PGreenblog

Bits O' Honey Partido Uno

Quotes To Think About (& Use) In 2.0 Land

"A 2006 study by the Verde Group showed that people who hear about a bad shopping experience are less likely than the people who actually had the bad experience to ever set foot in the store." -- from "Word of Mouth Marketing", Andy Sernovitz

"That's the deal companies make when relying on the help of customers to grow: customers will volunteeer their time and attention, but they will fight for their status and power." -- from "Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message" - by Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba

"In this world of constant feedback, one element of some corporate cultures is definitely going away. Strategies based on deception are doomed to failure." --from "Groundswell" by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

"...the human mind has no limit of developing, of realizing ever deeply and more adequately universal orders of life" --from "The Philosophy of Literature" by Gustav Mueller (when speaking about Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy")

"Community offers the promise of belonging....To beloong is to act as an investor, owner and creator of this place. To be welcome, even if we are strangers. As if we came to the right place and are affirmed for the choice."--from "Community: The Structure of Belonging" by Peter Block

Okay, everyone, I'm off to Sapphire 2008, SAP's shindig. They expect about 15,000 there. I'll be one of the herd. There as a "business influencer." Great title. One of the herd. I'll be doing Experience on the Edge (my podcast, if you haven't heard from there using my new Apogee Duet so I can get great rather than mediocre road sound quality. This will be episode #16 of the weekly verbal assault. Go listen to it), though it won't be about Sapphire. The Sapphire commentary will be #17 - and it will be impressions and maybe an interview or two. I'll keep you posted. Watch this blog for Sapphire coverage though.....

Technorati : Community, SAP, Web 2.0, social media, word of mouth marketing

Aggregating Some Ideas and Products For Aggregating

Further (and new) thoughts on a few items:

• Peer to peer is beginning to define the pre-eminent culture of contemporary communications. As I mentioned in a previous post, the customer wants to view the company as a peer. What this makes me think, without any specific research particularly, other than anecdotal that is, is that not only should companies provide a set of tools that will allow customers to personalize their experience with the company, but the company's strategy has to be to humanize the company (which still realizing that it is a company) which, if done well, will realize the idea of "company as a peer." One tactic for example, was mentioned by Long Tail author, Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson in his 2005 (!) discussion on business blogging done by employees, not corporate officers. Chris Carfi, my dear friend and partner, did a great post on retail blogging (that came from a training session on Social Media that we did last week) that supports this contention (the peer to peer value of employees blogging) on his always amazing blog, The Social Customer.

• For CRM 2.0 to be successful, I've been continually making the point that the company has to change its business model from being a provider of goods and/or services to an aggregator of products, services, tools and experiences that allow the customer to personalize the kind of relationship and the experience that they have with the company. What makes this important is the same thing that makes a PC important to someone's life - a means to give someone a sense of control over their own life. Ultimately, that's what we all are looking to have and what makes us advocates of something is that they treat us in a way that gives us the intelligence and knowledge to extend that control over our own life. For example, that's why things like social network aggregators are as important as the social networks in this new world. Take a look at Cerado's Ventana, a creation of Chris Carfi's (he's all OVER this entry isn't he? He's an important social thinker AND doer which is why he is all over this blog). The pix here will give you an idea how it works:

What makes it important is that it is device-aware (can show it on your iphone) and is aggregator of multiple social activities. You can coherently and in a single place either online or on a mobile device, look at your Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, etc. accounts and see all the joint activity going on and respond accordingly. OR you could do what you see here with the BlogHer Guide to Political Bloggers- here is an aggregation of what is now over 150 women in politics who have blogs and here is a single screen (or conjoint set of screens), mobile or online that you can see all the women who are politically blogging through BlogHer and (note the "News" tab) you can see what's new and what's up with a single click.

There are competitors that I've written about in this field in May 2007 with the leading one being Profilactic. I wrote about them separately. But the model that Ventana has is unique and interesting. Its not just aggregating social networks that are out there - its pretty much aggregating content in the format that you want and that's immensely valuable especially when you can carry it mobilely and without a whole lot of baggage or digital overhead. My interest in this doesn't come because I love Chris Carfi in a manly sort of way. It comes because I think that this is a genuinely interesting and potentially really valuable aggregator for consumers but even more so for businesses. Imagine integrating this with wikis and podcasts and blogs so that you can find out what you need - and intelligently deal with a company that you work for or want to deal with (as an employee or a customer respectively) while staring at your iPhone or your Blackberry in real time or nearly so.

Very cool AND very important. I'll be following this more. I've seen it and it works.

I'm Paul Greenberg and I approve this blog entry.

Technorati : Blackberry, BlogHer, CRM 2.0, Cerado, The Social Customer, Ventana, iPhone, mobile devices, social customer

The Terran Trio: "I Think Therefore I Am", "I Am Therefore I Act", and "Live from NY, It's SATURDAY NIGHT!"

Just a forewarning. This is a really, really strange entry, especially if you've followed my stuff for awhile (though maybe not if you know me personally):

It Starts Here.....

Not sure whether or not any of you have ever been students of philosophy, but if you have, you probably heard one of the greatest almost cliche-ish philosophical declarations. That would be the Rene Descartes "Cogito, ergo sum" "I think, therefore I am." This masterpiece of Cartesian understatement is more accurate as "Dubito, cognito, ergo sum" - "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am, " but however its used it has been seen as the philosophical proof positive of human existence - cognitive reasoning - for hundreds of years - though not everyone in this world is a fan of the man. The idea behind is simple. I doubt, and someone must be doing the doubting, which proves that I exist or I wouldn't be able to think about the fact that someone (me) is doing the doubting.....or something akin to that.

Okay. We've established that we exist and we exist apart from non-reasoning creatures though with all creatures nonetheless. I doubt that animals doubt their existence which proves their existence though really it proves my existence because I'm the one writing about their existence; they aren't writing about mine and then does that mean that they don't exist in their own minds, but we know they do and ARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH! (I wonder if I exist in my more animal-like states of mind?) (GAAAAAAACCCKKKK!)

Time for a 21st century makeover. (Still wondering what Saturday Night Live has to do with this?)

So, I'm declaring a new post-modern Cartesianism. "I think therefore I act (or I should act - shouldn't I?)." Now this statement of mine has no inherent reasoning or even logic that I can see (though it sounds like a philosophical dictum) Just because "I" think (Understand) doesn't mean "I" act on that understanding (that would be active knowledge), thus stopping me (that would be the real me - Paul Greenberg rather than the universal "I" - the generic individual mentioned above. We're heading toward another GAAAAACK here)

Actually, lets refine this a little. In fact, rather than a post modern Cartesianism, let's call this a neo-Dante-ist perspective.

Dante Alighieri, best known, of course for his "Divine Comedy" poetic trilogy, wrote this work called "Convito." In Convito, he identifies Love (in part) as the "deep contemplation which is the earnest application of the enamoured mind to that object wherewith it is enamoured." His thinking follows that since this love is based on reason and logic (though highly emotional - whole brained, not left brained) it can be universally shared and the more who participate in that sharing, the greater it becomes. So the actions of reasoning being who are participating in the sharing of Love (with a capital "L") according to Dante, is something that makes it greater. (Still wondering about Saturday Night Live aren't you? AND wondering if I've lost my mind? AND wondering what in the eternal spirit's name does this have to do with CRM?)

