By Jim Berkowitz, founder & CEO, CRM Mastery

Thursday, February 18, 2010

So I guess that it’s time for me to check in and comment about my experiences at the recent SCRM Summit put on by BPT Partners last week.  I won’t bore you with all the details surrounding my difficulties in getting back home, (it took me four days due to all of the airline cancellations from the winter storms in the mid-Atlantic and southern part of the country), I’ll focus on my most meaningful insight.

First of all I must say that this Summit was “chock full of heavenly” information; much of which was delivered by an energized Paul Greenberg, author of the CRM/SCRM Bible, CRM at the Speed of Light. I highly recommend this seminar and encourage any interested Social CRM professionals to attend their next session in Atlanta on May 24-25.

I’ve put together a Twitter List made up of the attendees (who have Twitter accounts) and “almost” attendees who weren’t able to make it to the event due to the weather (@Lager and @ekolsky). It’s available here for anyone interested.

There are already so many great posts about the Summit that it’s difficult to add much to the conversation at this point. CRM magazine has done a great job of pulling together all these posts here on its blog.

So, as a technology guy, what I’d like to talk about is the humanism of this event. [The full explanation appears after the jump...]

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By Wim Rampen, managing consultant, Contact Center Intelligence

Friday, February 19, 2010

Today is exactly one week after my return from Paul Greenberg’s first Social CRM Strategies for Business Seminar in Washington. I needed some time to let the experience sink in and to straighten out my thoughts.

I’ve read all of the wonderful posts collected here on CRM magazine’s blog, written by what I can genuinely now refer to as my peers. I regard them as my peers because I trust them, value their thoughts, experience and ideas and because we together now share a truly great experience, which we will all long remember and reference to. I owe all of them, with Paul Greenberg as Primus Inter Pares, a huge thank you, for their part in this event. Enough said about that. My main thoughts over the past week have not been on social CRM but on how to bring this experience from great to awesomeness:

I see a bright future for social CRM.

Regardless what we all try to name it and regardless the numerous debates that we will continue to have, I know that Social CRM is not going away. The journey started seriously, and we now have at least 68 advocates and practitioners of the mindset, the philosophy and the strategic direction that Social CRM provides us.

We also know it is not carved out in stone.

Personally I believe Social CRM will never be carved out in stone. There will be continuous debate on how to and what (not) to. And that is a good thing. Companies need to be adaptive to changing Customer needs and a changing competitive landscape, more than ever before, these days. And so does Social CRM. It’s a journey that 68 of us have been taking and will continue to embark upon. And the debate is what keeps us moving, as will research conducted, practices shared and lessons learned.

And there is still much to learn. [More of that, after the jump...]

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By Mark Tamis, associate, social CRM and social business consultant, NET-7

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the CRM Seminar on “Social CRM for Business.” The two-day event near was organized by BPT Partners‘ Paul Greenberg, who managed to attract a large number the world’s thought leaders on Social CRM and market players to convene at a snowed-in Westin Hotel near Washington, D.C.

To the members of the #SCRM Accidental Community, it felt like the culmination point (hence the term #SCRMsummit  ) after many, many months of tweets, blogs, comments, and Skype chats that have helped us shape our ideas of what a social CRM strategy could look like, as well as the promise social CRM holds concerning how business can be changed for the benefit of all parties involved. It was great to meet in person finally!

I won’t repeat the ideas that have already been put forward by other participants (you can find the links below), but I’ll cut to the chase and give you my takeaway.

The social customer is now a given (even though I believe the degree of which she is may vary per country…), and basically always has been around. Contrary to the past, these customers now have the ability to find, reach out and converse with like-minded souls from around the globe, it has exploded. They’re able to join and leave such tribes and communities provides them with great flexibility to create firm or loose ties as they so please. They are starting to become more and more aware of their power they can bring to bear when they act as a group and are able to bear more pressure as a group, leaving many companies in disarray.

Rather than turn to your company for their information needs about your product or services, they now turn to their peers who they overwhelmingly trust more than they do you. It is The End of Business As Usual (cf The Cluetrain Manifesto): No more only-outbound marketing (some would say “shouting”…), you now have to pay closer attention to what is being said about you, where it is being said, why it being said and strive to anticipate where the conversation is going: The new Marketing Logic is customer centricity through engagement and collaboration, but on the customers’ terms. Authenticity and trust is what matters – more than even the “consistency” of the message.

What really stuck with me? Find out after the jump.

