CRM 2.0 by Guido Oswald

Interactive Chat as a support (and sales) channel

2011-09-02T17:35:00.001+02:00

I just read an internal memo about the huge success of our (SAS) “proactive chat” feature and was thinking about my masters' thesis, where I stated that the standard triple of telephone, mail and email might not be sufficient anymore and additional channels help to establish a better relationship with customers.

I cannot disclose the numbers here, but in terms of revenue generation, I was actually stunned how the chat feature helps to make money and generate leads. Now given this success, one can only anticipate how this helps improving customer relationships through an outstanding support experience.

While SAS putting a lot of effort into this – like a real-time decision when and how to present the chat feature – and has a large Inside Sales team to handle these incoming chat requests, it is also possible for very small companies to extend their list of channels by a chat.

I recently bought a new TV and while looking for the best price I was stumbling across a very small shop (probably a one-man show) that had a very good price and was pretty close, so I could go there and get the TV the same day while saving the shipping cost.
I had some questions and wanted to get a better feeling (since the price was really low), but writing an email was taking too long and I felt calling him might be a bad idea because it might interrupt too much and I would need several calls to answer questions that were coming up while I was still reading about the TV in the internet and comparing other prices.

The intermediate between a telephone call and an email was a chat. There was no fancy web-chat feature on the store’s website, but he had simply put a Skype-Button on it that was showing if he was online and available..

Cost free and still very convenient!

He could answer my questions, make me feel good about his business and got the deal… simple as that.

Bottom line is that there are many ways to use technology to help build a better / trusted relationship with your customers and improving the customer experience.

Chat is one of the channels that is increasingly getting popular as it fills the gap between phone calls and emails. Chat messages are more interactive and faster than email while still not as interruptive as a phone call.

Have you had a similar experience? Is your company also supporting chat as a medium the get in contact with customers?

Technorati Tags: chat,customer experience,CRM20

Avoid Social Media Failures

2011-08-04T18:14:00.001+02:00

I just came across a blog post from Jeff Stibel where he talks about ways how to stay out of trouble when it comes to social media (both from a corporate as well as from a personal perspective).

While most of the issues that can arise with the Web 2.0 technologies and the “Social Web” are easily predictable with common sense, it is alarming how many people still make fundamental errors in dealing with these platforms.
CRM 2.0 (Social CRM) has to make sure doing these things right! It is a good idea to built a customer relationship on trust and transparency rather than blow out exaggerated marketing messages that have a massive negative impact on the brand when customers realize the truth.
Corporations have to keep in mind that customers are talking about them and (in our days) basically the whole world can read along.

Jeff actually brings it to the point when he says:
“…the most foolproof way to stay safe on social media is simply to be who you say you are. Pretending to be something you're not, or attempting to conceal or manipulate the truth is a surefire way to lose.”

…nothing more to say I guess.

Master-Thesis about CRM 2.0

2011-03-06T10:50:00.005+01:00

I am thinking of putting my thesis online - would anyone be interested?

The End of Management

2010-08-22T13:52:00.001+02:00

You have to read this very nice article about management and how it doesn’t fit into the 21st century:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476104575439723695579664.html

Very good research collection on how the model of large managed corporations will be obsolete in the future and Enterprise 2.0 will get successful.

We can see many examples in the corporate landscape that follow the path of Enterprise 2.0 like

SAS (listed in the article)
Dell and Starbucks (collecting ideas from outside the company)
Nike (design your own products)
Zappos (flat management structure and motivated employees)

I am sure the list goes on and on (feel free to add examples in the comments section) and shows that there is a need for change in our thinking in regards to management and the way we (want to) work. That is why I wrote about the “Customer Relationship Model 2.0” and not referring to it as “Management” anymore…

What do you think about this? Another hype that will be forgotten in 5 years? Traditional Management is about to die? Or something in the middle?

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,CRM 2.0,Management

Does every company need CRM?

2010-02-21T23:18:00.001+01:00

If you listen to the CRM tool vendors, it is crucial for every business (independent of its size) to use a CRM software in order to streamline its processes and collaborate effectively with customers and across the organization.

But is this really true for all kind of businesses and all sizes?

First off – I do not think that there is something like a “one fits all” solution for CRM. Even the vertical solutions from some vendors cannot immediately fulfill all the needs without adaption and customization.
And if you think of CRM as a Philosophy rather than a piece of software, installing a CRM tool will not provide a competitive edge anyway. The “me too” approach does not differentiate and thus is limited in its ability to deliver value to the company and its customers. Focus usually is around cost savings and process automation – nothing that will dramatically increase the customer satisfaction or the customer experience.

So what to do with small businesses (SMBs) that think about CRM and do not want to spend a large amount of money into licenses and consulting / implementation projects?
Good news is that there are so many free (or low cost) options out there that it makes sense to think about creating a CRM strategy that does not rely on a fully integrated CRM suite with a high price tag. With a limited number of users it is possible to create an outstanding customer experience by using the tools that customers use (which are usually the ones that are available without cost) and streamline the activities solely by outlining and communicating a CRM 2.0 strategy.

Ideally the used tools offer some kind of integration to avoid the creation of application or data silos. With the emerging standards, more and more applications will offer the possibility to take part in workflows that span multiple applications, departments or locations. But even if there is no possibility to automate this integration, I truly believe that it is not a big issue to do some of the internal collaboration manually.

Again, if the strategy is clearly set and communicated, it is no big deal to export and import some data and send it around via email… Crucial is that the people (i.e. employees) collaborate and pull together.
With smaller companies this is more important than a highly integrated CRM suite and well defined (but rather inflexible) automated business processes. The attitude of collaboration and co-creation will also help engaging better with customers and thus take the Customer Relationship Model to the next level…

Another side effect is that the employees are able to use the tools the know and love – this Enterprise 2.0 approach will also attract and maintain talent within a company.

In the next post I will outline some free or low-cost alternatives for SMBs when it comes to CRM – stay tuned…

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Customer Relationship Management,SMB,CRM suite

Portability of (social) profiles

2009-11-26T23:53:00.001+01:00

Create and maintain one single online identity and log on to the various social networking platforms wit a single logon?
Choose which information is seen by which platform and let them exchange messages and information (after allowing them to do so)?

While we are currently far away from this scenario and everybody has to deal with many user accounts on various social networks (and the associated logins), I truly believe that there will be mechanisms in the future to be able to streamline this mess and finally make our lives much easier.

Concepts like OpenID and Google’s OpenSocial might be an option to do this – if they will reach the critical mass. OpenID is already widely adopted (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, myspace, etc.). OpenSocial is a open API that can be used to exchange data between several social networks but is heavily competing with Facebooks proprietary API (Facebook Platform).

Recently I see data exchange happening more often, especially when it comes to find existing friends on a new network. On the long term I think there will be only few social networks in every niche, which will make the integration between them and platforms in other niches a little easier.

Not only will the life for users become easier, but also CRM 2.0 will profit from having standardized APIs and Authentication mechanisms. Next generation CRM tools will be able to access user data (after they have agreed to do so…) and will be able to provide much better and more personalized services to every single consumer. With this information, a corporation will be able to have meaningful conversations even with millions of customers around the world.

Of course I hear you shouting for security and warnings around the surveillance society – and actually I think this will become a big issue. For sure there will be fraud (just imagine what Google could do with the massive amount of information it has from every single user…), but as the hype settles and the technology becomes more stable, so will the security and trust in companies will rise. Many people will be fine with companies having access to their personal data in order to provide better service and a unique customer experience.

Technorati Tags: Social CRM,sCRM,CRM 2.0,OpenID,OpenSocial

Service Cloud2 – Salesforce.com taking Customer support into the cloud?!

2009-10-22T21:57:00.001+02:00

Salesforce.com has always been very visionary and successfully pushing the SaaS model into the market for sales force automation (SFA).

In their presentation of the “Service Cloud2” yesterday, they showed that the same SaaS model can also work for customer service and support.
Marc Benioff said that the average service and support applications are about a decade old – and I would totally agree with that. Having seen some installations and the associated data centers behind these applications, I can imagine the potential that Benioff sees in this market and that customers see in potential savings.

SFDC presented some very important new modules of the Service Cloud2 that are indispensable for high quality customer support:

A knowledgebase (competing with RightNow)
CTI integration (powered by CISCO?)
Integration to social networks (like Facebook and twitter)
Customer portals and communities (competing with Jive SBS)

While all these elements are not new and there are solutions out there to handle them, SFDC is probably the first one that is able to deliver a fully integrated solution (including crowdsourcing) out of one hand and paid solely per usage. This will allow small and medium sized companies to deliver a great customer experience with very little upfront investments in infrastructure and licenses.

Very obvious that putting all CRM in the hands of SFDC also has the risk of a vendor lock-in. And realistically, even if they call this a cloud, it is still not what I would call true cloud computing and it will not be possible to easily switch parts of the CRM to some other vendors or ‘in-source’ the application in the future.

But still, this is a very nice vision that Benioff and his team are bringing to a life and I am very sure that it will be as successful as the SFA module was.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Salesforce.com,Service Cloud,Customer Support

Twitter - just a temporary hype?

2009-10-04T11:49:00.001+02:00

I just read a post from Jennifer Leggio talking about twitter presence and overall social media strategy of corporations. And I have to agree that twitter has a somewhat limited value in a CRM 2.0 strategy as well.

The Comcast example might not be the blueprint for followers.
On one hand the twitter user numbers still seem to be growing fast, on the other hand I see lot of the communication moving to other platforms like Facebook. User numbers not necessarily visualize the amount of valuable information that is transmitted through such a platform.

My personal feeling is that the future will be a mashup of several social networks. Users will be looking for applications that combine the data streams seamless. I am using TweetDeck which has Facebook and MySpace connectivity already.

The idea of short messages enriched with pictures, location information and links to other sites might stay, but will twitter be around in a couple of years? Who knows…

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Twitter,Social Media

Socialnomics: Social Media Revolution

2009-10-03T17:18:00.001+02:00

Looks like there is a new name in town… what happened to the Wikinomics?! The short version of the video mentioned earlier also re-uses the business velocity theme.

Check out the interesting video response from tippingpoint labs:

Not 100% sure if the hula hoop is a valid comparison, though… what is the value add of a hula hoop, really? not much I would guess. Social Media has more to offer I’d say.

Technorati Tags: Socialnomics,social media,CRM 2.0

CRM 2.0 Presentation

2009-09-21T17:12:00.001+02:00

…done for my Thesis Defense last Saturday.

The goal was to squeeze the Thesis into a 20 minute presentation, so I put many slides into the backup section. I still could not finish within the 20 minutes, though…

CRM 2.0 By Guido Oswald

View more presentations from Guido Oswald.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,Social CRM,Master Thesis Defense

Salesforce.com the big winner in 2009 ?!

2009-08-27T16:13:00.001+02:00

The CRM Magazine has published the winners of their CRM Market Awards for 2009. Looks like SFDC is the dominant player, winning the top four categories (not really playing in the other categories).