Okay, time for the payoff in this insane posting. (you do knowing I'm playing with you, right?)

All this means that when Beth Comstock, President of NBC Universal Integrated Media says to Fast Company last May:

"If consumers are in control, they're going to figure out how they want to watch. We have to find the right solution."

and then she goes out and does something about it, she is acting on what she thinks AND providing the means to share in the results which make them greater still. So Descartes and Dante can stop rolling over in their resting places. I'm applying them to the 21st century now.

So what are the "objects of the enamoured mind" here? Saturday Night Live videos.

Wha'?

Last night, Yvonne (those who don't know. My wonderful wife of 26 years) and I were watching Christopher Walken hosting Saturday Night Live. He is the best host they've ever had and was one of the main characters in one of their greatest skits ever - More Cowbell. (Wanna watch it?)

At the end of the show, they announced that you could go to NBC and embed some of their skits for tonight (and prior shows) onto your blog or website. I did a doubletake and thought - WOWEEWOWEEWEE! This is coming from the station that actually tried to remove one of the key things that made SNL popular again from YouTube et. al. That would their Lazy Sunday Digital Short that had over 6 million views and, in the pre-Beth Comstock days, drew attention to SNL again.

They have come around to Beth Comstock's (and Dante's) view on both user generated content and sharing - you share and the more who participate in the sharing of that object (content), the greater it becomes. Now bloggers are encouraged to embed SNL skits into their blogs - and in honor of that - and Dante and Descartes (who lived two hundred years after Dante - a case of Descartes following the....never mind), I'm going to embed a couple of Christopher Walken skits for you from last night one in particular where Kristin Wiig is a riot (you'll have to suffer a commercial or two though):

Now a couple of more that NBC provided from earlier shows that I love.

First a great appearance by Mike Huckabee, easily the funniest by far of all the presidential candidates (though I'm a Democrat and Obama guy):

Now one by Joshua Hill (Superbad etc.) as a six year old Jewish comedian with his single parent Dad at Benihana's.

Wow. What a post. All that philosophical stuff to tell you that I love SNL skits sometimes and Christopher Walken.

Though there is a point here.....

The point is that NBC and many other companies are figuring out that the levels of participation of the population in producing and sharing content is now skyrocketing to the point that its become a mainstream activity - unleasing waves of participation and innovation (potentially - and along with a lot of shlock too) at unprecedented levels. And, to make sure that their businesses are responsive and thus, surviving or even fluourishing, they have to go with the flow. Interestingly, it takes the 14th century poet and Platonist Dante Alighieri to give the greater benefit of all this - we are reasoning beings participating in creation of something that is tied to our emotions and the more that we share it, the more will participate. Isn't this the basis for the success of social networks and communities? Or of user generated content? It is and that's why the transformation is social and affects all institutions - not just business. Its the way that people are expressing their creative "impulses" - "deep contemplation which is the earnest application of the enamoured mind to that object wherewith it is enamoured." That statement from Convito is no different than an emotional, personalized experience.

Proving once again, mankind is always continuing its own history by elevating its capabilities to greater and greater heights. All that's going on now is that we have new tools and new paradigms to meet those historic needs. Its why we think and how we act as individuals and as a species.

Even NBC figured that out.

Technorati : CRM, Christopher Walken, Dante Alighieri, NBC, Rene Descartes, Saturday Night Live

DirecTV Doubles to Left

It's that time again.

Every two months as you probably know, Ellen Filipiak, SVP of Customer Care at DirecTV writes a blog entry on the progress they're making in both fixing the problems that they've had with a lot of their customers over a long time and the new stuff they're doing. While the reviews have been mixed, I have to admire Ellen for her absolute commitment for sending me something each two months and always on time. She's been awesome about that.

AND

This month, the discussion is considerably more straight - comparing where they were a year ago (when she came onboard) to where they are now - which is a legitimate horn tooting because it acknowledges the problems they've had in the past with their customers and shows what they're doing to fix them. The fact is, as a customer I want them to both acknowledge it and to then solve it. I don't want them to be bad. I want them to be good. This month, a real live set of steps. Not marketing hype. Straightforward. Good for her. Looks like she might be the person DirecTV needed.

Ellen, take it away.

Filipiak Steps to The Plate....The Pitch....And There's A Drive!...

Hello, Paul!

As 2008 moves forward, I thought I might return back to an earlier post from late last year to highlight actions we've made within DIRECTV as a result of our call center visits to learn more about the customer care organization and find ways to improve on current practices.

We also reviewed our online site and fundamentally asked ourselves how we answer each customer inquiry to discover better approaches to customers' questions.

Here are actions resulting from that review:

First, we made changes to our online platform. We made it much easier to register for online services; we reshaped our programming and hardware ordering areas; and upgraded our e-mail service to help customers find answers faster.

Regarding registration, customers requested two things: make it easier and provide flexible ways to retrieve their password and allow updates to their e-mail address at log-in. Our web team took this feedback and implemented these changes late last year. We've since received positive feedback from customers on these changes.

Until recently, adding hardware and changing programming was not intuitive or well-coordinated. Many of our new offerings are dependent on specific hardware tied to specific programming - so linking both made sense. Now, where programming and hardware choices are dependent and a customer has a decision to make, we added clearer messaging to help them make that decision. So if a customer decides to order our HD Access programming package, we now check their account to verify they have an HD receiver, and if not, we show clearer messaging that indicates it's required to have both. At this point, we provide the customer a choice to continue with their order with an HD receiver added or make another choice. Again, these changes were made by our web team based upon customer feedback.

We are also upgrading our e-mail software so that many questions can be answered while still on the site, rather than waiting for a person to respond. If the question requires a personal response, our new e-mail process will gather more customer information, helping our agents respond in a more timely and accurate manner.

Also, we will be adjusting our hours of operation on May 11^th. We will be available 24/7 to answer technical questions and our automated self-service options (web and phone systems) are also available 24/7. Since most customers call with billing, account, and installation questions during the day, we are changing our hours and are readying our staffing levels to match that. Our new hours of operation for non-technical calls are 8:00am to 10:00pm based on the local time of the customer.

Finally, we are in the process of revising which calls each representative takes to help resolve issues the first time a customer calls. For example, over 80% of the time a customer reports a problem ordering PPV, the issue is related to their bill. From a customer's perspective, it seems like a technical issue - PPV won't work. However, by sending these calls to a billing agent, we can resolve the root cause of the problem. For the small percentage of calls that require technical assistance, we can also get them to a technical representative quickly.

While each of these changes has been quite an effort by numerous teams here, we feel each will make a difference in how we serve our customers as we continue to listen closely to their needs and desires throughout DIRECTV.

As always, I appreciate the opportunity to share the changes we are making and to hear your feedback. Enjoy the upcoming baseball season!

