Brent's CRM Blog

Customer Relationship Mismangment Revisited - Ellen Filipiak is Wasting a Good Opportunity

I haven't done one of these Tales From The Dark Side sagas of customer relationship mismanagement in a long while. Not that there's been a shortage of horror stories as there have been too many to mention. I've been just a little tied up lately with other stuff. But sometimes there's something that comes along that makes me take a little more notice.

A while back my buddy Paul Greenberg had a really bad customer experience with DirecTV. It was so bad that he devoted a series of blog entries to it, detailing the many attempts he made to actually reach someone who could take care of his issue. He even went so far as to keep a running clock tracking just how long it took DirecTV to fix the issue. He finally was able to reach someone who helped him get this handled. He connected with DirecTV's Sr. VP of Customer Care, Ellen Filipiak. I believe she was pretty new to the position, but she impressed Paul enough that he offered her an opportunity to write a regular article on his blog to chronicle her efforts to understand and rectify the problems people were having with customer service. Apparently Paul was not alone, as he heard from SEVERAL people who shared their horror stories with him.

I don't know if Ellen understands how great an opportunity this is as Paul has a loyal readership which includes a who's who in CRM industry, from analysts to execs at the biggest vendors, to many practitioners who read his books and attend his workshops. It would have been a great forum for her to talk honestly about why customers feel the way they do, share her own personal finding when visiting customer care centers, and share some of the plans for really improving the customer experience. Unfortunately, Ellen is blowing it. I've read all three of her entries, the latest coming out a few days ago. And I have to agree with Baylor University business professor Jeff Tanner's assessment:

"Overall, this just reads like more marketing schlock"

I couldn't have said it any better myself Jeff. Instead of using this platform to really connect with people about what's wrong with their current customer care operations and collaborating with the readers to work towards solutions to help customers feel more valued when the time comes for them to reach out for assistance, Ellen is using marketing spin to shift the conversation in a direction she feels more comfortable with. Well maybe it's uncomfortable to deal with the real problems in the beginning, but I bet customers would appreciate and respect that more than the bait and switch, bob and weave she seems to be doing. If that's her plan for using the platform Paul so graciously offered, it may be best if she stepped away from the blogoshphere for awhile and re-think this strategy. Sometimes silence may be a little better than words.

Technorati : DirecTV, customer relationship mismanagement, ellen filipiak

SMB Trends Radio: The Interview

If you have some spare time this morning, I'll be on the SMB Trends radio program.  You can catch the show at www.smbtrendwire.com @ 11AM ET.  I'll be talking about how to make it easier for prospects to find you on the web.  It should be interesting being on the other side of the mic!

For the MYBF Columbus Attendees

Thanks to all who caught me at the Moving Your Business Forward conference this morning in Columbus. As promised here are a few links to some articles, a few blog entries and some online demos that may be of interest to you. Thanks again!

• Microsoft Study on impact of technology on minority and women-owned businesses
• Atlanta Tribune - CRM: What is it?
• Atlanta Tribune - Is Silence Golden?
• The Network Journal - Managing Customer Relations
• The Network Journal - Community Relations: 21st Century tools
• GoDekalb.com - Using On-demand services to grow your small business
• GoDekalb.com - How Booker T Washington (and blogging) Helped Me Win Business
• CRM Magazine - The State of CRM in Minority Business
• CRM Magazine - The New CRM: Community Relationship Management
• Brent's Blog - Why RSS will be more important than email to small businesses
• Brent's Blog - What I found when I Googled myself
• Brent's Blog - GAAP for small business: Google-as-a-Platform
• Brent's Blog - Small Biz should dial "M" for CRM success
• Brent's Blog - Power to the Pod People
• BlackBerry webcast series for small business

Online Demos

• Using Microsoft CRM within Microsoft Outlook - www.crm2.org/Biztech/MicrosoftCRM.htm
• Integrating CRM with eCommerce with NetSuite CRM+ - www.crm2.org/Biztech/netsuite.htm
• Integrating CRM with your website using Salesforce.com - www.crm2.org/Biztech/WebLeadsLa b.htm
• Opportunities management using Oracle OnDemand - www.crm2.org/Biztech/opportunities.htm
• Accessing ACT! data from the BlackBerry - www.crm-essentials.com/handheld .htm
• Salesforce.com and the BlackBerry - www.crm-essentials.com/sfdc_scenario.htm

And here are the slides to the presentation:

Enjoy and thanks again!!!

Technorati : ACT!, crm, customer relationship management, digital divide, google, small business, smb
Del.icio.us : ACT!, crm, customer relationship management, digital divide, google, small business, smb

Customer Relationship Mis-management: A Cautionary Tale

I haven't done one of these in a while and it pains me to do this one. And because it's about a person that I highly respect for the great job they have done in creating a nice website with all kinds of interesting, fresh and relevant content updated several times during the course of a day. They are interested in driving more traffic to the site and one of the ways they are looking to do this is to use RSS to syndicate and easily distribute their content all over the web. Anyone reading my post on how I think RSS will eventually be more important than email will know I think this is a great idea. So far so good, but....

