Brent's Social CRM Blog

Come to Atlanta to Get Down to Social Biz…and for Some Biscuits

I have the opportunity to go to a lot of CRM/Social events during the course of the year, most of which are held in cool places like San Francisco, Boston and Orlando.  And while I love going to those places, I’ve always wanted to have one of those events down here in Atlanta.  And while I’ve threatened to do
it, I would always find an excuse (or 200) not to do it.  Not the right venue, not the right time of year, nobody in the industry would come, nobody likes me… man I better stop before I really depress myself.

Anyway, thanks to my friends and some great sponsors, I’ve completely run out of excuses.  So I have no other choice than to say that on Friday February 3^rd I’d love for 
you to join me in Atlanta for the Getting Down to Social Business conference being held at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) Conference Center.  It’s also being called Social Biz Atlanta because the event site is SocialBizAtlanta.com.  And it is free to attend if you register online in advance.

This is a full day event that will focus on the need for companies to transition their approach to “social” away from a narrow, reactionary set of disconnected activities, to a full-fledged corporate culture strategically aligned to build long-lasting relationships with today’s empowered customer.  And it's aimed directly at small and mid-size businesses - and even you enterprise folks working at the departmental level of your organization operating like a small business.  

Now I said my friends deserve all the “blame” for this making this happen, and let me tell you why…

A Venue I Couldn’t Pass Up

I’ve said to many people that I’d only organize an event if I could get a space like the GTRI Conference Center, because it’s a great location in Midtown Atlanta, has great amenities for attendees, and even has free parking.  This made for a great excuse for not doing something, until Donna Ennis of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute said I could use the GTRI venue.   Gee THANKS Donna!

Incredible List of World Class Thought Leaders Volunteering to Come

 Now that I couldn’t use the venue excuse, I really was relying heavily on the “nobody would come to Atlanta” excuse.  And, of course, not only did people want to come, many of them even offered without me having to ask.  I mean, who would’ve thought a group of thought leaders, experts and influencers like this would say yes:

• Anita Campbell, CEO and Publisher, Small Business Trends,  
• Robin Carey, CEO, Social Media Today,
• Ginger Conlon, Executive Editor, 1to1 Media,
• Bert DuMars, Vice President of Digital Marketing and eCommerce, Newell Rubbermaid,
• Donna Ennis, Project Director, MBDA Business Center,
• Art Hall, Director, Alvarez and Marsal,
• Cory Hartlen, Product Marketing Manager, Radian6,
• Jeanne Hopkins, Vice President of Marketing, HubSpot,
• Paul Greenberg, President of the 56 Group & Author of CRM at the Speed of Light,
• Adam Naide, Executive Director of Social Media Marketing, Cox Communications,
• Jeff Nolan, VP of Product Marketing, Get Satisfaction,
• Larry Ritter,SVP & General Manager, Sage CRM Solutions,
• Michael Thomas, Customer Success Manager, Microsoft,
• Matt Trifiro, SVP of Marketing, Assistly,
• Lauren Vargas, Community Management Strategist, Aetna,

Emily Yellin, Author of Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us

OK so I knew Paul G. would come and do it even if it were just me and him…which would have made it a CRM Playaz episode anyways.   But who knew all these great folks from great companies would say yes? Now I was down to my last excuse…

I CAN Have Regular Guy (or Gal) Food For Lunch At One Of These Things?

This is the biggie.  Having been to a number of cool events, the lunch situation can sometimes be dicey.  And I said to myself if I ever organized an event I’d have to have some “regular guy” food available.  Something I could sink my teeth into like some Chick-fil-a; a chicken biscuit perhaps...  And just when I thought it was illegal to serve this kind of food at a business event, I found out that I could actually do it.

No More Excuses…I’m Talking to You!

So now I’m all out of reasons for why I shouldn’t host a social business event here in Atlanta.  And due to having great sponsors like Microsoft, Radian6, Sage, Assistly and Georgia Tech, we’re able to make this whole event free! So if you work at a small or mid-size business and live in or near Atlanta (or you’ve been looking for a good reason to come here) you’ve run out of excuses not to attend.  Let’s see:

• Great Speakers – Check!
• Great Venue – Check!
• Great Location (with free parking) – Check!
• Great Eats (if you’re like me and dig Chick-fil-a) – check!
• Great information on an important topic – Check!
• And it’s free – Check! (or is that no check since you don’t need your checkbook )

In all seriousness we really do think we’ve put together a great day of content coming directly from experts, practitioners and vendors who can help your organization transition to becoming a social business.  So here are the details:

Title: Getting Down to Social Business: The New Business as Usual in the Age of the Collaborative Relationship (AKA Social Biz Atlanta)

Date: Friday February3rd

Time: 8:30-4pm

Place: Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center

250 14^th Street NW

Atlanta, GA 30318

Cost: None with online registration

Event Site: SocialBizAtlanta.com

I hope to see you there!

 

Enterprise 2.0 – What a Difference 2 Years Makes

Thank you Sameer Patel!  Not just for the obvious reason either. First and foremost he’s an industry thought leader/influencer, with a wicked sense of humor, which all comes through in his great blog.  This, in my book, makes Sameer one of the smartest people in the industry, while also being one of the coolest..

Sameer was the Sales & Marketing track chair for last week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference.  He invited me to moderate a panel on whether inbound marketing and outbound marketing could coexist - which I was thrilled to do.  I had the pleasure of facilitating a very interesting conversation with three great experts who are heading up their company’s efforts:

• Michelle Burtchell, Director, Acquisition Marketing, Constant Contact
• Mike Lewis, VP of Sales & Marketing, Awareness Inc.
• Ilya Mirman, Vice President of Marketing, VMTurbo

We touched on a number of issues, including:

• Whether inbound marketing is a replacement to outbound marketing – or an enhancement
• How does inbound differ in: B2B vs B2C, Large enterprises vs. SMBs
• How does “inbound” change a company’s marketing makeup
• What impact inbound marketing has on the relationship between sales and marketing departments
• How does inbound impact the relationship with customers/prospects
• And, of course, what ROI can you expect from implementing an inbound marketing initiative.

And as I was all set to recap some of the great points made during the session, Ilya beat me to it – so please check out his post that does a great job of summarizing the conversation.

Thanks to Ilya, Michelle and Mike for making my job as moderator extremely easy.  More importantly, thanks for providing great perspective and insight – and for sharing your wealth of experience in this increasingly important area.  And thanks once again to Sameer for letting me join his show.

Now getting back to the original reason I wanted to thank Sameer.  Two years ago I attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference.  I actually had a chance to attend way more sessions and keynotes than I did this time around.  And out of all the sessions and events I attended back then, I only heard the letters C-R-M mentioned once.  It was during Blue State Digital co-founder Jascha Franklin Hodge’s keynote discussing the role of social media in the success of President Obama’s campaign.

