The New York Times published an article the other day, commending Japanese auto-manufacturer Honda for sticking to its guns while everyone else was was living by the mantra bigger is better. With outrageous gas prices and rising customer concerns about the environment, companies are expected to make a serious investment in more eco-friendly solutions. More importantly, Honda committed to a noble brand message and stuck to it — now it’s reaping the rewards.

While industry sales drop 3 percent, Honda is seeing a 7 percent increase in sales for the first seven months. Online automotive resource Edmunds.com released its forecast for auto sales this month. Compared to August 2007, Honda will see a 0.9 percent increase in sales, while Chrysler, Ford, and GM sales are expected to decline 34, 16.3, and 27.5 percent respectively.

Honda, the author writes, “never veered from its mission of building fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly cars.” Since the 1960s, the company has been manufacturing cars under the philosophy, “blue skies for our children.” The article failed to mention, however, that it wasn’t always clear skies for Honda. When sports utility vehicles (SUV) became popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, sales of smaller cars took a hit. An article in the LA Times from 2001 reported on a study by J.D. Powers and Associates, which revealed:

Upper-mid-size sedan (Camry, Accord and Taurus) consumers are about seven times more likely to switch to an SUV [in 2001] than they were in 1999;

2 percent of customers shopping for upper-mid-size cars in 1999 switched and bought SUVs. In 2001, that number reached 15 percent;

the market had one “crossover” vehicle in 1997; by 2001, there were 18.

In response to consumer demand, Honda came out with its own crossover vehicle — the Honda CR-V — in 1996. But even so, the company stuck to its green-roots, and delivered a vehicle that looked like an SUV, but was built with the economic efficiency of the Honda Civic in mind. Motortorque.com cites CR-V sales increases of 28 percent from 2006 to 2007 (but notes that 2006 numbers were for the previous generation CR-V), compared to the overall SUV sector, which dropped 4 percent.

It’s interesting how companies are always after that customer loyalty, and yet, one of the problems industry experts often bring up is the fact that companies aren’t always loyal to their brand. McDonald’s, for instance, went through a difficult time when the company “took [its] eyes off the fries” . The fast food restaurant boasts fast, friendly service, but for a period, focused on building more locations rather than the interest of its customers (e.g., health and nutrition).

Even a mere tagline can reveal a lot about what you are — or aren’t. I interviewed Steve Cone, author of Powerlines, who spoke to the fact that if companies are consistently changing their brand message, how can they possibly expect customers to identify? Facelift after facelift may be more new and exciting, but in the end, the customer won’t know what you really look like.

Branding, however, is an elusive concept — marketers want something fresh, but it needs to be consistent. Even more challenging is seeing whether the premise of your brand is actually resonating with the consumer. Honda probably went through a period of doubt, but building a business requires passion and commitment. Look at how well that’s paying off now.

Open-source CRM continues to grow in popularity, and visibility, in large part to the reported success of Cupertino, Calif.-based SugarCRM, now disclosing that it supports 400,000 users on 50,000 installations in worldwide. Noting the growing trend, CRM magazine introduced the market as one of our Market Leader categories in this year’s Market Awards.

SugarCRM took the winner’s position, but not without intense competition from companies including Adempiere, Compiere, Concursive, vTiger, and xTuple.

The open-source pioneer just announced yesterday the general availability of Sugar 5.1, touting new capabilities in analytics, reporting, and wireless. At the company’s CRM Acceleration event last Thursday at The Westin New York, in the heart of Times Square, SugarCRM Senior Manager of Product Management Jennifer Yim gave a glimpse into the release update, as well as a look at the future roadmap through (tentatively) June 2009.

Speaking first about Sugar 5.1, Yim said “the focus is on deep CRM, and the analytics of the information in our system.” This is evident in the revamped reporting aspects, affectionately referred to as “Reports 2.0″–very Web 2.0-eriffic. Anyway, the new reporting capabilities include:

• user interface improvements;
• a report wizard that enables users to create various reports depending on business need;
• an ability to create more complex queries and filters by using the “and/or” rule;
• runtime filters; and
• grouping by matrix.

Sugar Wireless 2.0 is also compelling. In this updated functionality, SugarCRM Professional and Enterprise edition users can have browser-based, real-time access to their CRM on BlackBerry and iPhone devices. For these users, no separate installation is needed, according to Yim. She also insisted that mobile users will have the same functionality on their phones that they would using SugarCRM on desktops, including view, search, edit, and accessing any necessary records.

