Consumer Reports and Facebook users agree: AT&T is America’s worst wireless service

America’s most unpopular cell phone company has hit a new low. AT&T Wireless was rated last in customer experience by subscribers of Consumer Reports for the second year in a row.

And people don’t like AT&T on Facebook very much, either.

Consumer Reports surveyed  66,000 magazine subscribers who responded with their experiences using contract and non-contract wireless service. Twenty two carriers were  evaluated overall, but only four provide service nationwide: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.… Continue Reading

Oracle puts down $1.5B for RightNow’s cloud-based sales force service

Oracle plans to acquire cloud-based sales force automation and customer service company RightNow for $1.5 billion, the company announced Monday morning.

The planned acquisition makes a ton a sense in light of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s announcement earlier this month to finally push Oracle into public cloud computing after many years of shunning cloud services. The Oracle Public Cloud will let its customers use Oracle apps direct from the Web or deploy native apps in … Continue Reading

Lithium hires a new CEO for helping enterprises engage with customers

Lithium, a company that makes customer relationships more social, is announcing today that it has hired a veteran Adobe executive as its new chief executive.

Rob Tarkoff (pictured right) will replace founder Lyle Fong (pictured below) as CEO of Emeryville, Calif.-based Lithium. Fong will become the chief strategist and remain on the board. The change is effective Sept. 2.

The new addition will help the company figure out how to further marshal the power of … Continue Reading

Social CRM company reaches out to small businesses with Assistly 2.0

Customer relationship management (CRM) software provider Assistly is shaking up its business model to become affordable for smaller and mid-sized businesses.

Assistly’s application gives businesses ways to interact with customers via various social media sites like Twitter and Facebook as well as email, all through a single window. Like the customer service product it is, Assistly listened to its own reviews and found smaller and mid-sized businesses could not afford the product.

Enter new business … Continue Reading

UserVoice ramps up customer service tools

UserVoice may be best known for offering companies a way to collect user feedback and product ideas (it’s in the name, after all), but that’s not all the company can do. Two months ago, the San Francisco startup added a basic customer service product through a new package called UserVoice Full Service, and now it’s taking another step in that direction with the launch of a standalone HelpDesk product.

Naturally, UserVoice said both moves were … Continue Reading

Tello launches an app to rate customer service anywhere

A new mobile application called Tello offers you a chance to weigh in on the good and bad experiences you have at a restaurant, retail store, or anywhere else.

Think of it as a chance to speak to the manager without actually having to speak to the manager. I’ve certainly had customer service moments when I really wanted to complain about how badly I’d been treated or praise someone who’d done an amazingly good job … Continue Reading

Apptio slides past its third round funding goal thanks to Cisco, raises $20M

Apptio, maker of an analytics suite for IT executives, announced today that it has completed a fundraising round worth $20 million that was oversubscribed from its original goal of $16.5 million thanks to an investment from Cisco Systems.

The company offers a web-based software service that helps monitor financial and operational data about IT and technical customer support. The service compiles all the data and gives companies a dashboard of tools for visualizing and analyzing … Continue Reading

Oops! Verizon refunding $90M to customers for data charges

Verizon Wireless announced yesterday that it’s refunding $90 million to around 15 million customers who were mistakenly charged for data access on their phones over the past few years.

The majority of affected customers will see credits in the $2 to $6 range on their next bill. Former customers who have moved on to another carrier will receive checks.

The charges stemmed from customers who mistakenly accessed data sessions on their phones, even though they … Continue Reading

Tello lets you vote down employees for poor customer service

Tello, an online service that lets users rate specific employees and businesses based on customer service, announced it is launching its website, mobile Web app, and iPhone app today at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.

Users on Tello, Instead of writing a detailed review through a site like Yelp, simply give a thumbs up or a thumbs down based on the service delivered by a business or a specific employee. Users can also provide a … Continue Reading

DEMO: Vonata bypasses call center mazes, eliminates the secretary

Vonata is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Shervin Talieh wants to eliminate the call center. So the serial entrepreneur is taking another run at a tech startup with Vonata, a tool that promises to eliminate wait times to talk to a customer … Continue Reading

VCs seek satisfaction: Customer service startup Get Satisfaction raises $6M

Get Satisfaction had already attracted some early-stage investors to back its online customer service tools, but today it announced that it has raised $6 million in its first institutional round of funding.

The San Francisco startup initially drew attention by allowing customers to create and post messages on customer service pages that weren’t sponsored by the companies under discussions, a model that Get Satisfaction touted as a way to let customers drive the conversations. Those … Continue Reading