Keeping employees engaged and signed on to the team concept is one of the main themes here at the sixth annual North American Conference on Customer Management here at the Disneyland Hotel in balmy Anaheim, Calif.

Who better to talk about teamwork than Joe Torre, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers? Yesterday he wowed the crowd by opening up his speech into a question-and-answer session allowing the crowd to pick his brain about anything from his thoughts on the Chicago Cubs to handling George Steinbrenner, his former boss when he managed the Yankees to four World Series championships. “You have to understand, you never handled George,” Torre said. “You dealt with him.”

Whether he liked Steinbrenner or not is inconsequential. Torre explained that being able to actually sit down and talk with him made a big difference. “Managing in New York, I was able to speak with George and I really made the most of those conversations,” he said. “When I managed the Braves and Cardinals, I rarely got to speak with [respective owners] Ted Turner and August Busch III.” The takeaway — if you’re a contact center supervisor or manager, make sure your door is open and you’re willing to hear your employees’ concerns. You may learn something.

In connecting with the primarily CRM audience, Torre spoke about how handling a customer service team and a baseball team can be parallel to one another. He explained that in tough times, it is important to keep your cool and try to bring perspective to the situation at hand. “I try not to forget what it was like being a player,” he recalls. “You have to respect your employees, and try to understand why they reacted the way they did as opposed to blindly responding to their actions.”

Torre went on to explain that our society is predicated on looking at the sexy statistics, in baseball that can be home runs, strikeouts, number of hits, or consecutive games played. For the contact center, that could be individual agent key performance metrics such as average handle time or first call resolution. While stats should play a role, Torre stressed that it is important that everyone works together — fantastic individual numbers or not — to help the team win in the end. “You need a group of unselfish people who care about winning and not just their individual performance,” he said.

Leaving the crowd with one more nugget, when asked how he deals with players who are paid exorbitant salaries he made it very clear that when you walk into his clubhouse the Swiss bank accounts are checked at the door. “Never forget blood runs through everyone’s veins,” he said. “You have to deal with people as human beings no matter what they get paid.”

Hello from Denver and the Sage Summit afternoon keynote. Assuming I have wireless or some sort of ‘Net connection (pretty please, Sage?), I will be live-tweeting the event, so if you follow me on Twitter, I apologize for clogging up your stream. If you like that sort of thing, you can follow me @laurenmizzou, or search Twitter for #SAGE for more Sage micro-bloggers. In addition to Sage product announcements and strategies at today’s keynote, Olympic decathalon winner (and recent reality TV star) Bruce Jenner is here to talk about finding the champion within during tough economic times. (Something tells me that Jenner didn’t collaborate with step-daughter Kim Kardashian on this presentation.)

Just yesterday, Sage altered its branding a bit, dropping “Software” from its title to align more closely with the Sage global operations, Sage Groupl plc. Also yesterday, the business management software provider hosted a run and walk along the Cherry Creek Greenway in Denver led by Jenner, of course.

Early this morning David van Toor, general manager for Sage CRM, delivered a CRM-specific keynote that introduced new features and enhancements to the three Sage CRM products: SageCRM and SageCRM.com, SalesLogix, and Act! by Sage. Look out for a detailed destinationCRM.com news story on the new releases early tomorrow. To whet your palate, here are a few highlights which I expect will be expanded by the Sage exective team during the keynote:

• A greater commitment to Web 2.0 and Social CRM in all three products. The basis of this will be through the use of mashups. 
• SalesLogix 7.5 will “spoon feed” users who struggle with filtering through data and accounts. Includes new filters, tabs, groups, and timelines, to see the whole picture of the customer.
• Act! Mobile Live supports new operating systems. Sync Act! to virtually any handheld — even the new Blackberry. 

I expect much of this conference to focus on how to get the most out of your business given the economic climate. I attended a presentation this morning given by Sage CRM champion, Bill Hoffman on using CRm to drive business value in a tough economy. Hoffman had a unique view on the role SMBs can play — and he doesn’t see scaling back as an option. “In the small-to-midsize business market, we have an opportunity to thrive,” he says. “Your competition does not have CRM systems and you competition does not have communicative sales skills. They are backing off on marketing and training … When they back off, move full speed ahead.”

Never underestimate the power of making your customers feel welcome. I’m not talking about the employees who welcome patrons to the local chain store, but a real sense that the staff wants you there for more than just what’s in your wallet. It’s not easy to achieve — and it makes the case for letting human resources under the CRM umbrella — but if you can do it, you’ve got gold. Call it customer experience.

