To Adapt means to make suitable or to adjust to requirements or new/different conditions

To Adopt means to to choose or take as one’s own

My objective is not to make CRM Outsiders a weekly lesson in Etymology nor definitions of commonly used words. That said, I sense that some of the infighting regarding definitions breaks down at a much more fundamental level than we realize. On the one end of the spectrum, we paint complex topics with a broad brush and wonder why people nit pick at our approach. The other side is for those of us who use a pencil to color in a mural on the side of a building – it will work, but boy is it going to be painful getting there! Ok, said my piece there, I feel better.

It is Not Only About Early Adopters

In the June issue of Wired , once you made it past the Buzz Lightyear story, there was a nice little piece by Clive Thompson (I read the print, sorry no URL) about the late adopters of technology (The title of this post is a bit of a play on the title of Clive’s article). Specifically, he makes the case that laggards, the ones typically ignored by marketers who only go after early adopters, are a missed opportunity. The idea is basically that people who have let their technology (in the article it is a tape  playing Walkman) lapse to such a degree that they are likely to skip the 3 devices released since they last purchased, and go right to a 3rd generation iPod or even an iPad. “If only 10 percent of laggards leapfrog, their purchases can drive profits from a new gadget 89 percent higher…”The article is backed up with real research, it is not just theory.

The interesting thing to think about, for those of us that enjoy thinking about such things, is how does this play into the realm of CRM? Can a user of ACT! or GoldMine, even just email jump into the realm of all of this new fancy Social stuff? The simple answer is yes, they can but they still need solid core CRM application (so the Walkman metaphor only goes so far). Michael Maoz wrote a post that is in a similar vein as the Wired article, or maybe I am seeing something that is not there.  His post asked the question ‘Are people using Social as an excuse to avoid the hard stuff’. I will agree and disagree with Michael in the same sentence. It is more fun and interesting to think about the new cool technology stuff and I do believe that “..few leaders understand where social and traditional Customer Service are coming together“. But, I am not sure that it is about the technology, or that technology is the real problem. I believe the issue is less about technology and more about the people and process and the culture of the people on the other end of the metaphorical phone. If it is about the technology, it is more foundational, things like data quality, data silos, etc.,…

Maybe We Need to Think Also About Adapting not Only Adopting

Among the many issues that are discussed within CRM literature (liberal use of that word) has to do with the adoption of new technology. From application user interfaces, to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the many other ‘Social’ systems which we all use, admit it. Even writing this blog, the way in which we write, the simple task has changed in many ways just in the past few years.  My question to the audience is this: Which is the greater challenge, and why, “adopting to the technology or adapting to the technology?” It is possible that this is an unfair question. The second use of the word ‘technology’ could be ‘customer’, ‘culture’, ‘communication’. Ok, I guess I am leading you down a path, not a very good survey type question. My sense is that people like to focus on one, or the other, while they should be looking at both.

What are your thoughts? Which parts can companies ‘leap-frog’ over and bring themselves up to speed versus the parts that could be dangerous to skip over? It must be a Wednesday thing… Happy hump day! Or, for those of you with kids, happy back to school!

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I have been a bit distracted for the past few days, thinking about a few projects I am working on, as well as trying to create some original content for a client. I have been able to spend a little time reading, though not as much time as I would like. One thing I have noticed recently is that some of the practitioners get a little defensive every once in a while, as well as….well picky when it comes to individual words, and definitions. One of the people who I had a less that enjoyable experience with recently chose to call me a “Social CRM Troll” – this is the same person who said on Twitter: “When I say it is semantics, I mean that I really think you are wrong, but I do not want to waste my time engaging.” At the heart of the issue, really, is that in addition to the vendors, consultants and analysts are working to build their (our) credibility. I would hope that we can get it done together, not at the expense of one another.

What is in a Word?

