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.]

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

The “official” start to the holiday shopping season on Black Friday has not left us without myriad statistics regarding shopping preferences. According to a recent holiday survey of more than 2,300 consumers by Prospectiv, an online performance marketing firm specializing in connecting women to brands, found:

• 25 percent will use coupons more often this holiday season;
• 16 percent will shop online to find the best deals; and
• 35 percent will utilize email to share great deals they either receive or find with friends.

Convergys, a relationship management provider, also unveiled findings from a recent survey:

• 86.1 percent of respondents will plan to shop online;
• 37.3 percent will do all or most of their shopping via the Web;
• nearly nine out of 10 consumers say the most desirable attribute is the ability to shop whenever they like; and
• 61 percent of shoppers prefer the online channel because they can “get customer service on their own terms.”

No matter which numbers you scrutinize, one thing is clear: online retailing is rapidly taking the hearts — and wallets — of consumers. I had the chance to speak with Doug Farmer, Convergys’ senior director of customer management, about his company’s survey results, one statistic that shocked him, and what he has seen in his work with Convergys’ customers in the retail industry.

Read the rest of this entry »

So here’s a new feature: We’re going to start aggregating each month’s posts, for easier reference.

We’ll start this off with a few groupings from the month of October — which, if you’ll permit a moment of horn-blowing, I have to say I’m really proud of. We covered a lot of ground in the month, literally and figuratively, with staffers filing on-the-scene dispatches from nearly a dozen events at various locations nationwide, and guest-blogposts from not only our regular contributors but several newcomers as well.

October also marks the introduction of these monthly archives (which, one hopes, will appear sooner after the end of each month), and compendiums of coverage from all the big events (which, one hopes, will appear sooner after the end of each event). In the Comments below, I hope you’ll let us know if we’re giving you the kind of material you want.

For starters, here’s a blog-only exclusive, one I hope you’ve been watching all along:

Eric Barkin’s “Eric Across America” series of blogposts, a firsthand look at JetBlue’s “All-You-Can-Jet” promotion from the perspective of a participant:

• Eric Across America, Part I: The Story of One Man’s Journey into the Heart of JetBlue and JetBlue’s Entry into the Heart of That Man http://sn.im/dcrmblog100909b
• Eric Across America, Part II: Buying the JetBlue Pass http://sn.im/dcrmblog101209b
• Twitter Drove JetBlue Promotion — Eric Across America, Part II(b) http://sn.im/dcrmblog101309c
• Eric Across America, Part III: Booking Flights http://sn.im/dcrmblog101509a
• Eric Across America, Part IV: Trouble in the Contact Center http://sn.im/dcrmblog102009b
• Eric Across America, Part V: JetBlue Levies a Penalty? http://sn.im/dcrmblog102609b

And our posts from this year’s Oracle OpenWorld #oow09:

• Hello From OpenWorld ’09 http://sn.im/dcrmblog101209a
• GUEST-BLOG: The Perplexities (and Fun) of Oracle OpenWorld, by Beagle Research Group’s Denis Pombriant http://sn.im/dcrmblog101309b
• A Keynote That Will Pump (Clap) You Up http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409b
• GUEST-BLOG: Overloading on Oracle, Both Good and Bad http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409c, by Third Idea Consulting’s Marshall Lager
• GUEST-BLOG: Cloudy Computing at Oracle OpenWorld http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409d, by Third Idea Consulting’s Marshall Lager
• Also keep an eye out for our compendium post of #OOW09 coverage from across the Web.

The rest of the month’s posts — including coverage from The Conference Board’s Social Media Summit, the DMA 2009 show, eMetrics ‘09, the RightNow Summit ‘09, and Forrester Research’s Forrester Consumer Forum — are after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today at Sage Summit, I had the opportunity to venture to one corner of the conference center I had never been before — the Usability Labs. My conversation today with Sage’s Larry Ritter piqued my interest about the usability testing that Sage does in developing new releases of its software. So, I moseyed on down to the labs and met with Dean Barker, the head of the Sage User Experience Group.

Barker ushered me into a partitioned cubicle where we spied on a Sage customer taking a usability test (this is starting to sound shady — I promise it’s not!). On Barker’s laptop was essentially the same screen as the woman taking the usability test. Barker could see her mouse placement and things she was clicking on. At the top of the screen was a video showing the testee’s face as she went through the steps.

Facial expressions are important part of the testing, Barker said. Although a user might not say aloud that’s she’s confused, her facial expression could relay that. Let’s backtrack a little…

Sage Summit is one time and place where the company brings in users to help with usability research. This week, Sage will test 13 users on the Sage SalesLogix product. Users come in at an assigned time, log on to a laptop, and are taken through common tasks. They are encouraged to narrate along the way and give as much feedback as possible. Barker’s job is to observe the users interacting with the software. He also collects data — quantitative and audio and video — that he will sift through when returning back to the office next week.

User activity and feedback is measured and collected in a variety of areas:

• Qualitative: Users expressing that they can’t find functions or buttons or toolbars. Sage also collects customer quotes.
• Subjective/Objective: Satisfaction surveys are given, asking how satisfied customers are with certain functions and tools.
• Time to complete tasks.

The customer experience team does usability testing several times a year — at Summit, Sage Insights, product boot camp events, and in advance to product releases. According to Sage, usability testing has become more rigorous in recent years –as evident in the release of Act! 2010 with its use of Keystroke Modeling. “This is the only way to get real feedback,” Barker said.