As I relayed my positive feelings on this move to using RSS and how I think it will really help drive more traffic as people will see headlines and summaries and then click to get to the page, things went a little off course. A question was asked if instead of being directed to the page the full article is on, could people who click on the link be directed to their homepage. I said technically you could do that, but I asked why would you want to? Because they want people to see all of the content available on their site and not just stop at reading the information that drew them to the site. I think that's what happened to them in the past when sending out direct links to articles in emails. When I said that people are clicking on the link because they want to see that specific information and not a generic homepage, I believe my words probably fell on deaf ears.

Unfortunately, the need of the site owner to get more eyes to the homepage is outweighing the reader's desire to read the article they expected to see after clicking on the link created by the RSS feed. This is basically a bait and switch tactic which may not seem like a big deal to the owners of the site, but it really is as it will probably be seen as confusing, irritating and even alienating to people who are used to clicking on links to get to specific pages. It's just not good policy to put your needs and desires in front of your customers, and that is exactly what would be done here by "tweaking" an RSS feed in this manner. I can understand wanting to get more people to view other content and extend their stay on the site, but it shouldn't be done this way. It should be done by designing pages that include "related articles lists" or "most read lists" and any other "value adds" that will make people want to see more. This empowers the customer by giving them what they need to decide what they want to do instead of companies trying to dictate the action. It's really the difference in traditional CRM thinking and what's now being called CMR: customer-managed relationships. One has the control in the hands of the company where the other hands "the con" to the real bosses - customers. With more and more information sources piling onto the Internet, it's really important to look at how sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious and others have grown their traffic to unbelievably high levels by using a CMR approach and giving readers the power to vote what stories make the front page, not forcing them to read the front page. 

In the end it would definitely be for the best to give more options to the site's visitors than to try and force them to do what you want them to.

Technorati : crm, customer relationship management, customer relationship managers, rss, small business
Del.icio.us : crm, customer relationship management, customer relationship managers, rss, small business

Why RSS will Overtake Email In Importance To SMBs

Small business folks have an identity problem....they don't have one, at least not enough of one. The last stat I remember hearing says the average small business has about a 7% rate of brand awareness. So basically only seven out of every 100 potential customers who are looking for the services they supply has a clue of who they are. That ain't good. So in order to reach that other 93% SMBs have turned to email marketing. And why not? It's cheap, relatively easy to put together, real easy to execute and extremely easy to track its effectiveness. And therein lies the problem. It's so easy and cheap that everybody and their mother (i use this cliche but really have no idea of where it came from and why for that matter) sends it, filling up in-boxes to the point of insanity. And as you're looking at your in-box, you'll probably agree that most of it is unsolicited, junk or unsolicited junk. Studies show estimates that up to 75% of email is perceived by recipients as one of those three categories, leaving them overwhelmed and with a sense of helplessness. Present company included, as I delete at least 40 unsolicited emails daily. No doubt many of these are from small businesses trying to sell me something when I'm not ready to buy, or attend a workshop/seminar/webinar/networking mixer/fill-in-the-blank I'm not interested in attending. Why else would email response rates be so low?

Although it sounds like it, I haven't come to bury email. It's still serves as one of the best ways to interact with folks you have existing relationships with. And because it is so cheap and easy to execute, there will always be a place for it in attempts to build new business relationships. But the fact of the matter is you're message probably isn't hitting the target. At least not enough of it. That's why it's really important to understand how Really Simple Syndication (RSS) can help move beyond that 7% brand awareness number.

Instead of trying to put together a lengthy definition of RSS I would suggest checking out the definition at Wikipedia.. I think it's easier to understand it this way. I'm taking back control of my in-box as much as possible. I, like many other folks, am trying my best to cut down the current flow of stuff into my in-box. I'm opting out of everything except only the very few newsletters I really depend on. And luckily many of the sites I look to for information I can get delivered to me another way. I am always in Google, Yahoo! and MSN searching for stuff, so instead of using the basic homepages of these three, I've set up my own customized home pages - My Google, My Yahoo! and My MSN. With these special homepages I can subscribe to information from my favorite sources and have them configured as a part of my customized home page. This is perfect as I get to choose what information gets displayed. It's easy to add and remove without going through a lot of hassle. Services like TypePad and Blogger make it really easy to get into blogging.  And just like any other piece of content, I can have my latest blog entries as part of my homepage. Look at all the different ways my blog shows up in the different search engine homepages:

Microsoft has come out with a new free newsreader (codename MAX) that really makes my blog articles look nice when they are subscribed to as well as being able to subscribe to newsfeeds in the next version of Outlook - Outlook 2007:

So I only have to use my TypePad account to create a blog entry and because of RSS, it can automatically show up in all these different formats without any extra work. It can also be syndicated to web pages. I really only need to focus on the content of the blog because the technnology makes it so easy to use and maintain it. The search engines will make my content available for those searching for the kind of information I provide and allow them to easily consume it in the way the wish to receive it. So I'm not force-feeding it to people who really aren't interested in reading it just because I have their email address and I think they'll like it. I have over six thousand email addresses, of which I actually know less than a hundred of those people. I don't think they'd like to read my stuff, I'm HOPING they will, knowing darn well 97% probably won't give it a second thought because other things are more important to them at the moment the email is received. But with RSS, I can easily make my content available for all who is searching for it, which should increase that 7% at least somewhat higher. And that should help in the all important search for new prospects and customers.....maybe even more than the ever popular, and even more annoying, email message.

Technorati : crm, customer relationship management, microsoft max, my google, my msn, my yahoo!, rss, small business

What I Found When I Googled Myself

I'm back from an extended vacation from the blogosphere. Anyway I like to keep up with what the web has to say about me so I google my name every few days. It's a good practice to follow as you can best believe anytime you meet someone socially or professionally they are googling you to see if you're legit.  And believe me when I tell you that people have lost business by what was (or was not) found in search results.  As an aside, if you are a small business owner and your name and bio aren't listed on your corporate website, you're making a big mistake.  On most small business the second most popular page on the site is the "About Us" page.  Basically YOU ARE YOUR BUSINESS...and not having your experience somewhere on the site is bad.  Plus how does it look when you meet someone at a networking event and they do a search on your name and your own site doesn't even show up?  But I digress..... 

I wasn't surprised to see 1,200 links returned, but something else I found this time was really interesting. I knew Google was smart but this is getting ridiculous. Typically when I google "brent leary" I don't see any sponsored links at the top or on the right column. But check out the image below to see what I got back this time (click on the image to see the full image):

What gets me about this is that just from my name the featured sponsored link at the top is promoting the Destination CRM 2006 conference. Now I know the fine folks at CRM Magazine didn't bid on my name so they capture all the thousands of daily searchers who plug in "brent leary". Outside of my mother, I'm the only person doing that. I'm guessing that because there is quite a bit of links to CRM articles I've written, CRM speaking engagements, the CRM award I received with my partner Michael Thomas, from CRM magazine, etc., Google figured that it would be nice to folks bidding on CRM-related search terms and pop some sponsored links up for them. What really got me was the sponsored link on the right (circled in red) with the title of "Michael Thomas". That got first of all because Google recognized that many of the links with "brent leary" also tend to have "Michael Thomas" in there somewhere and thought it was a good bet for the folks bidding on "Michael Thomas" to show up here. I know Michael Thomas is a common name but no one wants to bid .10 cents on "Brent Leary"???

Anyway it just goes to show how sophisticated Google's search algorithms are and their ability to mine the mountainous piles of data they have at their disposal to deliver potential business to their AdWords customers. Or it all could be just a mistake, since I just re-googled myself and no sponsored links came up at all!

Research In Motion Webcast Series: CRM for Small Business

I mentioned a few posts ago that Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of the addictive BlackBerry devices, hired CRM Essentials to develop a three part webcast focused on helping their customers and prospects get a better understanding of how CRM could positively impact their businesses, and also how mobility can positively impact the CRM initiatives. That series is now posted on the RIM resource website. I really believe mobility is key to CRM success and should be a "must have" instead of a "nice to have" at this point.

Where can I get my $3,387.24?

I was doing a little research on linkbaiting thanks to a comment made by Mark Patsy on the Power to the Pod People post. I found Dane Carlson's Business Opportunities blog that had a cool entry which actually puts a dollar value on your blog. Dane bases his valuation formula on the link valuation research of Tristan Louis after AOL bought blog network Weblogs Inc. In short, each link to your blog is valued somewhere between $500 and $1000.