Regards,

Ellen Filipiak

Senior Vice President, Customer Care

Ellen.Filipiak@directv.com

Technorati : CRM, DirecTV, customer service

Oracle? Oracle? ORACLE?

Yes Oracle. I was on a call today with Oracle. And while I can't reveal the content of the call until March 11, 2008 at some unknown AM time, nobody said that I couldn't talk about the form of the call. So I will. It was a call run by Anthony Lye, SVP of Oracle CRM. It was a bloggers-only call. Yes, only bloggers were on it. It was run as if it were a journalist call or even to some extent an analyst call. I don't know how many bloggers were on it but it was, to my knowledge, the first time a major CRM vendor (or for that matter, any CRM vendor, large or small) treated bloggers the way they should be treating them - as influencers who might have an impact on the vendor's products, services, and company. So, once again, I'm stunned by a good move by Oracle (though not particularly stunned that its a good move by Anthony Lye - he seems to be making a lot of them) - that's two in the last 4 months (which totals two in the last 4 years) and on March 11, I'll be, I think, making that three.

Politics Online - 15th Annual, 600 Strong, First Class

I'm a political junkie. I admit and I've been politically sober for....ummm....a lot of years. Its important to admit it. I was in politics once and now I'm not but nothing gets the blood rushing to my head (you figure out which one) like political discourse and, with the rapid accession of technology and sudden interest in customer engagement a.k.a. constituent relationship management a.k.a. CRM (thank you, Barack Obama) and the revivification of a 60s-like environment in the U.S. its all good and exciting and I LOVE IT! For awhile now, I've had a spotty (but soon to be official) relationship - far less than I'd like - with the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet (IPDI), a think tank associated with George Washington University. In fact, I like these folks so much that I'm going to be the 2008 Practitioner Fellow for IPDI and I'm proud of that. They are concentrated on the application of web technologies and social constituent strategies to the electorate and I'm proud of being associated with the thinking. Which brings me to what I'm going to be jotting on here: The just finished 2008 Politics Online Conference.

Politics Online 2008 - Tipping Point or Tippling Point

On the balance, day 1 of the conference which was all I was able to attend due to work that I needed to do, was extraordinary with 600 of the most concerned, lively attendees I ever encountered. I have something of a political past and I saw a plethora of the idealist variety of politico - of course mixed in with the usual politic self-aggrandizing type who's in it for the "whatever they are in it for". But this is a younger crowd and IPDI brings that exuberance and social concern out - so that's who predominated. Exciting for an old child of the 60s like me - especially when I saw how they debated the issues that technology brought forth. My expectations on this were sky high and other than the opening plenary session, which I hated, it was amazing. I'll spend some time speaking to why I hated it and then more time telling you about the rest of the conference which more than made up for the "defensive contrarians" on the initial panel that opened the conference. Before I get into it, let me tell you that the work done by the Director of IPDI, Julie Barko Germany (and her staff and partners) was abso-friggin'-lutely spectacular. The level of conversation was something that was balm for the soul and fire for the heart - because it was typically (with some exceptions) about the application of technology for social good in the political realm. These were people who not only thought about the technology as cool but saw it as applicable to solving greater problems in the world - hunger, global warming, etc. They were Republicans, Democrats, representatives of every campaign, federal, state and local offices, party organizations and advocacy groups galore. There were technology vendors, of course, like Blue States Digital who seems to lead in developing state of the art political digital environments - though that is observation, not core analysis (that will come some time soon). But the discussion and buzz around how to utilize social media, CRM and social networks for campaigns, congressional offices, advocacy ad infinitum, was intense and bracing and fascinating and made one (me) want to roar back into action. So, as I listened to the plenary session in the AM, my dismay began to rise as I heard two academic elitists - meaning people who were more interested in defending their quirks and their positions by rising to the level of obnoxious than providing anything of value to the 600 eager listeners in the audience. What was horrible was the arrogance of all but the Google guy (former DNCer Bob Boorstin). I'm not going to give you their names but will call them the USC guy and the "So-Called Futurist." Their fundamental premises were cynical and they treated the audience with disrespect - and had little of value to say. For example, the USC guy bristled over one of the audience saying that 70% of internet traffic was porn and he almost yelled at the guy saying that this was untrue and that a recent USC study proved it was 40% - like that actually mattered. But even more was his assertion that with the rise of ubiquitous computing and the ability to increasingly personalize content delivery, he was afraid of "balkanization" - meaning that you would only receive the opinions and ideological statements and "stuff" that you wanted to hear - and he PROUDLY showed how noble he was with "I listen to Rush Limbaugh every day" - as if he deliberately exposed himself to dangerous toxins each day in the interests of free discourse and contrarian opinion maintenance and purity. While sitting there, I wondered what planet he lived on. Did he ever have sex with another person or go to a conference with 600 people or interact beyond third party communications? If you don't live 100% on the web and can't control all the activity that gets pushed to you AND you in fact, actually meet with other humans out there, then the odds of you never hearing opinions that aren't filtered toward your thinking are about ZERO. We are humans. We interact. We differ by a lot or a little but we differ - all of us. There is NO way his so-called "balkanization" can happen because we live in a society - and we will personalize all we want on the web and still hear contrarian thinking. Way the world works, bunky. The "So-Called-Futurist" was actually more offensive. He not only threw technology terms like WiMax and RFID at IPv6 at the audience without any clear explanation as things that will impact us greatly in the next 18 months but then got into this weird ubergeek discussion about trust, privacy, etc. that led him to say the best way to deal with these issues was by never joining social networks. He was SO proud of this. First, I doubt that the implementation of IPv6 or WiMax will be effectively even near complete within 18 months. For example, Sprint, who was the big pusher of WiMax and planned a 3 billion dollar investment, effectively withdrew that idea and investment sometime in the last few months because they began to see the issues that it brought up. While IPv6 is certainly the way to go, its impact won't be felt for awhile, because at the moment, there is a perception that we have sufficient room in the internet address space to hold on for a bit. He was saying what he was saying because he likes hardware and he likes to show off to audiences. His cynicism was blatant besides. His "I don't join social networks so I don't have to deal with issues" was no different in concept than a recluse who thinks the human species is 'dirty" and the best way to deal with it is to avoid it. Ugh.

But The Best Was Yet To Come - And It Did

Okay, that gets rid of the ONLY blight on this wonderful event. Because the rest of it more than made up for these misogynists. The bulk of the rest of the day was breakout sessions and I attended two and at the same time moderated one of them.

Going to School and Learning Something Important - Two Times In A Single Day

I attended two of the panels in breakout sessions - one on the development of mobile social applications and another on the application of social networking to political campaigns. While both were great, I want concentrate (for space and time reasons - though not the existential variety, the pragmatic - meaning I don't want this to be too long nor do I have much more time write it) on the latter not the former.

