notes and views on crm, social media, and the human side of information technology

Making CRM Personal

I KEEP HOPING THAT TECHNOLOGIES that are automating whatever we tell them to will one day bring the human element back. And they are: the whole Web 2.0 thing is about recognizing that we need communication, collaboration, self-expression in every area of our lives. Be it in the personal or business context.

Denis Pombriant writes about his experience with contractors and contrasts it with that provided by companies:

Because the contractors worked for themselves they held themselves to incredibly high standards. For instance the tile guy set up his wet saw on the front lawn and despite temperatures that were well below freezing—and ultimately froze his saw—he went outside to make cut after cut to perfect the junction of tiles on two walls so that they looked like perfect mirror images. [...]

It seems to me that agreeing on cost and deliverables is one of the biggest disconnects we currently have and it degrades customer relationships. It is certainly true that price negotiations have been a part of buying and selling since the earth cooled, but I think we may have gone too far in an almost exclusive focus on price in our dealings to the exclusion of things like quality, fit, and long term reliability. By focusing the discussion on shaving prices we have commoditized too much and in the process cheapened products and services to the point that some are hardly worth buying anymore. [...]

Economics has dealt a blow to CRM through a relentless focus on efficiency—of finding the equilibrium point where all markets clear. That approach might have worked in Adam Smith’s day when most of what people consumed was made at home or bartered for but it is at least unhelpful today and, I think causes real damage to the relationship.

True. And it’s a challenge for CRM to respond. How to create a culture of customer-centricity (gosh, how I hate that word!) unless your employees are intimately aware of the connection between the value they create and the value their employer receives in return from their customers? And why should they care, unless there is a value for them in there, too?

The sad truth is, rank-and-file employees are rarely incentivized to even bother thinking about customers. And it’s not their fault: the company is passionately removing every human element, imperfection, improvisation from its processes. To be efficient. CRM won’t amount to much unless it empowers, not eradicates, the human aspects of business interactions.

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 15, 2007 | Filed Under CRM | Leave a Comment 

Links for 2007-03-15

  • Are Web Interfaces “Good Enough”? I say no, no, no, they are nowhere near “good enough” but Jeff rightfully comments are just fine with the functionality AJAX and similar technologies provide. I didn’t recognize this when I wrote Presently Unimpressed. Even if Web interfaces are a huge step back in usability and comfort, if the masses accept them, just as they accepted VHS over Betamax, desktop developers will need to come up with something truly spectacular if they want to hold on to their jobs.
  • Do Not Work For A Big Company (if you want to be an entrepreneur):

    • [T]aking up a job is not on the way to entrepreneurship. I personally feel that attitude and aptitude required for both are completely different, maybe contradicting at times. The biggest thing that gets bypassed in a job is the ability to understand relationship between idea and value, and then between value and business.

    Yes, though if you want to cater to enterprises, it would make sense to learn how they work from the inside. Plus, you get to learn a lot on project work that you wouldn’t even dream about as a go-it-alone entrepreneur. I say an apprenticeship in a big company is definitely a useful thing. Just know when to quit!

March 15, 2007 | Filed Under Links and Quotes | Leave a Comment 

Does Your Software Out-smart You?

Cote writes:

I’m often confounded by software that’s too smart for my desires. Case in point this morning: as happens every week, several of the podcasts I haven’t listened to for awhile are marked with a little bang in iTunes. It’s stopped updating those podcasts because I haven’t listened to them in so long and wants to know if I’d like to keep downloading new episodes.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to turn this off. That’s life in Apple-land for you: thinking so you don’t have to.

Yeah. This is one of the reasons I did not fall in love with iPod and am still waiting for a Linux-based alternative (just kidding … or maybe not?).

On the other hand, my beloved has got one, and she’s happy precisely because Apple has done all the thinking for her and she, not being a geek, can focus only on what she cares about: listening to music. Everything that’s making that happen, processes and technologies, are completely transparent to her (she doesn’t care - she’s only concerned with the end result). And magically, the iPod is mostly right in predicting what she wants to do and how.

My take: the more competent you are with technologies, the less likely it is that you’ve developed your own way of doing things and the more choices you’re likely to demand. And chances are, you’ll be frustrated if the vendor assumes too much. You may be willing to accept the trade-off between simplicity and freedom (of configuration) and many have. Happily, the market has something to offer to just about everyone, and if you feel Apple is dumbing things down, well, you are free to look around for something more to your taste.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

March 14, 2007 | Filed Under CRM, Links and Quotes, Software delivery | 2 Comments 

How about unit-testing “Hello World!”

GILES BOWKETT IS GETTING SERIOUSLY PISSED about the FizzBuzz kerfuffle that has rocked the blogosphere as of late. I can see why: a simple test that’s supposed to weed out people totally unqualified for a programming job has become an idolatrous ideé-fix with coders around the world hacking implementations in all programming languages known to man. What a waste of time, except programmers are prone to getting lured into various time-wasters (well, at least I used so).

