PGreenblog

Life isn't Abstract: The Duke Diet and Fitness Center, Customer Experience and Me

This one is personal – and will involve some information about me that you might not really care to hear – or maybe you do. If you don’t, either mentally redact it (though to do that you’d have to have seen it) or don’t read this. If you do read this, think about why I’m writing this. Not to be too personal, but to show you how deep the impact of positive customer experience can be. Trust me, this is a good story, not a TMI one…or maybe TMI but good, nonetheless.

The big picture

In case you hadn’t noticed (if you know me or have seen me), I’m overweight. I know it’s a shock – most of you say, “how can that be? He’s so…he’s so….hmmm, overweight works.”

I’m also 63 years old, heading rapidly to 64. When you reach this age, young in spirit and heart, notwithstanding, you realize that you need to do some things that you wish you didn’t have to think about.

To change the pronoun’s case from “you” to “I”, I realized that it was time to lose weight, not because I’m ashamed of it – I’m not. My weight really isn’t a big psychological impediment to achievement or a constraint to my engagement with life. But it is a health concern that has to be taken seriously because of a very simple principal. I love being alive and get real joy from the relationships and activities in my life. So I want to be alive for a long time to come.

I’ve tried many times to lose the weight and have but have that classic weight yo-yo or if you prefer a different metaphor, weight roller coaster problem. I lose, I gain, I lose, I gain. Wheeeeee! Well, not wheeeee! really.

Part of the problem is that I spend so much time on the road (I’m writing this on a plane coming back from San Francisco, for example…and continuing to write this on a plane going back to San Francisco and now on a plane to Lafayette, Louisiana and now on a plane back from San Francisco again) that any rhythm or as some of my friends like to say, cadence, I get into, gets broken by travel. Second, I seem to have a metabolism that quits on me. My standing punch line in a not ha-ha funny way is that I can inhale air and gain weight. More on this later; its part of the story.

In any case, I’ve tried to lose weight many times. Actually in the early 90s between strength training and cardio and watching what I ate, I got down to 11% body fat. Additionally, in 2006 through diet and cardio I reached 190 – which I thought was my ideal body weight. Please note this comment too. It, too, bears on things later.

But here I was, at an impasse. How am I going to create a program that incorporates my lifestyle and at the same time does what I’ve been unable to do, despite my best efforts? I truly didn’t have a clue. Not a friggin’ clue.

The preliminaries

So I decided in July, one day, to start doing something about this. I have to take it out of the hands of the amateurs (me) and put it in the hands of the professionals. But who are these professionals?

I began a pretty focused investigation of who these superstars, who were going to save the day for me, might be. I had a clearly defined structure for this investigation – despite my normally ad hoc approach to life.

1. There was a problem to solve – I needed to drop 50 pounds in a healthy way.
2. To do that, I needed a program that I could adhere to once I had it in my hot little hands.
3. I needed this program to take my lifestyle i.e. continuous travel, into account.
4. I needed the program to be personalized though I had to assume it would be a modular version of that – built on best practices of “people like me.” I doubt someone put some program out there that was labeled “Just Waiting for Paul Greenberg – The CRM One” and hoped that I would find it.
5. I needed to commit to it, once I had it to get the outcome I was looking for (see #1).

This is far better project development and management than I’m capable of professionally and better planning than I ordinarily do, but it seemed to me that this was important enough for me to actually add rigor to my thinking, something I’m not exactly known for. ☺

So, dig I did. Of course, when you enter the realm of health and wellness, the amount of crap is super high and that ranges from the obvious garbage like “you can lose 100 pounds in 3 days drinking this herbal supplement (and taking a chain saw to your belly). I was looking for a combination of science and spirit. The former to help me get the data I need to make intelligent decisions on what to do; the latter because my extraordinary wife of 32 años, Yvonne, convinced me about two years ago of the value of centering one’s self and living in the moment. I knew this had to be a program component or what I was looking for wouldn’t be sufficient.

So I hunted and hunted and hunted and didn’t really come up with anything that made immediate impact or even obvious sense. (Note this too, has some bearing on this story). Then one day, the story goes, Paulie was reading an article on obesity and fitness on line and he saw a reference to something in the article called the Duke Diet and Fitness Center (DFC). So, being of sound mind and overwrought body, he found the Center and BAM! it nailed it –and him. This was the place. Interestingly, and this will have a bearing on the customer experience/CRM lessons learned later, I only saw one reference in an article that happened to cause me to look at this.

The reason that DFC seemed to be the place was the mixture of science and spirit, of training and education, of compassion and rigor. Their website wasn’t really adequate to the task but there was just enough to convince me to make it a contender – the only one. It was competing with me doing nothing about my weight issue but continuing to let things ride – up the scale. However, it was kind of no contest but you know how it goes, affirmation and validation are always necessary when it comes to making decisions that not only might change your life, but change the way you do life.

So, while I was trolling around about the DFC, I found the lodging that was adjacent to it – a place called Trinity Commons – and I spoke to the guy managing the DFC portion of Trinity Commons (it was otherwise, as I found out later, used for Duke off campus student housing) a down home guy named Eddie O’Brien who told me he was a graduate of the program and “it saved my life.” Eddie it turns out lost 160 pounds being in the program and was a healthy man now.

I was convinced. I called them and was sent a packet of information and forms to fill out - a 13 page medical questionnaire, a 6-7 page (I forget) mental health questionnaire and some other forms including a food tracking form that wanted me to track every single thing I ate for 3 days including a weekend day. That wasn’t terribly hard since I typically (when on) tracked the food I ate using MyFitnessPal, a great app BTW. They also wanted me to bring a copy of my medical records. I paid them a relative boatload and now seemingly cheap price (all in context, isn’t it?) and off we went for the 5-day program.

The Program

I went down to Durham N.C. and checked into the Trinity Commons apartments because that was what these were – really nice apartments in a facility that was about a block away from the DFC and was actually off campus housing for Duke students minus a few of the apartments set aside for the program. The stories associated with being in what was effectively a dorm at the age of 63 are a trip, told over a drink of choice. Ask me sometime. In any case, I went on a Saturday as recommended and stayed through the next Saturday. But the program was from Monday through Friday.

While there I met an extraordinary group of people in those who attended and the staff. The weights of the attendees varied from very heavy to slim and trim. Why slim attendees? They were former not-slim attendees who came back to the program on a regular basis and used it to not just see friends but to make themselves accountable. One young guy whose name I’m leaving out deliberately had been coming back since he started in 2005 and had lost 100 plus pounds and looked terrific but his bonds with others who were there and had traveled on their own journey with him was something to behold.

I could describe some of the terrific people here but in the interests of their privacy and because this is a customer experience and marketing tale with lessons to be learned, I won’t. Suffice to say, that I remain in touch and they literally all were truly great, warm, intelligent, friendly people, whose lives I’m glad have touched mine.

For me, it was, come out of the five days there with a program to use when I left. That meant one that took into account my lifestyle, which as you know means traveling like a maniac and insane amounts of work and busyness.

Honestly, what I expected and what I got were two different things – all to the beyond good. Even though I intended to fully participate, I am by either nature or training, don’t know which, a bit of a skeptic, when it comes to personal things being helped by outside “forces.” So what I expected was pretty modest. I would learn some things and I would attempt to apply what I learned “on the outside” after the five days were up.

I got so much more than that. While I’m not going to detail all of it, let me give you a brief energetic overview.

In that five days, I had one on one meetings and classes and training and exercises with medical staff and fitness instructors and health psychologists and nutritionists. I did a variety of required things including blood work, and weigh-ins. I did some optional tests including the “bodpod” and a test to determine my actual as opposed to calculated resting metabolic rate (more on that later). I got a great massage that used a number of different techniques. I received fitness instruction that took into account what I was looking for – a plan to sustain me on the road.

I can’t say that all of the classes were ideal. For example, there was one that looked at the issue of weight and shame – and that just isn’t my problem. I’m not ashamed of my weight (I’m happy to say the bulk of that weight is now gone) and never have been. I’m not lacking confidence – god, no. For me, this was and is a health issue – one I have to deal with as my age increases. Hell, I’m in my 60s now (don’t feel it but am) and health is something that has to matter. In the beginning of the 5 days, there was a session in which each participant (about 15 of us) were asked, “why are you here?” My answer, “I like my life.” I was being modest actually. I love my life – not everything but on the whole. Its amazing and I’m blessed or lucky depending on your proclivities, to have it. So I want to live and long time and too much weight can be an impediment to that.

What did I learn?

I had some eye opening results that have made this something that I had to do rather than just something that I wanted to do. Though its both. Okay, if you don’t want to get all personal now, eyes down to the lessons section. But if you’re okay with NTMI – nearly too much information – then read on.

1. I found out that I am pre-diabetic. Diabetes is indicated by a glucose level of 126 or more – in two fasting glucose tests in a row. I had 124, barely below the threshold. No second test necessary. The solution is, ta da, lose weight. So no reason for me to freak and I didn’t. Just doing what I have to do.
2. I found out that I’ve been operating under a misconception for years. To explain: When you figure out how many calories you should consume per day to lose weight, for the most part its based on a calculated resting metabolic rate (RMR). That means the amount of calories that you expend in a day if you do nothing but sit (in effect). My calculated RMR has always been between about 1880-1900. I took a test and found out that my actual RMR is 1400 calories per day. That means that I’ve been eating 500 calories more a day (translated to 3500 per week – a full pound up a week!) than I should have been. That means with exercise I was pretty much on a permanent plateau.
3. I learned to slow up when I eat. It takes the brain 20 minutes to register that you are full. Imagine how much you can pack into your stomach in that time. Far beyond mere satisfaction before it registers as “OMG, my stomach hurts.” Simple solution. Take a bite, put the fork down. Pick it up, take a bite, put the fork down. That simple thing is sooooo easy to do – and you eat less.

There was much more, but I came out of there with a clear personal mandate. Lose enough weight to get to 195 (five pounds under the bodpod determination that my ideal weight for my size, body composition etc is 200. Hey I’m a little vain, okay?).

So where am I? Down from 245 to 216 as of this writing (since late August – and I’m not starving by any means). Please, do me a favor and don’t congratulate me or give me kudos or support. I’m good. If you comment, please focus it around the customer experience and marketing parts on this or on the institution. There are lessons ot be learned that I want to point out and will from here on.

The customer experience lessons

This is a successful program – with one big caveat as you will see. They have an 85% success rate because the change is to your life and lifestyle. Its not implementing a fad diet. It is a combination of smart programming and an incredibly well thought out environment, populated by people who not only care but are good human beings besides.