So according to Dane's valuation tool which uses the Technorati API, my blog is valued at $3,387.24. Now I was actually thinking more like $1.95 because I really haven't been linked to much at all as of yet, so I was pleasantly surprised. But take a look at the valuations of some of the most popular sites that I like:

• Engadget - $14,498,516.28
• Postsecret - $6,845,612.04
• ZD Net - $5,228,204.94

Now these are extremely popular sites, but take a look at a few other blogs I check out frequently that are not quite as well known but have loyal followings:

• Anil Dash's blog - $519,376.80
• Mashable - $464,051.88
• Forrester analyst Charlene Li's blog - $134,925.06

So after seeing these numbers I figured the CRM vendor blogs (those that actually have them) would have decent values associated to them. Here's what I found:

• Salesforce.com's CRM Success blog - $3,387.24
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team blog - $10,726.26
• Oracle Blogs - $0.00
• Entellium CEO Paul Johnston's blog - $0.00
• SAP Executive Blogs - $0.00

Yup...pretty surprising isn't it? My first thought was that my blog was as valuable as Salesforce.com's....cool for me, but not for SFDC. Now I didn't spend a whole lot of time looking for vendor blogs so this is probably not an exhaustive list for sure, but it shouldn't be that hard to find blogs for the biggest players in the space. Since linking is the main basis for the blog valuation tool, it goes without saying that the vendor blogs aren't getting much love so to speak. I guess some people might feel that corporate blogs may be more sales than information driven. To be sure you will see a lot of sales-like stuff there. But the Salesforce and Microsoft blogs do have good solid information about best practice for using their applications. But in general these blogs are just too hard to find. And the SAP executive blogs actually ask you to register before you can view them. When's the last time you had to register to view a blog?

It's time for CRM vendors to create more perceived value with their blogs, and for most of them to actually create blogs in the first place. It's pretty obvious that blogging is here to stay.

PayPal Gets Big Assist From Google

I was just checking out July's categorized top ten search list that was put together by Hitwise, one the leader's in online competitive intelligence. In the automotive manufacturing category the big three of Japan (Toyota, Honda and Nissan in that order) lead the way....but that was before the "Ask Dr. Z." campaign really took off. And yes I happen to like Dr. Z, especially the commercial where he does a header with the soccer ball. Six of the top ten medical/pharmaceutical category searches centered around anti-depressants (lexapro, cymbalta and zoloft among others). Some of the other leaders in that category center around appetite suppressants and that old favorite viagra. The top search term in the internet advertising category was "work from home", with a whopping 20% of internet ad searches....man do people hate life in cubicles and commuting. In the blog and personal web site category it was all about Xanga, of which I had never heard of before viewing this site. But it had the top three spots in this category - xanga, xanga.com and www.xanga.com.

As a guy who's getting more and more into SEM/SEO I find this stuff pretty interesting. But what really caught my attention was the IT/internet category. Paypal not only had the top spot with 4.35% of the total searches, it had four of the top ten searches - paypal, paypal.com, www.paypal.com and pay pal. So with Google owning 50% of the search market, there's a lot of folks getting to Paypal from the new evil empire. So maybe eBay didn't have to ban Google Checkout from their payment options after all. Well I guess only time will tell on that one. We'll see what Hitwise will have to say next month.

Power to the Pod People!

My company CRM Essentials has begun doing a series of "CRM 101" workshops at Georgia Tech's Minority Business Enterprise Center.  We go over some basics, talk about the business case for CRM, look at the impact of mobility,  and let the class do some exercises in apps like Salesboom.com.  But for us we try to go where the attendees want to, and so we end up spending a lot of time discussing the importance of leveraging corporate websites to automate lead generation and qualification.  Search engine optimization and marketing is of growing interest, and because of that we also get into the importance of optimizing web pages with content tuned to search phrases. 

Because of the growing prevalence of high speed Internet access and broadband wireless, we explain the importance of delivering rich content beyond the typical powerpoints, white papers and case studies.  Think of all the stuff we get from the Internet for fun like music from iTunes, videos from YouTube and all sorts of other things, and it becomes pretty obvious that we like to consume information any all sorts of formats.  And it's because the pipe has made it possible to quickly download multi-megabytes of content.  So if we download things for our personal life, doesn't seem logical that we'll also download stuff for business as well?  So we encourage folks in the class to look at podcasting as a viable strategy for businesses to use to drive business.  Especially those in the technology industry.  And according to one new study, now's the time to get going.

Knowledgestorm and Universal McCann just released a survey of 3,900 B2B technology buyers last month that says they are using blogging, podcasting, wikis, RSS and other new technologies to consume information used to buy products and services.  Here are a few key points:

• 53% of those surveyed have downloaded or listened to a podcast at least once, with 41% claiming to have listened to podcasts on more than one occasion
• 65% said they listen to podcasts for BOTH personal AND business interest
• 60% of respondents said info on business or technology topics currently delivered as traditional white papers or analyst reports would be more interesting as podcasts.  And 55% of them would be more likely to consume white papers if they were delivered in this manner
• 27% said podcasts already influence work-related purchase decisions

Now these numbers sound good, but when you take into account that we're still in the early adoption stages for podcasting, you really can understand how big of an impact podcasting and the other new marketing technologies will have in the not too distant future.  These technologies are every bit a part of CRM as the traditional areas of SFA, MA and CSS.  So all I can say to those in the class who were not too sure if podcasting was really for business.....I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!  So get ready for my podcast starting in September.