In a May 5 entry entitled "CRM is Dead" , Seth Godin says,
"It might be more than just semantics. Disney Destinations Marketing has a new department: Customer Managed Relationships. Here's the quote from them that Tim shared with me, "CMR is our version of CRM - just a slight nuance regarding our philosophy that our guests invite us into their lives and ultimately manage our presence/relationship with them."
I would hardly call that just a "slight nuance," but it is a welcome change that to find a company that is always magical being even more so and entering CustomerWorld - a new customer driven universe - one that so many businesses just refuse to acknowledge as even existing. (Most of those businesses think "hey Disney invented FantasyLand too." Unfortunately, those same businesses haven't a clue that they are actually living in FantasyLand, not Disney.)
In fact, I would say that Disney Destinations Marketing's CMR initiatives are well beyond a nuance and that they are one of the participants in what is a coming sea change - one that is right now more conceptual than actual, though more and more companies are beginning to take it through. Once the company allows the customer to manage their own experiences with the company, the company becomes something different. With that paradigm transformed, CRM, as we knew it, begins to go away. But don't assume customer experience management (CEM) is its replacement. That is still far too focused in the "old school" corporate thinking. The company has no particular right to manage its customers experiences. People are looking to control their own lives which, among other things, includes business experiences and the company needs to become not just a producer but an aggregator and collaborator in the production of individualized experiences. Just like Disney Destinations Marketing is thinking. The more companies that adapt to that culture change, the more old CRM goes away. Or, at least, CRM becomes something else. Call it what you want. It doesn't matter unless it impedes the change.
For me, I have no name for it yet but know the new business strategies and models are not going to be called CRM or CEM - by me anyway.
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Paul
Godin is wrong. Well, sort of.
Go to the marketing department in any bank, telco, utility, airline, automobile manufacturer and have a look around. You will see dozens of people beavering away to create a wide variety of communications AT markets. You know, the TV or magazine ads that fewer and fewer people are looking at.
You will also see a few creating direct communications TO individual customers. You know these too, the mails that end up in the wastebin before they have hardly had time to hit the doormat.
This is the Traditional CRM that is alive and well and busy spending billions. GM spent USD36 Billion over the last 10 years in the USA creating a company with a market value of USD10 Billion. It may not be working, but it doesn't look very dead to me.
But look a little harder and you will see the occasional people developing communications to talk to new customers THROUGH existing customers. You have no doubt heard of viral marketing. Of course the best viral will have been organised by customers without help from the companies they are promoting. It will have been based on the fact that customers just love their products and want to tell everyone else about them.
Once in a blue moon you will see people busy talking WITH customers and helping them to co-create all aspects of the companies' future. They will be developing new products, talking about existing products in communities, developing "open-source marketing", creating "flash mobs" to buy products at a discount and serving themselves through the Internet.
It is these last two categories that are playing an ever increasing role in the New CRM and that may on day supercede large parts of it.
Perhaps Godin is just ahead of his time. CRM is Dead, long live the New CRM.
Posted by: Graham Hill | May 18, 2006 at 10:50 AM