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January 29, 2001

Xchange Offers More Ways To Keep Customers Loyal

Upgrade can access legacy systems and front-office apps to collect customer information

More on marketing automation:

Customers Take Control (12/18/00)

Xchange Changes More Than Just Its Name (11/6/00)

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good way for businesses to upset loyal customers is to not know that they're loyal customers. Xchange Inc. this week will offer a new release of its marketing automation software to help companies keep track of customers by linking multiple customer-relationship management tools, including sales-force automation, call-center, and campaign-management applications.

The major enhancements in the Xchange 7 line are in the Real Time suite of channel-integration apps. The system can now access legacy systems and front-office applications in real time to collect customer information. The software will, for example, let a bank employee access records about a customer's earlier conversations with the call center or information about a low-interest loan offer the customer received from the bank's E-mail marketing campaign. Real Time provides integration with a range of CRM applications, including those from BroadVision, Clarify, Siebel Systems, and Vantive.

Xchange 7 also includes a variety of marketing, campaign-management, analysis, and messaging applications. Other enhancements include workflow wizards to simplify campaign creation, execution, and analysis, and E-mail alerts on the status of marketing campaigns. The software will be available this spring; prices can run up to $1 million.

Photo by Brian Finke Citigroup, a longtime Xchange user, is already using some of the new apps. "Xchange is the backbone of our CRM strategy," says Noor Menai, managing director of CRM and consumer portals. The New York financial-services company is using Xchange 7 to distribute marketing and campaign-management data to regional and branch offices. Menai says the software's flexibility will let Citigroup adapt the system for offices in the 100 countries in which it operates.