A review of 2013 trends in Customer Relationship Management
MyCustomer.com recently caught up with CRM expert Paul Greenberg to get his thoughts on what emerged, re-emerged or strengthened in the industry over the past 12 months.
“In 2012, what you saw was the maturation of a lot of things that have been Wild West-y, edgy and unsettled for a long time in the CRM industry. You're now seeing the actual transformation of business on a global scale towards what IBM calls the 'Smarter planet'.”
So says Paul Greenberg, author of the seminal CRM at the Speed of Light and president of The 56 Group. In terms of enterprise software, the re-emergence of customer experience as a message from the vendors was one of the major trends to re-emerge this year, he explains. In…
Good User Experience = Good Customer Service = More Sales
Christmas shopping has begun and with it, the stress! And no, I haven’t been shopping offline at all, I’ve been shopping online! But this time of the year always brings to the fore one of the most obvious issues that many Ecommerce Managers have control of, but yet remains to be one of the most lacking in terms of solutions.
Picture this: you go into a store where a very nice assistant helps you find everything you need to purchase. You’re thinking “Great! All my Christmas shopping done in an hour!”.
You walk on up to the till point where the assistant starts totting up all of your purchases, but the sales assistant then suddenly tells you that you can’t actually pay at their till unless you have a specific device. So you…
Six serious misunderstandings about social CRM
18 months ago, customer-centric innovator Dr Graham Hill, authored Social CRM at a crossroads: Where to next?, an examination of the state of play in SCRM.
A year-and-a-half later, I've been reviewing with Graham how brands have been applying Social CRM. It seems that many brands may have taken a wrong turn. But before we get to some harsh truths, it’s worth emphasising the positives – because there has still been plenty of good work done in the interim.
Brands are listening to customers more; businesses are embracing social media as a communication channel; and vendors are developing a strong portfolio of social CRM technology. All laudable achievements.
However, Graham says, when he looks at how the social CRM movement has progressed in the past 18 months, ultimately he gets a feeling of “déjà vu”. Similarities…
Implement a CRM system and your prayers will be answered? Greater efficiency, improved customer service and conversion rates …..
The arguments for implementing a CRM system are well known: improve the number and quality of leads; improve quality of service and increase customer retention. But that’s the theory of course...
A system is only as good as the people who own and support it; or it can lead to poor quality leads, unsatisfactory customer experience, damaged reputation to the company, inconsistent processes and a lack of a shared working strategy to deliver the business case.
In this post I’ll share my experience in selecting and managing a CRM system for a public sector organisation to show some of the problems that can develop and what to watch out for.
Here are my tips learnt in the first year of implementing a system within a…
Why are brands killing the Facebook conversation?
June 2012 update - a new service for benchmarking Facebook customer service:
On June 20th at LeWeb, Socialbakers introduced a new service, Socially Devoted, which gives an idea of what are good and bad levels of customer service within Facebook.
Here is the worst from the retail category which shows there is still plenty of room for improvement:
The most responsive show how it can be done:
I originally read this post by Jan Rezab, CEO of Socialbakers, in October 2011 about the lack of interaction of brands have on their own Fan pages. Apparently only 5% of wall questions from consumers on brand pages ever receive follow-up interactions from the brand - shocking really! It's really shooting yourself in the social foot…
9 tips and good practice examples to improve customer service quality through the big five social networks and other tools
Many savvy marketers have known for a long time that social media is more than just facebook pages and YouTube channels and that these channels have far more to offer than mere ‘brand awareness’.
Engaging a brand’s customers (and developing a stronger relationship with them as a result) has been one of the main justifications for brand’s investing in social media despite it remaining difficult to demonstrate an accurate ROI for social media activities.
I believe this is missing the point.
Integrate social media across the whole business
Social media should be viewed more broadly across a business and form part of an organisation's structure. And, as brands and businesses start to recognise the importance of integrating social media beyond the marketing or PR teams,…
A brief review of 4 E-CRM alternatives suitable for a small business or not-for-profit company
I recently evaluated online E-CRM services for a contemporary art gallery. Dave Chaffey suggested I share my evaluation with Smart Insights readers since it may be useful for others taking the same decision for a small business. This follows on from a question I answered in the Smart Insights LinkedIn Group as to the issues to consider when selecting a CRM or email marketing system.
The review was also a fantastic opportunity to look generally at the CRM market place and consider what CRM system I should have in place for my own marketing consultancy business.
At the outset I had a number of requirements in mind including: the security of data (based on the supplier assurances and, for US suppliers, the Safe Harbor scheme); lists; custom fields; bulk email; online data capture; mobile access; back ups; auto-updates…
Is customer experience management the new CRM?
This year, many CRM vendors and commentators are hailing the age of customer experience management, raising the question of whether we are witnessing a sea change in CRM?
When SAP held its Influencer Summit in February, the vendor revealed it would be repositioning the focus of its CRM proposition from ‘relationship’ to ‘experience’.This wasn’t altogether a huge surprise. Last year, SAP executives Reza Soudagar, Vinay Iyer, and Volker Hildebrand, published a book reflecting this flavour, entitled The Customer Experience Edge. Indeed, Vinay Iyer told MyCustomer.com that customer experience was “beyond” CRM in a recent video interview by BPT Partners.
At Oracle’s Steve Fearon, vice president, applications sales development, alliances & CRM On Demand EMEA recently said:
"Customer relationship management is the corner stone of a customer-centric approach, but as the brand needs to be able to address the customer…
5 recommendations for delivering effective social media customer service from Frank Eliason
Frank Eliason is widely regarded as one of the innovators for delivering customer service through social media from his work at Comcast, initially delivered through the @ComcastCares Twitter handle. Eliason shows the importance of the intersection between social media and customer service when he says:
“The customer now has control of your brand, and if you really want them to share your marketing message, you must fix the overall customer experience”
“Many would say customer service has always been marketing, but the fact is the companies had a much larger control of the message than they do today. Social media has changed that and the customer has gained that control".
Now at Citibank, Eliason has continued to give great advice on how to apply social media for customer service, and is author of the book …
Over 44% of adults now using the web to share grievances
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Social Media Leadership forum
This report examines the role played by social media within the rapidly changing landscape of customer service. It was commissioned by Natalie Cowen, Head of Brand and Communications, first direct and created by Dr Andrew Currah.
The report reminds us how important the web and social media in particular have become to brands. In the Exec Summary, Natalie Cowen says:
“Over 44% of adults now use the web to share grievances about products, with companies expected to interact with companies online and get a speedy response”
It seems that many companies haven't changed the way they manage customer service in line with this - Dan Bosomworth summarised a survey in the autumn last year suggesting that 95% of customer Facebook posts were ignored by brands.
We’re alerting you to this new report, since if…