While this capability is browser-based, and not native to the actual phone like Research In Motion’s plans with SAP, its clear the next move in CRM is in the world of smartphones and being able to access CRM software anywhere, anytime, as fellow CRMer Lauren McKay pointed out a few days ago.

To conclude, Yim gave a quick look at plans for Versions 5.5 and 6.0, with tentative dates set for December 2008 and June 2009, respectively. That could especially change, given that last year when Sugar 5.0 hit the mainstream, the plan was to come out with 5.1 in December 2007 and 5.5 “in mid-year 2008″.

Yim stressed the roadmap could change, but still explained that release 5.5 will focus on enterprises, while 6.0 will delve even deeper into CRM.

Possible new features for 5.5 include:

• complex teams groups;
• sales territory management;
• social networking mashups; and
• platform enhancements that include full text search, calculated fields, and dependent drop downs.

Possible features for 6.0:

• calendar 2.0;
• Sugar wireless advanced mobility;
• advanced workflow;
• advanced studio and module builder;
• partner relationship management;
• extensibility platform; and
• Sugar Web services.

Keep a close eye on SugarCRM and its roadmap as other competitors continue to evolve and innovate in their own right and fight for supremacy on the open-source seas.

You might think after looking at the title that I’m on some type of crazy pills, or just didn’t have my second cup of coffee. (If you’re thinking it’s the coffee, you’re right.)

At first glance, you may have two questions come to mind:

• Isn’t customer service supposed to be by and for those brave souls willing to go back to a company and ask a question or has an issue that has to be addressed?; and
• Isn’t this controlled by customers?

Yes and no.

The goal is the same–solve the customer issue at hand. However, there is a difference in who is controlling the interaction: the company or the consumer. Traditionally, customers have been driven to only call a customer service line, send an email, or just peruse Frequently Asked Questions on a company Web site. There was not really a choice–customers reached out for help the way they were told.

Michael Maoz, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst told me back in March that “we’re forcing the customer into the process of our choice, as opposed to letting them have the process launch from the channel at the time of their choice.”

Those days appear to be coming to a close. The advent–and consumer adoption–of Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs (like this one), chat, discussion boards, forums, and videos are in a sense forcing companies’ hands. In speaking with Rob Bois, research director for AMR Research, about today’s story on RightNow Technologies’ August ’08 release, Web 2.0 is here to stay. “The consumer generation is demanding more and more technology to be incorporated in how they’re serviced,” he said. “You have to provide multiple channels for your customers that may vary by demographic, generation, geography, or culture.”

But how quickly will customers be able to fully take the reins and truly dictate the interaction? Maoz predicted it will take two or three years before we see more companies able to really deliver on tightly integrated, multimodal communication–including chat, email, kiosk, phone, etc.

Bois didn’t give a timeframe, but also maintained this is still a process for many organizations that vendors need to help guide along. “A lot of companies recognize that they need to look at some of these Web 2.0 technologies, but don’t know where they’re going to apply,” he said. “[Businesses] don’t really understand where it’s going to come from, or who is going to own it. By packaging [Web 2.0 capabilities] within the solution, RightNow solves a lot of those problems.”

It seems to be a logical progression–and surefire way to at least start the customer interaction off on a positive note–to give consumers the choice of preferred contact. With increasing economic competition and price commoditization, customer service just might be one of the last uninhabitated planets of differentiation.

Yesterday I wrote a story for destinationCRM.com about Maximizer Software’s announcement of its Mobile CRM branding. Along with the press release, the folks at Maximizer passed along a YouTube video that demonstrates the need for accessing CRM, even on-the-go.

The video is pretty funny, and as Laurie McCabe (SMB analyst with AMI-Partners) points out, it’s a good attempt at viral marketing.

The topic of smartphones brings me back to Tim Bajarin’s keynote at the dCRM conference last week. Bajarin, who rubs elbows with Steve Jobs, says:

“These devices will represent 70 percent of all phones sold in the us by 2012. That is a huge change in thinking.”

Bajarin goes on, saying that generation Y will not even consider using a regular cell phone anymore. A phone without a text keyboard? Forget about it.