Marc Benioff (SFDC CEO) is listed as one of the eight most influential leaders (next to Anthony Lye from Oracle and Tony Hsieh from Zappos). I am missing Paul Greenberg in this list…
It is noteworthy that Tony is in this list as someone that is actually doing CRM 2.0, not just talking about it or selling software that is supposed to implement successful CRM. This is a good example of how CRM 2.0 can look alike without spending too much thoughts on the technological or theoretical side of it, but just DOING it.
Tim O’Rielly (Enterprise 2.0) is also listed, because of his vision of the modern enterprise. Again, Tony has shown how this vision can be executed… Let’s hope Amazon can keep up this momentum and learn from Zappos rather than applying the Amazon culture.

Besides the extreme dominance of SDFC there is not a lot of surprises in the list of winners. Microsoft is massively gaining ground and I am unsure how Deloitte won the consultancies category – looks like they have done some successful projects to pass Accenture, IBM and Capgemini…

Amdocs (ex Clarify) does not show up anymore – looks like they killed the CRM business and put focus (back) on billing and their QPass and Cramer acquisitions. Although Rogers finally decided to upgrade to CES 7.5 and SmartClient, I am not seeing any new logos for Amdocs CRM in the past year).

Technorati Tags: CRM,Market Awards 2009

Social Media Ad

2009-08-20T15:52:00.001+02:00

just came across this YouTube video that has some impressive numbers to show that the rise of social media (through Web 2.0 technology) definitely has begun…

Interesting that it picks up the comparison of the time to reach 50 million users.

Technorati Tags: social_media,CRM 2.0,business_revolution

My Masters’ Thesis is progressing…

2009-07-30T20:07:00.001+02:00

now at about 20 thousand words on 90 pages:

More to come soon, stay tuned....

CRM 2.0 at Progress Software

2009-06-30T17:58:00.001+02:00

Interesting to see that the company I work for (although not selling CRM) is rapidly adopting the CRM 2.0 theme.

Gary Conway, our new hired CMO, is talking about a real dialogue with customers and sees the employees as the best evangelists of the company and its products. This is actually a very good start into a cultural change within the company and is accompanied by a marketing campaign to promote the Progress brand, which is pretty unknown in the marketplace of SOA. This is particular surprising as Progress Software has some of the best in class products there…

The new website is already life and features a life chat possibility which allows customers to ask questions w/o taking the receiver and dialing a number. It is really good to see that we’re going into the right direction here and it shows that CRM 2.0 or Social CRM is gaining momentum.

BTW: you might have noticed that the post frequency has dramatically reduced. This is due to me now actively writing on my Masters’ Thesis and therefore not allowed to publish some of the stuff that I am writing. But be sure to find a lot more when I am finished writing on August 13th (latest).

Stay tuned,
Guido

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Social CRM,Progress Software

Sometimes you have to ignore your customers!

2009-05-01T18:03:00.001+02:00

Jensen Huang (Co-Founder of NVIDIA) has an interesting sight on Corporate Vision and the fact that you have to ignore the customer base in certain situations. That is when you are sure that your vision is so much stronger than that of your customers:

This is actually a good point and sometimes probably necessary to differentiate from competition. Risky, though, when you completely lose contact to the end-users.
For NVIDIA it worked out quite well. But as Jensen said, they were competing against 200 other graphics chips producers in the 90s, so differentiation is sometimes hard and might really lead to the ignorance of customers (for a while).

A CRM 2.0 strategy must not always mean that a business has to blindly follow what customers demand. Some products or services might not have an obvious business case (i.e. will not create immediate money), some might see no demand at the time you have to start developing them. Still they can deliver in the mid- or long-term if there is a strong vision behind it (and the vision fulfills).

A Revolution needs strong leadership and only a limited number of people are able to discover this in an early stage.

Apple is another good example where products are created with very little or no involvement of (potential) users. A very successful example as we all know… The question is do I really want to completely ignore customers? And if so, for how long?

I think executing on a strong vision does not mean that you have to lose contact with your customers. There are always some people out there that share the same vision. It’s all about finding these individuals and getting them into the boat. The connected (Web 2.0) world these times is a tremendous help here!

So CRM 2.0 is also about finding the right people out there and co-creating products and services with them. If done well, these customers will get real advocates for the brand.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Vision

Crisis Management in Web 2.0 times

2009-04-29T14:58:00.001+02:00

After the post about the “Amazon Fail” incident, I stumbled upon a nice slideset about crisis management at Domino’s Pizaa from Taly at Trendspotting:

Crises Management: Trendsspotting Insights On Dominos Case Study

View more presentations from Taly Weiss.

Taly did some good research about crisis management and the presentations shows how this has changed in terms of reaction time (still to be improved) and used media type.

CRM 2.0 can help reacting to incidents like this one and avoid the Streisand effect that can cause major brand damage.

Here is some media coverage and Domino’s official response:

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Domino's Pizza,Crisis Management

Are Facebook and Twitter just new channels?

2009-04-27T16:12:00.001+02:00

Someone could argue that the new Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook, Twitter and co. are just additional channels that have to be supported by the existing CRM suite.

Dealing with these platforms as additional channels will not bring the benefit they could provide, though. Accepting that the rise of the Web 2.0 is dramatically changing the consumers’ behavior, leads to a simple conclusion – Businesses need to change the way they deal with the ‘new customers’ as well!

This means that Facebook and Twitter are only the spearhead of what will come in the near future. They are indeed channels that need to be dealt with (the more agile, the better) BUT the way corporations make use of them needs to change as well. The whole corporate culture needs to change!
Adapting to the new consumer behavioral patterns leads us to what I call a CRM 2.0 strategy (any other term will do as well as long as it has the same meaning and results).

New questions must be asked:

How can I have a meaningful conversation with my customers?
How can I engage customers to take an active part in this conversation?
How can I leverage the knowledge and willingness of customers?
Does my corporate culture allow meaningful conversations (what changes are required)?
Do I know the little aches and pains of my customers? Are they dealt with?
Who are my customers and where / whom do the talk about products and services?

In the very end, this might be the end of the transactions based CRM (not counting any order management here…) towards a more dynamic, flexible, agile and customer centric environment that acknowledges that customers are persons – usually – that make the buying decisions often based on trust and relationships.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Facebook,Twitter,Channels,Meaningful Conversations

Avoid getting into the fireline…

2009-04-16T18:29:00.001+02:00

Amazon is currently experiencing a customer rebellion that has some similarities to the “I hate Siebel” wave that I wrote about in an earlier post. (search twitter on #amazonfail and #glitchmyass)

Basically this is all about the filtering of gay and lesbian authors in Amazons search functionality. I do not have full insight in what has really been filtered and if this has a negative effect on the authors’ book sales or not (and I really don’t want to get into this discussion as there is a lot of coverage already). But I want to analyze the happenings from a CRM 2.0 viewpoint and think of solutions for companies to avoid such massacres by detecting the development early enough and reacting in the right way to avoid the negative PR or even reverse the effects.

In Amazon's case, everybody can easily understand that adult books must be filtered from regular searches and bestseller lists to protect the younger users of this platform. On the other side, I can also understand the furious reactions of the gay and lesbian customers that feel discriminated by such a ‘censoring’.
What really happened here is that Amazon was getting into the fireline between parents and homosexual people. Not filtering the lists would probably have caused similar reactions on the other side…

So how can CRM 2.0 help?

This example shows that the empowerment of customers is advancing. Although we are talking about a minority, the amount of press coverage is massive and might have true negative impact on the Amazon brand. The beauty of a CRM 2.0 strategy is that it aligns a business with its customers. Although this does not make the conflict disappear, it would have signaled the responsible people much earlier.
This ledge could have been used to engage both groups into a meaningful conversation and find the solution that will probably be found and agreed on anyway in the end.

Having engaged the customers would not only have avoided the conflict to raise like it did, it would also have created more loyal customers because everybody would have felt involved and taken care of.

Funny enough, you can buy the domain AmazonFail.com at the other big arriviste of the eCommerce boom – at EBAY…

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Amazon,AmazonFail

Lexnet Interview

2009-04-14T15:22:00.001+02:00

Lexnet is starting a series of email interviews with focus on CRM. I think this is a brilliant idea and Paul Greenberg and Christopher Carfi already shared some insights.

Find my answers here: http://lexnetcg.com/blog/email-interviews/email-interview-guido-oswald-crm/

Technorati Tags: interview,CRM 2.0,lexnet

The future of the Web (3.0?)

2009-04-04T12:06:00.001+02:00

Creating a CRM 2.0 strategy that is viable in ten years from now would be tightly connected with an accurate prediction of what the Internet (WWW) will look alike by then.

But the question must be asked if this prediction can be made at all? The world is turning faster and faster. Predicting the next 10 years of the World Wide Web would be like predicting the rise of HDTV and Flat TVs in the 1950s…

Remember my slides around Business Velocity?

Business Velocity

View more presentations from Guido Oswald.

Or do you remember your top bookmarks in 1996 (I was at university at that time convincing the Professor to upgrade the 56k Internet connection…)? comScore lists websites like WEBCRAWLER.COM, NETSCAPE.COM or INFOSEEK.COM amongst the top 5 – all dead and gone ten years later!

On one hand, the ®evolution of the Internet is going at the speed of light (Paul did recognize this a while ago :) – on the other hand, I believe that the cultural revolution that has taken place, initiated by the Web 2.0, has passed its zenith and will continue at a much slower pace the upcoming years.

With the acknowledgement that the future of the Web is hard to predict, a CRM 2.0 strategy should not solely rely on the most hyped platforms like Facebook or Twitter, but focus on a foundation that will last when they will be gone in ten years from now. “Covering the base” is the motto here rather than jumping on the short living buzz.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Business Velocity,Hype,Future of WEB

Do we still need Operational CRM ?

2009-03-28T11:10:00.001+01:00

According to Gartner “the ratio of operational CRM, analytical CRM and social CRM in packaged applications will shift from 90:9:1 in 2009 to 70:20:10 by the year 2020”. This means there would still be a strong focus on operational CRM and the so called ‘social CRM’ part will only account for 10 percent of CRM suites in 2020.

One one hand I have to agree that operational CRM will still be an important part when it comes to CRM software – even in more than ten years from now. On the other hand I strongly believe that the way companies will execute a CRM 2.0 strategy will dramatically change and shift more to the ‘social CRM’ part than Gartner predicts.

My vision is a software suite that comprises not only traditional CRM tools such as a call center frontend and a sales force automation application, but also all the enterprise 2.0 features such as

wiki-webs
forums
instant messaging
knowledge management tools
intranet search (across all platforms)
social networking applications (linked to external/public platforms)
web-conferencing
video-conferencing
Document collaboration / store

This would allow to effectively execute a CRM 2.0 strategy and reduce the operational part to a minimum as customers can be invited to use these tools (some thoughts need to be spend on security here…) and actively contribute rather than getting stuck in a fixed sales or support process flow.

