CEO directly credits customer evangelists as a--if not the--critical component for this firm's success, Indeed the firm has been built... read more →