(Yes, I’m going to write about another one of my shopping experiences. You got a problem with that?)

A month or two ago, my beloved Meaghan decided she needed some nice boots for fall/winter, and we went to check out John Fluevog down in SoHo. She knew they had things in her size (she’s a tall woman, so her feet aren’t small), plus she’d had a good experience with their Boston location. The staff immediately won us over by welcoming us, engaging us in conversation (not just asking if we needed help with anything), and by not treating Meaghan like a freak because she wanted something in an 11 or 12 women’s.

I say they won us over, and I mean it. Great experiences in two locations made Meaghan a lifetime customer. Treating me well even though I wasn’t there to buy — plus seeing the great experience she had — got me to come back when I was ready. In fact, it was the only store I considered. I wanted to go back, and buying shoes felt secondary to that purpose.

The shoes, man. The image doesn't do them justice.

Yes, they have absolutely beautiful footwear. But a good product isn’t always enough. They befriended me, to the extent that I’d be pleased to see any of them socially (it turns out we all hold Barcade in common esteem). When it turned out they didn’t have what I wanted in the color I wanted, they immediately offered to send an order to another location, for delivery to wherever I wanted, free of charge. I chose to have them sent to the store so I could come back to pick them up. The place is just that good.

Readers of my column know I’m no stranger to nice clothing. Still, I’m not made of money, and this isn’t the best economic climate to be spending extra on necessaries that could be had for less. That said, I happily and unreservedly plunked down more money than I’ve ever spent on a single pair of shoes in my life. And I will do it again.

BONUS CONTENT!

For those of you who get the title of this post, and even for those who don’t, here’s the inspiration. (Vulgarity makes it NSFW, but clicky.)

Edit: Fixed (I hope) the nonfunctional video link.

Let’s face it — the economy is a mess. Cost of living is up, stock shares go on hourly roller coaster rides you normally have to wait in line for hours to ride at Six Flags, and now people are trying to figure out how to buy gifts this holiday season while still being able to keep the lights on. In sum, consumers are impatient, perturbed, and trying to find exactly what they need when they need it.

For companies, this means personalization — and St. Louis-based customer experience systems provider Amdocs is looking to meet this growing need, particularly in the mobile phone world with its acquisition of Dublin, Ireland-based ChangingWorlds for $60 million, which is expected to close during Amdocs’ fiscal quarter ending December 31.

ChangingWorlds’ mission, according to its Web site, is to “pave the way for all types of personalized information services over mobile, from personalized portal navigation to smarter search and highly targeted mobile advertising to ensure that mobile subscribers enjoy content and services that are relevant to their true needs.”

Judging by the fact that the term “mobile” is mentioned three times in a single-sentence statement, ChangingWorlds is focused on that customer touchpoint. However, James Patmore, vice president of EMEA and Asia Pacific for Amdocs stresses that this move is not solely for the sake of mobile content. “This is about adding relevancy and personalization for all of the touchpoints a user might have with a service provider,” he says. “One is mobile, but others can be with a customer management team in the call center or the experience they might have purchasing [or updating] a service plan by using the online portal. ChangingWorlds’ business is really an expansion on what we bring to personalization technology.”

Elisabeth Rainge, director of next generation networks operations at Framingham, Mass.-based global market intelligence firm IDC, believes this is a smart move for Amdocs. “It’s about expanding the reach of the [the customer experience systems provider's] platform and providing more value to the consumer by being responsive in the way the subscriber prefers to interact,” she says. “It’s a bigger competitive footprint for Amdocs … but one with more values for [its clientele].” Rainge sees this as a largely technological acquisition, and as a result expects ChangingWorlds’ capabilities to be integrated into Amdocs’ core assets.

Consequently, Patmore does not foresee any massive layoffs and believes this is a way to also expand ChangingWorlds’ — there are no plans to change the company name at this point according to Patmore — competitive footprint. “This is an accretive acquisition,” he stresses. “The people are the key assets and we expect to assimilate all the employees into our organization.”

Rainge believes this move is well-timed and will force Amdocs’ competitors to rethink how they are providing personalization. “This shows [the company] is paying attention to the subscriber which is so important because sometimes the discussion becomes one of efficiency,” she says. “The kind of challenge operators face today in this economic climate is that they need to touch their customer as best they can with as rich an experience and reliable system possible.”