And the really interesting part of how he brought CRM up around how he described it as the foundation of the success that took place with social media.  I was sitting next to Paul Greenberg at the time, and we both looked at each other… as we both were thinking not just CRM, but Social CRM. 

But just as quickly as Jascha said those three letters (CRM), it seemed like it was overshadowed by the fascination with the social media piece.  And the only real discussion of CRM, and Social CRM, was later that night at Radian6’s totally unaffiliated Rockstars of Social CRM event – which Paul, Michael Thomas, Frank Eliason and me participated in….with Chris Brogan as the emcee, dressed as Professor Griff from Public Enemy.  And even back then there were over 300 people there (and over 600 on the livestream) to discuss this thing that was virtually ignored at E2.0.  I still think that most people really came to see Chriss dressed as Griff, and to see Radian6 CMO David Alston play the air guitar dressed as a Goth...

Anyway...so here’s where the thank you to Sameer comes in, a second time.  Sameer, according to Mr. Greenberg, is the driving force behind Social CRM’s inclusion into the E2.0 conferences.  Now I wasn’t at last year’s conference, but this year’s conference was really eye-opening to me.  The conference has always been top rate, but I couldn’t believe how much Social CRM/Social Business had been infused throughout everything.  You really couldn’t go too long without hearing Social CRM.  I couldn’t attend it, but Broadvision put on “An Evening with Paul Greenberg” as part of their announcing their Social CRM application during E2.0 – and several hundred people attended.  There was a Social Apps track, and the Sales & Marketing track Sameer put together was definitely infused with Social CRM thought leaders – including Sameer, Paul, Esteban Kolsky, Mike Fauscette and others.   And many other Social CRM luminaries were walking around the conference too – like Mitch Leiberman, Brian Vellmure, Michael Wu, Michael Krigsman (who was on a Social Apps panel), and many others.  I even had chance to meet with two of my favorite dynamos - Radian6’s powerhouse Director of Community, and Kirsten Knipp – Hubspot’s Director of Evangelism & Marketing.  

So while I am grateful to Sameer for inviting to be a part of a great sales & marketing track he put together, I’m even more thankful to him for bringing Social CRM to Enterprise 2.0.  I felt a whole new energy at the conference that I didn’t feel before - and a whole new comfort level seeing great #SCRM-tinged sessions, with a number of the SCRM AC members I’m not sure any of that would have been there if it weren’t for Sameer.

 

Yo Dog, Do You Have What It Takes to be the First CRM Idol?

Do you remember Kelly Clarkson? OF COURSE you do... She was the very first winner of American Idol and went on to sell millions of records. And none of that would have happened if not for this Idol idea, so keep that in mind as you continue reading on....

Ok, the below is from the unbelievable mind of The Godfather of CRM - Paul "Purple Haze" Greenberg, for only his mind could come up with a great idea like this. So if you'd like to be an up and coming player (or is that playa) in the CRM/Social CRM software industry, this one is for you.....DOG! So without further ado, take it away PG...

Okay, everyone this is the big one. CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season is here and we're ready to take your companies and find out which one of you in the Americas and which one of you in EMEA is not the next CRM Idol but the FIRST CRM Idol.

The Idea

Most of what we're trying to do was outlined in the pre-announcement announcement of CRM Idol last week. But it bears some repeating:

Small companies - at least in the CRM software related world - and that means social software world, in this case, too - abound. There are thousands of companies out there that are possibly innovative, possibly commercially viable in a big way, possibly the next big thing. But, as we said, there are thousands of them. And, no matter how great your product is, if no one knows about it, well, then, oops. Not a good thing.

These small companies are all making efforts to get into the ecosystem that could benefit them - one which includes investors, influencers, technology/strategic partners, media connections, etc. While getting support from this powerful ecosystem is by no means a guarantee of success, it can be enormously helpful in getting well down the road there. But, those small companies are often thwarted in that effort by either really bad PR people, or just the incredible amount of companies out there trying to reach into the ecosystem who are pummeling the small amount of influencers, etc. every week with requests to demo or talk.

Now, to be fair to the influencers, they are human beings with lives that aren't built around supporting this one company that really thinks they are it. All they know is that each of them is getting between 20-50 requests a week to take a demo or conversation with someone who owns or represents a company they've never heard of and never talked to yet. In addition to those that they know. Often enough, they are pitched by a public relations person who is either inexperienced or not really good at their job who makes no effort to find anything out about the person that they are pitching to. So the influencer, journalist, venture capitalist gets a generic curve thrown at them that doesn't even break over the plate - guaranteeing that the email is going to be discarded as a matter of course before the first paragraph is even read. Or it could be that on a particular day the influencer got 10 pitches and had a headache and didn't want to see any of them.

As unfair as generic pitches and high volumes of noise are to the influencers in the highly desirable ecosystem we are chatting about here, it is a problem because what are probably a lot of good companies are never given a chance to move ahead because of the difficulties inherent in the process and the vagaries of bad luck on any given day.

Which is why CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season exists.

The concept is simple, small companies out there. If you meet the submission criteria outlined below, you will be given the opportunity, first come first serve, to secure a time slot on a specific day that will put you in front of some of the most influential people in the CRM/SCRM world. They will spend an hour with you in a demo to hear about your technology product - software only - and they will write a jointly signed review of what they saw of you - that will be published in multiple venues as soon as its written. It can be a good review, a bad one, a mix or indifferent. There's risk on your part to be taken here. But it is something that you need to be aware of. The reviews will go up as soon as the 5 judge sign off on the final content. They won't be exhaustive reviews but they will be opinionated and fair.

Forty companies from the Americas and twenty companies from EMEA (that means ONLY Europe, the Middle East and Africa) will get a shot at this - again first come first serve (more later on what that means). Of the 40 in the Americas, 4 finalists will be chosen. (NOTE: There will be an APAC edition hopefully late in the year or if not, early 2012, depending on the success of these two events. Sorry, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, et.al. Logistics made it impossible at this juncture.) Out of the 20 in EMEA, 3 finalists will be chosen. Each of the finalists will be REQUIRED to do a ten minute video about their company and the product. Not a repeat of the demo but a video. Note I used the word REQUIRED here. Let me put it this way. If you make the finals and don't do the video, we will publicly skewer your company. Know why? Because our judges are giving up what little free time they actually have in a summer to do this and it will take us 4 hours a day for 3 business weeks to do it. So if you can't or won't put in the effort to do the video, don't bother to apply. Seriously. We're trying to help out here and we want you guys all to succeed but it's a two way street.

