Social CRM

Subscriptions, Social and CRM
March 13, 2013

"Who is the customer?" It's a great question, one that my managers liked to ask when I was a young sales representative. Like all great questions, it got to the meat of the matter with an economy of words that were impressive as much for their brevity as for thir meaning. The customer's identity is often far from obvious, and it's why professional sales and marketing people obsess over it.

Enterprises to Show CRM the Money
March 08, 2013

CRM will be a top spending focus for enterprises this year and next, according to a Gartner report. What's more, CRM will be THE top spending focus -- edging past the behemoth category of enterprise resource planning -- based on a newly released survey of IT investment priorities for 2013 and 2014. Following CRM are ERP and office and personal productivity tools.

Let's Hear It for The Ecosystems!
March 06, 2013

Could we have a moment of sustained loud noise for all of the companies that form the various ecosystems around major product lines? I mean it. The ecosystem -- and maybe not even social -- is the story of the last five years. While many of us have been talking up social, the ecosystems have been adding immeasurably to the customer experience.

The Time of a Mobile Ad's Life, Part 1
March 05, 2013

There is a long-standing debate in the email marketing community about timing -- that is, whether time of day makes a difference in open and click-through rates. In other words, will an email marketing message sent early Monday morning be more likely to be opened than one sent Wednesday around noon or one delivered late on a Friday afternoon in July?

The Dollars Are in the Details - and the Details Should Be in CRM
March 01, 2013

The devil is in the details, the saying goes. When it comes to B2B selling, the dollars are also in the details. That's something I learned many years ago while writing about the reseller channel. Back in 2000, the Internet caused significant disruptions of traditional reseller relationships, because many large technology vendors expected online sales to eliminate the need for resellers.

Benioff's Social Proof
February 28, 2013

Salesforce came to New York this week for its annual winter meeting with customers. The company had two goals: test new ideas, and gather customer input. The event was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a relatively small group -- less than 1,000 -- rather than at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, which can accommodate the maintenance facilities for a squadron of F18s.

Secrets for Speeding CRM Time to Value
February 21, 2013

We all know about the idea of total cost of ownership and the concept of return on investment. Both have their place in business evaluations of CRM. There's another measurement, however, that should be considered -- one I like to call "time to value." The T2V test is simple.

Sage Made a Wise Decision
February 20, 2013

I liked what Sage did last week in agreeing to sell off some non-core assets to partners, and I am most interested in the decision to sell ACT! and SalesLogix. The move reduced Sage's bullpen of CRM solutions from three to one -- and that's the right number for this market.

Building Social Into the Customer Service and Support Infrastructure
February 19, 2013

Surprisingly, many customer service organizations have yet to put their toes in the water when it comes to social media engagement. In fact, fewer than half of them actively respond to consumer complaints via Twitter and other social media channels. For companies that do actively engage in social media for customer support purposes, the average response time is an estimated 24 hours.

IntelliBuzz Helps Brands Keep an Eye on Social Media Mentions
February 15, 2013

Intelliverse has rolled out a new cloud-based tool that monitors social media for brand mentions and responds when appropriate. IntelliBuzz is simple enough that a company with minimal IT resources in-house -- that is, a computer and an Internet connection -- can manage this outreach just using the app.

3 Bad Habits to Unlearn for SCRM Success
February 14, 2013

For the better part of six years, we pundits have been urging businesses to get social. Social CRM even has its own Gartner Magic Quadrant, and while the entries in that document are all over the map in terms of what they do, vendors serving aspects of SCRM are well established. Gartner itself said that sales of software for SCRM topped $1 billion in 2012.

Big Data for Marketing
February 13, 2013

The marketing funnel is not exactly a new idea. Neither are sales or customer service, though all have morphed considerably from what they were more than a decade ago when CRM began. Sales and service evolved organically, making incremental changes as markets transformed and new technologies became available.

NextPrinciples Makes Integration Paramount
February 11, 2013

NextPrinciples has launched Insight-To-Action, a social analytics and engagement product that integrates with a handful of CRM applications. The company is in talks with other vendors to expand the integration of the platform, said Ted Sapountzis, head of marketing and product management for NextPrinciples.

5 Business Lessons to Learn From PR Flacks
February 07, 2013

As a journalist covering technology, you get bombarded with material from PR people trying to get you to write about their clients. Although there are some stellar PR people, the majority of pitches I get are not targeted at what I write about, addressed to the wrong person, or make claims that are demonstrably false or inaccurate.

With LiveOps, All Customer Channels Are Created Equal
February 01, 2013

LiveOps this week debuted LiveOps Engage, a browser-based desktop agent app that centralizes myriad channels -- phone, email, live chat, SMS, Twitter and Facebook -- on one screen. The screen also displays the history of past interactions with the customer. "This release is bringing together all of the channels of communication, both inbound and outbound," said CEO Marty Beard.

Customers Just Want to Be Tweeted Right
January 29, 2013

It's fairly common practice today for major brands to have a social media team at the ready to respond to customer complaints on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. The practice is so widespread that the Call Center Satisfaction Index report released last week by CFI Group found that call centers should perhaps be renamed "contact centers."

Sales Productivity
January 16, 2013

We are at it again -- and why not? It's the start of another year, and people are doing predictable things like having kickoffs of all sorts of things. Many companies I speak with on a regular basis are briefing me on new product launches and engaging in a sacred rite of a new year: the sales kickoff. Both of these things make me think a lot. The messaging I hear in briefings is all about sales productivity.

2013: The Year of Mobile CRM, Part 2
January 15, 2013

2013 is just two weeks old, but executives in the mobile CRM space have a clear idea of how they hope the rest of it will unfold. What they want, in a word, is more: more mobile CRM functionality; availability on more devices; more vendors supplying applications. More mobile CRM is indeed on the way as economic growth picks up, said Atri Chatterjee, CMO of Act-On.

Answer Customers' Calls - Even When the Phone's Not Ringing
January 10, 2013

By now, common sense, the business media and practical experience have taught the lessons of multi-channel engagement for service. Businesses have come to realize that they need to provide service in whatever way their customers wish to receive it, whether it's through the phone, via chat or text, over email or through social media.

Zurmo: Playing Games Is Serious Business
January 04, 2013

Last summer, open source CRM provider Zurmo threw its hat into the CRM ring with a beta version of its particular take on the hot new gamification software category. The theory is simple: CRM, especially sales force automation, has notoriously poor user adoption figures. Why not use some of the fun features people are accustomed to seeing in games and social media to drive adoption?