Currently i do not see any CRM suite getting close to this vision. SalesForce.com might get there soon, but their problem is that the perception on the marketplace is still as a provider of sales force automation – the curse of the brand – and that the networks need to get (much) faster to allow the SaaS model (I do not see them doing Cloud Computing, yet) to deliver an acceptable experience with all these tools. Implementing the full set currently requires a best of breed approach including tools like Jive SBS, Google, SharePoint, WebEx and many more…

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,CRM Software,Vision

Enterprise_2.0_install.exe ?

2009-03-23T19:12:00.001+01:00

While reading through Dion Hinchcliffes article “Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0: The good, the bad, and the ugly”, I keep mapping his experience to what I am currently going through.

We are currently trying to establish a collaboration environment in our PreSales organization in EMEA and was checking out Sharepoint last week. First bumper: it requires a Microsoft Internet Explorer! What do my colleagues with their MacBooks do now? After this rather disappointing experience I found the integration into Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint pretty convenient. But again, what if your focus is not the Microsoft Office suite (looking again at all the MacOS users…) or you need to share office documents across the Microsoft boundary to OpenOffice?

I actually think that we will use Sharepoint only for collaborating on Office documents in bigger projects and only as long as there is no alternative that is more flexible. My Company is currently upgrading Jive ClearSpace (now SBS?) to the latest version and we will probably use this platform as a main target for collaboration and knowledge sharing. But still this will be just a tool that only helps us doing our work better – nothing less but also nothing more.

This example shows very well that there is nothing than Enterprise 2.0 out of the box. It can only be a part of a larger CRM 2.0 strategy and has to be extended outside the corporate firewall to be effective – or would you be happy to enter your personal data again for the internal social network after having this information available on LinkedIn and XING already?? What if your customers have answers to problems and are willing to share this knowledge?

The secret is not copying the successful Web 2.0 platforms inside the company, but making use of the reference application secure enough to utilize the original instead of (a) copy… At least our new Progress Communities (going live end of the week) will share internal AND external data on the same platform. This means customers can actively take part and influence products and their development. Authentication will separate employees and customers if needed (and only if needed!). Now I would like to see my favorite social networks being integrated into Jive (and then twitter, then IM, etc…).

Welcome to the new world!

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,SharePoint,Jive SBS,collaboration

What is a “Conversation” ?

2009-03-17T17:22:00.001+01:00

When it comes to Social CRM or CRM 2.0, we often talk about establishing a conversation with customers. I think we all agree that pushing marketing data to a (static) Corporate Website or waiting for customers to call in when they have problems with the products is far away from having a conversation with them. But how can we define and establish such a conversation?

Creating a group on XING / LinkedIn, signing up as a corporation to Facebook or having an ‘official’ MySpace page does not automatically create efficient conversations with customers or prospects.

First step to get into a meaningful conversation with customers is a tough one, as it requires a company to share information that might normally be treated as confidential. This insight and the possibility to allow feedback from customers and prospects (using Web 2.0 tools) is the starting point of a real two-way conversation.

Of course the feedback has to be read and analyzed by someone in order to answer and get further feedback. This leads to a dialogue (and true collaboration) that allows to take action to improve a product or create new products and services.
To close the loop, the information about the new or improved products have to be shared again to allow new feedback and so on…

The Enterprise 2.0 paradigm can help creating the mindset within the corporation and will allow to create a relationship with customers that is worth being called so!

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Meaningful Conversation,Two-way CRM

Call Center –> Contact Center –> Enterprise 2.0

2009-03-14T13:18:00.001+01:00

While in the 90s Customer Support predominantly happened on the phone, with the rise of eCommerce new channels were added and the “Call Center” was renamed to “Contact Center”. Unfortunately some of the additional channels (other than Email) like online chat or instant messaging (IM) did not get very popular due to technical limitations in the pre-Web 2.0 era and the missing experience of customers with this kind of communication.

In the current economic climate the agent costs are being reduced by the use of tools like knowledge management or customer self service. RightNow is a CRM tool focusing on this area and showing some popularity when the focus is short- and mid-term savings (without losing customer satisfaction).

With the rise of Web 2.0, there are additional channels that need to be supported like blogs, micro-blogs, forums, wikis, social networks, SEO, etc. Within a CRM 2.0 strategy, the increased transparency and the concept of an Enterprise 2.0 helps reducing the costs even further by allowing direct contact into the company (even right to the experts) and establishing conversations that not only reduce the need for specialized support agent, but also help building the self service capabilities and knowledge management repository. SalesForce.com is recently growing the number of partners to leverage these new channels for its new customer support strategy.

In addition to the savings, the conversations help analyzing the customer requirements and aligning the product development with the customer needs. Involving customers also helps creating advocates - opening additional (viral~) marketing channels.

It has to be kept in mind, though, that these new channels are mostly targeted towards a tech-savvy and younger audience that is familiar with the new technologies. It would be a bad idea to completely shut down telephone support or tele-sales, even if the target group is the generation Y and techies.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Contact Center,Enterprise 2.0

Trust in a Customer Relationship Model 2.0

2009-02-25T12:24:00.001+01:00

The recent change of Facebooks terms (now claiming perpetual worldwide license for all content) showed how hard it is to build up a trusted relationship in the Web 2.0 world.

Although Mark Zuckerberg probably did not have any ulterior motives and reversed the change in terms shortly after facing massive protests from the community, it shows that there is very little trust in corporations and users are suspicious by default when it comes to their own content or data.

For CRM 2.0 this means customer rights have to be treated very very carefully as long as the new communication channels are completely established and trusted. It is not acceptable for users to read and sign complicated and long terms and the community will react very harsh if some parts of the terms seem to be fraudulent. In essence – treat your customers like you would like to be treated yourself. The communities in the Web 2.0 will find any malpractice and make it public, possibly causing massive damage to a brand. “Don’t be evil” and stick by it!

John Sviokla has listed the following principles on his blog post:

Allow users to own their content and identity
Make all "sharing" options default to the most conservative setting
Create a better infrastructure for anonymity and tracking of content
Don't sneak up on the audience

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Trust,Facebook

Enterprise 2.0

2009-01-30T18:39:00.001+01:00

Andrew McAfee defines Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers”.

According to his definition, CRM 2.0 is part of Enterprise 2.0 because he extends the use of social software to partners and customers – interesting thought. For me though, Enterprise 2.0 is a (crucial) part of a CRM 2.0 strategy, but not the other way around.

To successfully implement a CRM 2.0 strategy, it is necessary to change the corporate culture towards collaboration, co-creation and transparency - Using the Web 2.0 tools within the corporate is a logical and required step.

Good thing is that Generation Y will ‘naturally' bring some of this culture into the enterprise, as they grew up with the Web 2.0 and do not have the reservation that Gen X and the Baby Boomers have. Of course social software within an enterprise has higher requirements towards reliability and security, which might disqualify some of the services that are already out there and are widely used. Salesforce.com seamlessly integrating Google Docs is a brilliant example of how enterprise 2.0 (within a CRM 2.0 strategy) could look like. Microsoft Office Live might follow up, soon.

I am pretty sure we will see more and more companies using channels like Blogs, Twitter or Instant Messaging. Not only externally but also internally. Missing standards make interoperability between the different media and among the different platforms difficult, though.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,CRM 2.0,Strategy

Cloud CRM – a definition

2009-01-27T17:06:00.001+01:00

Cloud Computing is replacing SOA as the buzzword in 2009. I spent some thoughts on how this will influence CRM 2.0 in technical and business terms.

SalesForce.com is currently heavily pushing their “Service Cloud” solution, which is a little misleading in its naming I believe. The Service Cloud is not exposing any services into the cloud but utilizing some public APIs from platforms like Facebook or Google.

This is adding new channels to the contact center (and such enhancing the customer experience) and feeding solutions from customers back into the knowledge base – good thing - but what really has all this to do with Cloud Computing? My opinion… nothing!
Maybe this is just a way to get something out of the buzzword and sell new contact channels as a brand new product?!

Their example of Orange and Plantronics is nice to view, but what happens if I am not a SFDC customer? The SalesForce to SalesForce interface is (like all the others) a Point-to-Point integration and not even based on any standards like Web-Services, I believe (correct me if I’m wrong).

Having said this, what is my vision of ‘real’ Cloud CRM then?
For me, Cloud Computing means that I (as a user) do not know where the processing power or storage resides physically. In contrast Software as a Service (SaaS) is a piece of software that is running for a dedicated user at a known location (I count the url “www.salesforce.com” as a known location…).
Now if we use standards to communicate with the services in the cloud, this would make them pretty much completely exchangeable. Of course this is not a good thing for the vendors of these services and hence Amazon, Microsoft and Force.com introduced their own proprietary structures and interfaces.

In an ideal world – and we are far away from that, yet – all vendors would agree on one open standard and the consumers (i.e. users) would have the choice to dynamically exchange and combine services from the cloud to create their individual CRM platform that perfectly scales and performs as required. But how would ISVs feel if their customers had a zero vendor-lock-in? If they could exchange the CRM service with a couple of mouse clicks and the new service would still integrate seamlessly to their ERP or OSS? Maybe then even the producers of CRM software will have to think about a CRM 2.0 strategy… (I like that idea)

Ok, stop dreaming now! We are in 2009, facing global recession and I am delighted to see that SFDC is integrating to social platforms like Facebook (more to come I suppose) and help companies that are looking to implement a CRM 2.0 strategy by giving them the right tools to execute such a vision. The IdeaExchange functionality is a good (though proprietary) starting point to gather feedback from customers and get the involved – a first step to collaboration and co-creation.

There is a long way to go until Cloud CRM becomes reality. Standards have to evolve, security has to be ensured and SLAs have to be controllable. SaaS is (only) a first step into this direction.

Technorati Tags: Cloud CRM,Cloud Computing,CRM 2.0

The dark side of Web 2.0

2009-01-24T15:21:00.001+01:00

Besides the obvious positive effects of the world wide web becoming social, there are some effects that we might forget or underestimate, yet.

Agreed, it is a good thing that everybody can freely express their thoughts and views (and now being heard through the Web 2.0…), but what about things like professionalism, proper research and knowledge of the topic?

The Web 2.0 - and the resulting transparency - in many areas could result in unqualified and simply untrue expression of opinions that result in witch hunts or have serious negative impact on the targeted persons, products, brands or companies. While in old fashioned journalism the contributors are professionals that do proper research before publishing a story – in the Web 2.0 world a lot of the commentators have no glue of what they are talking about and do not have the knowledge or time to deal with the topic in the required detail.

Of course given that the amount of information and the number of contributors on the internet is very large, it will be difficult for a single person to make an impact being heard my many others. But when minorities get organized, they could well make a much bigger impact than the not so organized majority.

Is this our digital way to global Anarchy ??

Well, as always, nothing is eaten as hot as it is cooked…
Yes - it will be possible to harm somebody by publishing negative or even untrue statements on the internet and it might be possible to initiate a Tsunami with many people following and propagating the negative statement, but in the end there is still our common sense. And as easy as it is creating negative mood, as easy it is to create positive feedback for someone or something.
And as easy as it is to discredit someone, as easy it is for them to defend themselves using the same tools and techniques as the initiator.