What is/was mission critical to this program and the experience of each participant is two things:

1. The mixture of the elements of the program – Medical, behavioral, spiritual, physical, emotional. They have evolved a holistic model that is appropriate to the 21st century citizen. They take all facets of a human being into account and build the personalized programs from a combination of medical data, behavioral and emotional knowledge, nutritional information and physical training and planning. They balance all of it with spiritual centering via mediation and other programs for and from the soul.
2. The highly deliberate environment – built around two principles that I can see – 1. Community 2. Treating adults like adults – letting them control their own choices while guiding them to the right place. – During the time you are there, the environment is deliberately focused around fostering a sense of community and support –from each staff member who are clearly chosen for their combination of expertise and their humanity to the way that the program participants are encouraged to do things with each other. I went to a Durham Bulls game with one of the participants, for example. They had alumni who were there for round 7 or 8 for example, speak on their history at the Center – and two friends who met at the center who spoke together emphasized not just the DFC’s work but the evolution of their friendship and how they have sustained since 2005. The second aspect of the environment is that they didn’t force anyone to do anything. Everyone there was treated as a responsible adult who was accountable to themselves. No one had to do anything they didn’t want to, though there were constraints nonetheless. So, all meals were chosen from a specific set of choices on menus. The server staff at the cafeteria gave you ONLY what you chose – no changes possible, no bigger a portion than that provided. Choose it yourself, but live with your choices. You should know why you are there.

The lessons of public presence

One thing puzzled me from before I went and was reinforced over the five days there. Why did I have to look so hard to find this program when I was doing the research to find programs like this? I found it buried in a newspaper or online journal article of some kind. My curiosity and my desire to do something drove me to investigate this – or else it would have remained obscurely buried.

When I got there, I found out that the attendance for this extraordinary program was down somewhat in an era where obesity was rampant. Now its cost might be a factor – it isn’t cheap – but there are enough heavy people who want to solve the problem who can afford this program out there So I don’t think that was much of a factor.

The actual problem was marketing – or at least, marketing defined as via a public, visible presence. As I told one of the senior staff – you have a program that sells itself…but it doesn’t broadcast itself.” They tended to be almost too humble about the benefit they brought to people – at least in a public forum. For example, they have a partnership with the National Football League (NFL) for athletes as they and after they retire. Imagine what a public endorsement from one of those athletes can mean to a program like this Yet if you go to the NFL retirement program web pages – you can barely find mention of this relationship. Ugh.

The second egregious problem – is the unrealized potential of the post-care environment - meaning the DFC didn't recognize what it was - or at least wasn't doing anything about it.

What I mean by this is that there is clearly a sense of community from the graduates. For example, several of them – a pretty high percentage I’m given to understand – come back for follow up sessions even when they are down to their “normal” weights. Some of it is for the former customer making themselves accountable to someone other than themselves. Some is planned together with other grads to be able to reconnect. The sense of community at the site is so strong that it creates a desire to go back to this safe, nurturing environment that not only treats your health but handles you as an adult, not a child with a problem. That was there.

BUT…. Other than a few alumni Facebook pages, there is no real online community to go to and to continue the relationships between alumni and staff and between alumni. There is no subject matter expertise provided except some webinars once in a while. In other words, customer retention isn’t being considered to put it in business terms. The efforts are left in the hands of the alumni to do whatever – and while laudable, it is ad hoc and from a business standpoint for the DFC is minimally valuable, though certainly helpful for the alumni.

Things to be done

So what can be done by the DFC to make itself visible as the world-class institution that it already is?

1. Stop being so humble. Obesity is an issue that hurts millions of people. This is likely the most effective program in the United States, maybe the world. The results are measurable. The value immeasurable. Tell people this.
2. What #1 means for marketing. If you have programs like the NFL Retirement program, get a well known player who has been through the program to endorse it.
3. Build an outreach program through a social media presence on Facebook and Twitter. Participate in user forums and other social channels as subject matter experts in groups specific to medical, healthcare, wellness, obesity, and other appropriate topics.
4. Continue the webinars but as a series rather than a random group of events and experts. Get the word out via your outreach program and via more traditional media.
5. Build a community for your alumni and for guests who are exploring who you are and what you do. This is a community you control, not a Facebook page. It should be a place where alumni interact and renew old acquaintances; where the staff participates and comingles. The staff also should be available at specific times to be subject matter experts (SMEs) who (within reason) will answer questions that community members have. There should be content available on site and a link library for people that takes them to valuable information. Make this both a nurturing virtual community and a community center where important knowledge on diet and fitness, obesity and other conditions is aggregated.

Aside from one or two events, I’m not sure that I have ever done anything as important or valuable for my health as attend the Duke Diet and Fitness Center. Aside from me endorsing it, which I wholeheartedly and without reservation, do, there is a strong CRM story to be told here that I think not only can benefit the center but benefit any company that has a great story and provides a benefit, and as is often the case in especially the non-profit sector, they are too humble to tell it and forget as often as not that they are a business – albeit one with a purpose that benefits people, more often than that. I trust that there is something here beyond just my personal journey – and that the DFC and the institutions like it can take this and start their own journey.

You rock, DFC

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CRM Musings, Miscellany and Doings

CRM Musings and Miscellany: Short Bits

Every now and then I get a hankering to just do these short, pithy (there’s no lisp involved here) things rather than my usual long-winded posts.  This is the result of one of those hankerings.

CRM, BPMonline, Kiev

For those of you that don’t follow CRM Idol, shame on you!!  Actually, that wasn’t what I wanted to say, but what I was thinking. For those of you who don’t follow CRM Idol, BPMonline is a company, owned by UK-based Terrasoft, that was one of two winners in 2011, our first year. They are a company that has grown dramatically since then, being recognized by Gartner, Forrester and other analyst firms and individuals as a player in the CRM space. They also are an exceptionally warm and friendly company, run by Katerina Kostereva, co-founder and CEO and ably supported by a terrific young staff. 

Recently, I had the great pleasure of helping them celebrate the opening of their new office in a 7-story glass building in Kiev (they own it) with an incredible rooftop view of that historic (more than 1100 years old) city.  I was there for both an advisory day and to speak to customers – roughly 250 or so – who came from multiple republics in and around Ukraine (by the way, NOT “The” Ukraine. Ukraine). Even though I had a massive recurrence of an upper respiratory infection (long story) the night before, here is the speech I gave for your listening…pleasure…or pain if that’s the way you want to be about it.

The Onion on the Cloud

What can I say? I love this video.  No disrespect intended to HP (by me anyway. I can’t speak for the Onion) but this one is AWE…some! And about at the level of knowledge contained in a buzzword.

HP Offers 'That Cloud Thing Everyone Is Talking About'

HP Offers 'That Cloud Thing Everyone Is Talking About'

Salesforce Acquires EdgeSpring: News Almost Lost in the Marketing Cloud

I think you have a cogent idea of what I thought about the acquisition of Exact Target, salesforce’s marketing cloud acquisition that had the airwaves – social and traditional - buzzing and at times stinging. Lost in that – almost, since nothing salesforce.com ever does get actually lost – was their acquisition announced the following week of analytics platform startup EdgeSpring.  Note something here. I say analytics platform, not application or cloud service.  This is an important distinction for salesforce.

The reason is simple; they haven’t been able to compete with their larger industry brethren such as Oracle or SAP when it comes to analytics. That was the other great hole in the salesforce ecosystem. They have the Radian6 Insights Platform, which as cool as it is, doesn’t substitute native analytics that can be built to spec depending on what the purpose is.

That said, because EdgeSpring is coming out of stealth mode and has been immediately acquired, (run by a former salesforce employee now returning to the fold), its hard to say exactly what the quality of the platform is. I haven’t seen it, nor had I heard of it. But the idea is at least the right one for salesforce at this juncture. If the product has the capabilities, then salesforce continues to go down the path to becoming an all-encompassing ecosystem for customer-facing applications and services – which, for them, is what they need to do to fulfill their vision.

The Oracle-NetSuite; Oracle-Microsoft; Oracle-Salesforce Alliance

Everyone and their mother (if she is an analyst) had some hypothesis or speculative notion about this alliance. Here are some of the ones worth reading:

1. Frank Scavo, Constellation Research, On the Oracle/Salesforce “détente”
2. Dennis Howlett, Diginomica on the Oracle/Salesforce partnership
3. Stuart Lauchlan, Diginomica, on the Oracle/Microsoft alliance
4. Denis Pombriant on the Oracle/Salesforce deal
5. Larry Dignan, ZDNet on Oracle/Salesforce thing
6. James Staten, Forrester Group, on Oracle/Microsoft together at last
7. Esteban Kolsky, ThinkJar, on the whole Oracle-Microsoft-Salesforce-NetSuite shebang

These are good starts.  My opinion here would just be either corroboration of some of these or noise, so I won’t offer it yet. I’m also still thinking about the implications, some of which are not clear to me. So give me some rope (and time) to hang myself with. I’m sure I’ll speak to it at some point. Read these in the meantime.

Customer for Life:

Esteban Kolsky, one of the world’s leading analysts and one of my closest friends, and I had a discussion a few days ago on the nature of customer engagement and customer experience. Even though we have somewhat different metaphors that we present with, it is sort of scary how closely aligned our thinking is. Both of us had the same perception when it came to how to begin to think about engagement, experience and customers.  I’m going to give you all a short précis on what we discussed but please understand this is a mere representation of the richness of the subject matter. Maybe it will be my next book.  Then again, maybe not.

There is a strong tendency that companies, when they are planning their customer strategies and technology vendors when they are thinking about developing their enabling applications, tend to think about the customer engagement as a momentary one. That means that if I interact with a company about something and there is this intense emotional involvement, well, that’s engagement. Or, another variation would be if I talk to the company and finish the conversation (regardless of intensity) the “engagement” is over. But that isn’t the nature of engagement. In fact, engagement is characterized by the customer’s ongoing interactions with the company – an ongoing interaction that he or she (meaning, the customer) chooses to have. At any point in the life of that ongoing engagement, it can be intense or casual or intense and then casual, or something in between. The level of emotional involvement is the customer’s choice. The decision to continue the engagement is the key to it. The customer stays engaged because they want to have a relationship with the company that provides them with the results that they want to get from the company.  Keep that “ongoing” part in your head for a minute.

Customer experience suffers from the same kind of, though not identical, misperception. Most people think of the momentary experience – the one event driven experience that occurs as the interactions happen. It might be that it takes about 3 or 4 calls or communications of some kind for the event to start and end. That short-term experience is often what businesses are planning for and around.  That’s a limited approach and pretty much not the way to think about it.