Social Networks - Political Campaigns

This panel was run by my friend and colleague, TechPresident blogger and key player at the Center for American Progress Alan Rosenblatt. Also, I might add a truly discerning drinker of single malt scotches. On his panel he had the social web jefes from Ron Paul's campaign, Rudi Guiliani's campaign, John Edwards' campaign, and a guy from Fred Thompson's campaign. As Alan pointed out, Clinton and Obama weren't there because that happened to be the day of the Ohio and Texas primaries so they were kind of tied up. This was packed and fascinating and buzzed the whole time. The discussion was about the application of social networks to campaigns and the lessons learned when it came to failures and successes in how to do them. Justine Lam, Ron Paul's key web strategist, pointed out that he had 84,000 Facebook friends, 106,000 Meetup connections and 109,000 MySpace friends and that level of connection was one of the key reasons that he was able to raise the kinds of funds he did - $20 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 for a campaign that couldn't win. She made the point that actually only Richardson and Obama built their own social networks (though I'm not sure that's the case) but they found that $1 million quotes to build one were too high so that they did more of a reach out and work with existing social networks. Many of Paul's supporters were already on the web - marginalized (her term, not mine) programmers and others who were Libertarians or anti-war Democrats or youth for whom "freedom" resonated as a message. The value of this was that by intersecting social networks of those who were likely to support him, the supporters took ownership of the campaign from the ground up. Guiliani's approach was too late and too little but there was a plan for social networks. The campaign developed a Team Rudy social application and the results were amazing - within a month email signups tripled and fundraising escalated to the point that at the nadir of the campaign (Jan 2008) they had their best fundraising month. But, as she pointed out, a bad message or bad strategy still trumps a web presence. The John Edwards campaign had a web strategy built around integration, interaction and accessibility. They were unique in their creativity too. THey sponsored a contest with Eventful that worked kind of like this

1. Demand Edwards on Eventful in your community
2. Ask Edwards question
3. Then based on Eventful numbers someone won and Edwards would directly and personally answer the question you asked.

Or something like that. They did events online with Elizabeth Edwards - so they were always accessible. There was one really interesting technology they used - Upscoop, a free tool from Rapleaf, that lets you upload your address book and then searches over 400 million profiles and tells you what social networks those friends in your address book are on. Doesn't do Outlook as far as I can tell. But THAT is really interesting and a great idea. I could take you on and on in this particular panel because it was invaluable and shows how important a campaign's use of a social web strategy was critical to any progress and was going to be more critical as time progressed.

Making Data Actionable, Dudes

I was the moderator of a panel that wasn't all that exciting by name, but ended up being very exciting due to the participants. They were:

1. Me
2. Bob Greenberg - President of GH International (a forty person company) and the leading homeland security consultant in the U.S. - with a strong focus around the use of social technologies in homeland security (and he's my brother)
3. Bruce Culbert, CEO of Isymmetry and the former head of BearingPoint's CRM and Supply Chain practices; creator of IBM E-business
4. Scott Rogers, Senior Director of Customer Initiatives at David's Bridal - a practitioner star
5. Thomas Vander Wal, the inventor of social tagging and President of InfoCloud Solutions - a Web 2.0 legend

We had about 40 attendees to the panel and the discussion was wide-ranging from Bruce identifying the key ways to think about data - one of which was making someone accountable for its use; to Bob discussing the Virtual Alabama use of Google Maps Enterprise Perpetual License as a core for this brilliant first responders site; to Thomas identifying how to use social tagging in a campaign; to Scott talking about how David's Bridal handled web complainants with specific strategies and criteria for action. There was a key discussion around microtargeting that bears some repetition because it was a theme throughout the day and a subject of some real interest, concern and occasional ire. For those of you who don't know what it is - it's the practice of granular targeting of a prospect so that a super-targeted highly personalized explicit message could be sent to the constituent OR so that a potential voting pattern could be uncovered. So for example, if I knew what scotch you drank, what books you read, what kind of house you lived in and what car you drove, I'd have a good chance of knowing who you'd vote for AND I could send you messages that reflected all those preferences. One thing that I pointed out, thanks to a discussion with Alan Fuller, a principal in Flat Creek Consulting is that if the culture of the political entity remains the same, then a microtargeted message is still just an outbound message shoved down someone's throat - the difference between refined and raw sugar. Microtargeting's value comes when it helps you understand your constituent in a way that allows you to serve them better - not spew on them more specifically. Social tagging is one tool that allows that granularity and exposes that knowledge but is in the hands of the constituent because its their tags that are the core of the granular knowledge.

Who Won?

There is no question that IPDI pulled off something that is vitally important to the future of politics in the U.S. Why? Because it embraced and started the dialogue on what is the most important issue facing a campaign - win or lose - or an elected official. How do you engage your constituent in an era where their expectations have dramatically changed. This is a conference that actually went a long way toward doing that - and focused on which technologies, strategies and cultures were critical for that success. This was honestly a case where the cynicism of a few was drowned in the enthusiasm of the many. The wisdom of this crowd of 600 prevailed. IPDI Rocks - exactly when it should

Facebook Is Not Your BFF - But It Is F----d

How frequently can someone screw up? How badly can someone wreck something that coulda been a contender? I think that Marc Zuckerberg and company are dedicated to finding out the answer to this incredibly stupid set of questions - and they are passionate about it. Its getting to be old news when its news - Facebook Screws Up Again! The headlines don't even scream it out anymore. Its more like, "hey dude, Facebook f----ed up again, ja hear?" "Yeah, ja hear that Tina and I are getting back together?" "NO WAY!" "Way." Or this text message: U hr Fbk f-ed up? K. TTUL. That's how commonplace their major league screw ups have been. Look, I get it. They want to turn a buck or two in revenue and a half a buck or so in profit. Been around, have 60 million "assets" a.k.a. friends a.k.a. profiles that should be MONEY (in all ways you can translate that). But they keep forgetting that their social network has evolved to the point that there are "rules of conduct" and there are "privacy concerns." Thats spelled p-r-i-v-a-c-y, Facebook moguls. That they may be masters of their Facebook universe but they are slaves to its behaviors. They have no way out. Yet, even after the Beacon fiasco of a few months ago, they seemed to have not learned ANYTHING. On Friday, an op. ed. appeared in the Washington Post by staffer Catherine Rampell called "What Facebook Knows That You Don't." The piece highlights a series of recent articles that say:

even if you "deactivate" your account, Facebook holds on to your profile data. This disclosure has gotten privacy groups and consumers up in arms. All the commotion about how Facebook hoards outgoing users' data got me wondering whether we're missing the more important privacy question: What happens to all the data we active members choose to delete, for privacy reasons or otherwise? Facebook's privacy policy is disturbingly cryptic on this issue. It says the company "usually keep[s] a backup copy of the prior version [of updated profile information] for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information." Facebook declines to enumerate how many days (or centuries) constitute a "reasonable period of time." Facebook users do not have access to this information, so it's unclear who exactly would be doing the proposed "reversion."

