After three months in beta, new travel site Orbitz went live this week, only to run head-on into one of those classic Internet good-news, bad-news scenarios: traffic was huge, exceeding expectations, but the servers and call centers were overwhelmed by…
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Hewlett-Packard Co. today unveiled an ambitious plan to develop and market new Internet solutions for the aviation industry through a jointly established Aviation Solution Center. The new center will include people, products and services from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ aviation consulting…
A new report, urging businesses to improve their reverse logistics, says that the value of returned merchandise purchased online is expected to reach an estimated $5.8 billion in 2005, representing 90 million items. The Jupiter Media Metrix research report contends…
Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, a unit of Paris-based communications equipment maker Alcatel (NYSE:ALA) said it plans to buy the CallPath computer telephony assets of IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM) for an undisclosed sum. CallPath is telephony software that helps integrates voice and data…
Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) is teaming with B2B software company i2 Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:ITWO) for joint engineering, sales, support and marketing for next-generation CRM products. Customer relationship management solutions developed under this alliance are intended to enable iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions,…
Did you ever send an urgent e-mail to somebody, asking about something that was temporarily vital to you — like whether or not to make reservations for dinner tonight? I bet it left you checking your inbox every 20 minutes…
How far are we from virtual customer service reps — bots, if you will — that are absolutely indistinguishable from human sales clerks? Bots that could pass a Turing test — leaving you unaware if you are conversing with a…
I was once again reminded how fragile this consumer confidence thing is after making a couple of recent e-commerce type purchases. One of the transactions went as smooth as can be but left me paying more than I would have…
Remember that Jack Palance television commercial from a few years back, in which he intones in a dulcet voice: “Confidence is very sexy!”? The e-commerce version apparently is that “confidence is very profitable,” at least according to a recent industry…
So many e-commerce and corporate Web sites that I visit these days just seem to go out of their way to irritate me. And my No. 1 peeve (well, today’s pet peeve, at least) has to do with the telephone…