Is there a difference between “credibility” and “trust?” How about “ownership” versus “control?” What about “influence” and “empowerment” (that is a trick question, lots of good posts on that this past week).  Feel free to pick on any one of these, some have their own threads going elsewhere. The set I am picking on today is ‘Knowledge‘ versus ‘Experience‘. Why? Because too many people are confusing one with the other, and some are actually falling short on both (ie, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and you do not have experience). This post is not directed, in its entirety, at any one individual, so please do not be so ‘vain, to think this blog is about you’ as the song kind of goes.  If you see yourself in here, well, hey take something away from it (I know I am).

Much of what we are all talking about and doing with respect to Social Media, Social Marketing, Social Selling, Social Business and Social CRM is so new that very very few people can possibly be talking or writing from a position of significant experience. Some people are talking/writing eloquently, in the form of case studies, so we can all learn from the few experiences that do exist.  Taking information provided by others, adding some of their own interpretations and posting a blog, an article, giving a talk or sharing a video. So, here is my question: “Does writing about someone else’s experience provide knowledge”? I am not a philosopher, nor a sociologist, but I wonder about that – call me an intellectual, academic, geek, I can take the hit. I think is important, and valuable, just wondering.

It is the Combination that is Powerful

Which is more dangerous, experience without knowledge, or knowledge without experience? One direction is easy:  the book smart, well read individual who is a little green. The other side is a little harder to imagine, but one that I think might actually cause bigger issues. You might think of it as ’street smarts’ or success veiled by serendipity, misinterpreted as knowledge. I can tell you, from a position of both knowledge and experience, that time spent listening (not waiting to talk) is time well spent. Do not get me wrong, I do get a bit passionate as was the case with a blogger earlier this week. My issue, however, was his lack of humility. I can admit when I am wrong, (I could be sarcastic and say it does not happen often, but I won’t go there) and my approach is direct, but does not typically start with “Very few people, aside from me” or “you cannot argue with…”

I rely on the combination of knowledge and experience to get me through the day. Limitations of one, knowledge, can more easily be made up for by reading, research and learning. Experience is tougher, but you can either bring people in, those whom you trust, to fill a gap, or talk to as many people as you can to see if you can replace a slight lack of experience with more knowledge. I admire the people that work hard to extend their knowledge (publicly even), as the public sharing can accelerate the process. I am not saying that will always work, as a matter of fact, it might be downright dangerous in some situations. But, we are all on the journey together. We need bridge builders, not egos and more people willing to consider the possibility that they are not always right. I believe this to be especially true with bloggers. If you really are a blogger, then engagement is more important than your schedule to put up another post. Sorry, I will stand firm on that one.

Too awkward a post for a Wednesday?

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As part of the marketing team at SugarCRM, I am charged with defining and communicating our social CRM strategy. And interestingly, I do so on two levels – what we sell as a social CRM provider and what we DO as a social savvy company.

Both are very related actually. And in an unusual manner for CRM, the product actually led our adoption of stronger social strategies; we did not facet the product to adapt to our existing social strategies. This is important to note – because we do a LOT of social and non-traditional marketing and community building as a company with open source roots.

However, from a corporate sales scenario, we were a bit disconnected from “social” in a lot of ways, and were acting like any other B2B sales team: heads down in the CRM system, following up on leads and managing opportunities.  But as Sugar the product started sporting all these cool facets: the LinkedIn connector, the Twitter connector and the social feeds inside the app – things started changing. Sales reps were more connected – to both each other and to their leads and opportunities. And the great thing about it was that they were doing all this in a system they already knew how to use, and all that data was available right inside a central app – not locked in seperate silos.

Just as the data silo approach of products like Act! made it difficult for early CRM initiatives to show value, social silos can present the same problem. If your CRM users are going to three or four different sites to find out about prospects, talk and collaborate with each other, and leverage tools like Twitter for discovery and support – it can drain productivity. In addition, with all the data “somewhere else” it can be hard to get any insight into how your teams are using the information, which data or source is most relevant, etc.

That is why I am in such strong agreement with the analysts and observers who are so skeptical of “social CRM” as a concept in its own right. Rather, social CRM (or SCRM) is just a channel or branch of a core CRM strategy that leverages these emerging mediums.