As long as companies understand the Web 2.0 and its possibilities, they can utilize it to create a positive PR - connecting to their customers so that they become advocates and protect a brand, product or service from harm resulting of activities initiated by well organized minorities.
A well thought CRM 2.0 strategy helps organizing customer relations in this new world and ensures success in the future of our changing global business.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Web 2.0,Society,Anarchy

CRM 2.0 vs. Social CRM

2009-01-22T11:01:00.001+01:00

According to blogpulse the two buzzwords are heads up with a small advantage for social CRM:

For me these two have the same meaning, but I am happy for any comments if you think otherwise…

See also the CRM 2.0 definition Wiki: crm20.pbwiki.com/

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Social CRM,buzzwords,trends

I hate SIEBEL ?!

2009-01-19T16:42:00.001+01:00

An interesting development going on that relates in two ways to the CRM 2.0 topic – Firstly it is about a CRM Software Vendor and secondly it happens in the Web 2.0…

Recently I noticed a new group on Facebook called “I hate SIEBEL” which turns out to be a gathering of people that are frustrated with the Siebel CRM Platform. My understanding is that the group was created as a platform to shout out the frustration at Telstra when they moved to the new CRM Front-(and Back-)End but has now evolved to a group of 1,556 (Jan 19th, 4:40pm) members posting 320 comments on the wall and seriously affecting the brand image of Siebel Systems and Oracle.

As I was involved in the efforts at Telstra to re-vamp their complete IT, I have a rough understanding how things work there – or supposed to work I must say. And although I was competing against Siebel and Oracle in my previous job at Amdocs and do not know what exactly is causing the trouble at Telstra, I doubt that Siebel and the CRM Frontend is the only root-cause for this.

Interesting enough how thing have evolved, though. Siebel gets hammered (being the visible part to the agents) for all the issues with Telstras NextGen BSS/OSS System. This seems to be a very good example of the dynamics in the Web 2.0 and the possible harm that users can do to a brand. It shows the importance of a CRM 2.0 strategy and the (currently) missing awareness in some companies.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Web 2.0,Strategy,Siebel,Oracle,Telstra,Facebook,BSS,OSS

InsideCRM – best CRM Blogs of 2008

2009-01-13T14:35:00.001+01:00

I just noticed that I am listed on InsideCRMs list of best CRM blogs for 2008 – thanks!

Hope I can keep up the momentum in 2009…

Technorati Tags: Blogs,InsideCRM,Best Of

CRM 2.0 - The end of the Transaction-Model?

2009-01-05T16:21:00.001+01:00

While 'traditional' CRM heavily counts on fixed processes and transactions, CRM 2.0 takes the discussion one level higher and makes the customer relationship a strategy rather an IT (or business~) process. But what about the transactions? What happens to the way money flows from consumers to producers?

Obviously there will still be transactions in the future and customers will pay for products and services (otherwise we need to watch out for an alternative to money...) BUT the whole system will not be based on a transaction model anymore.

There is still the need to automate business processes (like Ordering, Fulfillment, etc.) but these processes need to become more flexible and companies need to understand that the customer relationship does not end after they bought something or paid for it. CRM 2.0 is a strategy and as such part of a companies vision, not their execution. Many corporations still struggle to automate their business processes in our days and I am afraid that CRM 2.0 (being a strategy) cannot help here a lot. A proper architecture like SOA (Web Services, ESB, etc.) will make the IT agile and stable enough to cope with the high demands of the new world. On that end, CRM 2.0 extends traditional CRM and requires the basic infrastructure to run smoothly - which is currently not always the case, unfortunately.

The tough part will be the ROI measurement of a CRM 2.0 strategy. There will be no associated revenue stream(s) with each single investment anymore. Advocate customers can influence many others and create a large number of leads just by spreading the word. The identification of these individuals (to adapt their customer value) will be a tricky thing as the information will be outside the CRM database and probably no easy Google search. The metrics to calculate ROI will need to change to include the fact that people can contribute in various different ways to promote products or build/enhance them.

Not investing in such customers will not only blot out the revenue and new leads, but might have the opposite effect (kind of the inverse Streisand-Effect - if there is something like this). Negative publicity can be really costly to fight against.

Technorati-Tags: CRM 2.0,transaction model,strategy,business process

CRM 2.0 tipping point?

2008-12-26T10:44:00.001+01:00

What will be the tipping point for CRM 2.0? What (and when) will be the single event to make it mandatory for every company to succeed?

Will it reach the critical mass at all!? Is this just another hype and one more buzzword that will be forgotten in two years?

There are examples like Apple that show it is possible to operate a successful company without actively including customers in the process of creating and evolving products and services (although they do a very good job in listening to their customers...)

Maybe there will be two kinds of CRM strategies in the future - one that gets into a true two-way discussion with the customer and builds on co-creation and co-operation; and another one that keeps focus on operational efficiency or competitive advantage through unique (kept secret as long as possible) features and functions?

I believe it is possible to create an outstanding customer experience without any CRM 2.0 strategy. It might depend on the product or the corporate culture if it makes sense to deeply involve customers in the processes or not.

Taly Weiss collected some predictions form 'Social Media influencers' on what they think will change in 2009:

Social Media Influencers Predictions 2009 By Trendsspotting

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web 2.0social)

A Merry Christmas to all of you out there...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Tipping Point,Strategy,Predictions 2009

Business Velocity

2008-12-21T19:46:00.001+01:00

Ciaran Dynes (Director of Product Management at Progress Software) presented some numbers that made it very visual how fast our world is currently changing... and it will get faster and faster in the future...

Business Velocity

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: business velocity)

With this ever increasing business velocity, the need for a new Customer Relationship Model is also increasing. The traditional CRM systems and strategies are not able to keep up with this acceleration.

Technorati-Tags: CRM 2.0,Business Velocity

Twitter posts about "social"

2008-12-18T16:10:00.001+01:00

Company Model of the future?

2008-12-17T19:03:00.001+01:00

Zappos is not very much known over here in Europe, but the consistent empowerment of the own employees could be the future model for a successful CRM and corporate culture. Happy employees serve happy (and loyal) customers...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,corporate culture

CRM 2.0 is not an IT challenge...

2008-12-04T15:39:00.001+01:00

Our CTO, Hub Vandervoort, talks about the challenges to implement an SOA and concludes that this is also not only a matter of the right Software or Tool-Set, but a challenge to get people collaborating and communicating with each other (see SOA- Socially Oriented Architecture).

The same applies to CRM 2.0! Software will only support a new Customer Relationship Model - the more important part is the strategy and the shift in peoples heads that has to happen.

While technology was the initiator (Web 2.0) to create the demand for CRM 2.0, it will not be the solution to deal with it.

Technorati-Tags: CRM 2.0,Technology,Software,Collaboration,Strategy

It's All About the Data...

2008-11-17T16:42:00.004+01:00

This article from Bill Snyder shows that in many SOA projects the data and its structure does not get the attention that it should.
For a working 360° view of a customer - something that Amdocs is propagating for years now - many data silos must be integrated and made accessible within an SOA. It is not only about (business) processes and services, the data is as important, especially when it comes to CRM.

In a CRM 2.0 strategy, the data and its availability is crucial. Customers expect all data (and services) to be available whenever and wherever they need it. There is no real personal treatment of customers without a 360° view of their data.
How can this be achieved?
One possible solution is a shared information datamodel (SID) or an existing standard datamodel like TMFs structure. This can either be used by all SOA services or be mapped to them individually (legacy apps).

Oracle seems to get it

2008-11-07T18:01:00.001+01:00

Anthony Lye from Oracle has a good vision of what CRM 2.0 really is about. And although CRM 2.0 is still not a tool or an installer that you can put on a server and be happy - It is important to have the right tools to engage users and be able to connect people and systems in an efficient way.

Anthony realizes the need to break through the very limited process-focused view of traditional CRM and connect to customers in a new and collaborative way. This is not only about gathering data from social networks and generating leads - its also about contributing to these networks and create value for the customers.

I specially like the fact that Oracle utilizes the OpenSocial API introduced by Google. It is always good if tools are based on standards and open source code. In this case it allows developers from the social networks or other Web 2,0 applications to provide interfaces to their platforms.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,OpenSocial,Collaboration

CRM 2.0 only for complex sales?

2008-11-03T11:56:00.001+01:00

Anthony Lye from Oracle suggests that Web 2.0 features are more useful for complex sales situations rather than the High-Volume, Low-Margin business (like Amazons retail business).

But is this really the case? What about features like customer ratings and reviews for example?
These are Web 2.0 features that are more useful the more people use it (requires to pass the critical mass!).

Of course it is not possible - from a companies perspective - to stay in close contact to millions of customers worldwide in a very personal way. But doesn't that even more cry for a Customer Relationship Model that engages the customers to share their opinion and get into contact with other buyers and users?

I believe that CRM 2.0 could (and will) be used in both scenarios and deliver equal benefits on both sides of the sales spectrum. Of course the features being used will be different, but still they require to change the mind-set of employees and management... and of course a properly developed CRM 2.0 strategy...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,SFA,crm-strategy

Economic downturn to increase the need for CRM 2.0?

2008-10-31T16:06:00.001+01:00

With the crisis on the financial markets and the possible economic downturn in the Mid and Long-Term, I was wondering is this will also slow down the rise of CMR 2.0 or if this will even increase the need for next gen. Customer Relation Management?

Analysts still see Software as a Service (SaaS) as the next big thing on the market - which would support the fusion of traditional CRM and Web 2.0. But will companies be able to re-think their Customer Relationship Model strategy or will they prioritize this down until times get better?

I believe that the majority will see CRM 2.0 as a chance to survive the 'hard times' and come stronger out of them as aver before. Or, to see it from the other side, the economic downturn could be a chance for a business to focus on the most important parts - their customers - and get rid of some of the bad behavior that we could see in the past years of globalization, rise of technology and new markets.

Interesting times ahead of us... Will be interesting to see what the outcome will be.

Technorati Tags: CRm 2.0,Markets,Economic Crisis,CRM strategy

Web 3.0?!

2008-10-24T14:14:00.001+02:00

Is this really a 'major release' or shouldn't this really be Web 2.1?

Technorati Tags: Web 3.0,Web 2.1,Buzz Words

Analogy to the TV revolution

2008-10-22T16:09:00.001+02:00

Brian Halligan raised a good point - isn't the current (r)evolution of Customer Relationship Management (or Customer Relationship Model) very similar to the dramatic changes in Marketing with the introduction of the television 50 years ago?

The TV completely changed the way of marketing and advertising! Some companies were able to leverage the new tool and grow dramatically (Coca Cola, P&G, etc.) while others got stuck with their traditional way of marketing and did not grow or even went out of business.

Very similar to what the Web 2.0 does with CRM! Customers discovered how to avoid the traditional advertising - i.e. one way or push communication - overload and more and more using new ways to do their purchase decision. The social networking is playing an important role in this decision.

