Ever stood in a busy shopping mall in the UK (and by the way same question applies to Delhi airport and a million other locations) and watched how many people are on their cell phones? It’s frightening to those of us who remember old telecom technologies like switchboards, bakelite handsets and even acoustic couplers.
There are [...]

Any business using social media to engage with customers is stepping into an unforgiving world. Social media should be a way of supporting and interacting with customers. If companies try to use it as a sales tool it will back fire.
Also if mistakes are made a brand can be seriously damaged. This is why the technology [...]

We are entering a new decade. Who would have thought that it would have flown past so fast? The party-like-it’s-1999 chant now seems positively dated.
And so does a lot of the IT services industry.
Why isn’t the corporate side of the industry supporting the tools and innovations that are being used by individuals? How many times [...]

Community is a buzz word in business today. You can now be a member of an online community and not just a customer. It feels like the business is giving the customer something else.
These platforms allow firms to engage with existing customers and potential customers and make them feel part of a community. Forums and [...]

I’ve spent much of the past two weeks explaining to non-techie friends and associates why Twitter is not just another Facebook or the latest Web 2.0 cross-over craze, but a landmark in the history of the Internet (and consequently business) as significant as the arrival of email, the web, Google search or peer-to-peer file sharing. [...]

Surviving and thriving through a downturn is as much about capturing a bigger slice of a shrinking market as it is about cutting costs, so focusing on customer service is key. But you won’t know what customers really want from you unless you listen and engage openly.
Traditionally, you might use market research to do this, [...]

The growing importance of new social network tools in improving the relationship between customers and service providers was brought home to me in a rather vivid fashion last week, although not necessarily in a way that will prove useful to many others.
It started mid-way through an important meeting at a newspaper office in London when [...]

President Barack Obama’s recently appointed Chief Information Officer, 34 year old Vivek Kundra, faces an enormous task as he is charged with helping the administration deliver its programme through effective deployment of technology.
He is currently on leave after the FBI raided the office he occupied in his previous role as chief technology officer for the [...]

A recent survey of 950 HR professionals and business managers reveals almost a third check up on employees and job candidates by looking at what they post on social networking sites. About a quarter say they have been put off hiring someone because of what they’ve found, with drunken photographs and use of obscenities wrinkling [...]

Tim Weber is business editor of the BBC News Online site, possibly the most popular news source on the Internet. He has been blogging recently from the World Economic Forum in Davos, and I thought the Exchange audience might be interested in an article he just posted on Friday.
Tim’s article is a great overview of [...]