It is pretty simple, really. Many companies already have – or should have – a CRM platform in place. The more flexible ones can now accept new data sources and types (social data) and leverage new marketing, sales and support channels (social networks, tools like Twitter) as part of existing overall CRM processes.

Just as we see the value of keeping all of our prospect and customer data in one place, social is no different. Do yourself a favor early on and ditch the silo approach and look to merge these new-fangled CRM data and processes with your existing CRM initiative and technology. It may take a bit of thought and in some cases creativity (depending on how suited your existing technology is to accept new data and sources) – but I am positive in the long run it will save you more time and resources.

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About 10 months ago, I wrote a post regarding the use of Twitter for customer service “Why do people think Twitter is a good Customer Service Platform“. We have matured since then, ok just a little, but I do not think we completely get it, yet. When compared with the rate of change in Social Media, 10 months is a long time, but not quite long enough. Then today, BusinessWeek published an article: “Delta Monitors Twitter to Remedy Customer Complaints“. The article highlights the bright spots – Delta received a positive mention in a respected magazine. However, it seems fair to address this issue once again, maybe with the lens of, well, 10 more months of thinking about it.

I said it then, and I believe it is still true, but I might need to temper it, just a little: “Twitter is not Social CRM. Twitter is immediate gratification meets CRM” I also stated “If your customers are trying to get your attention on Twitter to solve a specific ‘me only’ problem, your processes are broken, horribly inefficient or you have product issues”. While I do believe I need to modify that statement a little bit (in a moment), I am bothered by the very first part of the BusinessWeek article:

Mike Brice skipped the queue at the Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) ticket counter and dashed off a post on Twitter Inc. when he missed his Atlanta connection en route home to Utah from South Carolina.

Within minutes, the 40-year-old communications consultant had been rebooked for the following morning by an agent on the Delta team that uses Twitter to remedy passengers’ real-time complaints—changing flights, finding lost luggage, or sharing details on weather delays.

Specifically, the bolded section above. This is the key point of of my previous post, skipping the queue, cutting in line, screaming to get atention. But, I am willing to learn, as we all are in this fast moving space. A comment on my previous post by Parature, helps to shed some light on the topic.

Regardless of whether or not it is a good customer service platform, customers are taking their issues social and they can’t be ignored, so have your support teams send them a link to a knowledgebase article or self-service portal where they can do their own search, submit a ticket or chat with a service rep. It doesn’t have to be an “all or none” channel, just an extra channel. If I tweet and someone replies with a brief answer, or a link to get an answer to my question that transaction can begin the customer service experience.

Is it a good idea, is Delta a good example?

This is a bit of trickier issue than some technology company posting links to support forums, FAQs or just saying “hey, I hear ya”. This is actually brings in a real, time sensitive issue and Twitter may not be so bad. Sure, the PR is not so bad either. To bring some real parity, however, what if Delta had a registration program where the Delta Elite members could register their Twitter handle and then be given the same level of high(er) priority service on social channels as they enjoy on the phone? Thanks to Prem Kumar for the chat on thinking through this one (disclaimer, we both have status on Delta, thus this is a bit self-serving).

I used my own support community to solicit some comments from the crowd. Where? Twitter of course, with a couple of quick Skype chats as well. Some valid points, like “It is good at PR, not sure it is right for customer support”. Or another, “Is it scalable?” That is the real question, isn’t it? If you go to the grocery store and you are 5th in line, you are late to pick up your daughter from Gymnastics practice (yeah, this is the real me) and the store sees the lines, does the smart thing (it happens every so often, really) and opens up a new register, what do you do? Do you let the 4 people ahead of you into the new lane, or scout the progress and get ready to leap? Come on, tell the truth which is it? OK, not quite the same as Delta, but close. Revisiting my earlier quote, of myself, as Esteban Kolsky, of ThinkJar has reminded us all many times; If your customers are there, then you need to be there too (paraphrasing of course).

What are your other thoughts on this topic? Can Twitter be leveraged properly to do Customer Service?

Thank you to Muchiri Nyaggah for forwarding the link on Twitter.

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I read an interesting blog post by Sue Barret sparked by a Harvard Business Review article that argues that “customer delight” is less important than making life easier for your customers.