With a good CRM 2.0 strategy, companies can leverage this development and grow with it. Staying in the old fashioned structures might not be a good idea...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Revolution,Web 2.0,Marketing,Advertising

Examples how CRM 2.0 could deliver benefits

2008-10-22T14:42:00.001+02:00

I recently moved from Germany to Switzerland and now going through the pain of changing my address with all the companies I am dealing with...

Why can't they connect to a service like Plaxo so that I do not need to change my address with each and everyone of them?

Agreed, there is some security issues that need to be solved and Plaxo might not be the right candidate for holding a 'master address', but this example shows that there are applications of CRM 2.0 that really deliver a value to customers. Maybe they would even chose service providers based on their degree of adoption to these kind of networks...?

For example my mobile provider or insurance company could subscribe to my profile and use OpenSocial to get updates for my address and personal details. This could trigger an email that asks me if the new data is correct (e.g. new address or martial status) and provide a single link where I can confirm. This would safe me hours of my precious time calling all these firms and sending out many many letters and emails... What a nice dream :)

But wouldn't you immediately sign up for this? Did you ever go through this pain after a move?
Wouldn't that be a criteria when we select a product or service?

Thinking further this is valuable data that can be used for up-sell and cross-sell opportunities that would otherwise potentially fall never have been discovered. Maybe I need a new insurance when I got married or moved into a new house? Need a new price plan for my mobile when I am moving to a different country? Huge potential here...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,painful address change,business idea

Social CRM is not a product you can buy!

2008-10-20T13:32:00.001+02:00

When I am reading through Oracle's Vision of Social CRM (http://www.oracle.com/applications/socialcrm/index.html) I keep thinking that this is really missing the "social" component at all.

What defines a CRM to be "social" ?
How can a product help you achieve this ?
What is the outcome of social CRM ?

Adding some Web 2.0 collaboration tools doesn't help without a properly defined and executed (yes, I came to the conclusion that excution is AS important than strategy :) CRM 2.0 strategy.

It is all about how we leverage the existing tools to create a unique customer experience that differentiates a company from competition. There is no CRM 2.0 installer! There is no way around activating the brain and spending some thoughts of how that really works...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Social CRM,Oracle,Tools,Web 2.0

93 percent of Americans want companies to have a presence in social media...

2008-10-15T14:31:00.001+02:00

New research from Cone LLC finds 93 percent of Americans want companies to have a presence in social media. (more)

This is an impressive number and shows the importance for a CRM 2.0 strategy. Although the study says that the demand is high, the people asked were unsure about the ways this can be achieved.

43 percent say companies should use social networks to solve customer service issues;
41 percent want businesses to ask for customer feedback on products and services; and
37 percent believe organizations should develop new ways for customers to interact with a brand via applications and widgets.

As the "how" is not clearly defined, yet, there is a good opportunity for early adopters to utilize new Web 2.0 techniques and platforms to engage customers and get into a fruitful conversation with users and potential buyers. Being the first always helps to reach the critical mass that is so important in social networks and the Web 2.0 universe!

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,social networks

Oracle to include social networking in their CRM offering

2008-10-14T09:17:00.001+02:00

The solution (called Oracle Sales Prospector) does real-time recommendations based on previous buying behavior.

Not sure where the social network component will fit in there, though...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Oracle

Semantic Web

2008-10-13T13:25:00.001+02:00

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Semantic Web

What is the value of being able to search 124 billion web sites on cuil if I just want to have an answer to a simple question?

The Semantic Web will be the future answer to bring meaning into the fast growing information overload that the Internet delivers. It will be able to answer questions and - combined with mash-ups - show exactly the information we need rather than five thousand search results which I will never ever be able to look at.

In the context of CRM 2.0, the Semantic web will help internally to understand customers better and externally help deliver a unique experience that differentiates from competition.

..more to come...

SOA and the Enterprise 2.0

2008-09-02T11:20:00.001+02:00

see my post in the SOA blog:

http://soa2-0.blogspot.com/2008/09/giles-nelson-about-soa-and-enterprise.html

This is relevant to CRM as it outlines the technology changes required to implement a CRM 2.0 application based on a SOA.

I find Giles statement about the next generation of users very important. They will expect all the Web 2.0 applications at their jobs - that is why this time the innovation comes from outside the enterprise, not the other way around.

This might be a proof that the customers are more and more empowered and the enterprise has to adopt in order to be successful in the future... CRM 1.0 days might be gone soon!

Human Nature

2008-08-30T14:56:00.002+02:00

"People like doing business with people they like and trust"

This is a very true statement and seems to be written in human DNA.
In the past, many CRM solutions did not consider this simple fact at all and focused on collecting customer data and make them available in many different forms and at any place. With the right strategy, this can help build fruitful customer relations and create an environment of trust and cooperation. But a pure CRM installation is not the guarantee of success!

Sales reps appreciate a tool that delivers data of the customer but they are not keen on entering a lot of data into an application that is not helpful for them to win deals or generate leads. Social applications connected to such an application can help improve leveraging the social intelligence that improve these flaws. Additionally the Web 2.0 applications can improve the communication with the customer and build a better relationship from which both sides profit.

But again, tools or applications is only one side of the medal. It it necessary to back that up with a bullet proof and well thought through CRM 2.0 strategy. Software can only help building and maintaining relationships better and more effective, they can not replace real people talking to real people - people they trust...

CRM 1.0 vs. CRM 2.0

2008-08-24T01:07:00.003+02:00

Starts with a (ready developed) product
Strong Focus on SFA
Gathers information about the customer
Where is the Customer Relation?
Where is the value (+experience) for customers?
Process focused (Inside-Out view)

Provide content to engage consumers in a conversation
Collaborate on products and services
Listen to users and customers
The consumer engagement will lead to loyal customers
This will create a Meaningful Customer Relationship that brings value to both sides!

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, process flow, loyal customers, meaningful customer relationship

Viral Marketing and CRM 2.0

2008-08-23T14:59:00.001+02:00

Viral Marketing (did I mention that I don't really like that term?) can be a powerful marketing tool, especially if the budget is somewhat limited...

...but...

this shot can easily backfire!

Candians PCWorld has put together a list with 'viral' marketing campaigns that really did not deliver the expected result.

What about risks in CRM 2.0 using social networks?

Similar to Viral Marketing, CRM 2.0 utilizes social networks to gather information about the customer and establish a ralation - ideally making customers loyal to the brand or product.
What happens if the engagement in social networks fail or even show negative results (i.e. consumers run away or make fun of the products)?

A very important part of a CRM 2.0 strategy must be a management of the engagement in social networks that allows to intervene if thing start running out of the rudder. As high as the gains of CRM 2.0 can be, as high are the risks.
This shows the importance of a well defined CRM 2.0 strategy that does not blindly engage customers and use the nice&new Web 2.0 world, but create a concept that will bring real value to consumers and make them loyal to brand or products.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Strategy, social networks, risks

CRM 2.0 - Vendor selection process

2008-07-31T01:43:00.001+02:00

Here are my thoughts about vendor selection process and implementation phases - any comments highly appreciated!

Phase 1 „Daydreaming“

Determine Business Needs
What are the challenges?
What was the initial reason to think about a new CRM strategy?
Get help from an external advisor if necessary.
Define the ideal CRM solution
Outline the Hi-Level requirements
See the company from a customers‘ perspective

Phase 2 „Talk Turkey“

Come back to reality – you can not archieve everything you wish (what about ROI?)
Sync with existing CRM strategy and business processes – approve a project
Priotize the wishlist – separate the crtitical points from the nice-to-haves
Discuss with customers, employees and advisors
Identify the technology to be used (i.e. SaaS)

Phase 3 „Issue RFI, RFP“

Create a list of required functionality
Send this list to anumber of vendors (4-8)
Find a rating scheme and qualify the returned answeres
Ask the vendors to create a proposed solution
Asses and compare the outlined solutions
Find the two (or three) best fitting vendors
Focus on the vendor rather than the product
Technology must fit the strategy!

Phase 4 „Compare Vendors“

Does the corparate culture fit?
Is the vendor financial stable and is the roadmap promising and complete?
Is the product future proof (technology, platform), can it grow with your company?
Pricing model and license cost
Cost of implementation and customization
Required Hardware

Phase 5 „Proof of Concept“

Find a business process that covers as much technical aspects as possibe but can be implemented within a three week timeframe
Ask vendors to implement this business process with their product on site
Have IT and business people supervise the customization and administration process – get their buy-in!
Finish with a workshop where the vendor presents the PoC and answers questions how it was done
Try to estimate the efforts for the full project

Phase 6 „Implementation“

Keep business involved - gather feedback from future users during the implementation phase
Create reusable application code
Keep future upgrades in mind
Involve customers as beta-testers
Favor a staged approach for a ‚big bang‘

Phase 7 „Rollout“

Let users decide, not the contract – usability is the most critical factor...
Design DOES matter!
Provide detailed information to users (employees and customers)
Training
Collect feedback and keep improving the functionality and business processes

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, vendor selection, implementation

Social Networking Wars

2008-07-21T00:07:00.001+02:00

Awesome :-D

Next Best Action (NBA)

2008-07-11T23:04:00.001+02:00

Just came across an article from Anette Mitchell (Architect of O2's NBA) and that reminds me of some requirements we came across when selling Amdocs CRM to Telco customers.

First we tried to implement a solution ourselves but soon recognized that it requires quite a bit of code and analytical CRM capabilities to suggest a product or action (could be a campaign or agent script) based on the customers history and customers that were in similar situations.

Some actions are pretty obvious and can be added 'manually' (like customers with a high probability of churn would get special churn scripts) - but for the complex decisions it requires a sophisticated analytical CRM technology that is able to find patterns in customers behavior and predict in real time what the contact might be looking for.
It must be real time as the current interaction with the customer might have massive influence on the NBA...

NBAs have the power to turn the call center from a cost center into a profit center. This has can massive influence on the customer experience but requires well trained staff and a technology generating high quality predictions. It is also crucial that such a system learns from customer decisions, e.g. do not offer same or similar products if already declined by a customer.

All this help to approach (inbound) customers only with offers that potentially generate value for them.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, NBA, Concepts, Marketing

Oracle pushes Social CRM Applications

2008-07-11T17:54:00.001+02:00

Oracle introduced the new Sales Prospector on sales.com. Although this is focused on SFA (and there is so much more to social CRM and CRM 2.0...) this is a good first step and shows that Oracle is listening to its customers (or at least to the analysts :)

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM Platforms, SFA, Oracle

[fun] ROI Charts

2008-07-10T17:43:00.001+02:00

Sam Lawrence created some nice ROI charts :)
http://gobigalways.com/10-roi-charts-you-cant-live-without/

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, fun, ROI

Asking the right questions...

2008-07-09T19:07:00.001+02:00

Carly Fiorina, ex HP CEO, says that good leadership requires asking the right questions:

I totally agree with that! And further it is important whom you are asking these questions... and like she says, the customer always knows that something is wrong. And even if a customer cannot exactly tell what - listening to customers is crucial to detect the need for adjustments and change. A good leader will know what to do from her/his experience even if it is not articulated correctly.