But I’m not re-blogging his piece to argue about FizzBuzz. He received a Java implementation thereof and noticed how bureaucratic and inflexible it was, especially given the simplicity of the task. He writes:

You need to be flexible and adaptable in business. This Java solution packs layers of beauraucracy onto what might be the simplest programming problem in the world. Layers of beauraucracy have the functional result of impeding change — consider how my solution, you can change anything, whereas the Java one supports some changes and not others, and the developer’s assumptions about what changes may or may not be necessary shape the eventual range of what changes are possible.

But the sociological result of layers of beauraucracy is the real danger here. Sociology is much more important to software development than people generally realize. The sociological effect of Java, in this case, is encouraging conformity and limiting imagination. [...]

Anybody who’s ever seen a software project fail or even falter knows that if you cover every reasonable variation, you’re going to build a whole lot of options that your client or users will never ever use or even see, wasting time and money in the process, while at the same time building something which can bend at every join except the one they need to flex. You shouldn’t cover reasonable variations. You shouldn’t cover any variations. You should code the quickest, simplest solution you possibly can, even if it looks stupid as fuck, and then if your client or your users need some change, you should choose the way to do it which requires the absolute minimum of work.

Amen to that, brother.

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 13, 2007 | Filed Under Software delivery | Leave a Comment 

Open Source Processes

EVER NOTICED THIS IRONY? The office ghettoes are built from glass, like the one in Prague 4 where I find myself often: you can see through the walls and if had a spyglass, you could watch much of what’s going on inside. You would if there’s an element of order in this undecipherable chaos of people sitting, staring at computers, chatting in kitchenettes and seemingly doing nothing. And many times, there wouldn’t be one.

The inner workings of a company is hidden to you, an uninvolved bystander.

But, unless you’re role-playing after having seen too many Bond movies, would you even be interested in knowing what’s going on there? Who would benefit from opensourcing of processes?

We can standardise technology, and continue to do so. We can and should standardise processes, see what happens when we apply opensource thinking to service processes.

After all, it’s not the technology that will differentiate us. It’s not the process either, though there might be a short-term imbalance.

JP Rangaswami writes that companies have been poor at documenting their processes, so they would benefit from letting the sun shine on them so that they could be measured and improved. Makes sense. And I am all for making business more transparent and honest. The line I wouldn’t cross, and please let me take this farther than JP’s post goes, is that of boredom.

I as a customer don’t really need to know what different activities led to the delivery of the service I requested. Ideally, I wouldn’t even notice the process; it’s one of those things that best work unnoticed. What I usually want to know about a company is her character, her culture that’s influencing my relationship to her. Processes, technologies…? Yawn. I am not going to partake in this conversation.

Which leaves me wondering if companies should open their processes up to each other; subject them to a community examination.

And while I wouldn’t put too much value in processes themselves, they still are part of the company’s market advantage. They can be a trade secret, and if technologies are going open-source and innovations rendered obsolete in no time and people constantly on the move, what’s left to differentiate yourself from the competition? It can be a process, one that’s just a bit quicker, just a bit more agile than your next door’s rival.

(via iface thoughts)

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 12, 2007 | Filed Under Open Source | Leave a Comment 

Links for 2007-03-11

SOME EXCELLENT STUFF TODAY. Check this out:

Substance of style by Sims Wyeth (topically unrelated to my today’s post). “I bristle at those who say to presenters, “Just be yourself.” Which self? The self that converses with my best friend’s grandmother at her dining room table, or the guy who teases his teammates and drinks beer while taking off his hockey equipment in the locker room?”

Bootstrapping your business at Starbucks: “In ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ the bedouins always felt like they were on the warpath. They had greater cause,” said Niall Kennedy, a 27-year-old San Franciscan who quit his day job at Microsoft Corp. to run his own Web company, Patrick Media, out of cafes and a rented desk. “At a startup, you’re always on the go, plowing ahead, with some higher cause driving you.” (via Venture Chronicles - more on Web Worker Daily, and even more here)

March 11, 2007 | Filed Under Links and Quotes | Leave a Comment 

Substance of Substance of Style

I AM READING Virginia Postrel’s Substance of Style, and it reads like a historical treatise depicting an era long gone. Specifically, I cannot remember a time when style did not play a significant role in our purchasing decisions; partly because of my poor memory, and mostly because the rapid explosion of the nineties and the sustained revolution that’s going on in the first decade of the new century has already created new traditions, new dogmas, new histories - who would bother going back the memory lane to the awful 80s? (definitely not me, since that was the dying phase of the totalitarian regimes here in the East - and style had no place here then). From my today’s point of few, the book is rehashing the obvious, even though it was first published in 2003! We’ve taken an even more unbeliavable leap in our desire to customize, personalize, and fashionize since then.

We’ve got the RAZR, the MacBook, and lots of stuff in IKEA with labels that stress out the fact that each piece of the furniture has a unique touch - made just for you. And we take it for granted (I do).