Hmmm. In so many ways – the two are one, right?

This got me thinking. If we are trying to create great customer experiences while ALSO trying to make life easier for customers to drive loyalty – isn’t there a dangerous possibility that adding social media as a channel could do neither of these things?

What I mean is that unless carefully plotted out – adding social communication channels to your customer facing initiatives can only add complexity and confusion – for both the customer and your employees. Jumping in to a social engagement strategy without first creating rigid and clear escalation rules, as well as creating a succinct but encompassing messaging platform (or at least an easily accessed central knowledge base) can lead to support issues falling into black holes, and lower level employees communicating incomplete or worse incorrect messages to potential and existing customers.

Look, it is difficult to solve customer issues on twitter and through facebook in any mass produced manner. That is why contact centers are an expensive and sometimes cost-prohibitive aspect of many smaller and mid-sized businesses. And as I’ve noted in the past – social is not a band aid or a cheap/quick fix to an incomplete support and service initiative.

So, when you start to add social and create use cases around social media as it pertains to customer-facing scenarios, ask this question: “Will this make it easier for a customer to get what they need?”

If the answer is not a resounding “Yes!” in all cases, rethink that decision.

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A shout out to our sponsors to start this post, as it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with CRM, Social CRM or anything even close. SugarCRM supports this venue so Martin and I can wax poetic about topics that folks who think about CRM for 90% of our business lives can offer a different opinion, perspective or worse. It is important to sometimes just let things happen.

Friend Heather Margolis forwarded a tweet along which caught my attention, it linked to a post “Social Media is an Extension of Real Life, not a Replacement” by Drew Hawkins. Now, the only remotely CRMish tie-in here is the phrase itself – “Social CRM is an extension of CRM not a replacement”, moving on…. What makes the post great, is it comes with a quote from one of my all-time favorite 80s movies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Along with a picture of Mathew Broderick as Ferris, complete with that cheeky smile. The simple point of the post can be summed up with one line: “It’s okay to put away the smartphone once in a while and talk to people. Mashable will be there when you get back.”

What are you missing? (or What will you miss)

I consider myself very lucky, I live in Vermont, though I do travel a fair amount. I am connected – by some peoples standards I am hyper-connected, by others not so much. There are lots of devices and applications made for these devices all whose sole purpose is to get you to look at your device. Forget the fact that you are sitting at a table with family and friends, they are right there, stop looking down at the device, I dare you! I do not get Four Square. Well, ok, I get it, I do not use it much anymore. Being the Mayor of the local airport is just depressing, not something I am looking to achieve. I was the Mayor of Sugarbush Ski Resort last winter for most of the season, which is cool, but it meant that I was using my iPhone while skiing – UNPLUG.

Mobile devices are like a yawn, they are contagious. Or, worse a virus… I talked to my brother about this a few times. He rides the commuter train outside of New York every morning. about a 40 minute ride. He related a story about picking up his BlackBerry en-route one morning to check his email. A woman across from him, followed suit, just a minute after he picked his up. He put it down and checked his email about 5 minutes later – yep, she did the same. He repeated this 3 times, until she caught on – a little embarrassed. Come on, you have done the same, you know you have. Maybe at a bar, a meeting, waiting for a pause, looking over at the device, wondering if it would be rude to pick it up and look. Come on, share your story, I know you have one.

Unplugging is really ok, really!

One of the themes of the post referenced above is to turn social connections into real world connections. It is a natural progression, one that I have written about and fully support. It is absolutely awesome, the world is really a small place, and I have learned a lot from my peers – not just about technology, CRM but life, culture, food (there are a lot or foodies in tech, just saying). OK, but after you make those connections, or decide to go out to dinner, a bar, a ball game, a BBQ whatever it is you do – Unplug From The Matrix, it will be there when you get back. Is there really anything more important going on than the world right there in front of you? Go ahead, ‘check-in’ if you must – Tweet a great picture of what you are doing (it is ok to share, I do it too) – as long as you do not lose sight of what is right there with you – commentary for a Tuesday morning – Cheers

What are your thoughts? Am I wrong, feel like adding something, sharing? (The phrase unplugging from the Matrix comes from the post referenced above)

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I thought about a question mark at the end of the post title, and left it off for some reason. But I do feel that we are in a gray area right now in regards to social CRM. For a while, I have feared that we were in the stage where 99% of those involved in a trend are evangelizing it, while 1% are actually doing anything real about it.