Having an outstanding leader saying this, emphasizes the need of a customer centered Corporate Strategy. This might be the essence of CRM 2.0...?

See also Christo Norden Powers book on Powerful Questions to learn how to ask the right questions - although this is more focused on a one to one environment. For a company, analytical CRM will deliver the answer (when having asked the right questions to the software :).

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Leadership, Powerful Questions

Co-Creation - one step beyond customer feature proposals...

2008-07-08T21:35:00.005+02:00

I was thinking before how you could create a community like the open source one or the flock of free plug-in and gadget developers that actively create content and share it (being proud of their creations) while still having a business model and earn money from it.

Obviously it is hard to find an example in the software arena as only few people are willing to spend money on Software in times of Linux and OpenOffice. But Paul has found a very good example of a clothing store called Fashionology LA.

Read his blog post about what the store is doing to create a unique customer experience that customers are willing to pay a premium for.

I wonder if the Apple Store (iPhone v2) will be an example of a successful implementation in the IT world. The fact that content creators are able to offer their programs for free makes me doubtful... Although there will be a good solution for the micro-payment via the mobile service-provider.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Co-Creation, Collaboration, Customer Experience

CRM market growing at 23% in 2007

2008-07-08T01:36:00.001+02:00

Gartner released their CRM report, stating that the CRM market was growing with 23% in 2007.
SAP leads the pack followed by Oracle (Siebel, PeopleSoft) and SalesForce.com.

Report says that (CRM) customers are more and more looking for social networking and related technologies. This will help players that actively develop into this direction (like SalesForce.com and Oracle). Amdocs - No. 4 in the market - might suffer from this trend with a missing CRM 2.0 strategy.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM Market, CRM Vendors

Apple's customer experience

2008-07-04T19:42:00.001+02:00

I just read an article about Apple that was confusing me because they for sure create a fantastic product experience, but they are probably the most un-collaborative (does this word exist?!) company in this arena. Apple is actually doing everything possible to not communicate with its customers. Their policy is to keep everything product related as secret as possible. Even different departments within the company do not know what the others are doing. That avoids that somebody gets the full picture of a new product and accompanied with strict prohibitions in the employees contracts about what they are allowed to talk and to whom, it allows Apple to gain a competitive advantage that is massive (expected three years for the iPhone). When products leave the labs at apple, they are extremely stable and have only few bugs (although they are found quickly and the example of the iPod battery shows that consumers are able to strike back...).
The buzz that is created by new apple products allows Steve Jobs to leave customers in the dark during the development process without harvesting the negative feedback that everybody would expect. While Google motto is "Don't be evil", it looks like Apple's is the opposite. The leadership methods of Apple are antipodal to the open and collaborative ones that are common in most of the Hi-Tec and Software companies these days.
Interesting enough - Apple is tremendously successful with this strategy, gaining more and more market space from companies like Microsoft that recently started to open up to it's customers. Is this just an exception or will this market - which seems to be a precursor for CRM 2.0 strategies - fall back into traditional ways of leadership and marketing?

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Strategy, Collaboration, Apple
Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

Wordle.net

2008-07-04T17:59:00.001+02:00

Paul found a nice app to create a tag cloud from any text or website/blog with RSS feeds.

CRM market still growing fast

2008-07-02T02:39:00.001+02:00

AMR says the market for CRM software will grow with double digit rates.
This is pretty interesting given the fact that so many CRM projects still fail... Do companies realize that buying a CRM software is not sufficient to be successful?

What about the required changes to company strategy and employee behavior? According to AMR the Web 2.0 technology is mostly demanded in the SFA arena - but what about service and support? What about marketing and innovation?

Let's hope the software vendors get the basics right so that users of their platforms will finally be able to focus on the required strategic and behavioral changes towards CRM 2.0...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM market, CRM platforms

Presonalized Customer Experience - Something completely new?

2008-06-30T21:39:00.001+02:00

When I was running today on my usual track, I was thinking about the new personalized customer experience and what is so new about it. I came to the conclusion that we already had this concept in the past. It is not so new!

In the corner shops in the past, there was a truly personalized experience. The lady behind the counter knew all her customers personally and treated everybody different. She recommended products which she believed were of good quality and delivered some value to the consumer.
By sharing the experience of other buyers of the same product she could back up her own preferences. Customers met in the store and shared their experiences themselves - positive and negative ones.
The conversations were not limited to products, though. The people that met in the store chatted about their daily life and shared stories about family and friends. Sometimes interested people would spend some more thoughts about peoples problems and create solutions (could be new products or services).

With the globalization in the last decades the consumer got bombarded with new and cheap products from all over the world.
Innovative products reached millions of customers without any thought about their special needs or potential problems with the usage in different environments. No need for extensive testing or customer feedback - competition was fought on price and features.
As customers started buying in big stores without the personal support from the personnel or via the internet without any personal contact, there was no way to make problems public about products or services. Other consumers would buy the products because of the nice and shiny advertisements and producers made good money with selling bad products.
Marketing was made by analysts that gathered data, ran some algorithms on them and created products they believed had a good potential on the market. Supported by massive TV, radio and print campaigns the products were introduced to the market and produced with an efficient and cost effective SCM. No one ever spend any thoughts on products and services could be personalized and how the customer could be involved in the creation and evolution of them. And actually for quite a while there was simply no way to do this!!

But now there is way (!) and companies need to re-think their process of inventing, marketing and producing goods. The empowered customer is now able to share her/his experience with millions of other users via the internet and there are ways to create a personalized experience even for thousands or hundreds of thousand users.

So isn't CRM 2.0 a kind of 'back to the roots' thing? Weren't we as customers missing the personal component of the selling-buying process in the past years - but still want to keep the advantages of a global marketplace where companies have to compete globally on price, features and quality?

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Personalization, Customer Experience

The Customer changes... so do companies?

2008-06-30T15:34:00.001+02:00

I know this youtube video is pretty old, but it still perfectly visualizes what happens if companies do not change and adopt the new Web 2.0 world...

But is a CRM 2.0 strategy everything it requires to make customers happy? What else does it take to make consumers loyal to a brand or product - why and when do they become advocates?

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM 2.0 Strategy, Customer, Change

The Customer Experience

2008-06-29T12:49:00.001+02:00

Some CRM vendors talk about Service and Support when they push the Customer Experience. But the full Experience of a product or brand is so much more than that (although service is a crucial part of it...)!

What is the Customer Experience and why is it so important?

Creating an Experience means that the consumer receives a product or service that emotionally touches her/him and leaves an impression that is positive in all areas.

The Web 2.0 technologies allow empowered customers to share their experience with thousands of other users or potential users. If the experience is negative it will seriously harm a brand - if it is positive the customer becomes an advocate and kicks of the viral marketing machine (don't like that term).

A CRM 2.0 strategy must acknowledge the power of customers and actively create an Experience that is unique and all positive. This could be achieved by engaging the customer in a real dialogue and listen carefully to what e says. Innovation has to be a central part in such a strategy as well. Innovation from both sides, internally and externally.

The consumer will only become an advocate for a brand or product if if it delivers a great value (which is not related to the price!). In general the consumer is looking for products and services that leave them with a good feeling which might be created by innovation, the price, the uniqueness or the reputation.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Customer Experience

CRM 2.0 Strategy Discussion

2008-06-29T01:30:00.003+02:00

I collected my thoughts about what a CRM 2.0 Strategy will consist of.

Is this complete, anything missing here? Any feedback welcome!!

Next step is to get this structured and add some details in how this can be achieved...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM Strategy, Strategy

Innovation centric

2008-06-26T16:55:00.006+02:00

A. G. Lafley suggests in his book "The Game Changer" that companies should be centered on innovation. But he admits himself, that innovation that does not bring value to customers is nonsense...

So shouldn't the business be customer centric then?

I think there are many ways for customers to influence innovation and the products that come out of it. This graphic should visualize on a high level how that could look like:

The Web 2.0 will increase the influence of customers on innovation massively. Companies that actively support this development will profit from it and gain competitive advantage while companies ignoring it and staying with the old fashioned 'isolated' innovation process might not be able to create a customer experience that makes customers loyal.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Innovation, Customer Centric

The Social Graph

2008-06-03T22:34:00.001+02:00

The Social Graph could completely change analytical CRM in the future. Brad Fitzpatrick gives a good outline what the Social Graph is and why it adds value to users.

The OpenID project and Google's Social Graph API may be delivering the right tools to implement a working social graph across various web 2.0 platforms. If the critical mass is passed, no platform will be able to not open their APIs to connect to such a Social Graph.

As soon as this happens, companies will have to include this data in their business processes to make sure...

They address the right people with the right product offers
Customers are able to recommend the company or products
The buying experience is unique and exceptional
New and promising leads will be addressed
Customer support is leveraging the user community (save cost)
Feedback is possible and heard

Additionally it might be a good idea for businesses to play an active role in communities and the social graph to increase visibility and create a personal user experience. If I add a company or a brand to my list of friends, it shows my loyalty as a customer and makes this position public to my other contacts and friends. This is basically the same thing as if I am chatting with a friend and tell him how much I love my iPhone, but it's not only one person - it's a full community (across platforms) that can see my favorite mobile phone, including the vendor itself (-> cross-sell + up-sell opportunities).

As soon as the Social Graph gets usable (barriers are high in the web 2.0 world!) it will tear down the walls between the different platforms and web 2.0 communities and dramatically widen the horizon for each user. It will allow smaller niche platforms to operate with less user numbers - as long as the member can access friends in other platforms without registering twice...

Technically the Social Graph is ready to go (maybe the Semantic Web will get reality as well some day?). Google's initiative to create a standard API will probably help to make it usable also in a CRM 2.0 context to find new leads, help create a unique customer experience, initiate viral marketing (or however you want to call that) and build a community of users that help define, build and enhance new products.

Cross-Channel Integration

2008-05-16T12:54:00.001+02:00

If you - as a company - want to create a truly positive customer experience, there will be no way around the integration of all the different contact channels.
This was already a hot topic in the CRM 1.0 days (and still is) and led to terms like the "360 degree view on a customer". But having all the information available at the agents fingertips is not everything needed to create an experience.
In addition to the collection of data and making it available in the front office, the analytical side of CRM needs to take all this data into consideration as well when it comes to real time offering suggestions or campaign management. Additionally the customer wants to get the same experience independent on the channel he is using. There should be no difference between an email, a letter or a phone call to a business.
I am one of the typical "1st try an email..." type of guys. And guess what, I am getting really upset when it takes 3 weeks to answer my email but the agent on the phone can resolve the issue within 10 secs. Does it also take three weeks to answer a mail - or are they considered more important?

It looks like the processes in a CRM 2.0 environment need to change dramatically from the current ones, that seem to have strong preferences on certain channels (while ignoring some others completely).

