Was your last CRM rollout successful

I am looking to collect data and appreciate as much feedback as possible.  If you have time, also feel free to leave a comment:

After discussing with several people I have decided to pull this survey, for now.  My desire is to make this survey more thorough.  In the mean time, please feel free to leave comments, learning from what I am hearing.

Raising your personal brand value on Twitter

As I continue to spend time on Twitter my understanding of the platform, and how to use it to grow a personal brand, evolves.  This post is not intended as my final thoughts on the subject, just a snapshot of my current thinking.

• Define your goals for social communications and how Twitter fits into these goals.  Twitter does not address all needs, blogs are still important, face to face communication is still important.  Twitter is but one tool and you should first understand how it is used and then how it fits into your overall personal or goals.
• I have spent a lot of time with Tweetdeck during my first few months on Twitter.  Lately, however, I find myself spending more time with CoTweet.  While it is often billed as a tool for corporate tweeting I highly recommend it for individual use.  Scheduling tweets, my favorite feature, is a must if you blog.  Twitter users with a community of more than 50 users (aka followers) will not see every tweet you send.
• With CoTweet, schedule key tweets to be sent during prime viewing windows.  For example, when I am done writing a blog post that I want to ensure people read, I schedule it to be sent multiple times with a morning tweet around 10 AM and an afternoon tweet around 4 PM.  These are great viewing times, make sure your voice is heard.
• Use Tools like MrTweet, Twitter Grader, and TweetPlus.  MrTweet will give you a steady supply of recommended people to follow, Twitter Grader will help you understand how you are doing, and TweetPlus will point out where your community is blogging.
• Repeat after me.  It is not about you, it is about your community.  If you want people to respect you, to value you, you must first respect them and value them.  Sounds obvious, yes, but this advice is often ignored.

I won’t bore you with more on this subject tonight.  If you’re interested in hearing more, tweet me at @JohnFMoore or leave a comment here.

John

Social CRM is dead, long live Social Business Strategy

In my last post I discussed why I feel Social CRM will never be built.  I won’t waste your time repeating the points made in my post but definitely check it out if you have not yet read it.  It is important to fully understand that Social CRM is a strategy that focuses on people and their processes, using tools to assist.  It is not a tool and therefore cannot ever be built.

These ideas have not been formed by myself in isolation.  They come most recently from Bob Thompson who shared some thoughts based upon an interview with David Armano.  Many, many, more have come as a result of great discussions with people like Prem Kumar, Mitch Lieberman, Esteban Kolsky, Graham Hill, Wim Rampen, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Brian Vellmure, Arie Goldshlager, Glenn Ross, and too many others to name.

Social Business Strategy

This is a much cleaner way of referring to the use of Social Media as part of a business strategy.  Why cause confusion with terms like Social CRM, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, and so many other terms people have contributed to the conversation.  From here on out I will only refer to Social Business Strategy (#SBS) as the framework, Social CRM is dead to me.  For those of you that were friends of Social CRM, flowers can be sent to my house as we will be having a private Memorial Service tomorrow.

The Processes

We must begin to invest more time discussing the processes.  How do we ensure the success of a company’s Social Business Strategy?  What is the overall approach for analyzing the business?  How do you determine who to involve?  While critical, this is not a focus of this post, more will come in later posts.

The Tools

The vast majority of our conversations around Social Business Strategy have focused on the tools.  Vendors, using the term Social CRM as a catch all, have caused confusion.  Purist, thinking of Social CRM as primarily strategy have cause more confusion.  Novices, like myself, have only made things more confusing…  What are people to do?  Let’s add some clarity to the tools, here are my definitions:

• CRM using Social Extensions (#CRMUSE). Salesforce demonstrates one approach to social by bringing the stream into existing processes.  It’s a good approach, extending current processes to include social channels.  For many users this will be a very comfortable starting point.
• Social Support Communities (#SSC).  Helpstream is a good example of a company delivering products in this area.  A strong focus on the support channel where customers co-create support solutions and enable corporate cost savings, reducing the amount of support and knowledge transfer the company must perform.
• Social Business Aggregators.  I put Gist into this bucket, a clear example of how to use multiple social channels, from Twitter to classic e-mail, to provide a clear picture of people and companies.  The more I think about Gist the more my excitement grows.
• Market Engagement Solutions.  Tools that engage all members of the marketplace to co-create value on all fronts, not just in the area of support.    In many ways I see eBay as an early example on the sales front…

What do you think?  Will you attend the Memorial Service with me?

