The DS Team has tracked 7 companies that merged, received funding, or were acquired in the month of April 2012. The list includes companies from the following software verticals: Business Intelligence & Analytics, Education & Collaborative Learning Platforms, Content Management & Engagement, Telecom, Marketing Automation, and Customer Service.

Happy Aloha Friday!  To celebrate the weekend, I wanted to share with you this infographic I came across on Social Customer Service by Our Social Times. Personally, I have found that I get a much faster reaction from a company if I contact them via Twitter instead of email.  This is usually because my tweets are public and can be damaging if they don't address it.  Looks like customer service is now in the hands of the customer with social media.  But is this true for every company?  While the trend is moving towards social media outreach, it doesn't seem to be quite there yet, according to this infographic.

When providing software-as-a-service the most important thing is customer retention. Sure it looks good to close a deal and bring on a new customer, but can you keep that customer? Here are 5 solutions that not only help you keep those customers, but turn them into evangelists.

There is a great article posted today on Mashable.com that details a few tips for building loyal customers that refer more business at the very least, or best, promote your services and brand on their own. The best example of a company that has built a loyal base of customer evangelists is Apple. Create great products and position them in a way that benefits the customer post sale is the basis for creating this type of movement.

KANA Software, Inc., customer service solutions provider, announced today the acquisition of Trinicom, provider of customer service and interaction software. The acquisition brings KANA to the cloud, expanding its existing on-premise customer service solutions into the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) arena.  KANA plans to support new and existing Trinicom customers and expand its market reach to mid-sized businesses globaly. The details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

This infographic by ClickSoftware is titled "The State of Customer Service," but it should really say customer success. What is the different between customer service and customer success? Are they two of the same? The infographic gives you a snapshot of the customer service industry today as it relates to enterprise software.