Another way that customer experience gets shortchanged is when “the” customer experience is misidentified as being what I call a consumable experience.  A consumable experience would be the effect that the American Girl doll retail store has on your daughter when she goes there with her doll and gets her doll’s hair done, eats lunch with her doll, watches a play about her doll (or a doll in the American Girl line) and accessorizes her doll – for the price of about $400.00 for the visit.  It creates a memory for her that is unmatchable, no doubt, but it is only an aspect of the broader overall customer experience, as we have to think about it, if we’re building programs around it and strategies for it. The customer experience that goes beyond the event would include (for example inclusively but not exclusively):

1. The American Girl retail store experience (as outlined above) with your daughter
2. The storybooks and history and accessories associated with the doll which you can read about via print, or online and/or buy it in the store and/or online.
3. The ease of the transaction process for the “buyer” i.e. the parent
4. The type of customer service you get at the store, over the phone, via the web
5. The store associated interactions with you and your daughter that lead to follow-up activity of some kind – e.g. an invitation to an exclusive event related to the character of your daughter’s doll – and the history of your store visits.
6. The web presence of American Doll.
7. The availability of the products themselves when there is an interest in the acquisition (e.g. would you like to be told, sorry its out of stock – and available in two months – and then have to tell your daughter that?)
8. The ability of the tools to customize the experience (not the customization itself)

There is much more involved but you get the idea. This is an overall customer experience that in the long run leaves you with a feeling that you want to continue your relationship with the company – meaning buy stuff and do things for a long while to come. 

There is this saying (which I have to admit, I’ve had some responsibility in propagating) that “the customer’s experience is only as good as their last memory.” While that’s somewhat true, there are multiple nuances to this.  The most important nuance is this:

If your customer has had a long-term overall good experience or bad one, it will color the effect of the experience of last memory. Brush strokes color the pencil lines.  To put it in practical terms.

1. If I’ve had an ongoing excellent experience with the company and something bad occurs, I’m likely to forgive the problem or at least give it a lot of leeway without much impact on the long term as long as the problem is solved. If it isn’t solved, I’ll still be with the company
2. If I’ve had an ongoing average experience with the company, the issue is likely to carry more weight with my long term involvement than if #1 was in play. That means the problem better be solved or it will weaken my resolve to stay with the company.
3. If my ongoing experience has been poor, then the issue is likely to be the breaking point, even if resolved. Even if I stay, the slightest problem and I’m gone.

In other words same experience in the short term, very different outcomes due to the long term experience – which is the one that ultimately matters more.

Stuff I have going on

Just to keep you up to snuff and to get you going, some stuff I’m doing that I’d of course like your involvement with in some capacity;

1. CRM Idol 2013 – CRM Idol is now underway. We are evaluating the references of the contestants who, once again, represent multiple countries and regions.  We have nearly 80 extended judges representing influencers in the vendor, buyer, media and analyst world. We have those fascinating emerging tech companies that are willing to take a bit of risk to potentially be the breakout CRM company of 2013.  For more on this go to the CRM Idol site (duh.)
2. CRM Watchlist 2014 – Unlike CRM Idol, this is for any company that a. wants to take a shot at being recognized as an impact player; b. is willing to make an effort to do so; and c. wants me to track them in 2014.  The enrollment period is still open and will be right up to October 31, 2013. The submission period for the questionnaire is November 30, 2013.  If you are interested in contending, please send me an email requesting the CRM Watchlist 2014 questionnaire and in return you will a. get the questionnaire; b. get the 172pp CRM Watchlist 2013 Yearbook; c. start being tracked by me; d. be put in a Google+ group that will activate in the late summer some time and where I will be more than normally accessible. However, given how much I have to do, my expectation is that if you request the questionnaire you’re going to submit the questionnaire and not just do it as a ruse to have me track you. Please don’t disappoint me. My email is [email protected] if you want to be part of this. So far, I have 113 applications, well ahead of last year’s pace, which led to 173 requests and 153 submissions. I’d love to have you. The company size or state of being doesn’t matter. But be aware that this is an impact award and small companies without much of a history have a tough time winning. Though there are 4 or 5 each year that do – based on as much immediate potential as history.  Plus, if you enter, I do track you. If that means anything at all.
3. 3.    CRM Evolution, August 19-21 – As I hope you know, CRM Evolution, put on every year by InfoToday/CRM Magazine, has been the premier CRM conference – the one industry gathering where buyers, vendors, and influencers co-mingle in a given year.  The networking for varying purposes is outstanding and the content is good and the energy is always high.  I have had the honor of chairing it now for my fifth year and never, ever lose the excitement.  It’s a great place to be.  I’d love to meet you and if I already have, to see you again.  Come.  It’s in New York at the Marriott Marquis Hotel August 19-21.  
4. 4.    The 56 Group website - Truthfully, I haven’t ever really needed a website. I have been blessed with the good fortune of not having to really sell or work hard at promotion. But there are a lot of things I have always wanted to do that I haven’t been able to do because I haven’t had any place to “go” that was mine. I’ve been a nomad, residing on many other sites, getting friends to graciously allow me to squat on their land, letting me rest on their real estate for a little while as I continued my travels without any place to call my own.  However, that will be ending soon.  With the amazing work of DRI Global, one of my favorite CRM focused consulting firms (they are in Lisbon), I am getting very close to launching a site far too rich for one person but one that has a somewhat different purpose than the norm. I realized, as my nomadic life continued, that I don’t want a virtual house; I want to live in a skyscraper, a condo building with other people. So my website, built in Joomla (because I know how to use the administrative back end) will be a place where any person or organization that is the in the customer facing world will have a home. Among other things: It will have a community platform that will allow a CRMish person/company to have their own facilitated (by them) community on whatever topical area they want; Selected people will be able to have a microsite for selling their wares with their own catalog and payment system; there will be a loyalty program tied to my services and products with points awarded for not only buying stuff but for participation in the CRM industry and for being socially conscious and/or philanthropic.  The site will be able to aggregate content of all types – including videos, audio assets, slideshows, documents, links, you name it. There’s even the capability to take premium and free online courses – and I can write them from the back end of the site. So be ready. The site goes through a run through this week and then it’s a couple of months or more of populating it and then, welcome to your community, if you care to participate. If not, well, I tried.  If you are interested in hosting a community, let me know even starting now and let me know what it is going to be about. The rules are: follow the rules of the site and facilitate your own community. While it’s pretty open, I do have the right to reject it out of hand or shut it down. But I’m easy. I don’t know if it will work. There are some interesting questions that aren’t answered yet and won’t be until the communities start.  But all in all it should be fun.  Lots for you to do. Registered members of any community can accumulate points in the system for the loyalty program.  WAY more later but feel free to let me know you are interested in facilitating a community on something related to CRM now if you like. Contact me at [email protected].   
5. 5.    SEAT 2013 – I’m guessing that you never heard of the Sports Entertainment Alliance in Technology (SEAT) conference.  This is between 300-450 sports executives who gather annually to discuss how to optimize their use of technology in sports. It’s CIOs, CMOs, VPs, and Senior Directors of team after team, league after league, sport after sport. There is a substantial discussion of CRM (2.5 day track) and this year I have the distinct honor of being the subject of a keynote interview for the CRM track.  Russell Scibetti, one of the best CRM practitioners in sports (he’s the NY Jets guy) and one of my friends, will be the interviewer. I expect, since I love sports, it will be lively and fun.  Just wanted to tell you about it, because I think it’s really cool. 

 

CRM 2012 Forecast–The Era of Customer Engagement Begins– Part II

To understand why I’m saying this, please go to Part I on my ZDNet blog here.

Gamification becomes Serious Business

No matter how old you are, human beings never lose their desire to play. Play makes us happy. Each of us, and I challenge you to deny this, wants to have a happy life. We do what we have to in life to improve our chances to have one. One of those things is to have as many happy moments as we can accumulate throughout our lives. Even if we aren’t all that universally happy (not projecting here), each of us has had times where we were that we can point to.

Gamification, while often over hyped and misunderstood, is a concept that has increasingly important business value. It doesn’t mean playing games; it isn’t game theory; it isn’t a form of hunting meat. My favorite definition comes from Constellation Research Group CEO (and key influencer) (and great friend) Ray Wang from his recent research paper, “Demystifying Enterprise Gamification for Business:Behind the Hype of Influencing Behaviors and Effecting Business Outcomes:”

“Gamification describes a series of design principles, processes and systems used to influence, engage and motivate individuals, groups and communities to drive behaviors and effect desired outcomes.”

To see it in action, even in an unexpected place, take a look at how SAP has gamified Accounts Payable. As odd as that may sound, they’ve done a genuinely good job. Here is a post on it with screenshots at Enterprise Gamification.

These aren’t edge cases for a small niche. Gartner Group in April 2011 thinks that by 2014, 70% of all businesses in the Global 2000 will have “gamified apps.” Research firm, M2 says that by 2016, the gamification market, currently sized at $100,000,000 will reach $2.8 billion, with 200% growth in 2012.

In other words this is starting to get big.

The vendors are in the game too. Those who have enterprise ready gamification platforms out there include Bunchball, Badgeville, and of course, Gamify, all in all about a bakers dozen.

We’re already seeing sophisticated gamification frameworks being set up. Innovative small companies like the award-winning UK virtual mobile network operator GiffGaff used gamification to recruit their initial customer community prior to their beta launch by providing DIY tools to create videos – the best of which got a £5000 prize.

For a more complete discussion on gamification worth reading, please make sure that you read the posts by thought leader and Lithium Chief Scientist, Dr. Michael Wu. They are well worth it.

Ray Wong, Gartner, M2, all say gamification in a big way starting this year over the next few. I say, amen, brothers and sisters.

Insight Solutions will emerge as a technology category of its own

One thing that we can’t ignore (okay, that I can’t ignore) is that if customer engagement is to work, then insights into how customers want it to work are becoming increasingly necessary.

But again, we’re dealing with scale and we’re dealing with a dynamic social web with constant conversations that are liquid and changing continually. They are being carried out in multiple channels – channels that number all in all, in the thousands, both public and private.

The current generation of social media monitoring tools with a few exceptions – Radian6 and Attensity come immediately to mind – are somewhat passive tools that scour the web, find the conversations and organize unstructured data in the form of a report that provides the users with what is being said, usually in a positive, negative or neutral vein. The better tools provide strong analytic capabilities that give some insight into how customer segments are thinking or how “nodes” are responding. That would be Attensity, for example. Or they provide highly focused, highly specific, well thought out intelligence such as the sales intelligence focus of InsideView. Radian6 takes this to a whole new level with their Insights Platform which takes Radian6’s vast data mining and information organizing capabilities and integrate other technology tools that combined with Radian6 provide deep insight into individual customers, if that’s where you want to go. With the future capacity to tie this to salesforce.com or database.com or data.com transactional data, and contact information, we are beginning to see how an insight solution would work. It’s obvious limitation is that it will be tied to salesforce.com only customer data. But that aside, we are talking about something that at least foreshadows what are a future class of applications. Bryan Jennewein, the product manager for the Insights platform calls the results “social insight”, which is not an inappropriate term, in this case.