John

Why Social CRM will never be built

Let me tell you a secret.  Promise me, please, that this is going to stay just between you and me.  Okay, listen carefully…. “Social CRM will never, ever, be built”. 

Yes, I am someone who discusses CRM daily.  I am  always talking about Social CRM, Social Support Communities, CRM, and related best practices…   However, if we are waiting for someone to build a Social CRM solution we will be waiting for a long time.  Pull up a chair and let’s talk.

Social CRM is not software.  Remember, CRM, and therefore Social CRM, is an approach that takes into account people and processes and leverages software to accomplish outcomes.  The people and the processes come first.  Software, while critical to success, is always secondary.

Vendors that claim they deliver Social CRM are wrong.  They are delivering software solutions, generally Social Support Community software, that is a core component of a Social CRM strategy.

Social CRM is a strategy.  Building off of my last point.  Software cannot build strategy.  I know, one day machines will take over e world and I will be proven wrong.    Until that day comes I am right, it takes people to build a strategy that achieves corporate goals. 

Social CRM must work for all users involved.  I have noted that usability is a major reason for CRM failure, nothing new, you have heard it before. What one set of users may deem usable may be completely unusable for another set of users.  Your Social CRM strategy must make use of tools that end-users (execs, sales, support, etc..) will use, not because they are forced to, because they add value to their lives. While niche software solutions may be able to accomplish this for specific verticals it is not feasible on a large scale across multiple verticals.

Social CRM must support good business processes.  Some processes are identical from company to company but many key business processes are not transferable.  I have worked in a half dozen companies and each one have had different definitions of their sales pipeline process.  As a non-sales person I was shocked by this (and I still am) but each company does it differently.  Your software must support the varied stages and workflows for all of your processes.  When the software forces you to adjust processes due to it’s limitations, you have already lost.

So, is Social CRM something we should give up on?  Absolutely not.  Social CRM will revolutionize how businesses operate.  It will bring a richer level of engagement between all parties leading to happier customers and more profitable businesses. We must get there by following solid business processes that engage all users and leverage tools where feasible.  I know we will get there; we just have to work through the hype first.

John

How I became a Silverlight expert

Okay, you caught me, I am not a Silverlight expert. I do, however, play one on TV and feel qualified to discuss Silverlight at great length….

Before I begin though, how did I get here?  The Swimfish engineering team is reasonably sized with teams in three offices, 2 in the US, one off-shore.  We’re doing well and, to a large degree, knowledge and skills are fairly well spread out.  We have been working on a very cool piece of software for an upcoming pilot and the date has been tough all along, getting harder day by day as the team works through some interesting issues with Silverlight…

Now, it became apparent yesterday that we were not going to hit the pilot date without some quick thinking or some major chopping of features….  I’m not a fan of chopping unless necessary so I did the only thing left to do…. I stepped in myself and became a Silverlight expert.

The team responded to the fact that I was with them late into the night, will be again tonight to ensure we’re on track.  Did my expertise at fixing typos and adjusting item positions save the day?  While my coding skills are clearly legendary they did not make a major difference, the real pros got the job done.  My willingness to join in, to be part of the solution instead of just throwing it into their laps is what got us through night 1.

I always believe that great leaders must know how to delegate.  If you don’t you will never lead a team of more than one.  However, great leaders also need to know when to roll up their sleeves and get into the middle of things.  Are you willing to do that when the time comes?