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By Mitch Lieberman, vice president, strategic solutions, SugarCRM

Monday, February 15, 2010

People are the fuel that makes “the social engine” run

“The social engine” is my own metaphor for what drives social business. My objective is not to cram the word “social” into the first paragraph as many times as possible — it just looks that way. The reality is that social is top-of-mind, and many people are simply trying to put it all together. So how about this: I have my networks and my media, I talk about CRM, and I do business with people (left that overused word out). Whether you’re talking about Collaboration, Relationships, Knowledge Flows, Engagement, Expectations…. It all comes down to people. At the core, social simply means sharing with other people. In the digital sense, that sharing is done in the open.

“People are the platform”

I wish I could take credit for that statement. Proper attribution goes to Michael Fauscette (@mfauscette on Twitter) from IDC. We both attended the #SCRMsummit last week in Washington. The statement is not some esoteric, bigger than life hyperbole. It is quite simple really. You cannot have any of these things without people. A social business employs people, just as a social customer is reliant upon people. A social business is one that recognizes the amplification effect – the amplification of value by continuously meeting (or exceeding)  the dynamic expectations of the social customer. If you do a good job, other people will hear it. As we are all well aware the converse is certainly true as well.
[Editors' Note: Mike Fauscette's #SCRMsummit blogpost can be found here.]

Co-creation takes people

Co-creation is another one of those terms which seems overly complex, people throw it around, seem to be scared by it. Paul Greenberg reminded everyone that is does not have to be complicated. Wim Rampen writes about it often. I’ll be honest: It’s a term that scares me a bit. I will give a simplistic example, surely to be corrected (but write and learn right?): Say you’re at the local pizza joint and you select a few cool toppings from the “make-your-own” section. But you also want a topping not on the list — say, pineapple. The restaurant doesn’t have pineapple, but makes note of your request. As it turns out, when talking to other patrons, pineapple is an ingredient that’s more popular than the owners had realized. Within a week, the restaurant not only adds the ingredient to the “make-your-own” selections, but adds a pineapple-topped pizza to the standard menu at a special rate.

[Continues after the jump.]

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By Prem Kumar Aparanji, principal consultant, CRM, Cognizant Technology Solutions

Monday, February 15, 2010

I was in the U.S. last week. The journey from Bangalore to Washington, D.C., in itself was quite interesting: A three-hop journey (BLR-DBX-ATL-IAD) that took away ~32 hours of my life, but since I traveled west (& I gained time) I really lost only about 21 hours.

(Yeah, I know, convoluted. This is similar to that guy Louis Wu in the Ringworld series who kept traveling west to extend his 200th-birthday celebrations!)

The reason I was in the U.S. was to “evangelize” social CRM. But before I got to tell parables of The Customer Gospels to the flock, I went for my baptism by the Pope of Social CRM — Paul Greenberg. :)

OK, enough with clichés and cryptic ranting.

I came to the U.S. to attend what became known as the #SCRMSummit and follow it up with meetings with my peers, clients & partners to discuss & get things done around social CRM.

I got more than I bargained for. Caught in Washington, D.C.’s worst blizzard in more than a century, I spent the days cooped up with other thought leaders, analysts, consultants, systems integrators, vendors & practitioners of social CRM. There were 68 of us and, if you hated social CRM, this was the place to obliterate it. (Sorry, you missed the chance — though we’ve been talking about it for weeks now.)

The story of what ended up happening continues after the jump.

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By Kathy Herrmann, partner, Pathlight Solutions

Friday, February 12, 2010

The #SCRM community recently practiced what it’s been preaching when Paul Greenberg pulled together the top thought leaders in SCRM to a summit in Washington. Many thanks to Paul for being the magnet that pulled us all together — and my personal thanks for including me in the event.

Where to start? First, much to my surprise, we had almost-full attendance despite the snow and travel challenges. I was a local and almost got scared from braving the roads, but knew I needed to be there given the number of stellar attendees. And I’m pretty darned sure that’s what motivated the other attendees to brave the travel tribulations too.

What I loved about the group was the open discussion, and sometimes debate, within the conference room and in the evenings’ various social gatherings. We don’t always agree with each other, but everyone handles the debates with professional courtesy and a willingness to evolve their thoughts. That’s how we all grow.

After the jump are the 7 takeaways that struck the loudest chord for me.