But Radian6 hardly plays in its own sandbox here. There are a number of emerging players in this space which I’m calling “insight solutions” who have been misplaced in or evolved from other market categories. Currently, the runaway number #1 of these for me is Coveo, which came from the Enterprise Search space. Following them is Allegiance, emerging from the Enterprise Feedback Management world and Lattice Engines, which inhabits the sales intelligence world uncomfortably. Another newcomer that has flown under the radar is WiseWindow, a "mass opinion business intelligence" (MOBI) provider, who specializes in vertical insights among other things and come from the BI world All four have the technology to provide insights. Each takes an entirely different approach to attaining the knowledge that can support insight, but each minimally provides dynamic data mining, collaboration and analytics. All four either can or do integrate with CRM, by the way.

This is not to say that more “traditional” analytics such as text and sentiment analysis, business intelligence, etc are going to be replaced or suffering. In 2012, they will be even more important than they are now.

Several vendors are either upping the ante or providing new ways of looking at the data – all in the name of recognition of the importance of insight – into customers primarily, but also employees, opportunities, processes, etc.

For example, Clarabridge is both upping the ante and providing a new approach to analytics by taking sentiment analysis to a whole other level beyond the traditional five-point expression (very positive, positive, neutral, negative, very negative) and ratcheting it up to eleven points using semantic analysis so that there is context to the sentiment, besides. Recently, SAP, despite the fact that they own the best analytics firm known to man – Business Objects, recently announced a partnership with social analytics provider Netbase to become a VAR that would sell “SAP Social Analytics by Netbase” to their customers. They realized like others before them, insight is 2012 table stakes and social data is the tableware.

Analytics as a whole is becoming fundamental to all business strategy. 2012 brings more of that than ever and the rise of a new category customer-focused solution that provides a combination the surfacing of dynamic information and the analysis of that behavior as dynamically as it is surfaced.

An optimal customer experience becomes the core of what CRM can provide. Finally.

In 2011, we saw a significant shift away from the pure left-brained messaging of CRM toward a much stronger focus on customer interactions, engagement and behaviors. Traditional CRM vendors for reasons that are both good and bad began to rebrand their messaging around the idea of technologies that can support an enhanced customer experience. The good reason is that they needed to do that and they did. The bad reason is that they did it as a reaction to historic CRM bad press a lot of times, rather than just recognizing that the context had shifted and we were entering a period that demanded that customer experience and engagement got attention. Right results, sometimes wrong reasons.

Vendors like Sword-Ciboodle have taken it further and begun to present their product portfolios not as a menu of features and functions but around solution sets that help you do your jobs better. The name for it is jobs-based thinking. The academic framework for that is Service Design Logic, something that is gaining increasing credence in the business world. If you look at the Sword-Ciboodle site, you’ll see that it’s got a roles-based focus. The reason for this is that there is a recognition that we are dealing with behaviors – both customers and employees, not just products.

But the interest in providing the “right” customer experience high. Witness these numbers that come from the “2011 State of Customer Experience Management” put together by ubër-expert Bruce Temkin, the leading customer experience influencer and best of the lot in my book. These numbers are indicative of both where things are (not new but embedded) and where they can go (toward maturity). Temkin found that:

• Nearly 60% of the companies surveyed have a senior executive in charge of customer experience
• There are 30% of the companies that have 20+ employees who are delegated to the customer experience
• There have been positive results (measureable ones, people!) from Voice of the Customer programs in 84% of the companies using them
• The percentage of companies that received a moderate or better competency rating rose from 22% on 2010 to 30% in 2011.

That’s the good news.

The signs that this is still immature?

· “Only 3% of companies reached the highest level of customer experience maturity, which (Temkin calls) a Customer-Centric Organization

· Only 17% of respondents believe that their executives regularly support decisions to trade off short-term financial results for longer-term customer loyalty.” (source: Temkin, 2011 State of Customer Experience Management)

That means that there is a lot of room to grow and in 2012, I expect that we’ll see a continuation of these efforts to improve and get measurable benefit, though nothing dramatic.

The only real “trend” that will likely stand out when it comes to customer experience in 2012 is that I think vendor messaging will be increasingly focused around it. That’s not really much of a trend, if you think about it. You feel me?

Social marketing becomes an integral part of an explosive marketing automation sector

Social marketing and the broader, customer-facing interactive marketing are becoming ubiquitous as customer engagement becomes the increasing focus of companies thoughts.

Chief Marketer in their 2011 Social Marketing survey found that 73% of the respondent companies were incorporating some kind of “social messaging” into their marketing campaigns and in 2012 an additional 10% (meaning around 83%) would be doing the same. What’s interesting is the primary reason that the respondents were doing so. Fully 85% of them felt it was a way to “reach customers at multiple touchpoints.” That’s 25% more than the next reason, which is that customers are spending more time on social networks. In other words, there is a recognition that social channels are now part of the mainstream and that they are additions to the channels that we’ve reached customers on traditionally. To get a feel for how big a deal this really is, in August 2011, Forrester Group came out with their “U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011-2016” and saw the market spend up from $34 billion in 2011 to nearly $42 billion in 2012 and $77 billion by 2016. The bulk of the spend will be in the more traditional channels of interactive marketing – e.g. display ads and search marketing with emerging marketing such as mobile and social increasing about 250% in that time.

This is not surprising and if you look at it, the technologies available are once again more primitive than the efforts expended by the practitioner marketing departments.

The vendors are beginning to recognize the value of social marketing and are trying mightily to catch up and either incorporate it into their existing marketing automation or revenue performance management (sigh) applications and services. There are only a few genuinely useful pure social marketing or niche related apps out there at the moment, notably CRM Idol 2011 finalist Crowd Factory. One example of a niche related vendor would be the FuzeDigital reputation engine.

However the larger marketing automation/revenue performance vendors are taking note too. We are seeing social features being incorporated into more traditional applications from Marketo, Eloqua and Silverpop for example. Analytics giant SAS, rather than incorporating too much social into their marketing automation application, built and social media analytics application to take the pulse of the brand conversations going on out there. Companies like Infor, who provide customer interaction engines like Epiphany are using them to engage their prospects.

2012 will bring us continued explosive growth in marketing, especially social marketing because we have reached ubiquity when it comes to utilizing social channels as part of campaign planning. The more engagement is on the table, the more that marketing – with social marketing functionality as a prerequisite for a contemporary marketing suite – will grow dramatically. Forrester has it partially right with the increase of some 20% year over year in interactive marketing expenditures.

Think I’m wrong? Prove it. Launch a campaign on Twitter to do that. Ha!

Short Bursts: Other Trends

These aren’t meant to be full blown prognostications – just short takes on interesting trends that I’ve noticed that I want to make you aware of. There is too much in the sections above for me to draw these out but I didn’t think I should ignore them even if I don't spend a lot of digital ink making the case.

1. Mobile CRM - As in 2011, the creative development of mobile CRM will be driven by the tablet market and by the ability to analyze large amounts of data quickly that will show up on the tablets. The iPad will still be the dominant driver of mobile CRM application development. But we will see more activity around mobile payment than we will around anything else as Near Field Communication (NFC) is deployed on devices to a much greater extent than 2011 and Google Wallet grabs share of….mind as more and more businesses adopt.
2. Small Business SCRM – The success of Hubspot in 2011 and the emergence of a myriad of other technology platforms and companies who are small business focused (see CRM Idol again for many of the technology companies who concentrate on small business) is an indicator of the interest that small business has when it comes to doing business using social channels. I’m going to leave the details to Brent Leary in a forthcoming post here on the small business CRM market in 2012.
3. Big Data Becomes Really Big Data - The issue of how to data the massive increase in data and especially desirable data becomes possible the highlight of 2012. This is being fueled by the substantial increases in unstructured data on the social web, in the use of video, images, audio files and other rich data and by the growing ubiquity of the cloud all leading to what IDC feels is going to jump to more than 2.7 zettabytes (that would be 1021) in 2012, which is 48% higher rate of growth than 2011 – and 90% of it will be unstructured (Source: IDC Predictions for 2012: Competing for 2020). Managing this data will drive not only the storage and infrastructure markets, but will make even more “traditional” areas like Master Data Management (MDM) something that businesses will be investing in. This is a massive opportunity and a massive issue.
4. Acquisitions – The shrinkage of the market via acquisitions and it’s strengthening via strategic partnerships that support Social CRM and social business ecosystems will continue as they did in 2011. IN 2011 we saw, among others, salesforce.com acquiring DimDim, Radian6, Assistly, Model Metrics and Rypple; Oracle acquiring Inquira, Endeca and RightNow; SAP acquiring SuccessFactors and Microsoft acquiring Skype. We also saw a key strategic partnership between IBM and SugarCRM which was crucial to both companies. There will be more of the same in 2012 with interesting acquisition targets (at least interesting to me, not because I heard anything. Just to be clear) will be Marketo, InsideView, Coveo, SugarCRM and a handful of others including several of the CRM Idol contestants. Though, as always I’m sure I’ll be surprised and completely wrong. But acquisitions and partnerships will be the stars of 2012, whether I’m surprised or wrong or not.
5. The Cloud – 2012 continues the bandwagon though the hype will slow. This year not only did we see Amazon continue to be the cloud to beat, but companies like Oracle announce their “public cloud” and SAP went deep into the cloud as they announced at the recent SAP Business Influencers Conference not only buying SuccessFactors shortly after they announced that they wanted to significantly compete in the cloud but also announcing that from here on they are going to architect what they produce as cloud and will adapt it to on premises, rather than the other way around – a 180° turn in philosophy and development strategy. We also saw the cloud become the delivery system of choice, if you take it from the rate of adoption, not the amount of deployments out there in the on premises v. the cloud competition. Since this is short, let me recommend the always fantastic, quiet thought leader, Louis Columbus’ great aggregation post on cloud adoption. Read that to get the picture. On premises still is the dominant installation for CRM and other business technology, with hybrid deployments a popular option – and one offered by companies who have historically been invested in on premises software. In fact, all the leaders but salesforce.com offer it as part of their portfolio. More of this in 2012 as the unstoppable cloud juggernaut continues to gain delivery mechanism share.
6. Innovation/Co-Creation – This will continue to be in the purview of the most progressive companies – the leading edge of thinking and practice in business. But only at the lowest levels – feedback etc. will it be pre-eminent. The true practitioners of co-creation are just beginning to make their appearance on the global stage. I expect we’ll see most of this in the Fortune 3500 companies. I’ll be writing more on this and you’ll be seeing guest posts on this subject in 2012.
7. Knowledge Management – while there will be no slacking off of the existing models for knowledge management – accessible knowledgebases being the core of that – there will be considerably more focus on dynamic knowledge with as close to real time response as possible and the use of knowledge for insight (via analysis). The technologies to meet the requirements for the latter are just beginning to appear in the market. Knowledge grabbed from customer user forums and other external "unstructured":
8. Applications Marketplaces – Application marketplaces are becoming increasingly prevalent as more and more companies begin to view things from the standpoint of providing their customers with customized/configurable ecosystems. So now, in addition to the technology company marketplaces we know and…whatever emotion you want goes here….we are seeing even government agencies like the U.S. General Services Administration or the U.S. Army providing these application marketplaces to their constituents – in the former case, the other U.S. federal agencies and the latter case, varying Army commands. There is no reason to think that this is going to slack in 2012. In fact, look for it to accelerate.