Okay, that rant out of the way. Once the finalists are chosen and the videos done, they will be posted online in multiple media outlets. They will be voted on in two ways:

1. Popular vote - see, crowdsourcing is important. All the votes for the one winner from the Americas and the one winner from EMEA will be tallied from the public sites - in aggregate. That's 50% of the vote.
2. Extended Judges Panels - as you can see below, we may have assembled the greatest panels of judges - both leading vendors and influencers ever assembled in the history of CRM - not to be hyperbolic or anything. Each judge will select a specific winner in each of the Americas and EMEA from the 7 finalists. That's the other 50% of the vote. The original judges will be voting as panel members.

The winners in each will get a major array of prizes, some of which are below, and be declared "CRM Idol 2011 Winner."

Not too shabby is it? Vast amounts of media attention even if you don't make the finals. If you make the finals at all, some prizes to you. The winners get everything that the ecosystem can offer but guaranteed success. But they do get all the accoutrements they need to support their increased likelihood of it.

That way, you small companies out there who have been victimized by bad approaches or just circumstance have the opportunity to bypass all of that and make something happen. It's up to you to take the reins in hand but once you do, you have at least a serious chance at making yourself successful.

The Criteria

This competition is for small companies in the CRMish/SocialCRMish world. - see the categories below for some guidelines though please feel free to make the case if you don't see yourself in the guidelines.

1. You have to have software that is commercially available by the time of the demo - that would be in August - again see below. No betas, alphas, release candidates allowed. If we find that you're not commercially available, and you have a time slot, you're out and someone else will fill the slot. So please be sure that you can verify the claim if you want to participate.
2. You have to have 3 referenceable customers that, if we care to, we can contact and ask about you.
3. You have to have revenue under $12 million U.S. your last fiscal year. As far as disclosure goes, you have the choice of making the claim that you do - though that will have to be stated in your submission and we'll trust you or you can disclose your revenue in the submission with the knowledge that only the permanent judges will know what it is. If you make the claim, please be prepared to back it up if we ask. Your call on how.
4. You have to be willing to make a ten minute video if you get to the finals. More on that later.
5. You have to fit a category - though there is some leeway there.

The Categories

The categories that we've identified to start are:

1. Traditional CRM Suites
2. Social CRM
3. Sales - Sales Force Automation, Sales Optimization, Sales Effectiveness
4. Marketing - Marketing Automation, Revenue Performance Management, Social Marketing, Email Marketing, Enterprise Marketing Management, Database Marketing
5. Customer Service - all permutations
6. Mobile CRM
7. Customer Experience Management
8. Social Media Monitoring - requires the possibility of integrating with a CRM technology
9. Customer Analytics - including text/sentiment analytics; voice based analytics; social media analytics, influencer scoring, etc.
10. Enterprise Feedback Management
11. Innovation Management
12. Community Platforms
13. Enterprise 2.0 - collaboration, activity streams etc.
14. Social Business
15. Knowledge Management - this one requires the possibility of integrating with CRM systems
16. Vendor Relationship Management
17. Partner Relationship Management

Once again, if you don't see yourself in this list, don't worry. Just make the case as to why you have some customer-facing possibilities and the likelihood is that we'll be cool with it. We're trying to make this easier for you, not hard.

The Rules

They are numbered to be entirely clear.

Submissions

1. There will be 40 slots made available in the Americas and 20 in EMEA.
2. The submission will be by email ONLY to: [email protected]. (See below to see this again and what to do if there are problems). Any other attempt at submission will be rejected out of hand with the problem exception mentioned below.
3. The submissions will occur starting today - Monday, April 25 and will continue until Friday May 13 or until all slots are filled, whichever is first (watch #crmidol on twitter for updates on that as it occurs). On May 13, should any slots be left, the remaining specific dates and times will be made publicly available and another final round of submissions for those remaining slots will occur from May 13 through May 20. After that the submissions will be closed.
4. Each submission will include the following:
5. 1. Your company contact and named person contact information Two date and time specific slot requests. ONLY two. If your slots are not available, you're out of luck until May 14 - and then you can resubmit to any time slots that are publicly announced as still available. Though there is no guarantee that there will be any available slots at that time. (see below for examples of how to submit the dates/times)
   2. The category you feel you fit into - or if you don't but think that you qualify - why.
   3. A description of what the product is/the company is. Be persuasive here that you meet the criteria, not that you have a great product. This is merely a qualifying discussion. URLs cannot be used as substitutes for this description. The submission needs to be all inclusive. However, they can be used as supporting documentation.
   4. The names of the three (3) referenceable customers - the company, the contact and the way to communicate with them - minimum of email and phone, please.
   5. A statement that says that you meet the revenue requirement along the lines of "our company states truthfully that our revenues in our last fiscal year 2010 were under $12 million U.S". OR you can state the actual number with the knowledge that the primary judges in each of the Americas and EMEA will treat it as under non-disclosure. But please be aware those designated primary judges below will see the actual figures if you choose to reveal them.
   6. A statement that says, "if (you) make the finals, you are committed to making a 10 minute video for submission and public viewing as part of the conditions for entry." Word it anyway you prefer but make the commitment clear.
6. If you are accepted, you'll be notified privately but it will be posted that you've been accepted on the Twitter #crmidol stream. The time will only be sent to you privately. Just your acceptance will be posted. Please allow some time between your submission and the posting of it to the hashtag and your private notification, since we all still have to work for a living.
7. If you don't include everything specified in the rules for submission, it means automatic disqualification and you cannot resubmit.

The Demo

The demo has few rules. Just be prepared to a. explain your company; b. show your product - live please c. answer questions from the influencers/experts. Not much more than that. I'm sure many of you are experienced at this already so wed don't have to tell you this, but just in case… A site for the demos with login etc. will be announced to the timeslot owners in early August.

The Video

The standards for the video will be mentioned to the finalists once they are named. To rest any unease, you won't be required to spend lots of money to get it done. How much you spend and on what will be up to you as will the content and how you present it. We'll issue guidelines when the time gets near, including how the video is going to be distributed for posting and voting.

The Judges

Here are the lists of all the judges. As you can see, we have what is likely to be the heaviest hitting list in the history of anything done in CRM when it comes to awards or competitions. Click on their names to get to their LinkedIn bios. They are in alphabetical order.

Primary Judges

The Americas

These five judges will handle the 40 entries for the Americas which consists of the United States, Canada, South and Central America. They will all be involved in the one hour reviews each of the days over the two weeks and will jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the four finalists for the Americas.

1. Paul Greenberg - Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC
2. Jesus Hoyos - Managing Partner, JesusHoyos.com, LLC
3. Esteban Kolsky - Principal and Founder, Thinkjar LLC
4. Brent Leary - Managing Partner, CRM Essentials
5. Denis Pombriant - CEO, Beagle Research Group

EMEA

These four judges will handle the 20 entries from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia etc. They will all be involved in the each of the 1 hour demos/discussions from Sept 5 through 9 and will write and jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the three finalists for EMEA.