The following questions need to be considered in a CRM 2.0 implementation:

What channels do I need to serve?
What are the costs involved (opening new channels will disburden others)?
How can I make sure the experience is the same across channels?
What channels do my customers prefer (each customer individual)?

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, contact channels,

Treat women different?

2008-05-16T12:18:00.002+02:00

Jackie Huba is raising an interesting point when she explains the differences of men and women when it comes to the word of mouth.

Although I agree that there are differences, I would say (as an affected person :) that most of the arguments she raises also apply to men. I would tend to say that it is a matter of the product if you personalize your CRM towards women or men. And this could lead to differences that vary from the color scheme of the website to the wording or functionality.

Interesting point, though. Need to keep this in mind - maybe there is a different CRM 2.0 strategy if the audience is mostly male or female?

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0

Customer Feedback

2008-05-16T12:00:00.001+02:00

Ben McConnell did a nice post in his blog about customer feedback that doesn't really fulfill its purpose.

Besides filtering the customer feedback and suggestions, asking the right questions and leaving the customer the freedom of choice in his answers (and the channel), is crucial.

How can this be incorporated in a proper CRM 2.0 strategy? I will add a reminder in the strategy discussion...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, customer feedback

Internal Collaboration and Community features

2008-05-16T11:10:00.001+02:00

Salesforce.com did a nice video of their 'ideas' product that pretty much outlines how CRM 2.0 can help optimizing the internal flow of communication and empower employees to be able to contribute to product innovation the same way customers could do...

This example also shows a good way to use the community to (pre~) filter a large amount of data (see the post about filtering). I am missing the possibility to involve the customers here... wouldn't it be a good idea to let the customers decide on the value of these ideas - they will be the ones that ultimately use the products?

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, collaboration

Lower the barriers...

2008-05-13T00:51:00.002+02:00

Today Google announced a tool called "Google Friend Connect" that will help include social networking features to (standard) websites.

It will leverage Google's OpenSocial to connect to various social networks and allows web designers to include social features with very little effort. This clearly shows the direction and the increasing popularity of the Web 2.0.

From a CRM 2.0 perspective, it will reduce the technical effort to include SN features on a corporate website while underlining the importance of a well thought Relationship Model to avoid damage to a brand or company's reputation.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Google, OpenSocial, FriendConnect

Increasing Customer Influence

2008-05-11T14:01:00.001+02:00

Why CRM 2.0?

Well, Ben McConnell has some good examples of the increasing influence of customers on the popularity of brands or products.

These examples show that the Web 2.0 opens new ways to share experience amongst customers and it is therefore extremely important for businesses to 'steer' this experience in order to avoid negative promotion.
What Amdocs calls the 'Intentional Customer Experience' leads into this direction, but a CRM software is not everything needed to achieve this. A proper and well defined CRM 2.0 strategy is the basis which probably requires a re-thinking within the company as well. New business processes won't help, if the corporate culture doesn't adapt as well.

These examples show very well the importance of CRM 2.0 and that it can make the difference of being successful in the new world of the Web 2.0 or being doomed to failure...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Strategy, Customer Experience

Increasing number of Sales Channels

2008-05-08T15:17:00.001+02:00

An important argument for a company to implement CRM 2.0 is the massively increasing number of interaction channels with its customers.

Times are gone where we (as customers) were fine with mail, phone and maybe email as contact options. While the website (self-support, online-ordering, faq, etc.) has already been recognized as an important channel, the Web 2.0 adds many more.
The next generation of customers is more likely to use social networks (Facebook, Wer-Kennt-Wen, MySpace) and blogs (or micro-blogs) as their reference and influencer towards a purchase decision. And there is much more than viral marketing to this - it requires a holistic strategy to be successful in this space.

If a company is not preceived as authentic, the effect of a marketing effort might be counterproductive!

Public Product QA

2008-05-08T11:32:00.001+02:00

In the open source community it works very well that the Quality Assurance (QA) is done by the whole community, i.e. developers and users. Can this work for commercial products as well? And how does this fit into a CRM 2.0 strategy?

It is already very common (for products that con somehow be 'updated' after the sale) to release products that are not properly tested. The customer is used as a beta tester to find bugs that can be fixed through updates. This happens due to the time pressure on the market and has implications on the customer satisfaction and experience.

A well defined CRM 2.0 strategy can include public QA and therefore reduce costs and TTM without negative affects on the customer side.

Google is frequently testing products on stability and collects valuable feedback on the application (see http://www.google.com/experimental).

Effective Filters

2008-05-07T00:37:00.001+02:00

Sam Lawrence is searching for the new 'Inbox', bringing my attention to effective filters in a CRM 2.0 environment.

When a company implements a CRM 2.0 strategy and allows its customers to actively take part in the product life cycle and and development, there will be tons of feedback (if there is none, the strategy probably didn't work out too well...) that need to be handled. One of the big topics currently in the CRM world is Time To Market (TTM) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) which would both be negatively affected by this overload.

How can the amount of information be reduced but at the same time made sure that no valuable data gets lost or the customer experience is impaired?

The answer will probably be some kind of smart analytical CRM software that is able to sort, filter and route the right information to the right people in the organization.

So there is more to CRM 2.0 than implementing a platform for Web 2.0 applications. The 360° view was yesterday, now it is more important to filter than to collect. Smart suggestions (realtime recommendations) are an example that points into the right direction - give the users a guidance of what makes sense in a particular situation and what data is not important.

I will try to define the requirements for such a system in the strategy section of the site...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Analytical CRM, Realtime Recommendations

War of the Worlds...

2008-05-06T20:33:00.001+02:00

Tomas Kohl has outlined a somewhat hostile view on the composition of CRM 2.0 :)

He is probably right that there is nothing like harmony in the interaction of these components. And as Paul Greenberg stated, VRM is a kind of opposition to CRM, which means the customer will follow nothing but his own interests in such a context.

BUT, from a company perspective, wouldn't it be possible to leverage VRM to build a CRM 2.0 strategy?

Could this be the differentiator for a business if it deals with VRM (and all the other Web 2.0 inventions) rather than fighting it (or seeing it as a threat)?

I am sure that there is a lot of tension and potential conflicts associated in this interaction, but I think the company that can deal with it the best will win. And even if the driving forces for a business are always profits (and that's how it should be), a proper CRM 2.0 strategy has to place the customer much more centric as this is the case currently.

After reading Tomas' view on things and spending more thoughts on it, I think I will need to revise my simple diagram a little. It does not reflect the reality as it should. Thanks for the feedback here!

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM, SCM, PRM, VRM

CRM 2.0 and Advertising

2008-05-06T18:31:00.001+02:00

An article from a German IT Mag raised an interesting question about how advertising can connect to the Web 2.0 world.
They make a good point that classical banner ads are not working very well in social networks, as their users are not looking to buy something (like when searching the web) but find advertising on their homepage rather disturbing.

From a strategy perspective it might not be a good idea to go for banner ads in a social network - also because the content of the page might be inappropriate.

But how will social networks finance themself and how can CRM 2.0 work in this environment w/o spreading a negative mindset about a brand or company?

A possible answer is shown by services from Slide or Meebo that are actively engaging the community to spread the word. This is viral marketing at its best and delivers on both, advertising and brand identification.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0

User statistics

2008-05-06T12:43:00.002+02:00

Recent article reveals that women have (in average) more contacts than men (62 vs. 57) and the majority of users (80%) have 1-100 contacts.
19% of users have 100-1000 contacts, 0.66% have 1000-10000.

Global Map for Social Networking and CRM 2.0 Strategy Discussion

2008-05-03T14:19:00.001+02:00

I created two pages on the Google site to collect all information about the various social networks and another one that will take any ideas of how a CRM 2.0 strategy could look like - including the problems and trade offs that are associated to them.

Find the map here and the strategy discussion here.

Nike: first small steps into CRM 2.0?

2008-05-01T21:45:00.002+02:00

Nike seems to be one of the first adopters of the CRM 2.0 concept with Nike+:

It looks like Nike does not only engage their buyers to build
communities and share their (positive) experience with the products,
they also listen to the users on the Web 2.0.

I will try to compile a list of companies adopting CRM 2.0 like concepts or at least having a similar vision in some kind to proof that CRM 2.0 really can make a difference.

Global Map for Social Networking

2008-05-01T14:57:00.003+02:00

While signing up and testing out on different social networking platforms, I found that there is quite a difference in the user group and focus amongst them.

Although all the platforms are open to anyone in the world, most of the sites are only strong in certain regions, age groups or focus groups. How would a company choose where to engage within a CRM 2.0 strategy? What functionality is important for my customers and where are they probably sharing information (i.e. where can I reach them best)?

My idea was creating something like a global map for social networking platforms. Try to analyze which customer groups are signed up where and using which applications / functionality within the Web 2.0. Could this help corporates to define an effective CRM 2.0 strategy?

The Outside-In View

2008-04-30T11:37:00.003+02:00

One of the Amdocs Marketing messages is around the 'Outside-In Perspective', i.e. the customer view on CRM rather than the 'Inside-Out Perspective' that only considers company features and processes.

This is true on one side, but does not really cover both sides. It is not enough to listen to the customer, it is very crucial that a business can offer value and an experience to buyers that is unique on the market. This will require some leadership and customer education in a specific area.

Companies like Apple do a very good job listening to their customers, but this is not the only reason for their success. Steve Jobs is also a visionary and is able to show new ideas and uncommon products bringing two worlds together.

To make buyers to loyal customers (i.e. Apple fans) requires a real Two-Way CRM that is also able to provide an outstanding and personalized customer experience with the products and the company or brand!

So it is a nice feature of CRM suites to adapt to existing business processes, but it is also necessary to re-think these processes and make sure they allow Two-Way CRM.

CRM 2.0 = CRM + SCM + PRM + VRM ?

2008-04-30T02:15:00.005+02:00

Reading through several comments about CRM 2.0, Paul Greenbergs Blog and Charles' emails, I started thinking if CRM 2.0 could be the sum of CRM connected with Supply Chain management (SCM), Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Vendor Relationship Management (VRM).

Is the future of CRM just a mix of all of these playing together somehow? Or is there more to it?

Maybe CRM 2.0 is just the intersection of these?

Blue Ocean Strategy Canvas

2008-04-30T02:02:00.004+02:00

Charles encouraged me to do a strategy canvas for CRM and here is the first draft for it.
I will probably add some more aspects during my research to highlight the important areas that are needed to make CRM 2.0 successful.

Why change?

2008-04-28T23:05:00.004+02:00

Why should a company at all go for CRM 2.0? Does traditional CRM not deliver the same or better results or have less cost associated with it?

This is an interesting question that companies will ask themselves when it comes to implementing next generation CRM systems and processes. Not only the customers must see a value in sharing knowledge and data, but also the business must have a compelling reason to change!