The One By Itself

This is the most important prognostication for 2012. Period.

The Yankees Win the World Series – Locked and loaded. Our starting pitching straightens itself out, Teixeira gets his batting average back to a normal .290 or so; A-Rod revives his career enough to be a difference maker; Jeter just continues from his 2011 second half and Rivera of course is Rivera. Thus, The Yankees Win. The Yankeeeeeees Wiiiiiiiiin! Yay!

Finally

Look. This may be the most uncomfortable "forecast" I've ever made. It wasn't easy. I'm evolving a perspective I've had for almost 10 years and it has implications that are important, though not that dramatic, for how the industry will be developing and the strategies that need to be considered - if I'm right.

And that makes me uncomfortable. But I've learned a few things in my 62 years that I think have done me well over the years - some of it due to adversity that makes my skin very thick. Let's just say criticism doesn't exactly phase me.

First, I've learned that you are always learning.  That means that what I am writing here while I think its useful is only the beginning of something that I hope will have some impact but that will be constantly evolving even as it does due to collegial inputs from smarter people than me and those who are testing out what I'm hypothesizing here and finding how to tweak it or to show me that I'm wrong.

But if there is one thing I've learned that probably will never change, there is a way to think about all this. You make as good a case as your observations allow and then get on with your life and see how the next phase plays out. Which is what I'm now doing for 2012.

Choice, Circumstance, Context: The Hilton Hotel & The Vagaries of the Customer Experience

For whatever reasons, the hospitality and travel industries are amazing for providing an endless fount of stories. These stories could almost be called, in a strategic sense, individually customized services discussions - but that resonate with other people. Of course, while it does feel like these are stories of things that happened to YOU - and you only, truth be told, they really are easy to understand. Travel experiences (hotels, airplanes, trains) are built around what is a very emotional set of events. There are expectations that are pretty redundant from event to event, occurrence to occurrence. The expected quality of the service or event is about the same from venue to venue. In the case of a hotel it would typically be:

1. Easy check in
2. Recognition of elite status if you have it
3. courtesy regardless of status including things like eye contact
4. working room keys
5. clean rooms
6. working appliances in the rooms
7. efficient room service
8. Many other things
9. customer friendly design
10. Easy checkout

Needless to say, I can go on and on. But, its these things that as more than a sum total, that make up components of a customer's experience at a hotel. What the hotel chooses to do at these impact points can make or break how a customer thinks about the hotel, or more importantly feels about the hotel. If the bad is not just coincidental but is perceived as either a company policy or bad conscious choice, then there is a higher premium placed on the impact of the experience for the customer. I'm going to skewer the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan - use them as an example of exactly that - bad choice that seems to be either conscious policy or poor on the spot decisionmaking. Unlike the Ritz Carleton, or much of the Marriott chain, The Hilton, at least to me, has no more than a generic customer experience strategy. Walking in to the Hilton, my overall expectation was that it would satisfy my needs, not exceed them, because that is minimum standard that all hotels operate on, and I can expect faithfully when I check in the note. But this particular Hilton, made some small bad choices that led to a horrible experience, which because it was repeated with others in one fashion or another, had a bad business outcome.

Why Was I at the Hilton in NY?

Simple. It was for the CRM Evolution conference for 2011, which for the first time was at the Hilton on Avenue of the Americas, which, incidentally, is called 6th Ave, by any proper New Yorker. The conference, which lasted from August 8-11, pulled together a broad spectrum of very high powered influentials in CRM and smattering of social influencers, a significant number of vendors, the largest group of practitioners in the conference history. The unofficial number of attendees for the conference, which I heard from one of the principals was 500 in total. I chair the conference annually,and as long as the good burghers from Infotoday ask me back, I will be back. On a sidenote: They did ask me back for 2012, which I happily accepted. I really like chairing this conference). To put everything in a nutshell: The conference was a significant success, the Hilton Hotel wasn't. The Hilton was this year's venue and the reason for it was that both Internet connectivity and the treatment of meals was supposed to be a step up from the Marriott Marquis - site of the last several conferences. Let's just say it was and it wasn't.

The story….

My wife and I blew into town a couple of days early to catch Wicked at the George Gershwin Theater on 51st St where it has been running for eight years. I'll digress for a second and tell you this: outside of an iconic performance of "Man of LaMancha" which is seared into my soul for all eternity, this may have been the best musical that I've ever seen with only "Billy Elliott" competing and I've seen dozens of musicals. Okay, back from the commercial. In any case, this was a first for me, staying at this particular Hilton in NY. I've stayed at Hiltons and some I've liked and some have left little impression on me, but none has really gotten me p.oed before. Until now.

What Happened?

I'm going to number this sequentially.

1. As the conference chair, my hotel stay was placed on the conference master account. When I checked in with my wife, as I've done with literally every other hotel I ever have stayed at in the last 3 years or so, I gave my rewards program (Hilton Honors) number. They said to me, "Oh, well, because you're on the master account, you can't have the points." I found this a little puzzling, since I've literally NEVER run into that at any hotel I've stayed at including Hiltons and any Marriotts, nor has it been a problem on airlines. So I asked about it. He said, corporate" and let it go and didn't really want to talk about it. Bad start to a stay.
2. My wife and I then went to go to our rooms and I couldn't find the elevator for a minute so we went and asked a desk that seemed to be a bell captains or something like that but, like every other desk in the lobby where there was no real place to sit (except for the bar and its extension), the desks were unlabeled. A young guy there told us where the elevator was, asked for our room, offered 500 points. That seemed odd since I didn't tell him that we hadn't been given the points - until he hit us up for a resort properties seminar in the hotel the next day. Eventually, we managed to escape to the elevator.
3. When we arrived at the room, imagine our surprise that we had two double beds! Let's just say that we were obviously a married couple at the front desk. Even if they couldn't tell that we were married, they called us Mr. and Mrs. Greenberg, so you have to assume they knew that. They didn't give us a choice, nor did they say, "I'm sorry but the only room available had two double beds, is that okay?" Nada was said at all.
4. We decided to roll with the punches, and put on the lights in the room, which seemed unnaturally dark, probably due to the buildings outside blocking light, but hell, this is NY, what would we expect? Except that one of the lamps didn't work - the bulb kept fritzing out and then back on and out again. So we called customer service, which picked up after about 3 minutes. They sent someone up 10 minutes later and he checked and said, "the lamp has to be replaced." About 30 minutes later, there was a message flashing on the phone that I listened to which said, "sorry about the lamp. Someone will be up tonight or no later than tomorrow morning to replace it." Well, I guess the morning extends to about 2pm in Hilton time, because it wasn't replaced when we got back the following day from a traipse around the city to get ready to go to Wicked - and only because I called customer service again and told them it better be replaced by the time it got dark.
5. In parallel with all this, I needed to get Internet connectivity and, since I'm not elite at the Hilton, I realized that I would have to pay something. Well, imagine my surprise when I found out that if I wanted wireless connectivity it had three levels with actual high speed, which is typically what I need going for a stellar $18.99 a day. But the other two choices which racketed down to $13.99 by their own standard were considerably lower, making me think that what should have been one choice - high speed, for whatever price they want it to be - since its their prerogative - was a much smarter idea than the way they presented their Internet options. Though not a biggie.
6. That first night, we decided to order in because we were tired and went with room service as an option. After 5 minutes, room service picked up and promised our order in 30 minutes "or less." Forty-five minutes later, I called and said, "where's the order?" They promised it in ten minutes. Twenty-five minutes later it showed up. Food wasn't bad though.
7. Next day, I got ready to take a shower and I couldn't pull the handle out. After a futile call to customer service since we were trying to leave within the hour, I found the problem. Someone (I presume a kid) had jammed a stick underneath the handle blocking it from being pulled fully out. I broke the stick and it was fine. I would have thought they'd have checked the shower and used the water to wash the shower floor before we got there but I guess not.
8. Without giving you too much detail, lets just say it took them SEVEN HOURS to solve an important problem in the bathroom in addition to the one I solved with the shower. Yah. Seven hours after they promised they'd be right up. We left came back 6 hours later. It hadn't been taken care of, even though I had called them prior to leaving. It still took 2 more customer service calls to get them to solve it an hour after we got back.
9. We asked the person who cleaned our room to not do something. She agreed easily. Ten minutes later, when we returned to the room, it had been done. Ten minutes after we asked her to not do it.
10. The elevators closed really fast on people trying to get in and out. Sometimes by the time people got out, it was already closing. Seems to be a minor annoyance, yes? It would have been.
11. When we checked out, no one asked how our stay was - which might have been a good thing under the circumstances. It was a no eye contact, room number, see ya kind of checkout. Again, minor? Not by that time.

One additional factoid - David Myron, the jefe of CRM Magazine and sponsor of this conference told me that he's had more complaints about this hotel than in the three years preceding when the conference was at the Marriott Marquis, which was no great shakes either.

So, now, you have the chain of events. Let's look at what this means for thinking about customer experience - how it works in the minds of those that are customers - especially in emotional industries - like hospitality.

Choice, Circumstance, Context: The Concept

Customer experience is something that has been at the core of CRM since day one of its existence. Even though CRM had a decidedly left-brained bent and was based on a company's operational activities, at least its stated purpose was to improve the experience of the customer in his or her dealings with the company. It often failed at its stated purpose and instead, became identified with the use of technology to automate processes that would support the operationalization of sales, marketing or customer service. But its fundamental purpose never went away. Even disgruntled former CRM supporters admit that much these days. So when someone like me tries to place the Hilton experience in a CRM context, its always based on a simple reality. As an individual and as a CRM practitioner, what did Hilton do that p.oed me with the individual hat and how would I go about fixing it with my practitioner hat. What I've come to understand over the last several years, and like all of us, have probably always known, is that a few poor choices can enhance the negative feeling around what would be circumstantial instances because of the context that they were in when they occurred. To put it in terms that the Gunning-Fog Index would probably prefer:

When companies make consciously stupid decisions on how they are going to treat customers - when they have a choice - the negative impact of other bad things is amplified greatly. Why? Because they are framed by dissatisfaction to begin with.