1. Laurence Buchanan - Vice President, CRM & Social CRM, EMEA, Capgemini
2. Silvana Buljan - Founder & Managing Director, Buljan & Partners
3. Paul Greenberg - see above
4. Mark Tamis - Social Business Strategist, NET-7

Mentors

This is an exciting part of CRM Idol 2011. Each of these fine human beings has volunteered a day of their time - two during the finals and one with the winners - to provide the benefit of their experience to the contestants. What they will do is noted by their name. This is an awesome idea that Anthony Lye actually cooked up. Each of these mentors has decades of experience in the software and venture capital world and is considered a leader in the CRM space. So if you make it to the finals, you have the benefit of their knowledge and their valuable time. Amazing.

1. Anthony Lye - Anthony will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Anthony has had years of experience as a senior management person for enterprise CRM and a thought leader.
2. Joe Hughes - Joe will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Joe has been a leader in the CRM space for as long as we can remember and one of the more foresighted when it comes to the value of Social CRM
3. Larry Augustin - This is a prize for the winner of EMEA and the winner of the Americas. Larry who has years of experience as an executive in the software space and has been a successful venture capitalist will work with the winner to prepare them for dealing with possible investors including doing a VC matching with the winners.

There will most likely be other mentors announced as the competition gets closer to the demo dates. We might try to make some mentors available to prepare you if you need them for the one hour demos but that's still up in the air. We'll keep you posted.

Extended Judges Panels

The Influencer Panel

1. William Band - Vice President & Principal Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
2. Jim Berkowitz - CEO, CRM Mastery
3. Bruce Culbert - Chief Service Officer, The Pedowitz Group
4. Zoli Erdos - Publisher/Editor, CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars
5. Mike Fauscette - Group Vice President, Software Business Solutions, IDC
6. Josh Greenbaum - Principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting
7. Dr. Graham Hill - Partner, Optima Partners
8. Dennis Howlett - Buyer Advocate
9. Ian Jacobs - Senior Analyst, Customer Interaction, Ovum/Datamonitor
10. Michael Krigsman - CEO, Asuret
11. Marshall Lager - Managing Principal, Third Idea Consulting
12. Kate Leggett - Senior Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
13. Maribel Lopez - Principal Analyst and VP, Constellation Research Founder Lopez Research LLC
14. Jeremiah Owyang -Managing Partner, Altimeter Group
15. Sameer Patel - Managing Partner, Sovos Group
16. Scott Rogers - Customer Evangelist
17. Robert Scoble - Managing Director, Rackspace Hosting
18. Brian Solis - Principal, Altimeter Group
19. Dilip Soman - Professor of Marketing, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
20. Ray Wang - CEO, Constellation Research
21. Mary Wardley - Vice President, CRM Applications, IDC

The Vendor Panel

1. Larry Augustin - CEO, SugarCRM
2. Anthony Lye - Senior Vice President & GM, CRM, Oracle
3. Phil Fernandez - CEO, Marketo
4. John Hernandez - General Manager, Customer Care Business, Cisco
5. Jonathan Hornby - Director, Worldwide Marketing, SAS
6. Joseph Hughes - Senior Executive, CRM Service, Support and Social System Integration Lead, Accenture
7. Charlie Isaacs, VP, eServices and Social Media Strategy Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
8. Vinay Iyer - Vice President, Marketing CRM, SAP
9. Katy Keim - CMO, Lithium
10. Marcel Lebrun,- CEO, Radian6
11. Mitch Lieberman, Vice President, Marketing, Sword-Ciboodle
12. Chris Morace- Senior Vice President, Business Development, Jive
13. Zach Nelson - CEO, NetSuite
14. Bill Patterson- Director, CRM Product Management, Microsoft
15. Dileep Srinivasan - AVP - CRM & Social CRM, Digital Marketing & MDM, Cognizant
16. John Taschek -Vice President, Market Strategy, Salesforce

The Journalist Panel

1. Elsa Basile - Director, Callcenternews (Argentina)
2. Barney Beal - Managing Editor, SearchCRM,
3. Anita Campbell - Publisher, SmallBizTrends.com
4. Robin Carey - CEO, Social Media Today
5. Neil Davey - Group Editor, Sift Media
6. David Myron - Editorial Director, CRM Magazine, Speech Technology Magazine
7. Valdir Ugalde - Board, Member, mundocontact (Mexico)
8. Ann Van Den Berg - Senior Editor, CustomerTalk (Netherlands)

Media Partners

You'll note that we have 8 journalists on a panel of judges. Well, each of them represents a media partner that will be broadcasting the competition and posting the videos for voting in the finals for the popular vote. They are an awesome array of the most influential media sites in social media, CRM, and small business as well as local influencers in CRM in Latin America and Europe. They will be significant in the lives of the contestants, the finalists, and the winners giving each what may be an unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage. Their coverage will be supplemented by posts to the blogs and other sites that are owned by many of the judges so there will be significant reach for all 60 of the initial contenders. Each of these partners will be getting exclusives from the judges and hopefully some of the companies too so that we can add a quality of coverage that would enhance the value to the SMBs participating. in all areas - CRM, social and small business directly.

We expect to add more media partners as we continue on throughout the competition.

The current partners and links to their sites (in alphabetical order, like every list here):

1. Call Center News (Argentina)
2. CRM Magazine/DestinationCRM
3. CustomerTalk (Netherlands)
4. Mundocontact (Mexico)
5. MyCustomer.com/Sift Media
6. SearchCRM
7. Social Media Today
8. SmallBizTrends.com

The Prizes…So Far

These are the prizes as of launch today. There are several others in the works that will be announced as the contest rolls out.

All Finalists

All 7 finalists will get to choose one day of consulting from the list of Influencer consultants below. The order of choice will be based on the popular vote on the video which will be kept confidential but used for the choosing. There will be more consultants added to the list as contest moves forward.

The Americas and EMEA Winners

Each winner will get to choose four prizes from the list. Note - in the case where multiple prizes are being offered by a single vendor - the vendor counts as a single prize with all the items as part of that.