Synchronicity: Earlier this morning I was chatting with Paul Greenberg, and our thoughts turned to Microsoft Outlook, Windows Mail Live, and gmail. What we used, what we liked and didn’t like about each, and so forth. Shortly thereafter, I found this article in my reader. Taglocity socializes Outlook — in the sense of being social, not socialism — and I have to say the concept is pretty cool. Granted, it’s kinda sad that a communication tool like Outlook needs to have social interaction plugged in by a third party, but so what? As Avidian’s James Wong will tell you, most people (especially salespeople) work in Outlook already. Why not add some punch to Ol’ Reliable?

Microsoft Outlook isn’t a CRM tool — no email client is, not by itself. Still, integration with Microsoft Outlook is pretty much a requirement for being taken seriously in the CRM biz, especially for SMB products. Making Outlook more useful is not going to make anybody unhappy, and as long as the critical info gets into the CRM system, add-ons like Taglocity can improve the communication aspects of customer-facing jobs. Cool.

 Today, a New York Times Tech article outlined Google.org’s use of its Web-based search to track the spread of the flu in the U.S. Many times people, upon feeling ill, Google search phrases such as “flu symptoms.” A simple task on the end-user’s behalf has led to Google Flu Trends, a site created by the Google.org philanthropy unit. The Web tool takes flu search queries, ties them to regions based on the searchee’s location, and then creates pretty little charts based on regional data and the number of flu-phrase searches. Upon first glance and initial click, a site visitor can see the flu activity in her state and compare that to the rest of the country.

Search results today of Google Flu Tracker, (Image courtesy of Google.com)

Google “Trending” is not new. You can go to Google Trends page to see the “hotness” of a search topic and see whether it has spiked in searches recently. Google Flu Tracker, however, is the most service-based of all the trends. Wouldn’t it be nice to know if within the past few days the state you live in has seen a high increase in cases of the flu? Aside from the consumer benefits, just think of what this could do for healthcare facilties. Or even pharmacies and drug stores. See that flu activity in Maine has risen from Low to Moderate within a day? What an opportunity for TheraFlu to swoop in with in-store specials at all the Wal-greens stores in Maine.

I was excited about this service provided by Google. I’m used to looking to Google for answers, but this really takes it to the next level.  Looks like I wasn’t the only one excited about the news. According to Google Trends, Flu Tracker is number 5 on the “Hot Level.”

My question now is… What’s next?

Much as I love the soap-opera shenanigans that must be behind the apparent reappearance (nice phrase!) now-confirmed reemergence of ex-Oracle bigwig John Wookey at SAP — watch for check out Jessica Tsai’s news story over at http://www.destinationcrm.com/Daily_News soon! — I’m also intrigued to hear that the ongoing legal skirmish between the two CRM giants over tiny little TomorrowNow may be nearing its conclusion.

Trying to put our coverage of the saga into chronological order — and with a tip of the editorial hat to Wired News — I stumbled upon this little wonder: Dipity.com.

Eventually, I’ll figure out how to actually embed the chronology here, like a proper blogger would. For the moment, you’ll have to trust me when I tell you how cool this is, and actually click on a link:

Oracle and SAP Battle Over TomorrowNow

(I know, I know — how very 2007 of me. My apologies.)

With this new gadget, we’ll be able to help you put into perspective the scope and breadth of our coverage on a given topic, and ideally include some material from other relevant resources.
We’re still sussing it all out, but if it’s popular, we could even open it up to your input, allowing the CRM community to build out the chronology on any given subject.

Let us know what you think.
j.

Because it’s Monday….

It seems a shame to start off the week with a downer — especially after last week’s election excitement — but there’s bad news from the B2C consumer electronics sector. In case you haven’t heard, Circuit City has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (Steve Gelsi of MarketWatch has it here). Normally this wouldn’t be worth mentioning here, since on the surface the reasons are economic in nature and the bulk of our coverage goes to B2B concerns, but I felt there was something worth saying.

Not long ago I mentioned a retailer in my Pint of View column that had completely turned its sales and customer-service practices around. I left the name of that retailer out on purpose, but it was Circuit City. I used to loathe that store, as evidenced by the unprintable name I used for it in conversation (hint: the second word still sounds a lot like City). The change they pulled off in the last few years amazed me. CC wasn’t perfect — the perfect electronics retailer doesn’t exist — but the chain made the effort to treat customers like something more than cattle, and I appreciated that effort. The 24-minute pickup program they instituted also deserved kudos.