Oh yes, let me tell you something I learned about Silverlight…. First….

John

Back to work in 140 characters

We are going to get it done this week, right?

Audio is 1:16 in length.

Social CRM is a decade away, can your business wait that long?

Social CRM will change the way businesses operate….  The problem is, it will not have a positive impact for most businesses for at least another decade.  Can your business afford to spend money on hype alone?

Esteban Kolsky recently had an interview on his blog with Ed Thompson of Gartner and Esteban asked Ed about his vision for Social CRM in the future.  Here is what Ed had to say:

“I’ll look out 10 years. Social CRM will move from 0.1% of CRM application spending to 10% of all spending by then. Still not anywhere near as big as traditional SFA, Campaign Mgmt, Customer Service but vastly bigger spending than today. I don’t think it will be revolution but it will be a big change from today. Personally I think 2020-2030 will see the bigger transformation of CRM applications and processes.”

Ed, an expert in this field, does not believe that Social CRM spending will be significant for the next 10 years.  Yes, it will rise, but that means only early adopters will be jumping on the bandwagon.  Early adopters willing to live with incomplete solutions…  Are you one of them?  (The rest of the interview is excellent and you should check it out here.)

Does this mean that we should give up on the benefits of integrating Social capabilities?  Does this mean that we should give up on Social CRM?  The answer to both questions is an emphatic No.  We must, however, not fall victim to the hype which will only lead to more failed implementations, large revenues for a small number of so-called Social CRM vendors, and provide years of fodder for me to blog about.  Does the world really deserve to suffer from all of this?

The answer, of course, is to understand where social capabilities can provide the most benefit today.  The answer is customer support.  This is where we can have the most success in utilizing social capabilities and is also where the existing tools are closest to delivering real value.  The value will come from a new set of tools that should be referred to as Social Support Communities, SSC.  As Mike Muhney(Twitter | Web), Co-Inventor of ACT! tweeted to me regarding current SSC tools and Social CRM:

“Agree with U John. It is SSC, only one leg of the tripod, not all 3.”

SSC is the present.  SSC will enable you to reduce operational cost and increase revenues via cross-selling opportunities that arise during support situations.  These benefits are clearly documented and cannot be ignored.  Others are beginning to go down the SSC path with me, as I saw Mark Tamis recently blog here.

My question for all of you is a simple one.   Will you invest your time and energy on a vision that is a decade away or will you will you choose to invest in technology and  services that will make you successful today?

John

Hypocritical or Ignorant…. You be the judge

As regular readers of my blog know I attended a webinar on Social CRM yesterday.  I won’t repeat that post but would suggest you read it first.  In short:

Companies like HelpStream are not providing Social CRM (SCRM), they are providing Social Support Communities (SSC).  While both are valuable SSC is but a small subset of SCRM.

• SSC is valuable but is not SCRM

While HelpStream presents it’s software as Social CRM it is not Social CRM, it is a great example of a Social Support Community.  See yesterday’s post for a definition of SSC.

My concern with vendors misrepresenting their software is two-fold:

Customer confusion.  Social CRM holds great promise for the business world and will transform the way sales, marketing, support, finance, and other departments function.  SSC transforms support only.

Software cost are higher than necessary.  Customer pay for hype over value leading to further frustration with “CRM”.  The hype cycle defeats the promise.

 Note that my impression is that all of the “Social CRM” vendors are only delivering SSC.  HelpStream is just one example.

• Engagement is a critical component of Social. 

When people hear “Social” they think of engagement, of transparency, of two way conversation.  This dialogue must address both the positive as well as the negative.  Bob Warfield, CEO of HelpStream, said it well in a recent blog post when he said “Today, we have to reverse that trend of isolating ourselves from our customers”.  Well said.

