-
About
Notes and views on CRM, open business models, and what the Web means for customer relationships. [more]
-
Speaking at:
Telecoms CRM, CEM and User Experience 2008
Travel
Linkblog
Photos
Quote of the day
Sphere: Related Content“It eludes to some people that the internet is already providing the ‘one place’ where others can find anything about anything. Pretending that the bad stuff is not out there is no way to protect someone’s image. Or pretending that the image the world sees is the one they are presenting of themselves. Image silos are down just as much as the communications silos. Credibility is a function of several things - transparency, speed of response, expertise and authentic voice. By admitting to mistakes or addressing others’ mistaken perception of actions, companies can demonstrate two things - confidence in their own identity and respect for their audience by not shoving anodyne and watered down versions of it. Otherwise, others will do it for you.” - Adriana
My search for the perfect Linux smartphone
OK I’M A GEEK. No surprise there. And I didn’t really need all those gadgets I got, like the oh-so-sexy Zaurus SL5500 that I’ve recently given to my wife. But I can’t find a cure for my affliction, and lately I’ve been looking for another time-waster: a Linux cellphone.
My reasons:
- Philosophical: current market leaders (Symbian, Windows Mobile, and the rest) provide closed-source platform with limited options for user control. I believe open platforms ultimately bring more value to the customer, regardless of whether he feels he ought to be in control or not.
- Practical: I have needs that are common (making and receiving calls, texting my pals, etc.) and less-so (for instance, logging into remote console to restart a server). You could argue that I could do the latter using another device, to which I say: the technology is mature enough so that I could do that with my phone, so why can’t I?
I don’t want a company to decide what I can and cannot do with my phone. And I want to install whatever application the phone’s hardware can handle regardless of whether it’s supposed to run on a phone or not.
This is about CRM 2.0, folks: the customer isn’t a passive recipient of whatever value businesses throw at him but an active participant in the value creation process. Read more
Sphere: Related ContentUsing wiki for bug-tracking
AS BUSINESS ANALYST, I’ve been involved in a small project in Bratislava, Slovakia. Now that I wear the tester’s cap, I am having the dubious pleasure of seeing my design materialized on the screen. And I am helping developers to debug the thing.
The 4-person team is using a wiki to track issues, and I quite like the casual feeling. We could use a “fully dressed” solution like Bugzilla. And if the team were bigger, we’d have to.
The joys of using “undressed” or “partially dressed” processes & tools are sadly underrated. Companies love to grow and adopt “mature” frameworks to prove they are growing responsibly. That’s why we have RUP and CMM(I) (and why lots of techies wear suits). But sometimes the solution that barely does the job is a whole lot better than one that offers a myriad of options and forces you to follow a process.
The wiki just does what we need: I manually add an issue into a list and a developer will color it green once he’s done with it. Simple to the point it doesn’t feel like work. It’s more like an impromtu conversation. And the job gets done fast!
I’ll recommend this to any small software team: travel lightly, and you’ll get there sooner and with fewer pains encountered on the way. (Damn, have I just discovered Agile?)
Technorati Tags: testing, agile, software development
PS This is my first post that is related to what I do for a living. Perhaps I should re-think my tagline unless I do more of this. And the title, too, since there hasn’t been much of the classical CRM here. I love the way this blog defines itself regardless of my will.
No need to love the supplier of toilet paper
DOC SEARLS HAS FINALLY ANSWERED a question I’ve silently pondered for a long time: do I have to “have a relationship” with everybody I do business with?
Cluetrain is a “must read” (markets are conversations) but do I REALLY NEED a conversation with the supplier of toilet paper?
Unique products and services, but commodity items?
To which Doc says:
For businesses that require no live communication with customers in the course of everyday work, markets are conversations means simply that the company still shouldn’t isolate itself either from talk within their marketplace or from talk with customers when the need arises. In other words, it should still be ready to Get Real when the time comes for real conversation.
And he provides a nice illustration.
How to “Get Real” when you, as a company, don’t have a vast number of super-engaged fanboys? I suppose toilet paper suppliers don’t often deal with the end-users of their product. And a blog about toilet paper wouldn’t probably have a huge following… or would it? Hey, there’s a niche for everybody on the net. If it were Engadget-style, who knows.
But conversations aren’t only about blogs, and I often forget that. The one thing any company, including the “boring” ones, can do is to humanize all their interactions with the outside world. And inside, too: employees are the most ignored group in CRM initiatives.
Technorati Tags: doc+searls, crm, crm+2.0
Sphere: Related ContentA Saturday Rant
I’VE FELT QUITE UNEASY about my job title lately. Senior Consultant, goddamit.
