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About
Notes and views on CRM, open business models, and what the Web means for customer relationships. [more]
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Speaking at:
IIR's Mobile CRM, Bupadest, Dec 2008
Telecoms CRM, CEM and User Experience 2008
Linkblog
Photos
links for 2008-10-27
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Amazing!
Will the credit crunch help CRM?
Recessions mean an end to some but also a new beginning for many. CRM is associated with the optimistic seller culture; the company builds an infrastructure so that it can get to customers quicker and be more relevant to them. At a first glance, then, it would appear that a down economy would bring down times for CRM - fewer buyers with smaller budgets means cost cutting, baby - fire those IT consultants.
With less marcomm and IT dollars, companies have another opportunity to look at the flip side of CRM. It’s the side that is considerably cheaper to experiment with: I used to call it “CRM 2.0″ before “2.0″ lost its edge and, indeed, any meaning at all. Also called “Social CRM”, it’s a diverse set of tools designed to bring the customer inside the organization - on his terms, though.
Don’t look at Facebook, you. “Friending” a thousand prospects can only bring you this far, and unless you are in a specific niche, information from your “friends” profiles won’t mean much for your sales cycle. There are meaningful applications there, such as the Lending Tree, but no ground was breaken on Facebook for the majority of industries - Telcos, Energy, or any other Big Business™.
No, look at tools that don’t rely on eyeballs and ads and instead of building the same old walled gardens leverage the power of the individual in the networked, globalized, web-and-mobile enabled culture that we’re in.
One of the hints I will give you today is a project called Mine!, driven by Adriana Lukas. Loosely associated with the VRM conspiracy, it’s aiming at giving individuals the tool to share whatever information they choose with whomever they choose via XML feeds. On a practical note that could mean, for example:
- dumping registration forms of any kind - the company, when given access, will process the required data from the feed,
- no more guesswork about what your customer needs - just subscribe to what they decide to publish, and you will know exactly
The caveat: the customer controls the Terms of Service. Up until now there was no negotiation between B and C. That can change: not because “the customer” has suddenly amassed great power and can dictate his terms (try that on your mobile operator), but because it can make great business sense. Both in cost reductions and new opportunities that will come with an insight into explicitly stated customer needs.
Note that these initiatives aren’t driven by a BigCo of any kind. They are counter-cultural. I think most companies will sit this one out, again, until these tools have too many legs to ignore.
I think it’s an opportunity to look at your existing CRM investment and think about how you would fit a million customer voices in it should they start blasting at you one day. These voices are already out there, on blogs and social networks and such, but don’t have a structured form yet. That’s changing.
links for 2008-10-20
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Software projects have lived in the future more than in the present for as long as I remember. I'll argue that it pays to be ready for what comes next - when you know what comes next. Alas, more often it's about "what if we need this and that". No, you won't need most of it.
Quote of the day
John Jantsch of the Duct Tape Marketing fame asks, What is Main Street Anyway?
So, in my view, Main Street is not a place so much, and sadly, it is almost never a small town street anymore, it is, I think, a state or mind. And that state of mind exists in the hearts, sweat, passion, frustration, ingenuity and creativity of small business owners in every corner of America.
Yes, and the Main Street did not lose any of its value this week, unlike the stocks.
links for 2008-10-10
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Needs will shift not disappear, yes, but the pie will get smaller no matter how you look at it.
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No, you cannot please everyone. As a company, however, you should make sure that your business rules and processes make sense even in non-standard situations. That *isn't* hard to do given the modeling / simulation toolkit we have at our disposal.
links for 2008-10-07
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Turns out customers are not always right. Obviously, only listening to whatever your customers say isn't a sound strategy; that's abdicating your role as the your firm's "driver". I say it's good that we've tried both extremes: not listening at all, and being led by the customer's whim. Not it's time for synthesis.
links for 2008-10-06
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A useful reminder why waterfall development poses undue burden on everyone involved, and my a small-a agile approach makes a lot of sense (not the CAPITAL A one since that’s a religion).
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Danny O’Brien shares his concerns about Google’s Android. For me, the one big win is that the operators won’t be able to screw this up - only Google can.
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Yes! First, don’t use PowerPoint at all. Second, interact instead of just talk.
If you can’t say it, say it with Toastmasters
On the podium, many people struggle: with their material, with themselves, and with the audience. Worse yet, they don’t know it. Since PowerPoint democratized public speaking, the bar has been gradually set so low are rarely surprised when given a boring presentation. It’s normal.
Companies do make half-hearted attempts at instilling some presentation culture by sending their employees to soft-skills seminars and such. But a 2-day training cannot substitute for what’s really necessary to develop your skills in this area (as in any other): practice, more practice, feedback, finding out what you can achieve if you persist.
Here is where Toastmasters can help you. You go through a very structured process of learning first the basics, then more advanced techniques of public speaking; you speak a lot, listen a lot, give feedback to others - in a group of your peers.
I’ve heard speakers there that would blow any conference-goer away. People who couldn’t introduce themselves when they joined giving polished speeches after only a couple of months. If this is possible, I can’t comprehend why we would settle for the normal.
Loads of blogs deal with PowerPoint and other paraphernalia. In Toastmasters, you don’t even use notes after a few speeches. You concentrate on the people and the message, which is what you should concentrate on.
Forget PowerPoint. If you’ve got anything to say and if you feel your delivery could improve, find a Toastmasters club near you. You’ll be surprised what you can do.
PS Full disclosure: I am an (unpaid) officer at Bohemian Toastmasters in Prague.
links for 2008-10-04
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No free lunch? Really? I suppose we the web folks will need to re-learn Econ 101 sometime soon.
Quote of the Day
Ron Shevlin takes on social media douchebags:
You don’t need a social media strategy. I absolutely hate hearing from the social media dou… er, experts…that firms need to have a social media strategy. Firms need a customer engagement strategy — how should they, and how can they — interact (or engage) with customers in a more meaningful way that creates and deepens the relationship. I will keep saying this over and over until the social media proponents begin to understand: Blogs and wikis and Facebook are not the only ways to engage customers. Face to face works. The phone can work. Direct mail can work. Any touchpoint can work. If you’re a bank or credit union, it doesn’t matter one single iota that 100 million people are on Facebook — unless they want to interact with banks and credit unions there. And that’s far from a proven fact.
Customer engagement strategy - absolutely!
From what I remember about Credit Unions when I was in the States, they get a lot more personal than banks. Hence the role of face-to-face, phone, etc.
I suppose that social media experts, as well as yours truly, are arguing for the use of “2.0″ toolkit because firms either
- don’t employ them at all, or worse yet
- employ then in a mistaken belief that the Web is just another channel
A company that is conversational, ie. treats its customers as partners rather than a prey to be hunted, such a company will eventually reach out also using “2.0″ means, if and when its customers are ready for it. It can lead the way and pull its customers there, or wait until it gets pulled there by them; both is all good and well.
What doesn’t work is marching into Facebook with the same old rusty weapons, looking for another “segment” to bombard with “messages”, with a “social media strategy” paper at hand.
I hope that once the credit crisis blows over, many more companies will be doing the former, if not for any other reason that because they won’t have marketing budgets for the latter. Hyped up or not, the social web is here to stay, and sooner or later the companies will learn to live with it.
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