Brent's Social CRM Blog

Is Your Customer's Call Really All THAT Important To You

Everyone is trying to keep hold of their customers for as long as they possibly can, especially now. Last month I moderated a panel on nurturing customer loyalty at the Small Business Summit, and also did a guest post on the 1to1 blog - So YOU Want to Improve MY Customer Experience.

In fact I praise Borders in that blog post for improving my experience with them, but then I had to turn around slap them on the latest episode of the CRM Playaz when they took away the very thing I praised them for. And Paul Greenberg talks about the negative experience he recently had with United Airlines, the airline he has loyally been flying for years.

So this is not the time to start messing around with customer service and expectations, In the immortal words of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - "Don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge, I'm trying not to lose my head...". There are too many ways for us as customers to show our discontent that go way beyond just not spending our hard-earned dollars. And nothing irritates us more than feeling like we're being taken advantage of by vendors, and especially by vendors who don't listen to us. Some don't even bother returning a good number of the 64 billion service calls we make.

Emily Yellin, a journalist who frequently writes for The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and other publications, knows all about our frustrations having written the new book Your Call Is (Not That) Important To Us. Emily and I recently had a fun conversation for TFBS about the book. She shares some of her personal experiences with bad customer service, and insights she gained from conversations with folks like Fedex CEO Fred Smith and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. She also talks about the Customer Rage study, and the things that surprised her as she traveled throughout the world visiting call centers in places like Egypt and Argentina.

I'm still reading the book, but I've enjoyed what I've read so far. And I can tell Emily enjoyed writing it, because it comes across on the pages. She has fun with it, but still uncovers some really interesting things that give you insight into how companies really view customer service, from all levels in the organization - including the C-level of Fortune 500 companies. You can check out our conversation by clicking the player below, or by clicking on this link to download the mp3 file.

Let me say a special thanks to Emily for including a quote from one of my blog posts in her book. I would tell you what it is, but it would be better if you bought the book and found it for yourself!

Technorati : crm playaz, customer experience, customer service, emily yellin
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Social CRM in Practice - Microsoft and Neighborhood America

The social CRM conversation has gone to an all-new level over the last couple of weeks. It seems to have caught the attention over everyone lately, which is a far cry from 2007 when I started writing about it.

But now we're starting to see some real movement in terms of actual products and services aimed at helping businesses strategically use "social stuff" to create meaningful relationships with those turning to the web for help. Oracle has created several social CRM products to enable sales organizations within the enterprise to more effectively collaborate with each other - and with external partners - to improve the sales process. And other CRM vendors, along with third party developers, are beginning to create links to their apps/services from some of the popular social sites.

But deep integration between CRM applications and public/private social networks is beginning to take shape. A few weeks back at Microsoft Convergence, Microsoft and social network platform provider Neighborhood America (NA) announced the integration between Dynamics CRM and Elevate - NA's enterprise social network platform. This partnership is a part of Microsoft's Gov 2.0 public sector initiatives.

As Paul Greenberg said over on his ZDNet blog, this integration isn't the only one, but it is a compelling one. It's compelling because new community members creating a user profile on the Elevate platform side will have a new contact record automatically created on the Dynamics CRM side. And any update a community member makes to to their profile will also carryover to the contact record.

Having this kind of connection allows you to associate activities performed by community members on the social networking side with their contact records in the CRM database. But this is not part of the integration,as contact-level information flows into Dynamics CRM from NA, while activity level data does not. Right now that would mean pulling this information from two separate data sources - NA's social networking data store and the Dynamics CRM data store. It probably also means needing a data-append service on the CRM side to fill out the missing pieces of information needed to really understand who these individuals are. This is because you're not likely to get all the profile info you'll need from folks creating a profile on your community site, who'll typically fill out the least amount of info required of them - at least until they reach a certain level of comfort.

So we're moving slowly but surely in the right direction. But we're still in the very early stages of this whole social CRM thing. So check out a conversation I had with Microsoft Strategic Alliances Manager Amir Capriles, and my good friend Michael Thomas - Neighborhood America's Director of CRM/Social Media, as we discuss this partnership. We talk about why both sides thought it was time for this kind of integration, how it works, and what it means to the end users - in this case citizens receiving services from different levels of government. They also talk about the public sector idea bank Microsoft is rolling out built with NA's "idea-floating" product - Reveal. Click on the player below to hear the conversation or download the mp3 file.

Technorati : microsoft, neighborhood america, social crm, social networking
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Network Solutions and the Small Business Success Index

I wrote my latest Amex OPEN Forum post last week. It focused on a few recent studies put out by Network Solutions and The Nielsen Company - I called it A Tale of Two Studies. I talk about how the Network Solutions study created the Small Business Success Index (see graphic below) which measures the health of the nation's small business sector, based on the sentiment of 1000 small business owners they surveyed. And these are real small businesses - 100 employees or less.

I recently had an opportunity to record a conversation for TFBS (Technology For Business Sake) with Network Solutions CEO Roy Dunbar to talk about the findings of the study, and their ramifications for small businesses in 2009 and beyond. The report is 30+ pages and is packed with so much information that I'm going to do more detailed review, which will include the findings of another SMB-focused study put out today by Microsoft. I received a briefing on that report by Eduardo Rosini, corporate vice president, Microsoft Worldwide Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners Group. I will also have Eduardo on TFBS to talk about the results of their study.

At a very high level, these reports show just how important the wise use of technology can positively impact small business. They also show that small business people are still a pretty positive group of folks, considering all that is going on right now. So check out my conversation with Roy by clicking the player below, or feel free to download the mp3 file,. And find out more about the study at http://www.growsmartbusiness.com.

Del.icio.us : crm, network solutions, small business
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How Popeyes Got Me and Diddy to Talk Chicken...and Biscuits

I've been on the run lately, seeming contributing content to everywhere but here. I'm back - now on with the show....

Months back I wrote about how Popeyes used Twitter to make me do something I hadn't done in years - go to one of their stores for lunch. With 140 well placed characters, I responded to a tweet, started following them, blogged about the experience, and the eventually devoured a biscuit...or two...alongside a couple pieces of chicken. And if that weren't enough, I did a guest post over at 1to1's blog, which included a Popeyes reference. And if THAT wasn't enough, I also included a reference to Popeyes in my article for the March issue of CRM magazine, called The Tweet is Mightier Than the Sword.

So Popeyes got some pretty good mileage out of that 140 characters. But that wasn't the end of things, as below you will find the interview I did with Popeyes VP of Corporate Communications Alicia Thompson, and CIO Tim Davis. Alicia and Tim talked about why Popeyes is using social media, how it is impacting their engagement with customers, and some ideas on what role social media will play in the company's future. Also check out how keeping track of what's going on out on the social sites (and biscuits) helped them start a dialog with Diddy.

My good friend and former show co-host Michael Thomas comes back to help me out with this one. It was great to have him back, but it was quite the coincidence that he chose this time to come back...when there was plenty of great food provided by the fine folks at Popeyes....

Seriously, Popeyes provides a great corporate example of how you can use social media and networks to meaningfully connect with people. Check out the conversation by clicking on the player below, and also start following Popeyes on Twitter to see how they turned a tweet into cash:

Technorati : diddy, popeyes, twitter
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