Brent's Social CRM Blog

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.

 

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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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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Why Do 40% of People Call Customer Service Without Any Hope of Getting Helped? Mr Miyagi Knows...

With the remake of The Karate Kid coming out, I can't resist....

Paul Greenberg (aka the Mr. Miyagi of CRM - the Pat Morita Mr. Miyagi) said something February at the BPT Partners training event (aka Social CRM Summit) that has stuck with me ever since. OK he said a lot that stuck with me, but I'm focusing on this one thing for now. He cited a survey that found 40% of people calling customer service for assistance, called with no expectation of having their problem resolved. To me that is an incredible statistic - 4 out of every 10 people called customer service feeling that this call would not help them solve their problem.

Now sometimes folks will be surprised to find that their issue can be resolved by the customer service rep, but that doesn't explain why they called in the first place if they really felt it wouldn't help. Apparently the reason they called was to vent their frustration... and to be listened to... and maybe offer up ways a situation like theirs can be avoided in the future. Maybe they just want a kind ear to commiserate to...

Wax-on, Wax-off moment

Customers want their problems resolved as quickly as possible - this is not news. And when we can solve their challenges quickly that goes a long way to improving their experience as our customer. But as the 40%-ers show, they also have social needs that can have just as important an impact on that experience - providing us with a great lesson to learn without having to wax a car. And it's those situations that can provide ties that bind... if companies figure out ways to listen with empathy, turn what they hear into action, and provide opportunities for customers to help themselves and each other. This can prove to customers that we're interested in them beyond the financial transaction that comes with being a customer.

Customer Experience and Social Media

Many companies are turning to social media to improve relationships with customers by providing a better customer experience, but some are still on the fence. Jacada - a company focused on providing customer experience management solutions - is hosting a webinar this Wednesday to discuss the role of social media in improving the customer experience. They've invited CRM guru and friend Esteban Kolsky and I to join SVP of Marketing Richard Stern SVP to discuss:

• How social media is impacting customer experience
• The price of poor customer service
• Why you need to think more about customer service and less about sales (tough one here but very important)

The webinar is free. Below are the details:

Title: The Intersection of Customer Experience and Social Media Date and time:

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 11:00 am Eastern Daylight Time (New York, GMT-04:00) Cost: Free Use this link to register. Hope you can join us on Wednesday! I bet Daniel-san will be there...

Technorati : customer experience management, jacada, social crm, social media
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Helpstream's Bob Warfield on CRM and Social Business Processes - #scrm

I recently had a briefing from the folks at Helpstream. And while I didn't get hands-on with it, what I saw of it I liked. The integration of community functionality, social marketing and traditional CRM looks to be on target. But I'll reserve final thoughts on the service until I've had a chance to really check it out.

I don't have to reserve my opinion of Helpstream CEO Bob Warfield. I recently had a chance to speak with Bob and enjoyed getting his take on where social CRM is going. Bob shared his vision of what social CRM is, and the importance for companies to develop and implement social business processes. He also talks about the social CRM manifesto Helpstream put out on the company blog.

I totally agree with Bob on the social business process front. It's what differentiates social CRM from just hanging out on social sites and seeing how many followers you can accumulate. I like what Bob had to say, and the direction Helpstream seems to be headed in. So check out my conversation with Bob below, or download the mp3 here.

Technorati : helpstream, social business processes, social crm
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Social CRM, Superstar?

Who could have seen this coming? I know I didn't back in 2007. I mean, it hasn't been that long ago when CRM was still considered a 4-letter word. But here I am sitting in Boston about to go on stage with the likes of Chris Brogan, Paul Greenberg, Michael Thomas and Frank Eliason? To talk about Social CRM? And we're being called.... Rock Stars???

I can't speak for anybody else here, but I'm no Prince. Who am I kidding, I'm not even Milli Vanilli. But it's true, thanks to the fine folks at Radian6. Social CRM has come a LONG way in a relatively short time. Don't get me wrong, we're still in the infancy stages, but it's really on the map and interest in this area seems to be growing exponentially. Which is why it was kind of ironic that I only heard CRM mentioned once during the first day of the Enterprise 2.0 conference also going on here this week. But the one who mentioned it was Jascha Franklin-Hodge of Blue State Digital, the technology folks behind BarackObama.com and MyBarackObama.com. In fact he said that CRM was the foundation for much of their social media success... not to mention the success of a little project I (and my colleague David Bullock) like to call Barack 2.0.

The campaign's success not only raised the interest in social media that drove Oprah (and others) to Twitter, but I think it's also a key driver in the interest in social CRM. And if you are even just a little curious about this stuff, maybe you should join me and the other Rockstars of Social CRM tonight at 8pm ET for a fun conversation with a great group of people.

To join in the festivities use this link: http://radian6rockstars.eventbrite.com/.

I'm still prepping for tonight's event. Check out my preparation materials:

Technorati : chris brogan, frank eliason, michael thomas, paul greenberg, prince, radian6, run dmc, rush, social crm
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Social CRM in Practice - Microsoft and Neighborhood America

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technorati : microsoft, neighborhood america, social crm, social networking
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Social CRM and the Socialprise - A Match Made in Data

The focus is definitely sharpening on the social CRM. Oracle has been moving the term forward in describing some of their new products, as well as starting their own social CRM blog. I plan on doing a post on what Oracle is up to in the near future. Stay tuned...

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Marc Perramond of InsideView, makers of on-demand business search and intelligence apps. Back in March InsideView coined the phrase "socialprise" with the following definition:

I like the phrase, and the definition. I particularly like the first couple of words - "The natural convergence". Ok, I REALLY like the second word because of how naturally all the dimensions of our lives have converged, for better or worse...sometimes. And so it's time for the tools we use in our professional lives to naturally converge to make our total lives easier.

InsideView has a cool product called SalesView. What makes it cool is that it's making information more actionable/usable. It combines structured data sources (Hoovers, D&B, etc.) with data from popular social sites (Linked, Jigsaw, etc). But the kicker is that InsideView has created mashups that allow you to access this information from within crm apps like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. That's what really makes this important. Sales peoples lives are naturally converging like the rest of us, so they need tools that make their lives easier too. You could use SalesView as a standalone app, but marrying its functionality with popular crm services opens it up to fit with the needs of sales people.

While InsideView created mashups for some of the established players, up-and-comer Landslide Technologies created their own SalesView mashup to work within their application. And after talking with their CEO/founder Razi Imam, the mashup started as a pet project but has rapidly become popular with his sales team. This says something to me, as Landslide's philosophy is all about making the sales person's job (and life) easier. I can say this because Landslide offers their customers access to something they call the VIP assistant, where you can call and have your assistant perform updates to your account. So instead of having to come home from a day's worth of appointments to input data, you can call from the road and have the assistant do the typing!

Ok I got a little off track - that VIP assistant thing really got to me... The free version of SalesView works well from within Salesforce.com, but limits your access to more detailed data. I haven't seen the pro version as of yet, but expect to do so soon. I also should be getting a look at Landslide shortly and will have more to say about that later. But companies like InsideView, Landslide and others seem to be taking things in the right direction. By making information available to sales people instantly - whether a contact's title is updated in Jigsaw or that same contact Diggs an article - it creates more opportunities to engage them in meaningful conversations... at the right time.

Optimizing opportunities for meaningful conversations and experiences, that's what the socialprise, and social CRM should be about.

Technorati : insideview, landslide, social crm, socialprise
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