That is simply what we mean by choice, circumstance and context. Do wrong with the things you have control over, and the bad things you don't have control over will bite you in the butt that much harder, because of the ill will you've generally fostered. Think about it this way. What if:

1. The Hilton had given me the points, which I had come to expect because of my experiences with other chains and even other Hiltons
2. They had asked me and my wife about their decision to give us two double beds, which is ordinary courtesy
3. The guy had just directed us to the elevator without trying to pitch us.

Three choices that the Hilton made in the early part of the checkin experience. Think about it. If you had a benign or good early experience, how would you have felt about a lamp that was out when you got there? If you weren't already irritated, would you have even paid attention to and thought about the ridiculous pricing tiers for Internet connectivity? The lamp wouldn't have been a source of irritation, it would have been a service request. The 3 tiers might not even have come to your attention beyond making a choice. It wouldn't have meant much at all. Now, the room service was a problem. Choice? No. Circumstance? More than that. But because of the three little irritations at the beginning setting the context, the room service lateness became a major irritation. What's interesting here is how they might have remedied it - and didn't.

Another story.

I was at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco for salesforce's Dreamforce 2011 conference last week. I was in the bar with Accenture CRM practice leaders and ordered some food. It took more than 30 minutes. When I talked to the bar attendant about it, she went and found out what was wrong, took care of it, had the food out in 5 minutes, and without any expectation on my part of anything else said, "I'm not charging you for it." Wow. Thank you. I like this place. Contrast that to the Hilton, who should have offered something. Free dessert, no charge, a free drink from the menu or something as an apology rather than the "I'm sorry" that they offered the first time it was late and the second "I'm sorry" the second time it was late. But they didn't. So rather than rectify a situation, they exacerbated the irritation that had been building due to the lateness of the food twice and in the context of a bad initial experience that day. Remember, the effects of small bad experiences in emotional industries like hospitality tend to be cumulative, not singular.

The Business Outcome of Bad Experience

So now you say, meh, what was that all about? All that explanation for so little a result? Let me tell you the business impact. As a result of an experience like this repeated multiple times in different forms (ask Ray Wang about his experience at the bar), CRM Evolution is no longer going to be at the Hilton. For the next three years, CRM Evolution is going to be back at the Marriott Marquis. Customer experience is, and always was, the foundation of CRM - and the business outcomes that are what makes it something that we've always thought important. But there is only so much of the customer's individual experience that is controllable by the choices that the company makes. But making those small choices and being sure that they are made as repeatable ones and at the same time, providing the environment to support the smart decisions so that the employees are making the right decisions by nature. Then other circumstantial things become less problematic because the contesxt is good. And then, maybe CRM Evolution stays at the Hilton. Ray, bartender story

CRM Idol 2011 Update #2: We're Crankin' Now!

In case you need the full monty as CRM 2011 keeps rollin': here are the two links to the oh so passé past.

• The original rules and contest ideas, judges and prizes.
• Update #1

Now here are the latest updates:

Additions to the Judges

1. Lets give a big round of applause to Larry Ritter,  Senior Vice President & General Manager of CRM for Sage Software who joins our Extended Judges Vendor Panel . Larry is a long time industry veteran who not only knows software but knows small business too. A huge addition for the panel
2. Now, put your hands together for Chris Carfi, Vice President of Antseyeview and the man who just may have coined the term "social customer" with his incredibly popular blog. Chris is one of the first social influencers and one who knew the CRM market from the get go. He is also incredibly popular.  He joins the Extended Judges Influencer Panel.
3. We've got one more to clap those hands for and that would be Brian Vellmure, Founder and Principal of Initium, LLC. Brian is one of those Social CRM influencers who appeared about 2 years ago and just keeps getting more and more prominent. He joins the Extended Judges Influencer Panel too.
4. Also, give it up for Thomas Vander Wal, Principal at InfoCloud Solutions who joins the Extended Judges Influencers Panel. Thomas is a web legend who pretty much created social tagging and folksonomies and is the man who is defining the social "lens" that we look at companies, products and social interactions through.
5. Finally, last but not least, raise a glass to Kristian af Sandberg, Product Manager, Redpill Linpro, one of Scandinavia's foremost strategic implementation firms. Kristian is an EMEA leader who becomes part of the Extended Judges Vendor Panel.

The Mentor Program

We are adding another facet to the mentorship program. Where originally mentors were available to only the seven finalists on how to construct the content for their video, we are going to be able to expand that program to the 60 contestants on how to handle their demos etc with the primary judges. These mentors will be drawn from the Extended Judges panel and will be VOLUNTARY when it comes to which judges. Watch for a list to be published on the website at some time after the site launches.  The contact information will be made available PRIVATELY to the contestants for their knowledge only and the dates that the mentors will be available also will be privately provided. This is an exciting addition because it will provide invaluable advice on how to do things that will benefit the young businesses that are in this competition. Participation is strictly voluntary on both sides.

The Latest Calendar - May  5, 4:30PM ET, 10:30PM GMT

CRM Idol 2011 is closed. All the slots are taken but we've put together a waiting list. 

For all of the companies that have made it, please remember:

1. its provisional - dependent on your three references checking out. Once they do, we will send out notifications to everyone that will let you know the time and date of your actual slot.
2. I'm traveling and the other key judges are busy and we are all human beings so we might be a little slow in responding.
3. The waiting list is those Americas companies that submitted after closing of the competition. The order is based on the time stamped proper submission of the email. Any email that had something wrong with the submission has been asked to resubmit with the corrections. The resubmittal will be their actual time and date, not the original submission. Hey, it might sound sorta anal, but we haven't been asking much so reading the rules and making our lives a little easier isn't unwarranted, is it?

The Americas Calendar - FINAL (see #1 above though)

The Americas (all times are Eastern Time)

Date
	August 15 3pm – PhaseWare 4pm – Performance Solutions 5pm – Solucciones 6pm – Jaguar TPM	August 16 3pm – Relenta CRM 4pm – LuxorCRM 5pm – thedatabank 6pm –Connected	August 17 3pm –Assistly 4pm – SplendidCRM 5pm – RO/Innovation 6pm - GreenRope	August 18 3pm – Cosential 4pm – Media Funnel 5pm – Tasker.ly 6pm – Aplicor	August 19 3pm -FreeCRM 4pm – Interactions Corp 5pm – Antharia LLC 6pm – Relayware
	August 22 3pm – Lookout Software, Inc. 4pm – InvisibleCRM 5pm – Negoxia 6pm - CiviCRM	August 23 3pm –Vigilius LLC 4pm – Hyperoffice 5pm – SalesNexus LLC 6pm – Salestrakr	August 24 3pm – Brick St. Software 4pm – Stone Cobra 5pm – VIPorbit 6pm – Nimble	August 25 3pm – Front Row CRM 4pm – GetSatisfaction 5pm – ContactMe 6pm – FuzeDigital	August 26 3pm - bigWebApps 4pm – Loopfuse 5pm – Vertical Solutions, Inc. 6pm – Dovetail Software

EMEA - FINAL as of May 5, 10:30PM GMT

EMEA (all times are GMT)

Date
	September 5 3pm - Swivelscript 4pm – InTouch 5pm - Efficy NV 6pm - Jibe Company	September 6 3pm - Loyalty Factory 4pm – B-Kin 5pm – Atollon 6pm - Dimelo	September 7 3pm - Pipedrive 4pm – Akordis 5pm - Workbooks.com 6pm - BPMonline CRM	September 8 3pm – Iko System 4pm – Zestia Ltd 5pm - Really Simple Systems 6pm - Arten Science Ltd.	September 9 3pm –The SelfService Co. 4pm – Digita Srl 5pm –ABCrm 6pm - webCRM

Thus….Available Times as of May 5 at 1:30am ET, 7:30am GMT.

Americas (all ET)

• CLOSED

EMEA (all GMT)

• CLOSED

That's it. CRM Idol 2011 now has all its candidates for this year.  This is exciting. There is still room for those who don't mind being on a waiting list. Feel free to submit.In Other News

We are cranking on several other fronts that are in progress as this is written. Among them:

1. We are working on a CRM Idol 2011 website that will feature a Joomla! based content management system at the backend. This will become the source for all updates and queries when its ready. Watch for it in the near to mid future.
2. We are also working on a Facebook page for all you fans and friends out there.
3. We are working on a YouTube channel, which as of now, is going to be the system of record for the videos though because we are at 10 minutes as a video, we reserve the right to move this channel elsewhere should YouTube rules interfere.
4. We are working on the 1 hour session guidelines for all the entries so that you won't feel lost and we will see what we can do to set up a system of mentors that will be available during certains as yet ascertained period for advice for the one hours. That will be in July sometime I would reckon for the Americas and August for EMEA.
5. Finally, we are continuing to provide more possible prizes and will be refining the rules for prizes etc as we go on.  Stay tuned for more announcements.

 

Finally…CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season Is Here! Welcome to…Wherever We Are

PG Note: The post you see below represents the “official” launch of CRM Idol 2011 and is one that all eight primary judges endorse. For me personally, this is my “angelic” side – the side of me that wants to support an industry that has been good to me. On my more edgy side, some of the reason that this was hatched was because of PR agents who basically don’t do their homework and pitch me all day long without an inkling about me as an actual human. They think I’m an influential CRM cyborg. Dealing with that from the other side, Brent Leary and I will be launching a music video in a few months from Playaz Productions. Heh. Heh.

But the side of me that’s grateful to an industry and friends and those companies that actually have honored me by listening to me blather all these years, is enthralled by the idea that we may be able to give back to all of you through CRM Idol. So, thank you for everything over the years and welcome to CRM Idol 2011: the Open Season!!)

 

 

Okay, everyone this is the big one. CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season is here and we’re ready to take your companies and find out which one of you in the Americas and which one of you in EMEA is not the next CRM Idol but the FIRST CRM Idol.

The Idea

Most of what we’re trying to do was outlined in the pre-announcement announcement of CRM Idol last week. But it bears some repeating:

Small companies – at least in the CRM software related world – and that means social software world, in this case, too – abound. There are thousands of companies out there that are possibly innovative, possibly commercially viable in a big way, possibly the next big thing. But, as we said, there are thousands of them. And, no matter how great your product is, if no one knows about it, well, then, oops. Not a good thing.