At every single CRM event I’ve been to in the past few years, this was the case. I saw a lot of blowhards talking up the importance of the social customer, engagement, blah blah – but with no real answers for a company looking to meet these changing needs in any systematic manner.

However, at the CRM Evolution show this week in NYC – I saw some stories from companies actually leveraging social media effectively. And I saw some companies hitting the market with tools that actually take results of social media engagement into consideration. Startups like Crowd Factory are truly promising in terms of ending the black hole effect of social marketing.

The event got me thinking about that critical transition in any technology trend – going from What to How. In the social CRM space, it is even more tricky because there are so many potential applications of “social” in the enterprise. It is not like past trends like “web services” that while vast – really just meant a faster, easier way to link via APIs etc. – the business benefit quickly became clear, standards formed and best practices now abound.

Best practices in social CRM have not been as forthcoming. I think the “how do I start?” issue is a major obstacle, followed by “how do I measure?” And sadly I am not here with answers, just a few suggestions.

As we move to the How of social CRM from the What stage – one thing I am 100% certain about is the need for at least some decent traditional CRM footprint in the organization. This needs to be your launch pad. If you know nothing about your customers to begin with – adding fuel to that ignorance fire with social data will only exacerbate the issue.

Social CRM is new, amorphous and I have no doubt we’ll see many iterations of social CRM tools and best practices. Thus, it makes sense to base your initial forays into social CRM on a platform that is flexible enough to manage the changes – and allows you to make changes early and often.

I am often asked “What is SugarCRM’s social CRM strategy?” and I think the answer is simply that Sugar is an enabling platform – though of course there are and will be more social CRM out of the box tools. But for now, as the concept of social CRM slowly becomes absorbed into just “CRM” – we will act as more of a platform that a point solution.

From a “How” perspective, what we are seeing many customers do in Sugar with social is get to a managed phase – as the ability to see myriad social networks and respective data around your brand, leads, sales opportunities and support cases (or potential issues) in a single, easy to use place is a huge advantage to a basic silo approach to managing twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, etc. in separate tabs or windows.

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This is just a small thought – as I have far too many ideas that are too big for a tweet and not really epic blog material.

But looking at Michael Maoz’s recent blog post around customer service vs. social. He makes a great point: good service is a must-have goal of any company and you need to man the phones, handle email well and essentially do all the traditional customer service channels well if you want to be a great company.

All to often, both companies and consumers are finding themselves accepting social as a band-aid to bad service rather than an additional tool to extend the relationship. This is dangerous: simply clinging to a new trend could be damaging to your brand, and how your customers see you.

The “Comcast cares” initiative is a great one. While yes, the Twitter users may help some customers – the campaign’s popularity is a glaring indictment on how bad Comcast’s traditional customer service is, and how low in esteem consumers hold the brand.

Sometimes, cutting the corners can be an efficient means to gaining new capabilities. SaaS CRM is a good example of that development. But with customer service, we can not simply jump to social alone. There are far too many people and processes that need to occur via traditional mediums and with the help of real people, etc.

And ultimately, this could be said about all areas of CRM: sales people are not ONLY going to use social tools to ferret out leads and try to close deals. And marketers will still mail, email and perform webinars and ads in addition to Tweets and Facebook campaigns.

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I was going to continue the comment thread in Mitch’s last post on VRM but I think it warrants its own post. Mitch hints in the title about the “responsibility” for managing a relationship, and who has the most responsibility for a relationship.

I think that whole line of thinking is flawed, for many reasons. The very nature of a successful relationship is the fact that it is made up of a balance – effort being put in by both parties. While the customer may be in control of the conversation, neither customer or vendor is in control of the relationship.

