Sorry Gartner, Here’s the Real Magic Quadrant for SCRM
To understand what Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) is, we have to start with a clear definition. The definition must be clearly articulated and easily understood by individuals in the industry. In the Magic Quadrant for Social CRM, Gartner writes, “Social CRM applications need to be far more customer-centric than more-traditional CRM applications. Without benefits […]
Social CRM. Good riddance. Next: Social ERP?
Paul Greenberg, dubbed by some “the godfather of SCRM” wrote a post on ZDNET about Gartner’s 2011 SCRM Magic Quadrant. Paul is not pleased with the 2011 SCRM MQ, and he wasn’t with the 2010 either. I’m with Paul on all his points against Gartner’s selection and evaluation process, yet against him on berating Gartner. […]
Three Ways to Use Linkedin for Social Sales
I’m a big fan of Linkedin, I use it several times a week and when I announce what I’m working on (which I will do within a few days) it will become even more clear why it’s been so useful to me. I have three favorite uses for Linkedin: Finding relevant people to connect with, […]
Salesforce Acquires Radian6 To Help Their Customers Become Socially Adept
Salesforce.com (see previous CloudAve coverage) today announced that they are acquiring Radian6, a company helping organizations monitor and engage with their customers on social media, for $326 Million to boost the social intelligence of their products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com. Anyone who had seen the demo of their Service Cloud 3 […]
The Social CRM Magic Quadrant
I missed the Social CRM Summit today – twice. Not only did I not physically attend, but I was occupied with work and only found time in my lunch break to quickly scan a few tweets. Now it’s after dinner, there are 700 tweets, and I am ready to analyse away. Of course I use […]
The Social CRM Oxymoron
The temptation was great of course, a few years back, to invent Social CRM. There was a lot of buzz about Social, social people, social companies, social employees and social customers. It wasn’t a great step from that last one to Social Customer Relationship Management. Last year I piled all that up on the Social […]
Game Changing Customer Support Communities (Presentation)
The following was the Presentation I gave at the Gilbane Conference in Boston Self-Service support communities are beginning to replace the help desk for internal and external customer support. In fact, these communities are simultaneously reducing costs (less support calls) and increasing revenue (SEO lead generation). Follow along as I explore the history of documentation […]
2010-2020: The Great Divide
A Great Divide is what I see for the coming decade. Not a hydrological divide of the Americas, but an IT-divide of the business. Pretty much a follow-up from my one year-old Cloud and Social: the tectonic plates of IT 2.0, this post will show the great challenge Business and IT need to face together […]
Multiple Perspectives on Social CRM: The Consultant, Analyst, Vendor, and Client
If you put a consultant, an analyst, a vendor, and an end user client together in the same room and ask them to explain or discuss social CRM or social business (or pretty much anything else) you will get very different answers and explanations. Nothing is ever one-sided so why bother trying to look at […]
The Many Faces of Social CRM
I thought it would be very interesting to look at how other people in the world are talking about, describing, and visualizing Social Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM). I found some pretty interesting images out there and compiled some of them below. I also included an image from Chess Media Group. It’s interesting to see […]
Where Does Email Fit Within Social CRM?
Before you say anything let me first put some context around why I’m asking this question. On Friday I’m going to be speaking at the Social Email Marketing conference in San Francisco. Almost all of the sessions are going to be focused on email, and then…there’s me. The nice fellow whose going to be talking […]
Beyond Social CRM: The Open Innovation Revolution
The idea of bringing customers into the process of defining the products and service of your organization is one that is gaining a lot of steam. One manifestation of that is the increased interest in Social CRM. In this scenario, companies engage their social customers for feedback and marketing purposes. Taking it a step further, […]
Business Problems that Social CRM Helps Organizations Solve
(White to move and Mate in 2, can you figure out the answer?) There’s been a lot of talk about what SCRM is (social customer relationship management) and how it should be defined. There has also been a lot of conversation around Social CRM from a technology standpoint in terms of vendor offerings. I’ll admit […]
Would You Pay More for Excellent Customer Service?
A key tenant in Social CRM has always been around providing users with a better experience. In addition to delivering a great product one of the best ways to provide a better experience is through excellent service (yes there are other things). Here’s a simple personal example. In my neighborhood there are two large grocery […]
How Much of a Relationship Do Your Customers Actually Want?
On the Harvard Business Review, Matt Dixon and Lara Ponomareff wrote a piece that caught my eye, Why Your Customers Don’t Want to Talk to You. Consumers increasingly prefer self-service, and the authors speculate: Maybe customers are shifting toward self service because they don’t want a relationship with companies. While this secular trend could be […]