1. Accenture
2. 1. A full day workshop with CRM leaders in Accenture for possible partnership and/or possible investment.
3. Capgemini (for EMEA winners only)
4. 1. A half day workshop with Patrick James, Global VP CRM and Laurence Buchanan to explore joint go to market opportunities and help you refine and test your value proposition.
5. Social Media Today
6. 1. A blog post featuring the winner of the contest to run on both The Customer Collective and Social Media Today
   2. A single blast to the Social Media Today opt-in list (approximately 50,000 names) which will conform to their minimum standards (valued at $10,500)
7. Microsoft
8. 1. 12 mos. of CRM Online Free for developing extensions to CRM
   2. 12 mos. of Windows Azure Free for developing web-based portals and BI solutions
   3. Access to the Office 365 Beta for building collaborative applications and services
   4. Access to the BizSpark One program -a program designed to connect emerging businesses and their investors with a Microsoft advisor to help them identify unique opportunities and expand its business presence
9. SugarCRM
10. 1. Free 10 user subscription to SugarCRM Professional or Enterprise
    2. Membership in the Sugar Exchange and free consulting on product integration with SugarCRM
    3. CEO Larry Augustin, a successful venture capitalist in his own right, does a mentoring & VC matchmaking session with the winners
11. Brian Solis
12. 1. One hour internal webinar on how to use SCRM and social media to your advantage
13. Paul Greenberg
14. 1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
15. Ray Wang
16. 1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
17. Sameer Patel
18. 1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
19. Influencer Consulting- free strategic consulting for 1 day or 8 hours from a variety of judges (in person travel expenses to be covered by winners)
20. 1. Esteban Kolsky (in person only)
    2. Paul Greenberg (on phone or in person)
    3. Denis Pombriant (on phone or in person)
    4. Mark Tamis (on phone or in person)
    5. Jesus Hoyos (on phone or in person)
    6. Brent Leary (on phone or in person)

The Times, Dates, Hashtag and Email

Okay here's the hardcore stuff:

1. The hashtag is #crmidol
2. The email for submission is [email protected]
3. 1. If you have a problem submitting to that email send your submission and a report of the specific problem to [email protected]

Dates and Times Table for the Americas and EMEA

We've put together an easy little table with all the relevant dates and times that you'll need as you progress through the competition.

Dates/Times	Americas	EMEA
Submission Dates	August 15-19; August 22-26	September 5-9
Submission Times	3pm ET; 4pm ET; 5pm ET; 6pm ET	3pm GMT; 4pm GMT; 5pm GMT; 6pm GMT
Finalist Video Submission Date	September 30	October 14
Winner Announcement	October 17	October 31

A Note or Two

A little bit of unfinished stuff that will sort itself out as time goes forward.

• There will likely be a CRM Idol site (Joomla based) coming in the next month or so that will be an aggregate site for all the media outlets and streams. However, this remains a work in progress that's still under discussion.
• There will be more mentors and prizes added and possibly a judge or two.
• For now ongoing news will be found at the twitter hashtag #crimidol.

In Closing

That's about it. Now its time to bring it. First come, first serve. See you, maybe as the 1st ever CRM Idol, in Vegas, Hollywood. London or on the Social Web. Somewhere anyway.

CRM IDOL 2011 IS NOW OFFICIALLY UNDERWAY

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Zuora's Tien Tzuo Discusses Life in the Subscription Economy

"Think about your business, not in terms of how many transactions you can have or how many products you can ship, but as a collection of customers-high-value customers, medium-value customers, low-value customers-and find ways to drive customer loyalty to drive repeat purchases, drive greater revenues and build a sustainable business."

These are the words of Tien Tzuo, CEO and founder of Zuora, a leader in cloud-based billing and payment subscription management. I've know Tien since his days as Chief Strategy Officer at Salesforce.com, and have always found him to be one of the smartest folks in the industry. Which is the main reason I've been highly interested in his evangelism of the Subscription Economy - where companies "servitize" their product-centric organizations to provide ongoing services we subscribe to.

Tien was gracious enough to join me for my series of One on One conversations over at SmallBizTrends.com. If you want to get a glimpse for where things are heading, and how to successfully prepare to compete in the Subscription Economy. You can use this link to check it out. There's an audio portion as well as a transcript of our conversation.

Technorati : subscription economy, tien tzuo, zuora
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Social CRM Mainstreaming Continues With Hearsay

I just finished up doing some "judge work" for this year's Gartner/ 1to1 Media CRM Excellence Awards in the category of Social Engagement. I can't get into any details as the winners will be announced at next month's conference, but I can say I was really impressed with what companies are doing today in order to improve the customer experience, and to amplify the voice of the customer throughout their organizations.

In my last online column for Inc.com I wrote about how I think 2011 will be the year Social CRM goes mainstream. One of the reasons I feel this way was reinforced by what I saw in the companies up for the Gartner/1to1 award - more companies of all sizes are taking a more multidimensional, strategic approach to social tools and channels. Instead of being focused on one or two aspects - or acting strictly in response mode out of fear - you are seeing more comprehensive strategies being developed to integrate social with traditional to create better processes.

In order for Social CRM to have a chance to go mainstream, companies in traditional areas like franchising, professional services, financial services, etc. will have to find ways to implement a central strategy that extends to their local representatives. They'll have to be able to do so in a way that insures a cohesive message is delivered at the local level that reinforces the overall brand, while insuring each message coming from individual representatives is compliant with regulations (corporate and governmental).

Someone who has focused on this issue the past couple of years is Clara Shih, author of the very popular book The Facebook Era. Today Clara and her partner Steve Garrity are launching Hearsay - a social media platform for corporations/organizations with local branches. Hearsay was built to assist organizations that have local presences to be able to assist those local teams/individuals leverage the social web to engage their customers and prospects, while staying compliant with important rules and regulations. In fact the cloud-based app puts compliance, workflow, content management and analytics on top of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

According to information in the Hearsay press release, independent research shows that while 64% of insurance and financial professionals have adopted Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for personal use, only 21% use social media for business. Of those who said they do not plan to adopt social media for business use, more than half volunteered that company policy, compliance and security concerns prevent them from doing so.

I know personally I have spoken to many insurance agents, financial service professionals, and others in regulated industries who have said many of the same things that would seem to back up the numbers above. So if a service that can enable professionals in these areas to leverage social channels to create more engagement opportunities - while automating compliance management - it will go a long way mainstreaming certain aspects of Social CRM.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Clara, and while the official launch of Hearsay is today, they've actually been working at this since 2009. And based on what I've seen so far, I can tell they used that time to really understand the challenges of they call "Corporate/Local" enterprises. Two of the main issues to these kinds of organizations are definitely compliance, and maintaining a corporate brand while empowering local agents to fully engage customers and prospects on social networks. And from the local side - be it branch or individual rep - the challenge is not only being compliant in their interactions, but also creating enough content to grow a meaningful social presence. So Hearsay is looking to solve challenges on both sides of the corporate/local relationship.

Among other capabilities, the Hearsay Corporate View has a dashboard for brands features message archiving, keyword flagging and filtering, workflow and approval capabilities. Distribution of professionally created campaign and content suggestions can also be published, which individual branches and reps can tailor to local preferences. With the Hearsay Local View, a user can simultaneous post suggested content and branded tabs (such as corporate marketing campaigns, contests and videos) to Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Twitter with one click.

Along with the launch announcement (which includes the mention of $3M in venture capital being raised) Hearsay also announced that companies like State Farm, and Farmer's Insurance Group have already began using the service.