These small companies are all making efforts to get into the ecosystem that could benefit them – one which includes investors, influencers, technology/strategic partners, media connections, etc. While getting support from this powerful ecosystem is by no means a guarantee of success, it can be enormously helpful in getting well down the road there. But, those small companies are often thwarted in that effort by either really bad PR people, or just the incredible amount of companies out there trying to reach into the ecosystem who are pummeling the small amount of influencers, etc. every week with requests to demo or talk.

Now, to be fair to the influencers, they are human beings with lives that aren’t built around supporting this one company that really thinks they are it. All they know is that each of them is getting between 20-50 requests a week to take a demo or conversation with someone who owns or represents a company they’ve never heard of and never talked to yet. In addition to those that they know. Often enough, they are pitched by a public relations person who is either inexperienced or not really good at their job who makes no effort to find anything out about the person that they are pitching to. So the influencer, journalist, venture capitalist gets a generic curve thrown at them that doesn’t even break over the plate – guaranteeing that the email is going to be discarded as a matter of course before the first paragraph is even read. Or it could be that on a particular day the influencer got 10 pitches and had a headache and didn’t want to see any of them.

As unfair as generic pitches and high volumes of noise are to the influencers in the highly desirable ecosystem we are chatting about here, it is a problem because what are probably a lot of good companies are never given a chance to move ahead because of the difficulties inherent in the process and the vagaries of bad luck on any given day.

Which is why CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season exists.

The concept is simple, small companies out there. If you meet the submission criteria outlined below, you will be given the opportunity, first come first serve, to secure a time slot on a specific day that will put you in front of some of the most influential people in the CRM/SCRM world. They will spend an hour with you in a demo to hear about your technology product – software only – and they will write a jointly signed review of what they saw of you – that will be published in multiple venues as soon as its written. It can be a good review, a bad one, a mix or indifferent. There’s risk on your part to be taken here. But it is something that you need to be aware of. The reviews will go up as soon as the 5 judge sign off on the final content. They won’t be exhaustive reviews but they will be opinionated and fair.

Forty companies from the Americas and twenty companies from EMEA (that means ONLY Europe, the Middle East and Africa) will get a shot at this – again first come first serve (more later on what that means). Of the 40 in the Americas, 4 finalists will be chosen. (NOTE: There will be an APAC edition hopefully late in the year or if not, early 2012, depending on the success of these two events. Sorry, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, et.al. Logistics made it impossible at this juncture.) Out of the 20 in EMEA, 3 finalists will be chosen. Each of the finalists will be REQUIRED to do a ten minute video about their company and the product. Not a repeat of the demo but a video. Note I used the word REQUIRED here. Let me put it this way. If you make the finals and don’t do the video, we will publicly skewer your company. Know why? Because our judges are giving up what little free time they actually have in a summer to do this and it will take us 4 hours a day for 3 business weeks to do it. So if you can’t or won’t put in the effort to do the video, don’t bother to apply. Seriously. We’re trying to help out here and we want you guys all to succeed but it’s a two way street.

Okay, that rant out of the way. Once the finalists are chosen and the videos done, they will be posted online in multiple media outlets. They will be voted on in two ways:

1. Popular vote – see, crowdsourcing is important. All the votes for the one winner from the Americas and the one winner from EMEA will be tallied from the public sites – in aggregate. That’s 50% of the vote.
2. Extended Judges Panels – as you can see below, we may have assembled the greatest panels of judges – both leading vendors and influencers ever assembled in the history of CRM – not to be hyperbolic or anything. Each judge will select a specific winner in each of the Americas and EMEA from the 7 finalists. That’s the other 50% of the vote. The original judges will be voting as panel members.

The winners in each will get a major array of prizes, some of which are below, and be declared “CRM Idol 2011 Winner.”

Not too shabby is it? Vast amounts of media attention even if you don’t make the finals. If you make the finals at all, some prizes to you. The winners get everything that the ecosystem can offer but guaranteed success. But they do get all the accoutrements they need to support their increased likelihood of it.

That way, you small companies out there who have been victimized by bad approaches or just circumstance have the opportunity to bypass all of that and make something happen. It’s up to you to take the reins in hand but once you do, you have at least a serious chance at making yourself successful.

The Criteria

This competition is for small companies in the CRMish/SocialCRMish world. – see the categories below for some guidelines though please feel free to make the case if you don’t see yourself in the guidelines.

1. You have to have software that is commercially available by the time of the demo – that would be in August – again see below. No betas, alphas, release candidates allowed. If we find that you’re not commercially available, and you have a time slot, you’re out and someone else will fill the slot. So please be sure that you can verify the claim if you want to participate.
2. You have to have 3 referenceable customers that, if we care to, we can contact and ask about you.
3. You have to have revenue under $12 million U.S. your last fiscal year. As far as disclosure goes, you have the choice of making the claim that you do – though that will have to be stated in your submission and we’ll trust you or you can disclose your revenue in the submission with the knowledge that only the permanent judges will know what it is. If you make the claim, please be prepared to back it up if we ask. Your call on how.
4. You have to be willing to make a ten minute video if you get to the finals. More on that later.
5. You have to fit a category – though there is some leeway there.

The Categories

The categories that we’ve identified to start are:

1. Traditional CRM Suites
2. Social CRM
3. Sales - Sales Force Automation, Sales Optimization, Sales Effectiveness
4. Marketing – Marketing Automation, Revenue Performance Management, Social Marketing, Email Marketing, Enterprise Marketing Management, Database Marketing
5. Customer Service – all permutations
6. Mobile CRM
7. Customer Experience Management
8. Social Media Monitoring – requires the possibility of integrating with a CRM technology
9. Customer Analytics – including text/sentiment analytics; voice based analytics; social media analytics, influencer scoring, etc.
10. Enterprise Feedback Management
11. Innovation Management
12. Community Platforms
13. Enterprise 2.0 – collaboration, activity streams etc.
14. Social Business
15. Knowledge Management – this one requires the possibility of integrating with CRM systems
16. Vendor Relationship Management
17. Partner Relationship Management

Once again, if you don’t see yourself in this list, don’t worry.  Just make the case as to why you have some customer-facing possibilities and the likelihood is that we’ll be cool with it. We’re trying to make this easier for you, not hard.

The Rules

They are numbered to be entirely clear.

Submissions

1. There will be 40 slots made available in the Americas and 20 in EMEA.
2. The submission will be by email ONLY to: [email protected]. (See below to see this again and what to do if there are problems). Any other attempt at submission will be rejected out of hand with the problem exception mentioned below.
3. The submissions will occur starting today – Monday, April 25 and will continue until Friday May 13 or until all slots are filled, whichever is first (watch #crmidol on twitter for updates on that as it occurs). On May 13, should any slots be left, the remaining specific dates and times will be made publicly available and another final round of submissions for those remaining slots will occur from May 13 through May 20. After that the submissions will be closed.
4. Each submission will include the following:
   1. Your company contact and named person contact information Two date and time specific slot requests. ONLY two. If your slots are not available, you’re out of luck until May 14 – and then you can resubmit to any time slots that are publicly announced as still available. Though there is no guarantee that there will be any available slots at that time. (see below for examples of how to submit the dates/times)
   2. The category you feel you fit into - or if you don’t but think that you qualify – why.
   3. A description of what the product is/the company is. Be persuasive here that you meet the criteria, not that you have a great product. This is merely a qualifying discussion. URLs cannot be used as substitutes for this description. The submission needs to be all inclusive. However, they can be used as supporting documentation.
   4. The names of the three (3) referenceable customers – the company, the contact and the way to communicate with them – minimum of email and phone, please.
   5. A statement that says that you meet the revenue requirement along the lines of “our company states truthfully that our revenues in our last fiscal year 2010 were under $12 million U.S”. OR you can state the actual number with the knowledge that the primary judges in each of the Americas and EMEA will treat it as under non-disclosure. But please be aware those designated primary judges below will see the actual figures if you choose to reveal them.
   6. A statement that says, “if (you) make the finals, you are committed to making a 10 minute video for submission and public viewing as part of the conditions for entry.” Word it anyway you prefer but make the commitment clear.
5. If you are accepted, you’ll be notified privately but it will be posted that you’ve been accepted on the Twitter #crmidol stream. The time will only be sent to you privately. Just your acceptance will be posted. Please allow some time between your submission and the posting of it to the hashtag and your private notification, since we all still have to work for a living.
6. If you don’t include everything specified in the rules for submission, it means automatic disqualification and you cannot resubmit.

The Demo

The demo has few rules. Just be prepared to a. explain your company; b. show your product – live please c. answer questions from the influencers/experts.  Not much more than that. I’m sure many of you are experienced at this already so wed don’t have to tell you this, but just in case… A site for the demos with login etc. will be announced to the timeslot owners in early August.

The Video

The standards for the video will be mentioned to the finalists once they are named. To rest any unease, you won’t be required to spend lots of money to get it done. How much you spend and on what will be up to you as will the content and how you present it. We’ll issue guidelines when the time gets near, including how the video is going to be distributed for posting and voting.

The Judges

Here are the lists of all the judges. As you can see, we have what is likely to be the heaviest hitting list in the history of anything done in CRM when it comes to awards or competitions. Click on their names to get to their LinkedIn bios. They are in alphabetical order.

Primary Judges

The Americas

These five judges will handle the 40 entries for the Americas which consists of the United States, Canada, South and Central America.  They will all be involved in the one hour reviews each of the days over the two weeks and will jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the four finalists for the Americas.

1. Paul Greenberg – Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC
2. Jesus Hoyos – Managing Partner, JesusHoyos.com, LLC
3. Esteban Kolsky – Principal and Founder, Thinkjar LLC
4. Brent Leary – Managing Partner, CRM Essentials
5. Denis Pombriant – CEO, Beagle Research Group

EMEA

These four judges will handle the 20 entries from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia etc.  They will all be involved in the each of the 1 hour demos/discussions from Sept 5 through 9 and will write and jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the three finalists for EMEA.

1. Laurence Buchanan – Vice President, CRM & Social CRM, EMEA, Capgemini
2. Silvana Buljan – Founder & Managing Director, Buljan & Partners
3. Paul Greenberg – see above
4. Mark Tamis – Social Business Strategist, NET-7

Mentors

This is an exciting part of CRM Idol 2011. Each of these fine human beings has volunteered a day of their time – two during the finals and one with the winners – to provide the benefit of their experience to the contestants.  What they will do is noted by their name. This is an awesome idea that Anthony Lye actually cooked up. Each of these mentors has decades of experience in the software and venture capital world and is considered a leader in the CRM space. So if you make it to the finals, you have the benefit of their knowledge and their valuable time.  Amazing.

