It’s, without a doubt, bittersweet to share the news of my departure from the magazine. I feel blessed to have been a part of such a supportive community for the last three years. Although a new opportunity is calling my name, I will surely stay in the CRM loop. I may even pull a Jess Tsai and show up on the CRM office balcony every now and then to forage pizza, taunt former coworkers about the Market Awards, and share gossip from the analyst world.

I want to thank (this sort of feels like an acceptance speech and I.Like.It.) all of the great people I’ve met along the way. When I started at CRM in February 2008, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. (I recall googling “What is CRM” before my interview.)  Throughout my first few phone calls with vendors and analysts, I kept waiting for someone to call me out on knowing virtually nothing about the industry. Thankfully, I have only come across patient and supportive people along the way — analysts, execs, and PR people who truly tried to help me do my job better. For that, I am grateful.

I’ve gotten to write some interesting stories, attend cool events, and interview impressive people over the years. I became addicted to Twitter, proclaimed my love for cornbread, and, like all CRM bloggers, bitched about my bad travel experiences. After covering the gamut of CRM subsets and segments, I have my acronyms down pat. I can rifle off five steps to social media success without a pause. And I can dial into a vendor briefing with my eyes closed. For kicks last night, I reread my first ever destinationCRM.com article and my first blog post. Although my writing style is still pretty much the same, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve matured a lot in my understanding and appreciation for CRM.

So, this is it. Don’t be a stranger. You know where to find me. Lauren

[Editors' Note: This is the first in a series of blogposts about the hazards faced by any brand that assigns its social media fortunes to a single employee or personality.]

As with several other elements in this series, events at PhotoshopDisasters.com (@psdisasters) are still unfolding — but enough has happened already to make this a classic case of a brand beholden to the personality of a single voice…and now paying the price for that reliance.

PhotoshopDisasters.com is a veteran blog chronicling precisely what its name implies: unintentionally hilarious examples of digital retouching gone horribly, horribly awry. Visitors and commenters began noticing a change in the site’s content last week — and they weren’t exactly shy in expressing their displeasure.

You can find a selection of the comments via UberVu here.

After a few days of mounting criticism — and a cryptic tweet (“We don’t really know each other”) that linked to a now-deleted post — a short blogpost went up on the PSDisasters.com site just after midnight on Sunday, Oct. 24, with separate notes from (presumably) the old and new owners of the blog:

PSD Update

Goodbye

Dear Readers of Photoshop Disasters,

As some of the more astute amongst you may have noticed, Photoshop Disasters has recently changed ownership. As with any transition, there have been some changes. For instance, many of you wanted fewer unprompted insults leveled at the homeschooled; that has been achieved. We should be proud of this.

Anyway, please give the new guy a chance.

With love,

Eddie Con Carne (Cosmo7)

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The Future

I wanted to thank Cosmo (Eddie) for all the work he has done to the blog over the years and wish him all the best. I have been reading and working with Eddie for the last few weeks to try and make the transition as smooth as possible.

I’m not planning any radical changes to PSD; starting Monday we should have our team in place and be back to producing great content next week.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to send an email to me ( info [@] psdisasters.com ).

Thanks,

Vernon

Almost immediately, tweets about the transfer of ownership began appearing online:

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[More, after the jump]

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Baseball fans: Doesn’t IBM remind you of the Yankees? Both are loaded organizations with rich talent pools that don’t mind spending a ton of money to fill in holes. This simple analogy came to mind this week for two reasons: 1) The Yankees got whooped by the Texas Rangers in the American League Championship Series and are likely to spend more than $20 million to acquire the Rangers’ ace pitcher Cliff Lee this offseason and 2) IBM acquired Clarity Systems and closed the purchase of OpenPages — two moves that follow a slew of purchases IBM has made in recent months.

Here are links to CRM magazine’s coverage of IBM’s most recent buys: Netezza, Unica, Sterling Commerce, Coremetrics, Initiate Systems, SPSS, Cast Iron Solutions, and Datacap.

IBM’s press release announcing the Clarity Systems acquisition refers to Clarity’s software as one that “allows customers to automate the process of collecting, preparing, certifying, and controlling financial statements for electronic filing, in support of electronic filing mandates by the SEC and other local financial regulatory agencies.”

The OpenPages move will offer IBM clients software that helps “more easily identify and manage risk and compliance activities across the enterprise through a single management system,” the IBM release says.

The acquisitions will further accelerate IBM’s business analytics efforts, which have seen 14 percent growth in the third-quarter, according to the release. IBM’s leadership doesn’t mind bragging about their success; nor should they, especially if you take into account how much they’ve gambled on analytics: In the last 4 years, IBM has invested more than $14 billion in 24 analytics related acquisitions.

That’s no typo. 24!

Allan B. Krans, senior analyst at Technology Business Research, praises IBM and the purchase in another of his excellent blog posts. If you don’t read his stuff, you’re missing out. Here are the highlights:

“An existing partnership, rapid revenue growth, and fit with IBM’s Business Analytics strategy all made Clarity a good fit for how IBM’s acquisition selection criteria.”

“While other technology companies such as Cisco and Oracle use acquisition to expand into new segments, most of IBM’s purchases support existing initiatives. Clarity fits this criterion by extending IBM’s offerings around the risk management area and supporting its broad Business Analytics initiative.”