Because of the large number of organizations that fit the Corporate/Local description, I think Hearsay has an opportunity to have a significant impact on the adoption of social into organizations where compliance is a major adherent. I'll be featuring a conversation with Clara as part of my One-on-One conversation series over at SmallBizTrends.com. I'll also have more to say on how I think Hearsay will impact the mainstreaming of Social CRM in 2011 for my next Inc. column. You can learn more about Hearsay by going to http://www.facebook.com/hearsaysocial.

Technorati : hearsay, social crm, social media marketing
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Best One-on-One Conversations of 2011: Social CRM, Entrepreneurship and Connecting with Real Influencers

Over the past couple of months I've been hosting a conversation series over at SmallBizTrends.com (thanks Anita Campbell!) called One on One. The goal of the series is to pick the brains of successful entrepreneurs, best-selling author, and executives with organizations serving the small business community, to provide entrepreneurs with their valuable business insights. A transcript of each conversation is included with the audio recording.

Each person I had the pleasure of speaking with had some really compelling insights to share with respect to doing business in today's world. Below are snippets from each of the one-on-ones. If you want to check out any of the full conversations just use the links included here.

Jon Ferrara: pioneer in the CRM industry, co-founder of Goldmine (one of the first contact management apps), founder of Nimble.com, a social CRM service for small businesses.

Question: Do you think successfully implementing CRM hinges on being able to integrate social media into a CRM strategy?

Jon Ferrara: Without social, CRM is a stale database. Goldmine helped create the first model of networkable relationship management. Today, what's different is the social aspect. If all you are going to do is CRM, you can do databasing with anything. But combining the ability to communicate and collaborate, to listen and engage, transforms a business.

Check out the full conversation with Jon by clicking here.

T.A. McCann: Serial entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Gist.com, formerly ran the Exchange business at Microsoft.

Question: A year from now, where are we going to be in utilizing all of these different services-e-mail and social networks-in gathering information?

T.A. McCann: Having all of your data in the cloud, accessible anywhere and anytime, will continue to proliferate. Therefore, the value of desktop applications will continue to lessen. And no matter what app you are in, you are going to have access to the other data that's relevant to that application. There will be more integration.

The preponderance of location-based [services], whether Foursquare, Gowalla or others, and being able to do a query like, "I am in place X - show me all of my most important people who are nearby"-those kinds of queries are going to start to show up, whether in Gist or other applications.

When you think about building relationships, it is still about physically connecting with people. Having systems that are smart enough to say Who is important to me? Who's nearby? and How can I quickly connect with those people? are some of the scenarios that [will be] natural and easy to do for a year from now.

Check out the full conversation with T.A. by clicking here.

Scott McMullan: Partner Lead for Google Apps

Question: There seems to be a very vibrant CRM application store for the Google Apps Marketplace. As I saw on a recent blog post on the official enterprise over at Google , CRM is one of the hottest areas from a customer perspective.

Scott McMullan:We've got 2 million businesses using Google Apps - businesses that need to serve their customers. They need to sell and engage with their products to keep the lights on and to grow. These businesses are turning to Google and saying, "Google, we love the way you are bringing ease of use and messaging collaboration. We would like you to help us with our customer relationship management." Again, we are not building those applications. There are a lot of great CRM applications out there. Our goal is to make it easy for our customers to discover and use all of these different CRMs.

Check out the full conversation with Scott by clicking here.

Robin Carey: CEO of Social Media Today and veteran of the publishing industry

Question: You've built a number of excellent online communities, such as SocialMediaToday.com, MyVenturePad.com, TheCustomerCollective.com and TheSocialCustomer.com. What do you think people should be concerned about when it comes to creating active communities online?

Robin Carey: First and foremost, content, content, content. Keep the content flowing. That's the beauty of user generated content or crowd-sourced content-if you moderate it or curate it properly, you can have it 24/7.

The other critical part is people. Find the right people to come to your community. Find those who are not only the most influential (and that's easy enough to measure these days) but also have the most intriguing way of looking at things. We read people's blogs before we invite them to become part of our community. You cannot automate that yet. [Identifying and creating] really good content requires human intervention.

A combination of content and contact makes a strong online community. After getting it launched, you have to continually nurture it.

Check out the full conversation with Robin by clicking here.

Jim Fowler: Founder and former CEO of Jigsaw

Question: What do you think this type of acquisition and integration does for Salesforce customers?

Jim Fowler:You can have the world's greatest data container, i.e. a CRM solution, but without great data to drive it, the system has significantly less value-[even] zero value. Salesforce was remarkably prescient in their vision of combining the container and the services and cloud, as well as the data. What we had done before we were acquired, and [have done] even more since, is make it seamless and automated for Salesforce customers to get the value of account and contact data, the two foundations of all CRM databases. The ability for us to go in and automatically deliver, clean, and maintain data in a real-time way just doesn't exist anywhere else. I think it is going to help Salesforce continue to be the market leader in this field.

Check out the full conversation with Jim by clicking here.

Greg Gianforte: Founder of RightNow Technologies

Question: If you could leave the audience with one or two pieces of advice, what would they be?

Greg Gianforte: Sales is Number 1. At the end of the day, if you haven't sold something you haven't done much. I would start by immersing myself with my target customers. Go in, talk to them, and decide if your skills can be applied against their problems. Once you have a clear path to some value you can create, go off and build a product or service.

Don't go build a suite of applications, or a product, or even build a feature. Build a featurette you can charge money for to get cash flow started. You have to get the wheels on the bus turning, even if it's a tiny fragment of what you are going to do eventually.

Check out the full conversation with Greg by clicking here.

Dan Siroker: CEO and Co-Founder of Optimizely and formerly Director of Analytics for the Obama presidential campaign

Question: What were some things you took from your role as Director of Analytics that would apply to a small or mid-sized company that's just starting to analyze how impactful their website is?

Dan Siroker: First, define quantifiable success metrics. Very early in the [Obama] campaign, we identified what we were trying to optimize. We looked at things like average dollar per page view on our donation sites, or dollars per recipient of our [outbound] e-mails. Defining and measuring enabled us to know whether we were going in the right direction as we made changes. Without a quantifiable sense of what your goals are, it is very easy to optimize for the wrong thing.

Check out the full conversation with Dan by clicking here.

Andrew Zuckerman: Photographer, documentary film director and author

Question: Your book Wisdom includes interviews with Nelson Mandela, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Billie Jean King and many others. How did you not only get in front of these folks, but really connect with them?

Andrew Zuckerman: Getting in front of them is a very pragmatic series of steps. One major influence on my project is the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has extended letters to subjects that I am interested in. I travel all over the world to find my subjects and slide surreptitiously into their schedule. That's the "getting."

Connecting with them- that's an abstract thing. People can smell and feel dishonesty right off the bat. If you are looking for something, an angle or any desire, they are going to pick up on it and most subjects are not going to give that to you.