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By Brent Leary, cofounder and partner, CRM Essentials

Friday, February 12, 2010

I’m writing this while on a plane, flying back to Atlanta from Baltimore. I’m coming back home from BPT Partners’ Social CRM training event that was headed up by Paul Greenberg (aka The Frientor of CRM). The event was held in Herndon, Va., a stone’s throw from Dulles Airport, which is where I flew to attend the event. But I had to fly out of BWI in Baltimore after having two flights cancelled from Dulles because of the blizzard that hit the Northeast.

I’m writing this after suffering through a 2½-hour delay, which had me sitting a total of eight hours at the airport. I’m tired…and cranky…and hungry, because the five pretzel bits the airline gives you on the flight ain’t cutting it. But, more importantly, I’m happy that I traveled in blizzard conditions and got stranded for a couple of days, because coming to what was eventually dubbed the Social CRM Summit was worth every cancellation of flight, minute of delay, and inch of snow…and that’s truly saying something.

It goes beyond the training, which was stellar. Jeff Pedowitz did a great job going over the practicalities of tying “social” to demand generation efforts. Ryan Strynatka from Radian6 gave a nice demo of his company’s social media monitoring tools, sparking quite a discussion — not just on the tool, but on the subject overall. We performed a couple of interesting case studies that really got our minds (and our creative juices) going. And, of course, PG did his thing. (I can honestly say that he was in the rarest of form. But I knew he would be.)

This is where I stop talking about the training. If you want a blow-by-blow of developments, check out the PDF of all the #SCRMsummit tweets put together by the one and only Esteban Kolsky…who seemed to actually be there with us, even though the weather (and airlines) conspired against him making a physical appearance.

And I’m sure there are already blogs posted about the event that have covered it in ways that make it unnecessary for me to do so here (Brian Vellmure’s write-up is an example). So I’ll talk about it from another perspective. [Editors' Note: That perspective begins after the jump...] Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Fauscette, group vice president, software business solutions, IDC

Monday, February 15, 2010

Last week, I joined a group of social CRM thought leaders — and representatives from 14 software vendors — for a two-day social CRM summit. The event, led by noted CRM author, blogger, and consultant Paul Greenberg and BPT Partners, was held in Herndon, Va. (See the pic below, taken from the Westin Dulles during the snowstorm that kept most of us there an extra day or so.)

Westin Dulles, Snowpocalypse '10 — #SCRMsummit on February 8, 2010

The event generated some great discussions and networking opportunities. One of the biggest takeaways for me is that SCRM is still in the bleeding-edge-new zone and some really smart people are defining and refining it on an almost-daily basis. I also believe that it’s on the edge of trendy — in other words, it’s starting to attract some people around the edges who are trying to jump on the bandwagon and yet are not “experts” in CRM at all.

I won’t go through my whole social business speech again, but I do want to re-emphasize that “social business” and “SCRM” are not equivalent to “social media” or “social networking.” They are not defined by consumer tools such as Twitter and Facebook either. Social Biz and SCRM are about changing corporate culture and about relationships, IMHO. I also am joining Paul in the decision to stop trying to define and debate the definition of SCRM…it’s time to do.

OK, enough of that — on with today’s point. There are some excellent write-ups already published (CRM Strategies Blog and Brent’s Social CRM Blog) on the summit so I won’t try to recount the whole event, but instead I think I’ll just hit on a few points that I think are worth repeating. [See those points after the jump.] Read the rest of this entry »

By Brian Vellmure, FreeCRMstrategies, @CRMstrategies on Twitter

February 12, 2010

One of the worst snowstorms in the history of our Nation’s capital, the most flight cancellations since 9/11 (almost 6,000), and the closure and inaccessibility of a pre-booked venue were the circumstances surrounding BPT Partners’ Social CRM Certification Training, better known to the Twittersphere as #SCRMsummit.

Despite the obstacles, a little publicized event at a brand new Westin Hotel in Herndon, VA brought together a mix of customers, vendors, and a large majority of the world’s thought leaders on the subject of Social CRM. In all, participants not only descended on the blustery white winterland from all regions of the United States, but also from Canada, Mexico, Columbia, France, The Netherlands, and India. It truly was a global event.

The #scrm Accidental Community was almost completely represented with one largely apparent omission, Esteban Kolsky, who was grounded before he could leave his hometown due to flight cancellations. Esteban made his presence felt during the event and after by assembling the tweets which you can download here to get a sense of the flow of the event. Here are the links from Day 1 and Day 2, and I have more on my take after the jump.

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