Mobile CRM makes sense. CRM is not an industry that ties its employees to desks. Sales and marketing people are often traveling and doing business whenever and wherever. Recently, I had the privilege to have dinner with a several CRM vendors, one of whom sells mobile CRM solutions for BlackBerry. At one point during the evening, the man next to him turned and said, “I need you.” He shared that all through the day at the destinationCRM exhibit hall, he was meeting people, making contacts, and taking business cards. He was frantically writing down information on the back of the business cards so that when he goes back and enters the contacts into his CRM system, he will hopefully be able to put a face to the name. However, as he told the mobile CRM guy, if he would have been able to pull up the CRM database on his BlackBerry, it could have been done in seconds.

I recently purchased a smartphone, mostly because I wanted to be able to check email on the road. I won’t share which kind of phone it is, but I will tell you that it’s not an iPhone or a BlackBerry. I have found myself, even after having the phone for about six months now, discovering new features and using it in new ways. Perhaps my favorite application is the quick access to Google Maps. [It means I don't have to bring my old fold-out map with me when trekking through new areas of the city. Basically, it allows me to still look "cool" in New York, even when I am incredibly lost and confused.]

Talks of mobile CRM has seemed to have taken conferences — and headlines — by storm. In the words of my dear colleague, Jessica Tsai, “Dude, I’m so relevant.”

I was hoping to be among the first editors to post to this blog, but Jess, Lauren, and Chris are younger and quicker than I am. (*sigh* Ahh, the kids today, with their music and their Interwebs.) So a belated welcome to our new thing.

In keeping with my lateness, the first topic I want to discuss is one that popped up during our recent conference. Patrick Bultema, CEO of CodeBaby, led a lively discussion about adding Web 2.0 technologies to existing enterprises, and I think attendees got a lot out of it. especially in terms of opening minds to the changing concept of what a customer is. There were two items, though, that didn’t work as well for me as they seem to have done for other people, and I wanted to get your thoughts on them. One is the nature of emotion on the Web; the other is what CodeBaby does.

First item: Bultema described the Web as an “emotion-free zone,” and when he said that my eyebrow went up Spock-style. Most two-way communication on the Web is text-based, he noted, but real communication requires much more than words on a page (or screen). Pushing text or video at customers is not an effective loyalty hook. “Loyalty is driven by emotion,” he said, and suggested that the current model is to co-opt the emotion from an existing community and make it part of your business.

Communication is certainly better when there’s more than mere text involved, but I don’t agree that emotion is absent from the written word. Instant communication between distant individuals is not that old a concept. You (or your parents) may remember a time when not everybody had a telephone in their home, long-distance calls were a special event, and party lines weren’t something advertised on late-night TV. For thousands of years, people communicated effectively at a distance through writing. Love affairs were conducted with the pen when more intimate contact wasn’t possible; wars started and ended on paper; and the older generations still expect a written thank-you note sent via snail mail. Hell, I stake my livelihood on the power of writing.

The Web allows us to combine the power of the written word with the immediacy of a phone call. Yes, there’s a layer of separation there, but one only has to read a community forum or a blog’s comment thread to see emotion at work in text. Many of these online communities began there, not in the real world, so emotional communication must be possible in text. If anything, there’s too much emotion online. Flame wars can start over nothing — using the wrong emoticon is practically a declaration of war to some people. Immediate access to information is a powerful thing, but the ability to respond immediately — before getting one’s facts in order — has led to a breakdown of communication even worse than the advent of sound-bite news reporting. But that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong. (Apologies to Dennis Miller.) What do you think?

Second item: CodeBaby makes real-time virtual assistants for Web sites. Maybe that’s too simplistic a description, since I didn’t get an extended demo, but it should give you a sense of what the company does. when I saw it, all I could think of was Clippy, the Microsoft Office Assistant. I loathe Clippy, and Office Assistant is among the first things to be permanently disabled on any computer I use. Granted, CodeBabies appear to have a lot more power and versatility than the Clip, but I admit that my first reaction was negative. Since then, I’ve reasoned that CodeBabies could be pretty neat if used in the right way. What do you think, CRM readers? How — if at all — should a company craft a walking, talking Web persona and how should it be used?

BONUS FEATURE! Thanks to the wonder of YouTube, I can provide the source of this post’s title for your listening pleasure. ’80s Brit pop FTW! Spandau Ballet — Communication