How incredibly stupid can Mark Zuckerberg and his minions be? Why hasn't he fired his entire legal department? This one is worse than Beacon. Basically, if you interpret what they are doing, its insidious. It basically is removing all control you have over your profile - or, in other words, what you care to record of your life online. So that if YOU decide that YOU don't want to be a member of Facebook - fine, as far as Facebook is concerned. THEY still will own YOUR profile. If YOU decide that YOU made a mistake and revealed something YOU shouldn't have or needed to get past something that YOU had done and recorded, that's fine as far as Facebook is concerned. THEY will still own YOUR history. One of the key psychological benefits of a social network is not just the peer-to-peer communications that it fosters. It is CONTROL of the life that is being exposed by the owner of that life. That is translated to a profile when it comes to a social network and the actions on that profile. What makes Facebook particularly nasty here is that it says to the "friend" - "your ownership is an illusion. Once you commit - you commit. And then, heh, heh, heh, the data is MINE, MINE I tell you. MINE!! I AM FACEBOOK - LORD OF THIS UNIVERSE - MASTER OF THIS SOCIAL DOMAIN." OR to put it in little kids terms: What's mine is mine. And what's yours is mine. Some of this is understandable - though not forgivable. They want Facebook to be a business, not a hangout, and thus they treat the profiles as assets. This is no different on the surface of it than the salesperson who is treating their contact database as their asset and leverage (in their case, to protect their livelihood). But there is a different protocol that governs social networks. Peer-to-peer trust is one major facet of that governance. As a social network there are three things that have to be remembered at all times:

1. The social network is responsible for providing a reasonable expectation of privacy for each and every member of the network. That means that the individual who provides the profile retains ownership of the profile and is, in effect, licensing the use of that profile in a limited way.
2. That the terms of the "license" must be mutually agreeable and always transparent. There are no hidden or undue uses of the profile by the social network.
3. The social network is must do what it has to so that it is trusted AS A PEER by the individual members of the social network. This one is the most important and is critical to all businesses now. I'll be elaborating on this in future entries. For now, suffice to say, the social network can't be seen as an abstract entity by the individual members. It MUST be seen as a "trusted peer" to be successful.

Facebook is failing miserably at all of these and continues to make the kind of mistakes that will doom it in time to a footnote in the history of the social changes that have been roiling the world of human institutions in the last several years. That's sad. Look, I still like Facebook. I'll maintain my profile and you can see my Likenesses from PG to R rated. You can see who I'm poking (in a "good for all audiences" kind of way). You can read my conversations, see what other applications I use and what's going on with me from day to day. I have nearly 400 friends on Facebook and will keep growing that friends group. But at this point, I'll have a good time and put it to good use until it finally succumbs to the pressures of Google's OpenSocial API, Google's Social Graph API, some other social network that does get this and its own incredibly stupid mistakes - especially the ones that violate both public and private trust. In the meantime, I'll talk to my trusted peers on Facebook, as well as LinkedIn and Plaxo. But I have to say - Facebook, I don't trust YOU.

YES!! GIANTS!!! From Cadillacs to Baseball

I'm heading out to Toronto to begin what might be a great but grueling week. I'm on an experts panel at the Microsoft Canada kickoff for Dynamics CRM 4.0 and then head out to San Jose, CA on Wednesday night to arrive at my hotel roughly 2:30am to speak as one of the keynotes at SugarCRM's national SugarCon at 9:00am the following morning. Should be able to give a really good speech since I'm going to be tired and my inhibitions will be, shall we say, "lesser."

But before I go, a couple of things.

First --- YEAHHHHHHH GIANTS!!!

That had to be one of the best football games I've ever seen with David Tyree's catch and Eli's supernatural evasion of the Patriots pass rush/blitz being one of the greatest sports things I've ever seen. Being a Giants fan made it that much sweeter. That was as improbable a season as I've ever seen and one of the most satisfying. Restoring New York to glory helps - and defeating the Patriots who, while I don't hate, didn't want them to be "historic" either.

Okay, but this is about CRM, right?

Sorta.

First, my favorite 3 SuperBowl Commercials:

1. The Clydesdale and Dog Trainer one for Budweiser

2. The Giant Carrier Pigeons for FedEx

3. The "Where is Love" commercial for Diet Pepsi.

I also really liked the Coke ads in general actually. As well as most of the Bud Light ads.

The ones I thought were the worst? Doritos UGC with the giant mouse pounding the guy (once again proving, just because its UGC doesn't make it good) and the ETrade little baby vomiting ad. Its as I've always said. Because we've grown up with TV, even when doing user generated content there is an expectation of production values. Pandering to some fantasized "gross out" crowd isn't particularly funny.

If you want to see all the commercials, go here.

Okay, one last thing on marketing that I think is incredible. I was in a gathering of some people a few weeks ago and we were talking about commercials. When I mentioned that I thought the Cadillac 2008 CTS commercial that stars Kate Walsh of Private Practice and Grey's Anatomy was incredible because of her delivery of one line (see the YouTube video below and I KNOW you'll figure out what it is), the entire crowd - literally and excitedly (note that) jumped in.

Excitedly. The entire room (about 15 people) went and mentioned the line and everyone LOVED it. Which shows that irony and metaphor in contemporary advertising can impact a large group of people on behalf of the advertiser when used well. They are not "uncool." A lot smarter than a stock trading baby vomiting. Intelligence and humor - or at least irony - still make for the best commercials in a short time with the most impact.

Do you know the line? It's just so obvious - and so amazingly well delivered. Its a thing of beauty.

As was the Giants victory!!!

Technorati : CRM 2.0, Cadillac 2008, Marketing, NY Giants, SuperBowl

The New Year Starts for DirecTV. New Lease (or Buy) on Life? You Be The Judge

I have the latest entry from Ellen Filipiak - the first of 2008 - and even though as always, I'm going to encourage that you read it and either email me on what you think or let her know directly through the comments here - I'm going to give her some props for delivering these entries on time and without any prompting at all. Better than I can say for myself.

Here 'tis. Please note her direct email at the bottom of this entry (from her).

Hello!

I hope everyone's 2008 is off to a wonderful start. It's hard to believe that I have been at DIRECTV about 10 months, and that this is my 5^th opportunity to post to Paul's blog. During my short tenure at the company, we have made strides toward improving our service at DIRECTV by listening to our customers and taking action. Reading some of the responses here and elsewhere, many of you have requested concrete examples of how establishing a more direct relationship with customers has improved our service.

My previous post focused on HD DVR improvements and how customer interaction made a difference. Building on that experience, DIRECTV has committed a key group of leaders from all lines of business within the company, including my own, to continue working with forum moderators and bloggers. This team's charter is to discover how changes in our business impact our customers, and proactively communicate and clarify upcoming changes to our online community, as well as take what is learned there to drive improvements throughout DIRECTV.

A specific example of this team's work was getting the word out early on the transitioning of our MPEG2 West Coast distant broadcast network feeds (for customers outside prescribed network broadcast areas) to the MPEG4 platform. http://www.satelliteguys.us/directv-forum/121142-directv-dns-moving-mpeg4.html

The advantages of this outreach are many. By providing this information upfront to moderators and bloggers we:

· Shared the benefits of this change

· Identified who qualified and how they would receive notice

· Provided details of what to expect and what hardware was required

· Took action by listening to real-time feedback to refine how we educated our call center representatives and to improve processes throughout the company

Feedback from our on-line community is very important to us. Combining these voices with the insight from specific internal analyses we have continued to improve our business. As a result, I will be making changes to the customer care organization to establish a closer link between why customers call and the responsible departments within DIRECTV. Let me give you an example of this. As you know, we recently rolled out many local HD channels now totaling 72 cities and 92 national HD channels.

