A reader asks: Is sending out newsletters still an effective way to increase customer loyalty? Our organization normally sends out new product notifications several times a year, but we are considering either a paper or email newsletter to go out more frequently. Is once a month a standard schedule? We are trying to strike a balance between keeping in touch and inundating customers with mail from us.

There was a time when online portals were restricted to auction sites like eBay. Amazon’s success in the US has spurred it to venture outside American soil opening portals to serve customers in Canada, the United Kingdom, German, France, Japan and China. Amazon turned a tidy profit of US$5 million on US$1 billion sales. Hong Kong is staking its claim in the online world with CSL throwing the first volley following the launch of its online channel in early 2010.

Call center agents do not have the best job in the world. They are often jeered, ridiculed, maligned and in some cases called names in the name of their jobs. But not all situations are bad. The best among them have had positive impact experience dealing with customers who are often at wits end, frustrated or just plain tired. Many customers are often just looking to find the answer to their problem.

We're interested in seeing how a recent redesign of our website is impacting the online customer experience, but we aren't sure how to measure this. Has there ever been a correlation drawn between the percentage of visitors to a support website and the number of calls received?

Twitter has elements that are great for word-of-mouth marketing, but from a CRM perspective, it’s a lot like email or chat or self-service. It combines aspects of each, while exhibiting certain unique characteristics, as we explored in a prior column. Twitter is also a way to express consumer frustrations and reach customers who may be frustrated before they do something drastic like cancelling their subscription or -- even worse -- telling the world that they plan to!

Business executives working for contact centers or internal sales/marketing teams or media agencies all share the same predicament as the Chief Marketing Officer of any Fortune 500 company – how do I use social media to really sell. During the Icelandic volcanic eruption when flight cancellations around Europe were a commonality, Lufthansa showed us how powerful Twitter was as a tool to build loyalty that lasts a lifetime.

How should our company "let go" of unsavory customers? By this, I mean the rude customers who scream at our call center agents or continually call about non-issues. When and how should we coach agents on "giving up," so to speak, on customers who aren't worth the customer service we offer them?

Marketers who, just a few years ago, were focused squarely on customer acquisition have been forced by the recession to reverse course and ensure that the company is retaining customers.