Now Circuit City is headed for receivership, and some are saying one reason is that they weren’t selling. (From the MarketWatch article: “Circuit City had been hurt by having stores in less-favorable locations than those of Best Buy Co. … by increased competition from the likes of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. … and by an earlier move to lay off higher-paid staff who were able to push more profitable sales, according to industry observers.”) My personal experience with Circuit City tells me this isn’t the case. The higher-paid staff couldn’t have sold me a pack of batteries back in the day — they’re the ones who turned me off of the chain in the first place. The people they have today really seem to have a handle on low-pressure, consultative sales, and the stores (including the checkout lines) are always busy when I see them.

Oh well. Hopefully the reorganization of Circuit City will leave their improved sales practices in place. Until then, we can make jokes about how you should never work for a company whose uniform includes a red shirt.

On Wednesday, Google and Yahoo! announced that they are not going through with the advertising deal they had proposed earlier in June. With little support from the advertising community the deal was intended to benefit, as well as legal concerns around monopolization, the failed proposition wasn’t faced with too much disappointment.

Robert Liodice, president and chief executive office of the Association of National Advertisers, shares his thoughts on the announcement with CRM magazine:

So what’s the general feeling at the ANA?
We are pleased. There are a couple of things at play here and the most important is that we got a meeting of the minds. What I mean by that is when propositions like this are of consequence, it’s important to get full participation and full integration on the implications to the marketing community. The opportunity to be able to weigh in on the proposed deal that Google and Yahoo! provided was an appropriate way to go. They saw that there could have been some risks to their initial proposition and they gave many parties the opportunity to weigh in, including the Department of Justice, which was the original reason for the delay because it at least had the appearance of potentially being monopolistic or certainly [having] a level of concentrated of power. So we welcomed that opportunity, and we weighed in against the proposition because we felt that it was not beneficial to advertisers from a variety of standpoints. In the end, the Department of Justice seemed to agree with our posture as well as the postures of other organizations around the world, including the World Federation of Advertisers and the Association of Canadian Advertisers.

So yes, that’s a long-winded way of saying we’re happy.

Was nobody really buying into the idea that it was actually going to be a “competitive auction,” or a successful one at that?

First of all, nobody of consequence that I’m aware of on the advertising side bought into the proposition, period. That was what was the most intriguing thing out of this whole situation. There were no major advertisers that looked me square in the eye and said, ‘Yea, this is a good thing, we can’t wait!’

That really was, I think, the stark reality that both Google and Yahoo! faced. There were no real takers, no believers that this was going to be beneficial to the industry. It was a situation where if the community wasn’t going to stand up and rally behind it, then how could Google and Yahoo! proceed forward? So the belief, or at least the rational, that these organizations were saying, that this would lead to a higher return on investment for marketers, was, at best, a conceptual one and not one that was demonstrated in fact, data, or reality. There’s no way you could go into something of this consequence with the potential marketplace implications of bringing the two largest guys together and think this could be beneficial to everybody in the long run.

The other thing is…this is not a staid and stale market. As we look at both competitors, they’ve done a lot for the industry, and we’ve been very grateful that search advertising has been as well-developed and well-defined as it is. But when these situations develop, we have to respect the fact that technology is going to continue to bring the level of innovation and creativity to make the marketplace even more beneficial and more productive for advertisers and marketers. We had some ongoing discussions with Yahoo! about this to say, ‘Yes, we recognize that there are reasons you may want this deal. Obviously, we don’t concur.’ The reality is that there is a natural momentum that’s taking place by innovation and innovative people, and the ability for technology to evolve,that’s going to make this a win-win for everyone.

Even without this partnership, does the advertising industry fear what industry pundits have called “Googzilla”?
I applaud Google for their competitive victory. They’ve done a magnificent job with taking this marketplace and winning, and consistently winning, and beating out some pretty good competitors. Anytime you can get to the 70 percent-range of any market, you’re obviously doing a lot right.

Is Googzilla just a myth?
The question is, what happens from here? Obviously one would never like to see someone control 98 percent of the marketplace because your options become limited. But on the flip side, the beauty of where we are from a technology-based media and marketing marketplace is that things will evolve and things will change and you may be the big gun now but you may not be 3 to 5 years from now. If this were a stale market I’d think it’d be tough for someone to knock them off or challenge them. [But] the future is always in doubt, some young upstart will come up with something better. [We'll] continue to have that happen as technology filters its way through all aspects of the broad media spectrum.