Many of these additions came very quickly during the 4^th quarter. Some customers reported that they were unable to view closed captioning on some of the new channels. By having a process in place to get that direct customer feedback to our broadcast team as well as our channel providers, we were able to ensure closed captioning was up and running quickly.

Another example includes the recent roll-out of DVR Scheduler, which is a free feature that lets customers schedule recordings on their DIRECTV Plus® DVR from any computer or mobile phone, anytime, anywhere. This was developed in response to customers telling us they wanted to be able to have access and control of their viewing choices even when they are not at home. Check it out at http://www.directv.com/dvrscheduler or read Multichannel's take at http://www.multichannel.com/blog/350000435.html#1010020301.

So as you can see, we are working very hard to respond to our customer's needs and desires not just in customer care, but throughout DIRECTV!

We still have room for improvement and are confident that our relationships with our online community and customers will continue to drive DIRECTV products and services.

As always, I appreciate the opportunity to share the changes we are making and to hear your feedback.

Regards,
Ellen Filipiak

SVP Customer Care

Ellen.Filipiak@directv.com

So whatcha all think? Send me the comments (that's me PG) and let me know - or pop me an email at paul-greenberg3@comcast.net if you're shy.

Technorati : CRM, Customer Service, DirecTV

Sometimes A Plane Notion

I do a fair amount of consulting and a LOT of traveling - Mostly United. I complain, like everyone else in the universe about the airlines and will on occasion laud a Jet Blue or a Singapore Airlines for their actual attention to customers. But one thing that NONE of us ever do is talk about our customer experience at an airport and what goes into making that a great one, good one, or horrible one. Even though we routinely bitch about the airlines and it takes nothing to get going on why we hate __________ Air, we never speak to our favorites or most hated airports. Yet how many of them do we deal with in a year - especially if we have connections. How often are we walking through an airport or sitting at a seat, etc.

I had this flash about airports Saturday (yesterday) when my wife and I were returning from Naples FL. Actually this was a business trip that she came with me on so we could hang out a bit together. Neighborhood America, my favorite enterprise social networking company (more on them another entry or two down the road), had me there to speak at their Executive Seminar on the social conversation and customer engagement AND to see their new technology for enterprise social networks - which, without going into detail, I have to say, was impressive to say the least. In order to get there and get United FF miles, we had to take U.S. Airways as a Star Alliance partner which necessitates a trip from Dulles in D.C. through Charlotte, NC to Fort Myers/Southwest Florida airport. While sitting in the Charlotte airport with Yvonne (that's my wife, pardners), I realized how much I actually liked that airport. With the other two - Dulles - I don't like it much at all. Ft. Myers/SWF airport - I'm indifferent. Seems small and inconsequential. But Charlotte is arguably my favorite on the east coast - and one of my favorites all told.

Interestingly enough, there is a company that tracks airlines, airline lounges at airports and airports and the traveler experience. Its called Skytrax and has, according to them, 268,000 reviews from customers etc. It seems to carry some industry weight because when the San Francisco airport won their "best U.S. airport" in 2006, SFO issued a press release trumpeting that. There were 14 user reviews going back to 2002 about Charlotte which were for the most part, extremely positive and very similar as to why. Here is a typical good review (and here is the link to all the Charlotte reviews) that made some sense to me (meaning, it weighed in positively on the things that validated my thinking about the airport):

I decided to do the best I could at dissecting this customer experience to find out what it was I liked - partially because I was curious, partially because its instructive to drill to the granular level on customer experience as a template for doing so in a professional sense. So with the help of my wife here's what we figured out.

1. Everything is clearly marked and there is no problem finding your way to any location in any concourse.
2. The airport is organized for both those connecting quickly and those who have a few hours to spend between connections.
3. The moving sidewalks are plentiful and aimed at getting you from Concourse B to C or wherever you have to go in a minimum of time with a maximum of speed & efficiency.
4. There is a warm hospitable "feeling" about the place - with generally friendly employees wherever you go - either airlines, airport, or stores.
5. There is a central hub that the concourses are spoked around - and the central hub has a substantial number of eateries of different types - as does each concourse.
6. There are rocking chairs to sit in in the central hub that are near a strong wireless zone.
7. Wireless access is free.
8. There are dozens of other kinds of stores if you care to shop or window shop and it has a cozy, mallish feeling - not too busy, not too big, but big enough.
9. The carpets are dark and very clean - not scruffy or dirty.
10. There are acoustic ceiling tiles and the noise level at the airport is a low hum - not even a buzz. Nothing irritating about it at all. Even though its busy.
11. There are readily accessible mobile carts and drivers who are quite accommodating on taking people where they have to go. I would say that we observed 5 times the normal airport number and level of activity on these - with nothing dangerous occurring either.
12. Bathrooms are plentiful and, according to my wife, in the rest rooms for women, there is an attendant there all the time to keep them clean. Didn't see that in the mens room but I wasn't looking either.
13. There are substantial numbers of departure info boards throughout the concourses and in the hub and on the way.
14. The chairs at the gates, while vinyl, are soft vinyl and infinitely more comfortable than the hard plastic you often find at other airports.

Some of this may seem trivial to you but take it as a whole and you get a feel for how good this place really is. All in all, my favorite, but what's important is to recognize how much obvious thinking has gone into the nuances of the traveler's needs and feelings and comfort. I don't suspect that a single item I mentioned in the 14 above, wasn't thought through by someone at the planning stages for the expansion of this airport.

Now, if you took this on a utilitarian level - pure feature and function - it has the same things that any airport has - rest rooms, stores, eateries, departure info, seats at gates, mobile carts, carpets, ceiling tiles, other chairs, likely wireless access of some sort, etc. But its how they do it, the granular thinking that goes into what the customer/traveler experience etc. that makes the difference here.

And in general.

Technorati : Charlotte NC, Customer Experience

Okay Time to Open 2008: The Year of the Totally Cool Social Customer

I love you.

You love you.

And, as I said, in such a manly dramaqueeny sort of way, two and a half years ago- most companies don't ACTUALLY love you, but want you to think they love you - because you love you (unless, of course, you have a self-esteem issue - but even there, you know you should love you - or you wouldn't know you have the issue).

What does THAT mean? It means that style - and even stylin' - matter to all of us as customers - and has to matter to the business half of our schizophrenic selves.

And so starts 2008 - Social CRM with style.

Think not? Take a look at this article on how consumer technologies are beginning to drive innovation in business. Then add to that brew, the study referenced in my favorite blog entry of all time "Pardon Me. Is That Laptop a Real Louis Vuitton? It was done by Intel and Turay Ultrasuede. It found 76% of the respondents stated that when they made a technology choice, style mattered. More interesting, 73% of the respondents said that when they looked at someone else's technology, they looked at the style. So you have consumer thinking and technologies beginning to impact innovation and decision making in business too.