I have to challenge HelpStream to live up to this statement.  Following the webinar, and my pronouncement that  HelpStream is delivering SSC, not SCRM, I immediately received silence.  While nearly all of the other tweets from the webinar were responded to, none of mine were.  Now, my blog is small, my opinions are those of a student, not an expert, and I am certainly not “an important person” in CRM circles.  However, it would be great to know that a “Social CRM” company took social seriously, responding to comments that align with their desired  brand messages as well as comments that question their brand message.

• Companies should know what they are selling.

If you went into a hardware store and asked for a wrench would you be satisfied when the store owner gave you a hammer instead?   The store owner may try to convince you that it’s a wrench, will you fall for it?.  Would you continue to go back to this store?  While I can’t give you advice on hardware stores I would suggest you think twice about buying from any company that fails to understand the products it sells.

What do you think?

John

Following up on the Crossing the Chasm Webinar for Social CRM

If you read/listened my blog post yesterday you’ll know that I was attending the HelpStream webinar that  was supposed to discuss if Social CRM has Crossed the Chasm.  As I listened and tweeted about the webinar conversation I came to a few conclusions:

• Social CRM is far from the chasm.  If Social CRM were a marathon runner it would still be tying it’s shoes, stretching before the race has even started.
• Companies, including those that are building so-called Social CRM applications, do not understand what Social CRM is all about.  Most, including those who spoke in today’s webinar, were describing what I refer to as Social Support Communities (SSC).
• Companies must be careful about preaching engagement when they are not prepared to listen.

Social CRM is far from the chasm

While the webinar was supposed to focus on Social CRM’s location in regards to the chasm no one discussed this, or even attempted to answer the question at all.  The core question failed to be addressed…. 

As I noted yesterday, CRM Software has been across the chasm for  years.  The successful implementation of CRM, and for that matter Social CRM, is far from the chasm.  It does not see the chasm, it is still waiting for directions.

Social Support Communities are not Social CRM

Every participant in the webinar discussed their use, or their support of, Social CRM.  However, as the concepts were discussed it became clear that they were all discussing SSC.  Since I have never defined this term before, let’s clarify:

• SSC is a discussion group, a forum, on steroids.
• SSC incorporates social networks as additional channels through which customer conversations can occur.
• SSC enables customers to directly converse with other customers.  Companies and partners can also be equal participants in this conversation, but are often playing the role of moderators in the examples provided by the webinar participants.
• SSC is a small subset of Social CRM, a very small subset.
• SSC focuses on the customer almost exclusively, ignoring in large part, other participants in the marketplace including the company, partners, and competitors.
• SSC focuses on customer support services.  It fails to provide value in marketing, sales, finance, or other aspects where CRM is utilized.

Eat your own dogfood.  If you preach engagement, engage, listen.

Throughout the webinar several people, myself included, challenged the conclusions being drawn during the webinar.  As is typical, I will raise concerns if I do not feel the full story is being told.  At around 1:30 PM ET my Social CRM friend Esteban noted “@JohnFMoore webinar as well as most published case studies are about communities – not SCRM. SCRM not yet done #scrm #scrmseries #scrm”.

At around the same time I noted, also on Twitter: “RE http://bit.ly/KZ0UL(expand) @gyehuda Yes, true. However, this #scrmseries addresses #social support communities, not #scrm” .

If you are a Social CRM, or SSC, company engaging in a webinar about Social CRM you must be proactive in engaging, communicating, relationship building.  Leaving open questions like this in the market speaks more to a company working with old models of preaching messages vs. the new world where companies are expected to listen.  Time will tell how this all shapes up, I’m not impressed yet.

John

Has Social CRM crossed the Chasm?

I will be attending a webinar tomorrow that explores this very question. While I will explore this further after the webinar I wanted to take a few minutes of your time to share my thoughts going into the webinar.

Since I am a believer in trying new things I wanted to experiment and provide you this post as a podcast, using technology that I helped build back in my days at Brainshark. The technology is great, as you’ll hear, but keep in mind that I am experimenting, going without a written script, I hope it makes the podcast feel more conversational and therefore more enjoyable (let me know what you think).

Podcast is 4:48 in length:

John