Doc Searls on VRM. My view on the challenges

I came across a nice post by Doc Searls on what he would like when it comes to CRM from the point of view of the customer, or VRM. I wonder how long it will take for the first VRM applications to be released.

One of the challenges I personally see with VRM is: who will we trust with our information? We already trust loads of companies with privacy related information, such as what we buy, what we subscribe to etc. but this information is dispersed over multiple vendors. I wouldn't want to trust Albert Heijn (a major dutch supermarket chain) with information on all my purchases and subscriptions. Perhaps this is something for a semi-governmental institution like a consumer authority that is regulated and that we can trust not to use our personal information for commercial gain.

On end year credits - Top 20 CRM Bloggers

In 2007 I was added to the top CRM bloggers list of InsideCRM.com (great site, go check it out). On December 29, 2008 Chris Bucholz published an updated version of the list, update for 2008. The list is full of interesting CRM blogs everyone should check out, and fortunately for me I'm on the list once more, featured in a list that also contains the big minds in CRM such as Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary, Christopher Carfi and, Mr. VRM himself, Doc Searls. I hope I'll make the list again next year.

Moving to wordpress

As of today my blog is also available on the following domain:

http://blog.crmworks.nl

Just testing whether I like Wordpress better than Blogger.

On 2009 - the year of sustainability

The new year is approaching, 2008 is ending with some of us feeling the consequences of the credit crunch. It's time to look towards the future. Every new day and new year opens a wealth of new opportunities,  even in a crisis. 2008 ends with a starting recession, many business are facing tough times. I do not have a crystal ball and am not much of a fortune teller either, nonetheless I would like to offer my views on 2009, from a CRM perspective that is.

2009 - the year of sustainability
In 2007 and 2008 we've been able to see a new trend rise, sustainability and environmental awareness. We've come to realise that we need to use the earth scarce resources wisely. Sustainability can also be applied as an economic and not environment term however. Wikipedia lists the following for the term sustainability:

Sustainability, in a general sense, is the capacity to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely.

(src: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability)

So sustainability can also be applied to your business as the capacity to remain operating and to remain in business. How could one survice the current economic crisis and what does sustainability in crisis mean?

1. Sustainable operating model


2. Sustainable customer base


3. Sustainable investments

A sustainable operating model
The first thing companies focus on in a crisis is operational excellence. Reducing expenditure and increasing efficiency. Cut out unnecessary costs and focus on the core of your companies operation. This could mean divesting or closing retail outlets and changing your channel partner strategy. Perhaps others are better at selling and marketing your products than you are. Operation Excellence also marks a path to lower cost channels, such a self service internet channels as opposed to contact centers or an on-site repair man. In other words, I believe that 2009 will lead to companies employing self service more and more, as a means to both improve customer service (24/7 access) and reduce cost.

Sustainable customer base
During a boom companies typicall focus on Sales & Marketing when it comes to their CRM investments, trying to get a piece of an ever increasing pie. In a crisis the pie usually stays the same size or gets a bit smaller. Unless you provide an innovative product or service for which a whole new pie exists, you will try to have to make do with getting a bigger piece of the existing pie. The focus, in my view, should be to focus on preserving your existing customer base through excellent service, and gaining new market share through word-of-mouth marketing. Spending heavily on marketing campaigns for a .05 percent marketshare increase is nonsense if your existing customers are leaving. So keep your current customers, provide excellent service, preferably better than your competitors, and gain marketshare that way. After all, the cost of acquiring a new customer is 5 times higher than keeping your existing customers and convincing them to spend a bit more with your company.

Sustainable investments
Due to the credit crunch most companies are no longer able to draw unlimited financing from either the stock market, or the credit market, one has to invest wisely. Invest in improving your current products or services, products or services that are complimentary to your current portfolio and invest in customer service. Secondly make sure you invest in a way that is environmentally sustainable and use that as a marketing tool.


Sustainability and CRM?
So what does this mean for your CRM efforts. I feel that 2009 will see an increase in spending on improved customer service, through more possibilities for self service, increased spending on cost-efficient call centers (through products such as Oracle Contact Centre Anywhere) and increased spending on loyalty management applications. Loyalty management spending will be directed at keeping existing market share and growing the existing customer base through word-of-mouth marketing.

I'm looking forward to another interesting year in CRM, CRM Applications and IT.

On social CRM II

One of my former colleagues at Deloitte, Fabio Cipriani, the author of the blog cooperativo, shared a presentation on slideshare about Social CRM, how it extends CRM 1.0 and what the potential benifits are. Definitely worth taking a look at.

Social CRM

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing strategy)

On the first steps of Social CRM

Traditional CRM is about gathering data and knowing all about your customer. Gaining insight into your customer and his or her behavior traditionally allows a company to better respond to it's customer needs, provide better quality service and generally leads to market succes. Over the last 10 years companies have invested in CRM systems for Sales, Marketing and Service and gather quite a lot of data on their customers and customer behavior. Much of this data has been put to good use, it is a lot easier to get high value services from the companies you do business with and companies or government insitutions are able to adapt quickly to the changing needs of their customers / consituents. 

Our behavior as consumers is changing however. They way we interact with companies, make decisions on which products to purchase has changed significantly since the late '90s. The usage of internet has risen dramatically, using social networking sites like facebook and myspace have become part of our daily routine and do we even remember how we used to find information before Google? When I recently bought a new LCD flat panel HD TV I did most of my research online (but I still bought it at a brick and mortar store). This changed behavior provides companies new possibilities to interact with (potential) customers. The number of possible touchpoints has greatly increased, if a company is able to capitalise on the wealth of opportunities today's Web 2.0 environment offers. 

Image courtesy of Brent Leary (http://www.brentleary.com)

Not only are consumers searching for information about your company or your products or services online, web 2.0, communities, blogs and other tools offer companies a wealth of information on your consumers as well. As the graph above indicates social media users believe that companies should engage the customer in a conversation on Social Media sites.  The challenge however is to use social media in a non intrusive way. No one wants to be 'friended' by a company on facebook, I however would like to have the opportunity to contact companies for service regarding their product online, possibly through branded communities. I would also applaud VRM like applications that would allow me to inform all the companies that I do business with of an address change online (perhaps through something as simple as Plaxo). Social Media also offers the possibility to research your clients and determine how to best serve or contact them. Using Social Media for CRM is far from mature, Oracle has started offering plugins for popular social media tools in it's Siebel CRM application and others are sure to follow. We are on the verge of a new development in CRM and we'll see loads of tools popping up that will allow companies and consumers alike to engage in mutually benificial conversations with each other. The future holds a lot of promise, let's see what will happen in 2009.

Linkdump - MDM still a buzzword, but a backbreaker for most companies

Check out this article on the buzzworthiness of MDM vs. the challenge that most companies seem to have in implementing MDM solutions. It's not an article that adds a lot of value to most MDM discussions or offers solutions, but does point out an interesting fact. The MDM market still has a load of potential, but software vendors and systems integrators alike are not yet able to help their clients with implementing an succesful MDM solution. Time for something new perhaps?