It's very important to have no expectations. Go into these engagements with an absolute purity and sense of honesty about what you are looking for. It is [in] that meeting place where everything happens. Like anything, you continue learning every single time and rejecting the things that do not work.

Check out the full conversation with Andrew by clicking here.

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Will you be on the ISH List This Year? CRM-Ish List That Is...

At the end of last year Paul Greenberg invited me to put together a list of companies I thought were worth watching in the CRM space, from an SMB perspective. He included it in his awesome (and extensive) group of posts for his ZDNet blog, which he called his 2010 CRM Watchlist. You can check them out with the following links:

• 2010 CRM Watchlist Part I
• 2010 CRM Watchlist Part IIa
• 2010 CRM Watchlist Part IIb
• 2010 CRM Watchlists Part IIIa
• 2010 CRM Watchlist Part IIIb
• 2010 CRM Watchlist Part IVa (part one for SMBs)
• 2010 CRM Watchlist Part IVb (part two for SMBs)

If it's easier the folks at ZDNet turned the series of posts into an ebook you can download for free.

The companies I selected to watch weren't all what typically would be considered CRM vendors, but they definitely had products and services that I felt had the potential to impact how SMBs find, catch and keep customers in the Social Age. I think of these companies as being CRM-ish, which is why I called my list the ISH list... that's my explanation and I'm sticking to it.

Well 2011 is right around the corner, which means it's time for The ISH List to return. I'm in the middle of making my list - and checking it twice - which will be unveiled again this year along with Paul's watchlist. I've got a few weeks to pull it together, and feel pretty good about the companies I've been watching throughout the year. But, if there are companies you think should get ISH List consideration, please feel free to throw them into the comments section here. If something catches my I, it make find it's way onto the list.

So be on the lookout early next year to see which companies are The ISH. And in the meantime, check out the latest episode of the CRM Playaz. Paul and I talk about how to determine playaz from posers when it comes to who has real influence online.

Technorati : crm, ish list, small business, social crm
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As the Social CRM World Evolves: Your Guess Is Better Than Mine…..

It's been over three years since Paul Greenberg and I were on Technology For Business Sake having what I think was our first CRM Playaz like conversation about Social CRM. My how time flies... I thought of this because tomorrow I'm participating in a webinar with Radian6 where we'll talk about The Evolution of Social CRM. Here are the details if you're interested in checking it out:

Title: The Evolution of Social CRM

Date: Wednesday December 15^th

Time: 2pm ET

Registration: Free. Use this link to register

I'm looking forward to teaming up with Lauren Vargas (Radian6's smart and energetic Director of Community Management) to talk about where we've come from, where we are, and to take a stab at where we may be going with Social CRM. So please join us if you can!

But…does anybody really know where we'll be with this Social CRM stuff? I know I don't (but that won't stop me from throwing some things out there tomorrow…). I'm still kind of amazed how far we've come in the past couple of years… and also by how long it's taken for this to get started, but I digress. It hasn't even been a two and a half years since I had the opportunity to do my first Social CRM keynote for Intellinet's user conference. I had been writing about it for a while before then, but for the most part there wasn't much going on. But we did have folks like Paul Greenberg and Chris Carfi who were out there spreading the gospel, although Mr. G. was using the CRM 2.0 name - no we're not gonna get into the name wars here folks! In fact the first time I heard the term social crm used was back in 2006 by Kintera, and the context really had nothing to do with social media. Oracle began using the term and creating products underneath the social crm umbrella shortly afterward. Anyways, that was pretty much it. But things have changed dramatically in a couple of years.

Exhibit One - The Social CRM….Rockstars???

Social CRM is getting the kind of attention that "Classic CRM" never enjoyed. Back in 2009, for example, I participated in an event called….wait for it… The Rockstars of Social CRM. Ok, stop laughing... Radian6, the maker of popular social media monitoring tools, organized this cool event. Chris Brogan, the hardest working man in social media, hosted the evening's festivities… dressed as Professor Griff from Public Enemy. The panel (on stage mind you) was made up of folks mainly known in traditional CRM circles - the aforementioned Paul Greenberg, CRM Association president Michael Thomas, and me. The panel did include a real social media star in Frank Eliason (formerly of Comcast, now with Citibank). And hundreds of people attended in person, with even more tuning in online. But I wasn't quite sure they were tuning in to hear us talk about the integration of social media and customer relationship management, or to check the Guitar Hero contest taking place after the panel discussion.

Exhibit Two - The Hashtag: #SCRM

After writing my first whitepaper on social CRM around October of 2008, I created and started using the #scrm hashtag on Twitter. Wait a minute, I started actively using Twitter almost three years ago, and there wasn't much CRM talk going on. So when I started using the #SCRM tag, there still wasn't that many CRM conversations going on, let alone social CRM convos. About a few weeks in I kind of gave up on the hash tag. But a funny thing happened, a guy named @scorpfromhell (now known as @prem_k) started using it with a vengeance. Then other folks began using it, and then a few more joined. CRM consultants were using it. Vendors began using it. CRM media outlets began using it. Then social media stars like Brian Solis and Jeremiah Owyang even used it. Now the number of people and discussions using the #scrm tag are so many it's a struggle for me to keep up with! In fact I don't even try keeping up with it anymore because there's no way I can.

Exhibit Three - The Social CRM Vendors and Applications

A couple of years ago the only vendor I was aware of that called their products Social CRM applications were Oracle. But the apps were really focused on helping internal sales organizations be more productive and effective. And you didn't hear of any of the big vendors integrating with Twitter or most any other social network. But that has all changed. Many of the usual suspects integrate in some form or fashion with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. Enterprise social network platform providers and CRM vendors are building integrations to work with each other - and RightNow has created it's own platform with last year's acquisition of HiveLive. Additionally, relative newcomers like Radian6, Lithium Technologies, BatchBlue, JitterJam, Nimble, Bantam and a host of others that are now being referred to as Social CRM vendors. In fact I get a couple of briefing requests a week to look at various Social CRM-related products.

Exhibit Four - The University

Earlier this month the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management held a three-day course called Managing Customer Engagement Using Social Media and CRM. It was the first class under the school's recently created Centre for CRM Excellence. The course was taught by a mix of school faculty and CRM industry experts (including Paul, Esteban Kolsky, Ray Wang, Michael Wu among others), and included sessions on measuring the value of customers, the ROI of social CRM, customer-centric process design, and driving user adoption with change management.

The Centre is a partnership the university entered into with Microsoft Canada, with the objective of creating a globally-recognized hub for CRM thought leadership, research and education aimed at the CRM experts and practitioners community. And the fact they launched the center with a course focused on Social CRM is something to take note of. The idea that a major institution of higher education dedicated a three day course to the subject of Social CRM would not have happened even a few short years ago. But not only is there a class, the Centre itself emphasizes the importance of integration of social media and CRM to businesses today.

