MTM Recognition, the world's leading employee reward and recognition solutions provider, today announced the launch of Carousel, a proprietary, customizable social engagement platform, uniting today's multi-generational workforce through web-based recognition.

"With the continued growth of social media and remote worksites come new challenges to manage and engage a diverse workforce," said Mike Ketcherside, VP Sales MTM. "Carousel meets this challenge by offering a reward and recognition platform that is familiar and fun for users and provides opportunity for frequent and public recognition anywhere, anytime."

Carousel is designed to drive desired behaviors and reinforce company values through a customizable badge system. Badges can be earned for any accomplishment determined by the client. This platform can be used for any reward and recognition initiative including important milestones, safety, service, wellness or performance.

Led primarily by increases in satisfaction with policy offerings and billing and payment, overall customer satisfaction with auto insurance companies has reached an all-time high, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Auto Insurance Study(SM) released today.

The study measures customer satisfaction with auto insurance companies across five factors: interaction; price; policy offerings; billing and payment; and claims. Overall satisfaction with auto insurance companies is 804 (on a 1,000-point scale), up 14 points from 2011. Satisfaction levels in 2012 are the highest since the study was launched in 2000.

Satisfaction increases in all factors in 2012, with significant improvements in policy offerings (+30 points) and interaction (+19 points). Satisfaction with price is essentially unchanged from 2011.

Connecting with customers, enabling associates to become knowledgeable and empowering the IT organization to meet business needs should be the top three priorities of retailers, according to Motorola Solutions.

The company unveiled several solutions Wednesday designed to help retailers meet those three goals with an end result of delivering "the shopping experience of the future", according to Retail Customer Experience.com.

From mobile POS solutions to smart badges that deliver tasks and product info to employees, Motorola executives demonstrated their vision of the retail future in a mock store setting in New York City. The "store" featured the company's newest solutions in action, showcasing how technology is changing the customer experience. Before seeing the product demonstrations, however, attendees sat in on a panel with Motorola execs, and a couple of retail experts, that discussed the future of retail and technology's vital role.

Oracle is planning to build on its acquisitions of companies such as ATG, Fatwire and RightNow with a new product strategy centered around customer experience management, as co-president Mark Hurd will explain on Monday during an event in New York.

CEM refers to the notion of improving a customer's experience wherever they may be and through all possible channels, with the results ideally being happier buyers and, of course, more revenue.

"Customers want to interact with a company wherever and however they want," said Anthony Lye, senior vice president of CRM (customer relationship management) at Oracle, in an interview prior to Monday's event. "It's not just call centers, not just stores or face-to-face. It includes mobile and social [networks] and kiosks."

It has always been a simple idea, find out what a customer likes, do it, and they will come back. However it appears that the shift in consumers buying patterns, after the recession, has been grossly ignored by a number of industries. High street retail in the UK has been one of the worst hit; with the likes of La Senza, HMV, Habitat, Jane Norman, Barrats, Peacocks and Clinton Cards all either selling up franchises or entering administration over the 2011-2012 period (BBC News, May 2012).

Finding and keeping customers is the name and game of business. Every business needs customers, and very simply the more customers, the more profitable and successful a business becomes. So why are some businesses growing with new customers while others as mentioned above have failed? Source Marketing Direct say it is most likely down to how much effort each business put into attaining the right information, and more importantly how effectively the business utilises that information from their customers.

In the same space as around!, Squiryl, and Perx, the idea behind Shoppening isn’t new. But it caught my attention at the recent CommunicAsia 2012 event in Singapore for two reasons: One, it is a Thai startup. Two, it has a female co-founder.

In essence, Shoppening addresses the problem of having too many membership cards and discount coupons. It is a mobile application and campaign management platform, which allows merchants to create mobile coupons and mobile loyalty programs. So customers can now redeem their items using paperless coupons, and continue collecting their loyalty stamps using the app. Aside from catering to the customers, merchants can also do online monitoring and analytics services to keep track of mobile campaigns and make sure that it is effective.