Not persuaded about style (and love) yet, you unromantic utilitarian, you? What about this?

Or this?

Or this?

Okay, maybe not that.

Now that Web 2.0 is becoming part of the vendor landscape, the issue of style is becoming one of the most important issues as hardware and software are increasingly commoditized and products become increasingly part of a set of aggregated offerings from business. The differentiators move from feature/function to looks and style. Traditional software and hardware vendors have begun to catch up and they now realize that style is genuinely important - and it, like Web 2.0, is being driven by the customers right through the steel hearts of the corporation and the steel heads of the analysts (that would include me, I guess).

That is by no means a shallow thing as we shall see.

To start this journey, take a look at this week's Business Week - that would be the recently redesigned, newly horribly ugly, changed look Business Week. There's an article that is well worth looking at called "That Computer Is So You."

The fact that the customer is driving the changes in thinking is stated in econotechnospeak by Dave Fester, the GM of Product Marketing of Microsoft:

"The market is pushing computer makers to do this."

So true, but, in some ways, so sad.

What's So Sad?

You would hope that businesses in general, especially those that profess to be at the cutting edge, like technology providers, would be foresighted enough to anticipate this market, but they apparently aren't. So customers have to do the thinking and then make it clear to businesses that they have to agree to this or they (the customers) simply won't do business with them. The businesses on the other hand, should be realizing that, by this time, that, in fact, most of the people who run these businesses that are caught flat-footed by these changes - are also consumers, so they should know how consumers think.

But they didn't know. And that's sad. A lack of foresight and they're caught flatfooted. You saw how long it took for them to adopt Web 2.0 - so imagine what it does to an technology enterprise's ego to think that style is going to be a key frontier for 2008. As we see some of them are.

What's So True?

The customers are driving this market because the market was defined when these customers began concerning themselves with personal choices and individual customization and began sharing their choices with their peers - outside of business.

Remember this phrase, my colleagues, my friends - OUTSIDE OF BUSINESS

Thing is, the change in communications that we now take somewhat for granted, though are fascinated by its newness still, took place outside of innovation at the enterprise. This was a social evolution driven by IM, SMS, and MySpace; by 14 and 15 year olds on their cellphones, as much or more than it was ever driven by a company. It is a social change that actually impacts economics, politics, culture, institutions of all types and sizes and changes the nature of human demand which means changes individual expectations of all institutions. Among those expectations are immediacy of response, visibility into the institution (truthiness) and the means to sculpt one's own experience.

This makes Joe Pine's and James Gilmore's mass customization uniquely more interesting to business - and its because of what I formulaically could say is "personalization + sharing = a hell of an interest in mass customization + a twist.

Think of it this way. The peer-to-peer sharing of personal choices, looks, behaviors and interactions (made obvious by Facebook) created the market that Dave Fester talks about above. The reason it is a market is because they are all shared. Shared. Shared. Shared. In other words, others had access to them with either positive or negative judgments attached to the value of those choices, looks, behaviors and interactions. That desire to judge is inherent in our gene pool. All of these were judged, say, "cool" or "uncool"; "good" or "crap", "useful" or "what the f--- good is THAT?!!!". Or a myriad of other emotional or behavior descriptors. Proof of concept has been around since the first member of the species thought that fire was "cool" (not "hot"). Social sites that do reviews like Yelp, etc. are also proof. Their popularity is boundless.

When we each do that and we use our mouths to spread the word, to share those definitive judgments we throw out there, we create buzz or maybe, buzzkill.

Its why Dave Fester also says in the same Business Week article, once again from behind the enterprise firewall, "There's a new bar being set."

The way its being set is kind of funny in this particular case. Microsoft is sponsoring a "fashion show" that's being run by three fashion mavens including the wildly popular (for reasons beyond any logic I can actually construct), Nigel Barker from America's Next Top Model." Their job is to judge the runway where a dozen PCs will parade and they have to choose the one that's the most fashionable.

Read the article. It confirms time and time again that 2008 is the year of style when it comes to customers and, by extension CRM and by further extension, CRM strategy. One more quote from Michael Dell (from Dell....??? Duh.) before I move on.

"We're in the fashion business. The products we sell increasingly make a statement about who you are."

Michael "Versace" Dell, dahling.

For those of you who remain skeptics when it comes to the power of style and its rightful placement at least along side function and feature (it no longer follows function - See Louis Sullivan's world famous "form follows function" architectural concept from the early 20th century. Go to Chicago and look at his beautiful, beautiful buildings, while you're at it.), got a couple of books for you to read.

First, the Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel, so you can locate the role of style in how it affects history and business in particular. Even more germane to this particular entry, read the aforementioned Joe Pine II and James Gilmore's The Experience Economy. Pine and Gilmore make the pint that the customer's experience - of which style happens to be a feature - can be a highly profitable venture for businesses - especially when the tools of mass customization are brought to the fore. This is supported by Donald A. Norman, a professor at my alma mater, Northwestern University (which automatically means he's right) and author of The Design of Future Things. "The proper way to design is not target an individual type of customer. You want 100 million customers."

Personally, this is where I would include the "twist" I mentioned above. Design for 100 million, but include the tools that allow each individual in that 100 million to craft the design to the style and substance that they want. The 100 million person design is a framework that provides the capacity, flexibility and tools for an infinite number of possible singular instances. Meets the need for mass customization and individual style simultaneously and makes the experience that the customer is having both valuable to the business providing it and wonderful for the customer having it.

All in all, we're kicking into 2008 with an unprecedented transformation of the business ecology - as it is increasingly being sculpted and shaped by the customers a.k.a. people who are driving social change in the way we communicate and with a fresh new set of expectations - more than ever before in their own hands. Businesses, remember something. You're customers too. You're either institutional customers in a B2B world or consumers when you go home and engage in family life and that B2C world. That's a good thing because you can understand how style impacts your business because you can understand how style impacts you.

Remember:

"You got style. You got grace. You're a member of the human race."

Welcome to (bust a move) 2008. The Year of the Seriously Cool Lookin' and Actin' And Stylin' Social Customer

Technorati : America's Next Top Model, CRM, CRM 2.0, Experience Economy, Iphone, Style, social customer

God, Put It To Rest, Ye Merry Gentlemen: ANOTHER "What About B2B?" Answer

I thought my dramatic last flourish would be the forecast for 2008, but I couldn't resist letting you know of one more article that I think you should read - especially if you are a "what about B2B?"monger or have an interest in literal vendor relationship management. This morning in online PC World an article on how power has shifted into the hands of the software buyers - in this case they are addressing CIOs. Worth reading because of their reasoning. They think that open source, the shift to SaaS, the increasing use of web services and service oriented architectures and the growth of virtualization are increasing the number of alternatives out there forcing the software vendors to be increasingly competitive and increasingly nervous, putting authority and control in the hands of the buyers a.k.a. CUSTOMERS That means B2B buyers are in control. That means once again as I've been saying for at least 18 and as much as 24 months, the customers are in control of the business ecosystem, whether its B2C or B2B.

