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

CRM From the Stone Age

Are CRM vendors reluctant to embrace, uh, the virtues of social media or CRM 2.0 if you will?

Paul Greenberg thinks so:

CRM companies have been soooo slowwwwww to provide the toolsets for social media and collaboration that I began to look elsewhere to see who would provide the suites for it. For some reason, the entire industry has been acting as if the tools that would allow customers to engage with a company aren’t important to, ummmm, customer relationship management. That’s the “customer” in CRM which, in case you haven’t figured it out CRM industry, equals the “customer” in customer engagement and the “customer” in customer experience and the “customer” in co-creation of value.

I have thought long and hard about not ever offering a commentary that is general and generalizing in nature, anymore, but I just can’t resist a cheap shot when offered a chance. To me, CRM 1.0 (that is the big, fat, multi-million-dollar implementation of a packaged software cleverly marketed as a way of reaching your customer base and getting to know it) is not as much creating a “science of business from the art of life” but quite the opposite: sucking the life out of the art of business and creating a lifeless science out of something that is essentially a relational and vital play.

I am not saying, intentionally. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or whatever the saying is.

And I am inclined to think that BigCos are eager to have a “relationship” with every one of them customers, and pity that they are at the same time so obsessed with ‘control’ because the vendors know it, and boy do they know how to exploit it! Why would every mundane piece of software have “management” stuck somewhere in the middle of its name? It’s all about control, or the illusion thereof.

CRM will be a fraud as long as it’s got the “M” as its middle initial - it’s as simple as that.

And Paul’s post on CRM on the Hill says as much, in so many words:

You realize that not only is Congress at the CroMagnon stage when it comes to thinking about CRM technology, but the level that they are at when it comes to the programmatic, philosophical, strategic and cultural core of CRM is downright primitive. Their actual interest is not constituent engagement, but constituent avoidance or constituent deflection. (Kissingerian policy? Kidding…). In fact, I spent the day yesterday in Boston with Denis Pombriant, who is one of the leading CRM analysts in the world, and he called it, while chuckling, “Defensive CRM” - good for driving, not CRM.

But is it only the politicos who think this way? I think not. That’s the default way - it’s easire and it offers more short-term benefits.

CRM has been marketed and used as a tool for control, not engagement, not a conversation. So the vendors would be stupid to change their ways - as long as the buyers keep buying. Why would they?

Things are changing, though, and I think Salesforce’s move to open up their platform will prove to be a turning point. There’s a vendor who’s brave enough to give up control. It’s totally counter-intuitive, and yet I think it will prove to be a winning strategy. Because in the customer ecosystem, the company realizes it isn’t in control. And the sooner it does, the sooner it starts having the, you know, relationship that it seeks to have with its customers.

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May 3, 2007 | Filed Under Software delivery 

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