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Adtran Acquires Objectworld
In his Communications and Technology Blog, Rich Tehrani writes:

I got a tip that ADTRAN was acquiring Objectworld. My take? Objectworld is a company with great UC technology and no brand recognition. ADTRAN is a company with a product line similar to Cisco but much smaller. Still, with a market cap of over $1.4 billion, Objectworld can really get a boost from ADTRAN’s access to capital, infrastructure, reseller network, carrier relationships and improved branding.

Visit Rich’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/

Unsubscribe and Permission
In his On Rad’s Radar, Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO (News - Alert), Inc writes:

Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing in 1999. Ten years later, most media companies don’t understand the concept still. As Seth explains in the book and in his blog numerous times, when I give you my e-mail address, it is a trust issue. I trust that you will not spam me; inundate me with off-topic e-mail; and most importantly not sell my e-mail address to third parties, even if they are your partners.

All too often, when I sign up for an event, I get inundated with e-mail from the vendors of the event. This irks me for a number of reasons, but mostly because I did not give my e-mail address to them.

This is a failure on so many levels. The media company has a database of e-mail addresses that are mostly “junk.” By that I mean Yahoo, Hotmail and the like. That means they are likely not sending email that will not be read.

An advertiser is paying to send an e-mail that will be likely read. It does no good to pay for 5,000 e-mails if 4,500 of them are worthless, unopened, bounced or sitting in an e-mail box that gets opened infrequently.

By the way, the CAN-SPAM Act is one thing, but your media company brand gets destroyed by these kinds of hijinks. Act accordingly.

Visit Peter’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/on-rads-radar/

ClickFox (News - Alert)
In his “First Coffee” blog, TMCnet’s David Sims writes:

ClickFox, which sells customer experience analytics products, has announced what company officials call “the expansion of their deployment” with a telecommunications organization to include “all customer interactions across all of their interaction channels.”

The coyly-unnamed wireless provider will use both existing and new interaction analysis to “further improve operational efficiency, customer retention, revenue generation and customer satisfaction.”

Marco Pacelli, CEO of ClickFox, notes correctly that the telecommunications industry has “steep competition, high customer churn and highly publicized customer satisfaction issues.” Amen, that last one goes double.

Fascinating question, isn’t it? Which came first, the lousy customer service, high churn or stiff competition? If customer service were better would churn decrease? Is such a thing possible? What would it look like: increasing the quality of customer service to the point where it actually reduces churn? Interesting question, somebody get Paul Greenberg on it right away... well, when the Yankees game’s over.

These issues need to be constantly monitored and analyzed, company officials say, adding that limited analysis doesn’t always cut it when it comes to getting insight.

ClickFox officials are trying to position CEA as a counterpoint to what they call “traditional business intelligence and data warehousing approaches,” touting their ability to deliver “enterprise-wide investigative insight into customer experience and behavior.” If you’re looking for a one-sentence differentiation, well, First Coffee supposes that’s as good as any.

Visit David’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/

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