As they say in Thailand, there's lots of good solid left brainedness and just plain smart reasoning in this article, ka.

Consider this PC World article here a late present.

Happy New Year everyone.

Technorati : Forrester Group, VRM, salesforce.com, software as a service

This is IT!! The Forecast for 2008: Sizzle or Fizzle? Tune In Next Year, Same Time, Same Station

Time to Stop Procrastinating and to Start Prognosticating Or Is That Pontificating?

There is an important algorithm that all my forecasts are based on that, for the first time, in this 2007 fourth and final wrap up blog entry, I'm going to reveal to everyone so that you can become a fabulous forecaster too.

Here it is:

cs*(womm)n = d(ui)

Where:

cs = crowdsourcing

* = times, multiply by, you should know this one. Did you flunk school completely?

womm=word of mouth marketing

n= Either the number of friends you've talked to about the "thing" or a letter of the alphabet that falls between "m" and "o" that makes the algorithm exotic.

d(ui) = Dewars, the scotch (not like "we should end all de wars".....though we, of course, should) You can interpret the ui as "user interface" though if you can interpret it some other way, I can't bail you out.

Let me explain how this complex algorithm was created. I've been listening to (actually, catching up with the Onion News video podcasts the last couple of days.Aside a complete, unrelated but important aside: for those of you who have that sardonic, satiric sort of sense of sumor - ahhh, humor but humor just didn't have that "s" I needed, you should be listening, watching and reading The Onion religiously. (Here are all the links that you could ever want) The November 2007 podcasts were sponsored by Dewars leading up to a December 5, repeal of prohibition day. They ran this somewhat cute but not all that funny ad about the repeal of prohibition. Not worth it until....the end. Here it is, unchill filtered, unadulterated, cask strength. The end of the Dewars commercial:

CS*(WOMM)N=D(UI): A ONE ALGORITHM PLAY
(There is a fade in from the previously undescribed scene and standing center stage is a somewhat exaggerated master of ceremonies sort looking rather pleased with himself. This MC looks at the crowd and begins to speak)
"As Tommy Dewar says, 'If an opinion becomes general, it is generally correct!'"
(The scene fades to black and we are back to The Onion Video News)

That rather remarkable quote ,from the mouth of someone who I presume is either a liquor magnate, or a man with a very coincidental name.

THAT, my friends and colleagues, is timeless wisdom when it comes to prognostication. If I didn't know better I'd think that James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds said it at a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) event. So take that lovely Tommy Dewars advice into account when you forecast - because that is about the validity level of any forecast.

Now for my forecast - the number you see in front of each of these is merely the level of feeling I have as to my "rightness" for 2008. You could call it the "n" in the algorithm above if that gives you a measure of comfort.

1. (8) CRM 2.0 will be nearly ubiquitous in 2008 and omnipresent in 2009. It's clear with the moves being made by the market makers like salesforce, Oracle, SAP and to a lesser extent Microsoft with the integration of social technologies into their offerings - and the understanding that customers want cool looking stuff too, that CRM 2.0 is finally reaching the place it should and by 2008 will be there technologically through platforms, partnerships and tools. The issue that will remain will be the culture of the practitioners to take this into the core of their strategy. Its actually a lot harder to "get" the fact that the customers are in command and that they demand transparency, authenticity and more than anything engagement/collaboration as part of their RFP to those that they will do business with. Don't meet that cultural and strategic set of requirements, the technologies you adopt won't be much use for long. I think that the strategic adoption of customer engagement as the core of customer strategy will take longer than the linear willingness to use the technologies and there will be some notable failures when the totality of the criteria aren't met. (parenthetically, I hope that this year sees a better name than CRM 2.0. Maybe Social CRM or if we want to be really hip about it, so.cial.cRM (ain't that de.lic.ious?)
2. (7)SMB interest in CRM - both strategically and technologically will not only grow, but be at the cutting edge in the thinking beyond. This is due to Gen X and Y entrepreneurs driving much of the SMB market; the easy availability of cheap or free business technology tools; increasing visibility of anecdotal evidence of small business success which means really good stories that always impact how people think, the published benefits of Web 2.0 technologies; and the increasing use of consumer technologies and thinking in business. - Interesting, the latter is important because SMBs - especially the small businesses are closer to consumer thinking than their Fortune 500 counterparts. For example, a case can easily be made to use the iPhone for small businesses as a business and consumer device, while in the larger environments, those that use Exchange servers for example, it isn't the wisest choice. There are more factors here too, among them the hunger for the SMB market is reaching ravenous levels by technology vendors; and the resultant effect is dozens of solid alternatives to big boys. The value of those alternatives is not just that they are cheap but that the companies that make them are small businesses themselves and they have a solid use case when they look in a mirror. Think there isn't enough proof. First Check out Brent Leary's always mission-critical stuff on this very idea. He is THE expert in this area of CRM. Second, look at some of the results of this study by RingCentral on small business technology spending: "The majority of small businesses (60%) will increase tech spending in 2008 • Only 6% of businesses plan to decrease spending and 31% planning to maintain current spending levels. • Small business use of social networking sites (LinkedIn, Facebook) will increase from 38% in 2007 to 59 % in 2008." For the full monty on this one check out this site.
3. (8)Social media and especially social networks will hit a wall as too many proliferate and privacy issues and commercialization questions begin to predominate discussion. This won't stop people from using them in business or joining them but the rate of growth will slow, barring some spectacular entry into the fray. We've seen that with the continuing stupid moves being made by Facebook - especially with Beacon. If you think about it, Facebook began to treat its "customers" as objects of a sale, rather than subjects of a relationship - exactly what even "classic CRM" set out to fix. This was reinforced no further back than yesterday, when news hit that Google, the drivers of the possible "spectacular entry" - did the following: "They flipped on a switch in Google Reader that makes posts and articles designated as "shared" by Google Reader users available to every person listed as that person's contact or friend on Google Talk. Given that bloggers don't necessary want the exposure to what could be parents or business associates, among others, the bloggers took umbrage. AND to make it worse, they didn't even learn from the mistakes of Beacon. They made this an opt-out feature, not opt-in. So stupidity, privacy and distrust are punching holes into the sex appeal of social media and this will be even more prevalent in 2008 - starting to settle the totally scorching social network frontierland. For more info on the StupidGoogle error, check here.
4. (6)Web based apps. will become enterprise ready in 2008 as companies like Zoho begin to challenge the on demand market leaders with their pricing and features. Zoho in particular will be ready to rock - with offline and business work. This is a natural evolution, since most of the social media and Web 2.0 application vendors are trying some way to make money and need to appeal to businesses as well as consumers. In fact, dozens of Web 2.0 vendors have asked me over the last 6 months primarily how to get into the CRM "market." The interest in how to help businesses lock in their customers is pretty high because most of the big and small Web 2.0 and web-based vendors are seeing the value. Companies like Zoho are putting forward solid products with inexpensive subscriptions, making them eminently appealing and the more business functionality (scalability, integration, security, etc.) they include, the more that businesses will see their value. I see this as a real threat to the on demand world by 2010