In a company, you’re supposed to climb the ladder or there’s something wrong with you. So you climb. And the higher you get, the more ridiculous you feel, or maybe you don’t ‘cuz you feel high. You’ve got status, man. Super-duper consulting chief honcho.
Could I just have something like “go-to guy” or “gets shit done” line on my business card?
Status is for cowards.
Sphere: Related ContentQuote of the Day
I JUST COULDN’T RESIST… this is a perfect formulation of CRM 2.0:
“Growth will come, I believe, not by increased efficiency so much, but by humanification. For example, take two well-known airlines. Both cost about the same to fly somewhere. Both have nice Boeings and Airbuses. Both serve peanuts and drinks. Both serve “airline food”. Both use the same airports. But one airline has friendly people working for them, the other airline has surly people working for them. One airline has a sense of fun and adventure about it, one has a sense of tired, jaded business commuter about it. Guess which one takes the human dimension of their business more seriously than the other? Guess which one still will be around in twenty years? Guess which one will lose billions of dollars of shareholder value over the next twenty years?” - Hugh MacLeod
(emphasis mine)
Sphere: Related ContentAmiestreet: How To Resuscitate The Music Business
THE SEARCH FOR NEW BUSINESS MODELS in music distribution has been a long and tiring one. It’s been RIAA vs the pirates and whatever your position is, it’s hard to say which side is winning. The one that’s been losing is easier to spot: the musicians. Robbed by the recording industry dinosaurs AND the bittorrent generation jointly.
Which is why I so love Amiestreet.
It’s a perfect market. Bands upload their songs. They’re initially free for a download; as they get more popular, their prices goes up until it reaches a pre-determined ceiling (98 cents at the moment). The band gets 7o% of the rate. (which is like, what, 69 points more than they get from a label?)
You, a listener, buy a credit and spend it on songs you like. But it doesn’t stop there: for every dollar you get a matching number of a social-network currency called a REC, which is basically a vote that you can cast to support the music you like. That the number of votes you get is constrained is supposed to prevent artificial “inflation of popularity” by overzealous fans. Clever!
Plus: the songs you download are DRM-free, thank goodness!
This is an attempt I passionately support: to re-introduce elementary principles of free markets to the music business so that both producers (musicians) and consumers maximize their value while the role of the middleman diminishes. It’s free of the Napster anarchy AND the music label dictatorship. And, happily, it’s free of amateurism as well: I could find a track I liked in a matter of minutes (Plastic Mary, loved your songs!).
What they should do to take this even further is to create a channel for fans to connect with the bands. We’re not talking about Madonna and her gazillion bodyguards, hairdressers, lawyers and such: it should be much easier to reach a level of intimacy with a band that’s brave enough to release their stuff there. So, if the key business differentiator today is to “attract high quality online networks of interesting and engaged users“, where else to begin than here, in the marketplace of music? You can’t find more passion anywhere else.
Technorati Tags: amiestreet, crm 2.0, music, music business, plastic mary, bittorrent
Sphere: Related ContentQuote of the Day
“First Coffee is of the belief that customers don’t particularly want to be managed. Any customers who enjoy being managed please do write in.” - David Sims @ First Coffee
Heh.
Sphere: Related ContentLinks for 2007-03-19
- Show me the money: “A key differentiator for businesses in the future will be their ability to attract high quality online networks of interesting and engaged users of their product or service and then delivering access to those networks to their new customers.” Very CRM 2.0ish,very true. Though I am still wondering how is this applicable to the vast majority of companies who are, frankly, quite boring (mmm, ever had a crush on your gas vendor?)
- How to host a product/feature design party: “Want to design the next great web app? Upgrade your product, but can’t decide what to add or change? Add a new feature to your product, but can’t decide how to implement it? Forget focus groups. Forget endless meetings and brainstorming sessions. Throw an ultra-rapid-design party, and do it in a single day. This approach exploits the wisdom-of-crowds through a process of enforced idea diversity and voting, so no consensus, committe, or even agreement is needed. And it’s way more fun.“
Linux vs Windows on the desktop, part MCLMXIII
Doc Searls and Abhijit Nadgouda point to a funny comment about Linux that sounds so dumb I have a strong feeling it’s actually a prank. Nah, the poster couldn’t have meant that seriously. Come on:
Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?
The article this comment belongs to isn’t a prank, though it certainly is a joke. Who has ever claimed that Linux will eventually displace Windows on the desktop? This kind of debate is getting tiresome. Maybe Linux isn’t going to dominate the desktop but that’s not the point: the question should be whether Linux is usable on its own, and then we could argue which OS has an edge and where. Plus, is this question going to be relevant five years from now? I don’t live in Firefox such yet, but damn, the webtop is growing stronger every day.
Sphere: Related Content-
Recently featured
-
Stay in touch
-
Blogroll
Promotion