It’s this infinite variety of choices that businesses create that’s speeding up the transition to CRM 2.0 where customer isn’t an object of a transaction but a subject of a very complicated play. If Postrel’s book seems so obvious to me now, less than 4 years after it was published, I am optimistic as to when we ought to expect this to happen. Guys, it’s around the corner now, really!

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 11, 2007 | Filed Under CRM, Enterpreneurship, Links and Quotes | Leave a Comment 

What CRM Can Learn From Linux

THIS IS THE AGE OF “ME”. Call it Gen Y, the era of narcissists, whatever. The fact is that we expect the world to revolve around us in a way unimaginable to our fathers. And no, I am not going to issue a moral judgment here. I am part of the movement, too.

I want get things done my way.

For example, when I buy an MP3 player, I want to be able to get new music via any kind of online service, not just the one provided by the manufacturer or their partner. Don’t you? Vendor lock-in is so 20th century! Choice is the new mantra, and so if freedom.

Which is where Linux comes into the picture. Much of its allure comes from the fact that it lets you create and re-create a highly personalized value chain that corresponds to and answers to your particular needs. You get to be in control.

You.

You, the only person in the world that matters. Read more

March 9, 2007 | Filed Under CRM, Open Source | Leave a Comment 

CRM @ Bratislava

I PROMISED to elaborate on my experience in Bratislava. If you want to know what good CRM looks like, read on.

First, a personal note. We denizens of Prague tend to consider anything to the east of the city limits to be part of Western Asia. Not fair, not particularly funny, a fact nonetheless. Given how small our country is, it’s outright ridiculous. And it holds.

Imagine how delighted and surprised I was in December when I found out Bratislava is not only beautiful, it’s way ahead of Prague in customer service.

This is strictly personal experience. Others may disagree and I won’t blame them. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. But consider this:

- Lodging. I have been staying at Venturska Residence. It’s a small and agile operation; they’ve got several downtown apartments available for a short-term stay. I’ve got a superb experience: this one time, a water pipe broke and the guy came in 15 minutes with a rag, sent me to a good restaurant, and cleaned the place in under an hour. That was 9 pm, folks! Another time, my internet connection broke, I called the guy, he called the customer service and reported back in a short while, while another guy drove God-knows-how-many-kilometers to give me a back-up EDGE card so that I could carry on with my personal business. That was about 10pm, folks…

- Food. You who are lucky enough to live in North America won’t appreciate this, but waiters and other staff here on the Continent are much less eager to please than you’d guess. I am used to a pretty much poor service, and I get excited when the waiter remembers me after having my, um, 300th coffee in their joint. Anyways, I went for a Gyros one day, then came back a week later, and the waiter remembered exactly what I’d had the last time. And suggested I spice up my Gyros in a way he’d expected I’d enjoy. And enjoy I did!

- Other: I’ve had countless encounters in businesses small and big, and most of them were enjoyable. A hairdresser who would spend more than 3 minutes with my balding head, carefully touching it, paying attention to details, washing it afterwards… a colleague at the company I’ve been staffed to who’d send me a birthday e-card… A shop owner who would suggest a different jacket because she knew what would fit me best…

I do not confuse customer service with CRM. Yet good customer service is part of good CRM. And if CRM is basically about making the day-to-day business interactions more human, more enjoyable, then any and every company should be like this: personal, engaged, caring. If it isn’t, than the 400 million dollars spent on Siebel 7.7 will have been wasted.

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 8, 2007 | Filed Under CRM | Leave a Comment 

Six (and more) Reasons Why CRM Initiatives Fail

THERE ARE COUNTLESS TRAPS on the way towards a successful CRM program, and one of them lies in thinking about it as an “initiative”. This article summarizing some of them. I find the following very compelling:

CRM systems are essentially databases with customer oriented forms built on top. They are very good at capturing and organizing structured information, but are horrific at capturing and organizing unstructured information.

and

Today’s CRM is more useful for transactional (i.e. call center) types of companies than it is for small businesses who have client relationships that are more solution oriented in nature.

Exactly. True relationships defy pre-set rules. CRM is operating on the premise that customers are deterministic automatons: it’s a useful abstraction, yet it is - taken literally - dangerous and foolish. All businesses are “solutions oriented” in that they solve customers’ needs. And these are all but predictable. There must be a better way of capturing them and working with them than stuffing them into “Opportunities” and subjecting them to a process dead-set in stone.

For a small business that has a lot of direct interaction with customers, CRM ought to be little more than a contact management. Why? Because it’s silly and wasteful to automate relationships that you are able to maintain on the personal level. Yes, for big business, CRM 2.0 poses a gargantuan challenge: how to re-activate the human, ad-hoc side of business transinteractions when your customer base is half the planet? (think Microsoft, GE…). For the little guy, I advise common sense. Yes, by all means, keep your customer information in one place and make it accessible, searchable, reusable. Just don’t forget your clients are more demanding, more insightful than ever. And keep talking to them (and listening back). That will give you a ROI no CRM software can.

Technorati Tags: ,

March 5, 2007 | Filed Under CRM | Leave a Comment 

« Previous Page — Next Page »