Some good arguments for an upgrade to CRM 2.0 are:

The fast changing economy in our days
A different business climate compared to the 90s
Shorter product life cycles
Customer has more and more choice - products become a commodity
Differentiate through unique customer experience rather than price or quality
Loyal customers are more and more important to ensure enduring revenues
CRM applications got more flexible and richer in functionality

Advisory Relationship

2008-04-27T01:27:00.004+02:00

Charles' comment about the differences in the business - customer relationship made me think about the changes that CRM 2.0 will imply in this area:
"CRM 1.0 assumes a “transaction relationship” with the customers. Trust is not necessarily important, just ”feeds and speeds,” so to speak. Does this not imply an advisory relationship? What kind of relationship does CRM 2.0 imply? Is this just a little change or is it a qualitative shift in relationships? Is trust important? In other words, there are a lot of subtitles involved in this 1.0 to 2.0 shift. What are they?"

If I follow the idea of an active customer that is willing to provide data and information about himself and takes part in what I called a 'two way CRM', it is absolutely necessary to create a high level of trust between both parties. Otherwise the customer will not be willing to provide all that data - he will see no value in doing so.
In the past (actually this is still the standard for 95% of the market) CRM was always a one way - or advisory - relationship, meaning that the businesses tried to gather as much data as they could of their customers and made them available wherever they could. That's what they called a 360° view of the customer and the goal was providing this information with some intelligence (e.g. what product can I up/cross sell to this customer) in real time on all available channels.
Although this still desirable, it will not be enough in the future to differentiate from competition and create a unique customer experience - which will lead to loyal customers.

CRM 2.0 really requires a much stronger relationship to customers, allowing them to take an active part in decisions and get more influence. A good example is the internet community that grouped together and bought Ebbsfleet Utd., a football club that is now actively managed by the members which take part in all decisions (even the formation during a game or player changes). How loyal would you be to a product where you are involved this deep?

CRM 2.0 should really be called "Customer Relationship Model 2.0" as the term Management suggests that the business 'manages' customers, which is not the case anymore...

The 2.0 concept

2008-04-25T03:12:00.003+02:00

I sent the draft to Dr. Charles Savage, one of the extremely inspiring professors at the FOM and he has some important questions that need to be answered in this context. One of them is around the term "2.0" and its meaning - what is it really about Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 or human culture 2.0?
The answer is not the same to everybody, but my definition is this one:
CRM 2.0 is the move from uni-directional contact management to a bi-directional, collaborative and active customer experience. This is the fusion of CRM 1.0 with technologies from the Web 2.0 arena. The consumer is evolving to a prosumer that actively takes part in the development, creation and support of products by providing data, feedback and information about himself and his experience with the offering.
From a company side, it is no longer enough to analyze customer behavior and create a marketing strategy from the analysis of this data. The differentiator will be a unique and outstanding customer experience that can only be created by actively involving the customer and keeping a continous dialogue with them. This will lead to a high value relationship and finally to true loyality to a brand or company.

This active involvement of the consumer can be achieved with Web 2.0 techniques in the various customer touch points:

Customer Support
- Customer helps Customer (Forums, knowledge sharing, mentoring)
- Intelligent customer self-service (make solutions easily available online)
- Communities (find users with the same problem)
Sales Force Automation
- Offer the right product at the right time (real time decisioning based on customer live data)
- Flexible product offering (let the customer decide what he wants to have and when)
- Personalize the experience (give customers the chance to provide personal data)
Knowledge Management
- Let users take part in the creation and maintenance of the knowledge base
- Provide feedback (allow easy feedback and suggestions)
Ordering / Provisioning
- Consumers decide on the ordering process (if possible)
- Flexible in time and location
Marketing
- Customer feedback (listen to customers)
- Match consumer requirements and expectations if posspible
- Reduce Time To Market (TTM)
Product Creation / Bundling
- Flexible bundling (let the customer decide)
- Listen to the customer when creating or enhancing products

All in all, its's all about bringing the customer on board and thus leveraging their knowledge while creating retention and identification to a brand, product or company.

First draft of proposed topic

2008-04-24T19:51:00.004+02:00

Yesterday and today I created a first draft of a document describing the proposed topic for my masters' thesis.
Next step is to get some feedback on the document and the topic to see if it is usable for a masters' thesis (no idea what I'll do if it's no good...).

I also started with a rough project plan to get an idea when I have to do what things...
The draft outline looks like this:
1) Executive Summary
2) Introduction
3) Problem Definition
4) Objectives
5) Methodology
6) Historical Background (CRM 1.0)
7) Web 2.0
8) CRM 2.0
a. Technology
b. Business Cases
c. Potential Drawbacks
9) Conclusion
10) Holistic Approach – ITM Checklist
11) Abbreviations
12) Bibliography
13) Declaration

Revolution or Evolution

2008-04-22T20:33:00.004+02:00

One of the most interesting questions around CRM 2.0 - in my eyes - is if this will be a revolution or more like an evolution of CRM 1.0.
Without being able to predict the final outcome, I would prefer an 'evolution' as I think CRM 2.0 will definitely be build on all the good things from CRM 1.0 and it will leverage many pieces that proved to be valuable in the 'old world'.
It's gonna be a very exciting journey towards real CRM 2.0 and it will definitely change things and the way business is made in the future (or how companies will differentiate). But we will still see some good old stuff then that was around forever.
A good example I see is SOA, which is also both - a hype and the normal evolution of software development in an enterprise environment. There have been many concepts before SOA that delivered the same kind of functionality or value, but there is a reason why they have not been that successful and why SOA is seen as a revolution in this space.
Again, it will be an exciting jurney and I hope that I will not only be part of it, but also actively design CRM 2.0 and it's vision....

Day 7 - Two Way CRM

2008-04-20T22:40:00.003+02:00

Currently most of the CRM activities are initiated and driven by business rather than the customer. With CRM 2.0, this can change as the customer will play a much more active role in this relationship.
By providing data and deciding whom to provide the data, the customer actively steers the purchase decision and will speak to companies on the same level. Ideally, the relationship will be much deeper and the company is rewarded by true loyalty from the customer.
While most of the current marketing activities are based on analyst recommendations which derive their data from anonymous surveys the might - or might not - represent the consumers' demand, CRM 2.0 can help to let the customer take part in the creation and development of new products.
This will not only lead to new ideas and inventions, but also save cost and deepen customer retention.

Day 5+6 : Sharing vs. Information hiding

2008-04-19T16:33:00.004+02:00

On my way back from Zurich yesterday, I had some thoughts about sharing and the importance of sharing knowledge and information in the Web 2.0 and therefore also with CRM 2.0.
First thing that I recognized is that I still wasn't able to get a copy of a finished masters' thesis from somebody else and was unsuccessful to find one in the internet (will probably try again later today...). This shows the current mindset in our society and the fact that nobody is keen on sharing anything - especially not knowledge - with others if there is no good reason for it.
I added this under the "Problems" branch in the mind map as I see this as a crucial factor to be successful with CRM 2.0 and reach the critical mass necessary to keep it running:
"How can we change this mindset and get users to contribute in social networks by sharing their knowledge? What incentives are there for them?"

Thinking about this, I started looking for an easy way to start sharing stuff for this thesis and came across Google's "Shared Stuff" page. Basically this is an easy way to share Links to websites that you are surfing on. You just have to add a link to the Links-toolbar and click this to share the website your are currently visiting.
Find my shared links at http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff?user=108398601856201089428

I will also add this on the Blog's links (on the right).

As soon as I find an easy way to make the mind map and other documents available, I will upload them and post the link here as well. The thesis document could be shared as a Google Docs file, but I think this requires a Google account to read and edit and I am not sure if Google Docs offer all necessary formatting options for a thesis document... need to check on that.

Day 4 - Data Security

2008-04-17T10:53:00.003+02:00

As I am a member of social networks and a customer to various companies as well, I tried to think of any reservations that I would have about this. And the first thing that came to my mind is obviously data security?
How can I as a user or customer control who is using my data for what? We all know how many spam we get every day, but this is sent more or less blindly to a large number of recipients.
When companies have more data about me, will this lead to even more unwanted email or will this filter the advertising and reduce the amount of communications while increasing the quality?

I think this could be a tightrope walk for companies that think about implementing CRM 2.0. A strict governance needs to be put into place that ensures that the customer data is not abused in any way. Any affairs in this area could seriously harm a company or its affected brand.

Day 3 - Googles OpenSocial

2008-04-16T23:13:00.004+02:00

A very interesting project is Googles OpenSocial API. This API is intended to allow the integration of existing social networks (like LinkedIn or Xing) into new applications or mashups without having to learn or re-engineer the various APIs of the social network application.
Quote from the OpenSocial website: "The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the API and host 3rd party social applications. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING."

This could be easily used as a basis to retrieve data from various sources and not only get enhanced information about the single customer, but also about their relationship amongst each other and how groups are created or influenced.
A big topic will be data security and the aceptance level within the users of social networks. Will customers be willing to share personal information if they know that they will be used by companies they don't know?

Day 2 - Customer Experience

2008-04-15T22:01:00.003+02:00

While reading through many articles about CRM 2.0 or the development of CRM in general, I am coming along the "Experience" notion more and more often.
It looks like many companies that sell CRM software or services have finally understood that CRM is more than a software for contact management and that outstanding customer service can be a differentiator for companies when their products become a commodity.
This awareness changes the way CRM solutions and services are marketed and also their functionality. Many companies include Web 2.0 elements into their products to follow this trend and fulfill customer requirements.
So it looks like there is some demand on the market for CRM 2.0 and the software vendors are picking up that trend already. But still I have the feeling that there is no common definition of what CRM 2.0 really is and how it can add business value to customers (and the customer's customers).

Mind-Map

2008-04-14T15:19:00.003+02:00

I started capturing links in my browser's bookmark list and put new ideas into a mind map as I go ahead with my research.
I will find a way to share the bookmarks and documents that I create so that the latest version is always accessible.

I am using FreeMind to create and update the mind map.

Day 1 - The Beginning

2008-04-14T10:51:00.001+02:00

So I am finally starting to document the progress of my masters' thesis in a weblog...

Today (Monday April 14th 2008) is the beginning of my two weeks holiday that I have dedicated to work on my masters' thesis about CRM 2.0.
This paper will be crown of my two year executive MBA studies at FOM in Munich.

I decided to use Blogger.com as a host for this blog because I already have my personal blog here and got used to the functionality that Google offers with Blogger.com.
It turns out there are hundreds of hosting services available for weblogs, but as always, you use what you are used to, so I am back here :) During the blog creation, I found that there is already a blog from Michael W. Thomas that talks about CRM that uses the "crm2" sub-domain, so I choose "crm2-0" which leads to "crm2-0.blogspot.com" for the complete url.

I plan to a post daily status and additional milestones that I pass along my way towards the final paper. In the previous days and weeks I already had some ideas about the topic and did some research and initial reading. Looks like there is already some material available in the internet that talks about the web 2.0 in combination with CRM. I hope that my professional background, selling CRM software for the past eight years, and my personal experience with social networking and web 2.0 will bring some new aspects and findings in this area.

Next Steps:

Do more research around CRM 2.0
Create a mind map so I don't forget anything
Create an outline or high level description what the thesis will be about
Talk to some professors at FOM to find out if the topic is OK for a masters' thesis