Exhibit Five - The People

One thing that has definitely changed from a year ago is the guy who runs the country. And the way he was able to obtain that job has made everybody take a good long look at how social media can help win friends and influence people. And as important as video, user-generated content and micro-blogging was to the Prez becoming the Prez, good old-fashion CRM was the foundation of the campaign, according to Blue State Digital CTO Jascha Franklin-Hodge in his keynote address during last year's Enterprise 2.0 conference.

What the Obama campaign made very apparent to us all is that the power lies in the hands of the people. If you inspire them, treat them as equals, and equip them with the tools they need, they will take the ball and run with it. Social media may get them excited, but well thought out strategies and processes, implemented successfully, will turn inspiration into activity. Given the right tools - equally important the right motivation - the people (aka prospect, customer, community member, etc.) will follow through. They want to follow through… they need to follow through…

Social CRM's Future? Ask The People

Now I don't know where all of this is going, and how long it will take to get there, wherever "there" is. I certainly didn't see the growth in interest for Social CRM coming, or why it didn't happen years before now for that matter. But one thing is for sure, the acceptance of Social CRM will not be driven by vendors or pundits, it will be driven by people and their desire to use every means available to them to communicate with each other. Twitter wasn't even a blip on the business screen two years ago, now you can't talk to anyone without them telling you their Twitter name (mine is @BrentLeary, btw…). Who knows what we'll be talking about next year. All I know is that people want easy access to good information, and to each other - for business as well as for personal reasons.

So get ready for a long, strange trip. Social CRM is here and it's being driven by the needs and wants of the social customer. Vendors better be ready for the challenge. And be able to keep up. And don't forget to join Lauren and I tomorrow to talk about the evolution of Social CRM.

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Cisco Dives Deeper into Social Media Customer Care with SocialMiner

A while back I wrote about 4 "Non-CRM" CRM companies that have the influence to really shake things up when it comes to Social CRM: Google, Apple, Amazon and Cisco. Today Cisco announced a couple of applications that support why I think they are going to be serious players in the space.

Cisco SocialMiner is a social media monitoring tool that adds queuing and workflow capabilities to deliver interactions coming from social channels more efficiently to customer care agents. And while SocialMiner can be used stand-alone, the power of it increases when used in tandem with Cisco's contact center technologies. Cisco also announced Cisco Finesse, which is a desktop app that leverages Cisco Quad social software capabilities to pull information from traditional and social channels into a single, customizable view.

Free to all current Cisco Contact Center customers, SocialMiner uses algorithms to go monitor social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube for keywords and phrases important to customers. The software then filters the most relevant ones, and forwards them onto a customer care rep who can handle the situation,

These products have the potential to have serious impact in fulling integrating social media with traditional customer support processes, and in fact could help to shape better, more effective processes - and in doing so create better customer experiences. I don't I'm going out on a limb here in saying that, because anything that makes communications between customers and customer care agents better, has to improve the customer's experience.

The whitepaper I did with TheSocialCustomer.com (The Social Customer Engagement Index) included results from a survey of customer service professionals. And the companies who have seen the most positive results from utilizing social channels to serve customers had a few things in common:

• They have been interacting with customers via social channels for over 2 years
• They have actual customer service agents engaging customers online, not just pr/marketing people
• They have integrated social channels into customer service processes, not just using them as separate communication channels
• A larger % of their interactions with customers come over social channels, compared to those who saw no measurable benefit from using social channels
• They interact with customers across more social channels on average when compared to those finding no measurable benefit from social channels

So it would seem that the more companies can integrate social with traditional from a customer support perspective, the more positive the results will be for both the customer and the company. And so Cisco's new products have the possibility of making it easier for companies to more fully integrate social and traditional - which should be good news all around.

Having talked a couple times with John Hernandez, VP and GM of Cisco's Customer Collaboration Business Unit, this is not just going to impact large enterprises. Even smaller organizations will be able to take advantage of these products. One of the companies included in the press release is Zone Labs, a small online seller of health-related products. According to the release, they are planning on using SocialMiner to launch their social media initiatives - and for better customer engagement. I hoping to get a conversation in with Zone to learn more about this, as I am really interested in how a smaller organization is able to use these services.

One last thing John mentioned, which I think may have a really interesting impact on customer service/experience engagement - Cisco is also introducing a rich media capture platform that will support recording, live streaming and playback of all kinds of media types. So rich media interactions between customer and agent should allow for improved experiences. Also, Cisco is inviting third party developers to create apps on top of this platform. So you will see companies leverage these rich interactions from a business intelligence perspective to analyze conversations (sometimes in realtime) in order to provide the right information, in the right format, based on the context of the interaction.

This is the kind of stuff that could really show the power of social media from a business process perspective, and show immediate returns from a customer retention perspective. While the focus is still on social media from a marketing perspective, many are beginning to see how using social to build deeper connections with current customers can be the best marketing you can do right now.

Technorati : cisco, customer service, finesse, social crm, social media, socialminer
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The Small Business Technology Tour Pulls Into Atlanta November 9th

I've been fortunate to have participated in the last three Small Business Summit events in New York, co-organized by technology evangelist and publisher of SmallBizTechnology.com Ramon Ray. I've also been fortunate enough to participate in Ramon's Taste of Technology events he's done regularly over the past few years.

Ramon's events are always some of the best events I particpate in, and I'm not just saying this because Ramon is a good friend. They're always very informative, high energy, great for networking, and also a lot of fun. So when he decided to take his show on the road and do the Small Business Technology Tour, I was really glad that Atlanta would be one of the stops.

The Atlanta Small Business Technology Tour takes place Tuesday November 9th at the Gwinnett Center (6400 Sugarloaf Parkway, Duluth, GA 30097). See the full agenda here: http://www.smallbiztechtour.com/atlanta

You'll learn from experts in business and technology, and leave with more information on how to strategically leverage technology for the growth of your business. eCommerce expert and local favorite John "ColderICE" Lawson will be there sharing his knowledge and insights.

Also at the tour you'll learn how to save time, save money, be more productive, increase revenue and enhance relationships all by using technology.

Find out more information and register today at http://www.smallbiztechtour.com/atlanta

You'll network with your peers. Learn from experts. Speak with technology vendors. Participate in discussions. Eat (I like this one). Win Prizes. And more - all with the goal of seeing how you can leverage technology and empower your business for growth.

As a participant in the event, Ramon has given friends of mine an opportunity to attend the event for only $10 (the full cost is $49 and then $99 after November 2): To take advantage of this great offer use the link below:

http://scrm.me/bvgEfU

Ramon has even given me a couple of free passes. Send this tweet to me (@BrentLeary) on Twitter : "I want to go to @RamonRay's #smallbiztechtour Atlanta stop for free!". First come first served will get the free passes.

I hope to see you there next week!

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