Even on the most base terms – customers and vendors need each other. The vendor obviously needs revenue to survive, but customers need (in varying degrees) to objects or services offered by the vendor.  Basic economics, right?

But the internet changes a lot of the moving parts in the real world application of this paradigm. In the B2C world, the relationship between vendor and consumer has long been mediated, but retail operations and other intermediaries – until now. The power of the social web brings manufacturers right in front of consumers – this is scary to some but also presents huge opportunities (all of us in the social CRM world have been talking about this for years). E-commerce has allowed buyers to (if they so choose) to skip the retailer and go to the source.

In B2B – e-commerce has essentially only made existing processes a little easier. It is strange that we have no redefined B2B marketing, sales and support all that much in the age of social – simply tried to make it a lot more cost-effective and powerful. I think that is because the “relationship” aspect of B2B has been strongly in place for some time. (And this is why CRM has always succeeded most in B2B in my mind…)

Perhaps it could be argued that the internet has changed the nature of B2B relationships in that the web allows buyers (and perhaps sellers in some degree) to be as fickle as B2C buyers. The ease of research and negotiation in today’s web-driven economy has streamlined the process of vendor evaluation and decision-making to the point where relationships alone will not save a deal or secure loyalty.

But at the same time – the web enables more pricing transparency and levels the playing field, allowing vendors to differentiate on service, engagement strategy – all the things that make up a strong relationship.

Just like the old saying goes – “the phone works both ways” – relationships are not “owned” but nurtured. Both parties get out (depending on their needs and agenda) exactly what they put into them.

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We have made it through the heatwave, but it is possible that this particular author has suffered some lasting effects of the heat. While CRMOutsiders is supposed to take an objective ‘Outside-in’ view point of CRM, writing a blog post about VRM – Vendor Relationship Management might be just pushing it a little too far, no? If you think about it, you might believe that VRM is the mirror image of CRM? VRM is getting a little more traction these days, it does have some high quality sponsors, and supporters. The VRM project page is hosted by Harvard, and Doc Searls has a solo site as well (the super smart, and one of the co-author’s of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”) has put his energy into driving it forward. As defined by Doc Searls, this is what VRM is:

VRM is a grass roots initiative which seeks to ‘Enable buyers and sellers to build mutually beneficial relationships by helping individuals to gather, store, share and use the information they need to go to market more efficiently and effectively’.

While that is a powerful statement, the following gets even closer to the heart of the issue:

In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders  — not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace.

Where does VRM fit, or does it?

In a really nice post by Julian Gay, he builds a picture/model where Social CRM sits in between CRM and VRM. The title of the post is “Beyond Social CRM” – taken one way, this makes a lot of sense, taken another, I am not sure I agree. I have stated previously that I believe “Social CRM is based on the simple premise that you are able to interact with your customers based on their needs, not your rules.” Therefore, I believe that VRM is a lot closer, at least from my vantage point, to Social CRM than many people think. What neither Social CRM, nor CRM provide to the customer is a simple place where they can “gather, store and use their own information more efficiently”, that is a gap which must be filled. Given this capability, Social CRM allows customers (past, present and future) to help build those mutually beneficial relationships as described.

In his post, Julian makes the following statement:

VRM complements CRM and SocialCRM by enabling the ‘voice’ of the customer to be communicated directly to company’s ‘ears’. With a CRM and VRM infrastructure in place, we have a platform for dialogue, and ultimately a context for building scalable trust-based relationships.

I do not agree with this statement, or it is completely possible that I do not understand it. While some might say that the current form of the relationship (company / customer) is skewed, or unbalanced, pushing it completely into another realm, making ‘me’ responsible for it may or may not work. While individual customers may not have all of the control that they want, they do have the power of the purse. There is freedom in markets and they are free to choose with whom to do business.

Like I said, I do like the format of the diagram, and placing Social CRM as a bridge between customer and supplier controls makes a lot of sense to me. We are barely out of the gate with Social CRM. By timeline, VRM actually predates Social CRM. It is possible that the existence of Social CRM is partially a response to bridging the gap between CRM and VRM. What do you think?

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