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iCOMS provides electronic commerce applications for companies that are looking to do business online, and already supplies services to more than a hundred firms. The company sets up online commerce systems that allow retail and business-to-business merchants to "pay as they sell," rather than invest up front in technology and staffing.

This area could well be the hottest in customer service in 2000. Larger sites will likely hire their own online chat staffs, much the same way that they operate customer call centers. In fact, it is possible that many voice call center operators will have chat capabilities added.

As part of this new alliance, Microsoft will train Simon staff to demonstrate the MSN service and answer questions about it. Both Simon and Microsoft stand to increase their Internet presence as a result of the deal. Microsoft has already linked itself with Tandy's RadioShack...

Answers.com works directly with a company's existing customer service providers, including toll-free phone staff and people-monitoring live chat areas on the site. Answers.com filters through the frequently asked questions consumers have, answering the ones it can and referring the others to the company's live customer service representatives.

The partnership calls for a number of pioneering cross-promotional efforts. One significant initiative calls for Healtheon/Web MD to rely on a staff of 100 full-time medical experts in providing healthcare content that will be used across all of the News Corp's media properties. These properties include Fox Television, the British Sky Broadcasting network, the New York Post and dozens of other newspapers in Britain and Australia.

Well, my experience has been quite the opposite. If one factors in the value of the time wasted in getting to the store and the aggravation experienced in trying to buy an item from an understaffed sales floor, one quickly realizes how well e-tailers compare price-wise. ...

The SEC wants to see an increased amount of discussion between trading companies and SEC staffers to develop regulatory strategies that will protect consumers in the fast and risky online trading world. New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer went a step further, announcing ...

Barbour and his new team redesigned the site, expanded its product offerings, and added staff to its customer service center. Toys "R" Us then aligned itself with online giants America Online and Yahoo! and began advertising its site on the radio. The company has made many of...

Allstate Corp. (NYSE: ALL), the nation's largest personal property insurance company, announced yesterday that it plans to cut back its call centers and non-sales staffs and replace some of those functions with direct-response call centers and the Internet Allstate will invest...

During that period this year, the company hired 200 additional workers in customer service and 900 in fulfillment and distribution, according to Paul Mikos, president and CEO of RemedyTemp, Inc., an e-commerce staffing service. RemedyTemp has also provided workers for other h...

Agillion will use its first round of funding to create a major marketing campaign, hire additional staff and develop new features and strategic partnerships. "Agillion is giving business people the necessary technology tools to make their businesses succeed and is addressing ...

SmartAge's Kinko's-like business model also appeals to analysts, some of whom have hailed the company as an incipient giant of the Internet. "I'm pretty impressed," says Jack Staff, chief economist at Zona Research, in Redwood City, Calif. "Small businesses need to be able to market on the Web without a lot of overhead." ...

"Spamming has a profound effect on consumers, Internet service providers and the Internet as a whole," Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley (R-Virginia) said in a prepared statement before the hearing began. Consumers spend time and money sifting through the many messages to determine which are unsolicited, and ISPs have to deal with bulk e-mails to multiple recipients, which can tie up network bandwidth and monopolize staff resources.

One of Inc.com's primary missions is to locate, package and recommend solutions for meeting small business challenges. The site's staff selected 100 Web-delivered applications and tools from dozens of providers. The providers are independent firms that submitted their products and services to the site's staff for review and testing.

"The enhanced local content found on CitySearch city guides is now more extensive than that of any other portal, with most of the information being delivered by CitySearch staff who know the ins and outs of their communities," said company CEO Charles Conn. ...

Wall Street reacted negatively to the income result last week, and eBay's stock fell in trading. However, the company said that it had forecasted the income result, saying that investments in computers and staff to deal with power outages and its expansion into new markets and products were the cause...

The dot-corp is staffed by a combination of internal and external personnel. It seems to work best if the corporation wantse-commerce to be a heavily controlled extension of the existing corporation and its product or service mix. Many of the large retailers originally jumped...

Entropic has staff in Washington, DC and Cambridge, UK. Washington staff members will relocate to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, or to the Cambridge office. Entropic's Cambridge office will expand.

To bring this scenario about, it has been reported that AltaVista has beefed up its staff to more than 600 employees from a measly 80 workers last year. It has also created a new tag line for the plethora of TV commercials it has scheduled: "AltaVista: Smart is beautiful." Th...

Who will respond? While some companies have devoted entire customer service teams exclusively to addressing e-mail inquiries, other companies incorporate e-mail response services with existing telephone Customer Service Representative (CSR) responsibilities. Either route you take, you should strongly consider administering a written exam to those people responsible for sending e-mail replies. This will ensure that you are sending intelligent and grammatically correct messages to your customers. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages that depend on your specific business and customer service model. What you have to keep top of mind is that you need an adequate staff to accommodate all the inquiries your company receives, whatever method they arrive.