Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Alex Bard, VP and GM of Desk.com, a Salesforce Company (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: There are limits to what you can do for your customers without blowing your profitability or viability. For example, we have taken this charter of democratizing entrepreneurship education. One of the value propositions we are working on is democratizing management consulting. Now, that cannot possibly happen. We charge a $1,000 annual membership fee,

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Alex Bard, VP and GM of Desk.com, a Salesforce Company (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Is there any specific area that you’re looking at as an area you want to bring expertise in-house for? Alex Bard: That’s not something I can comment on. SM: OK. What about innovation? What’s on your radar in terms of companies that are doing interesting things in this domain?

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Alex Bard, VP and GM of Desk.com, a Salesforce Company (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Given what’s going on in your business right now, and given the things that are happening in the industry, where do you see trends and open problems? Alex Bard: First we’ll talk about social, and then we’ll talk about mobile. Some of the interesting things that we’re seeing in social are deeper engagements

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Alex Bard, VP and GM of Desk.com, a Salesforce Company (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What strikes me also is that Virgin has a good product. The service is its product, and the company is doing a nice job of its core offering, whereas United is not doing a good job with its core offering. As a result, I don’t think it’s easy to turn around a social

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Alex Bard, VP and GM of Desk.com, a Salesforce Company (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This is not an easy problem to solve. It’s not easy to do social customer support, right? Alex Bard: Well, it depends. The way we think about it is – and this is if I was giving advice to an entrepreneur or business – you have to start by listening and understanding that

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Alex Bard, VP and GM of Desk.com, a Salesforce Company (Part 1)

Desk.com was founded in 2009 under the name of Assistly. The company released the premiere version of its Desk.com product in September 2010. By September 2011, the company had been acquired by Salesforce.com and Desk.com became one of many offerings that Salesforce.com provides for its international clientele. Sramana Mitra: Hi, Alex. Let’s start with a

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Penny Herscher, CEO of FirstRain (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: So, that’s your primary user interface, Jive or Chatter or whatever? Penny Herscher: Jive, Salesforce. It’s typically Salesforce.com CRM, Chatter, Jive, SharePoint, or the iPad. SM: OK. PH: Or a push in email. Then clients think they’re getting it in Outlook. Salespeople don’t need another tool. What they need is a workflow where

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Penny Herscher, CEO of FirstRain (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I’m sure social media are creating whole new opportunities for your business. Why don’t we explore that, especially if you have specific customer examples? Penny Herscher: There are two aspects that are social that are really impacting the workflow of the sales and marketing person. The first is, obviously, social media content. Twitter

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