“Despite investing more than $5 billion annually in research and development, internal development accounts for only a portion of IBM’s overall approach to innovation. Tapping into the innovation investments made by other firms, through both partnering and acquisition, is a critical component to IBM’s overall innovation and business strategy.”

Do you all think these moves are no-brainers? Or will IBM remember these purchases the way Yankees fans remember the signings of Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright?

Let me know.

A new survey by Convergys research confirms that many UK consumers have a predilection for channel surfing when it comes to customer service, particularly millennials (aged 18-34).

Many consumers place agent-assisted phone support as the most important; sixty-two percent of participants selected phoning a contact center as their first or second preferred channel. Generation X (aged 35-22) and baby boomers (aged 45-65) prefer phone-assistance by a whopping 80 percent.

However, according to Convergys’ second annual Consumer Scorecard study, millennials are always testing new mediums such as texting, social media, and smartphone apps without any loyalty to one particular channel. I encountered a similar phenomenon in my October feature, “Anybody’s Bot,” when I ran across a post, “Why Your Customer Don’t Want to Talk to You” on the Harvard Review blog. Matt Dixon and Lara Ponomareff determined that, in the US, 30 percent of all customers on the phone with an agent are perusing answers to their questions on the company’s website at the same time.

Furthering this idea is evidence by a TellMe study in the UK that revealed that 40-60 percent of all transactions that start in channels that don’t provide a live interaction with a customer service agent ultimately transition to an agent.

Paul Trefonas, the vice president of Convergys had this to say about the channel switching: “What we have is a situation where consumers are engaging organizations across many new channels when they need service or assistance, but those channels can’t always provide high-touch, empathetic and personalized care needed for the resolution of more complex issues.”

Convergys also discovered these fun facts about the growing complexity of customer interactions:

• 42 percent of UK consumers expect to be able to use texting, or SMS, in the near future to interact with brands (Juniper Research)
• Juniper Research also predicts a huge increase in the use of SMS by banks to communicate with their customers.
• 27 percent of UK consumers have or would like to use social media when communicating with companies, while 14% said they would use smartphone apps.

The Convergys 2010 Scorecard Series research also concluded that the millennials are communicating the most via email, text message and smartphone apps, with 60 percent using one or more of those channels (not shocking). Forty-seven percent of generation X and 41percent of baby boomers are likely to use digital channels for service as long as they are “reliable.”

Trefonas commented that, “What our study shows is that consumers of all ages are increasingly open to communicating with brands using new technologies, whether SMS, social networks or even smartphone apps. More importantly, however, they expect companies to provide these channels.”



Recently I had the opportunity to catch up with Wendy Lea, the chief executive officer of Get Satisfaction. Lea and I last chatted 18 months ago when she had just taken the reins at the customer community company. A year and a half later, Lea shared with me what’s changed at GetSat, her views of social CRM, and how Facebook has impacted its business model. Here’s a portion of our conversation:

CRM magazine: What’s new over at Get Satisfaction? I see that you all have been embracing the term “Social CRM!”

Wendy Lea: We have gotten a new outside investor and that signals to us and to the market the belief that there’s something to this new domain called “social CRM.” We have never doubted the value of CRM tools and systems and processes—it’s been hard sometimes to realize, but the fact that companies of all sizes around the world use these systems would indicate there’s value there.

What’s interesting about the social component is that it’s not separate from CRM, even though it is outside-in, it is public, and it seems a bit free-form because it deals with the natural expressions that consumers and customers have for the brands. The truth of the matter is there is a role for all these social expressions relative to amplifying CRM investments. It doesn’t have to be ‘you are out there in Facebook’ or ‘you are inside your CRM system.’ The beauty of what’s happened – over the course of 18 months – is companies of all sizes are more comfortable with the reality that their customers are online and they are expressing themselves, and companies want to do more than listen.

CRM: How are consumers behaving differently?

Lea: Consumers are more active than ever, but they aren’t just ranting. They do want to express themselves in productive ways. They don’t want to just ream Virgin Airlines. They want to express themselves in ways that help themselves and the brands they support.

I see an easing of those two dimensions so much that I think consumers are getting more comfortable participating in communities that are sponsored by companies; and companies are more comfortable creating these spaces so their customers and prospects can come in and out in ways that are most natural to them.

CRM: What indicators have there been of this newly-realized comfort?

Lea: From a Get Satisfaction perspective, we have 40,000 companies that have come to us organically to set up a community. Their customers/members/citizens can exchange conversation. And that’s happened in last three years without us spending a penny on outbound. That’s a pretty strong indicator. And these aren’t just start ups. These are some very large brands. The fact that we have a freemium model would suggest that some are experimenting. (I’m in to being pragmatic. I’m not going to overstate it—I’m not that kind of executive.) But the truth is, to see over 1,000 companies every month come and set up and establish a community and to at least experiment with it is a non-trivial indicator to me that companies are willing to let go a little a bit. Now that doesn’t mean they are using us as instead of their service or support system in place of from Salesforce.com, or RightNow, or Parature. That is not the case.

We are serious about our ability to create and encourage high value conversations that ultimately bring benefits to consumers and companies. And then, if a company chooses to, they can integrate conversations from their community into their own systems— it can be integrated from a marketing standpoint, a product standpoint, or in service-support way.  That to me is what has really shifted.

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