1. Anthony Lye – Anthony will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Anthony has had years of experience as a senior management person for enterprise CRM and a thought leader.
2. Joe Hughes – Joe will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Joe has been a leader in the CRM space for as long as we can remember and one of the more foresighted when it comes to the value of Social CRM
3. Larry Augustin – This is a prize for the winner of EMEA and the winner of the Americas. Larry who has years of experience as an executive in the software space and has been a successful venture capitalist will work with the winner to prepare them for dealing with possible investors including doing a VC matching with the winners.

There will most likely be other mentors announced as the competition gets closer to the demo dates.  We might try to make some mentors available to prepare you if you need them for the one hour demos but that’s still up in the air. We’ll keep you posted.

Extended Judges Panels

The Influencer Panel

1. William Band – Vice President & Principal Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
2. Jim Berkowitz – CEO, CRM Mastery
3. Bruce Culbert – Chief Service Officer, The Pedowitz Group
4. Zoli Erdos - Publisher/Editor, CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars
5. Mike Fauscette – Group Vice President, Software Business Solutions, IDC
6. Josh Greenbaum – Principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting
7. Dr. Graham Hill – Partner, Optima Partners
8. Dennis Howlett - Buyer Advocate
9. Ian Jacobs – Senior Analyst, Customer Interaction, Ovum/Datamonitor
10. Michael Krigsman – CEO, Asuret
11. Marshall Lager – Managing Principal, Third Idea Consulting
12. Kate Leggett – Senior Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
13. Maribel Lopez – Principal Analyst and VP, Constellation Research  Founder Lopez Research LLC
14. Jeremiah Owyang -Managing Partner, Altimeter Group
15. Sameer Patel – Managing Partner, Sovos Group
16. Scott Rogers – Customer Evangelist
17. Robert Scoble – Managing Director, Rackspace Hosting
18. Brian Solis – Principal, Altimeter Group
19. Dilip Soman – Professor of Marketing, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
20. Ray Wang – CEO, Constellation Research
21. Mary Wardley – Vice President, CRM Applications, IDC

The Vendor Panel

1. Larry Augustin – CEO, SugarCRM
2. Anthony Lye – Senior Vice President & GM, CRM, Oracle
3. Phil Fernandez – CEO, Marketo
4. John Hernandez – General Manager, Customer Care Business, Cisco
5. Jonathan Hornby – Director, Worldwide Marketing, SAS
6. Joseph Hughes - Senior Executive, CRM Service, Support and Social System Integration Lead, Accenture
7. Charlie Isaacs, VP, eServices and Social Media Strategy Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
8. Vinay Iyer – Vice President, Marketing CRM, SAP
9. Katy Keim - CMO, Lithium
10. Marcel Lebrun,- CEO, Radian6
11. Mitch Lieberman, Vice President, Marketing, Sword-Ciboodle
12. Chris Morace- Senior Vice President, Business Development, Jive
13. Zach Nelson – CEO, NetSuite
14. Bill Patterson- Director, CRM Product Management, Microsoft
15. Dileep Srinivasan - AVP - CRM & Social CRM, Digital Marketing & MDM, Cognizant
16. John Taschek –Vice President, Market Strategy, Salesforce

The Journalist Panel

1. Elsa Basile – Director, Callcenternews (Argentina)
2. Barney Beal – Managing Editor, SearchCRM,
3. Anita Campbell – Publisher, SmallBizTrends.com
4. Robin Carey – CEO, Social Media Today
5. Neil Davey – Group Editor, Sift Media
6. David Myron – Editorial Director, CRM Magazine, Speech Technology Magazine
7. Valdir Ugalde – Board, Member, mundocontact (Mexico)
8. Anne Van Den Berg – Senior Editor, CustomerTalk (Netherlands)

 

Media Partners

You’ll note that we have 8 journalists on a panel of judges. Well, each of them represents a media partner that will be broadcasting the competition and posting the videos for voting in the finals for the popular vote.  They are an awesome array of the most influential media sites in social media, CRM, and small business as well as local influencers in CRM in Latin America and Europe.  They will be significant in the lives of the contestants, the finalists, and the winners giving each what may be an unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage. Their coverage will be supplemented by posts to the blogs and other sites that are owned by many of the judges so there will be significant reach for all 60 of the initial contenders.  Each of these partners will be getting exclusives from the judges and hopefully some of the companies too so that we can add a quality of coverage that would enhance the value to the SMBs participating. in all areas – CRM, social and small business directly.

We expect to add more media partners as we continue on throughout the competition.

The current partners and links to their sites (in alphabetical order, like every list here):

1. Call Center News (Argentina)
2. CRM Magazine/DestinationCRM
3. CustomerTalk (Netherlands)
4. Mundocontact (Mexico)
5. MyCustomer.com/Sift Media
6. SearchCRM
7. Social Media Today
8. SmallBizTrends.com

 

The Prizes…So Far

These are the prizes as of launch today. There are several others in the works that will be announced as the contest rolls out.

All Finalists

All 7 finalists will get to choose one day of consulting from the list of Influencer consultants below. The order of choice will be based on the popular vote on the video which will be kept confidential but used for the choosing. There will be more consultants added to the list as contest moves forward.

The Americas and EMEA Winners

Each winner will get to choose four prizes from the list.  Note – in the case where multiple prizes are being offered by a single vendor – the vendor counts as a single prize with all the items as part of that.

1. Accenture
   1. A full day workshop with CRM leaders in Accenture for possible partnership and/or possible investment.
2. Capgemini (for EMEA winners only)
   1. A half day workshop with Patrick James, Global VP CRM and Laurence Buchanan to explore joint go to market opportunities and help you refine and test your value proposition.
3. Social Media Today
   1. A blog post featuring the winner of the contest to run on both The Customer Collective and Social Media Today
   2. A single blast to the Social Media Today opt-in list (approximately 50,000 names) which will conform to their minimum standards (valued at $10,500)
4. Microsoft
1. 12 mos. of CRM Online Free for developing extensions to CRM
2. 12 mos. of Windows Azure Free for developing web-based portals and BI solutions
3. Access to the Office 365 Beta for building collaborative applications and services
4. Guaranteed access to exclusive Business and Technical On-Ramp program funded by Microsoft to accelerate entry
   and access to the Microsoft ecosystem
5. SugarCRM
   1. Free 10 user subscription to SugarCRM Professional or Enterprise
   2. Membership in the Sugar Exchange and free consulting on product integration with SugarCRM
   3. CEO Larry Augustin, a successful venture capitalist in his own right, does a mentoring & VC matchmaking session with the winners
6. Brian Solis
   1. One hour internal webinar on how to use SCRM and social media to your advantage
7. Paul Greenberg
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
8. Ray Wang
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
9. Sameer Patel
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
10. Influencer Consulting– free strategic consulting for 1 day or 8 hours from a variety of judges (in person travel expenses to be covered by winners)
    1. Esteban Kolsky (in person only)
    2. Paul Greenberg (on phone or in person)
    3. Denis Pombriant (on phone or in person)
    4. Mark Tamis (on phone or in person)
    5. Jesus Hoyos (on phone or in person)
    6. Brent Leary (on phone or in person)

 

The Times, Dates, Hashtag and Email

Okay here’s the hardcore stuff:

1. The hashtag is #crmidol
2. The email for submission is [email protected]
   1. If you have a problem submitting to that email send your submission and a report of the specific problem to [email protected]

 

Dates and Times Table for the Americas and EMEA

We’ve put together an easy little table with all the relevant dates and times that you’ll need as you progress through the competition.

 

Dates/Times	Americas	EMEA
Submission Dates	August 15-19; August 22-26	September 5-9
Submission Times	3pm ET; 4pm ET; 5pm ET; 6pm ET	3pm GMT; 4pm GMT; 5pm GMT; 6pm GMT
Finalist Video Submission Date	September 30	October 14
Winner Announcement	October 17	October 31

 

 

 

 

A Note or Two

A little bit of unfinished stuff that will sort itself out as time goes forward.

• There will likely be a CRM Idol site (Joomla based) coming in the next month or so that will be an aggregate site for all the media outlets and streams.  However, this remains a work in progress that’s still under discussion.
• There will be more mentors and prizes added and possibly a judge or two.
• For now ongoing news will be found at the twitter hashtag #crimidol.

In Closing

That’s about it. Now its time to bring it. First come, first serve. See you, maybe as the 1st ever CRM Idol, in Vegas, Hollywood. London or on the Social Web. Somewhere anyway.

 

CRM IDOL 2011 IS NOW OFFICIALLY UNDERWAY

The Honeymoon Ends in Despair: The Sad Sad Case of Verizon Wireless

For years - since the first one was released - I had an iPhone. I had the iPhone, then the 3G, the 3GS and the 4. For me to continue to acquire that fashion statement, I had to suck it up and go back to AT&T, a carrier that I hated for eons - because of continuously bad customer experiences. They were designed not to partner with me, the customer, but instead to suck out my life's blood, some joy, my money - all the while dropping calls merrily along the way.

I finally cracked when I took a trip to London in November 2010. For the zillionth time, I had to leave the iPhone data roaming feature off or, even with AT&T's $20/mo (not prorated), 2GB program for international data, I would be out hundreds of dollars in five days. It put me in the ridiculous position of waiting until nighttime to see what emails I needed to respond to right away - which, with a reasonable data plan, would have been 5 hours ago. And, the phone didn't work everywhere in the world.

So imagine my delight when I found out that there were phones like the Droid 2 Global that worked in every country in the world AND that the carrier with this phone, Verizon Wireless had an international data plan to die for. It went something like this.

For Email Global, the charge will be either $64.99 or $69.99 per month but pro-ratable. The data? Unlimited. That means for roughly $13.00 for a five day trip to London, I had unlimited data. Perfect. Totally, beautifully perfect. To add to this, Verizon was rolling out their 4G LTE network, making me happy for the future with this new and (I thought) better carrier.

My hopes were sky high. I was excited enough to make the effort to consolidate all business and personal phones to Verizon - 3 landlines and two cellphones. I consolidated my Mifi to the Droid 2 Global which had a hotspot (though domestic). In other words, mostly all in on Verizon. Not only did I have this shiny new telco to handle all my communication needs, but perhaps I could have them handle my Internet needs too? I was willing to try.

So, I figured, that I would ask them about FIOS. When I made the transition in December 2010 (near Christmas) I told the Verizon store rep I was dealing with that since the FIOS trunk lines were literally buried in my front lawn, I would for a reasonable deal be willing to move from Comcast to Verizon. She promised to get back to me. Didn't. Promised again after I called her. Didn't. Promised again after I called her again. Didn't. The result, I'm still with Comcast, because of her total (and stupid) lack of attention - for a possible sale.

Notable here is not the FIOS part of the story. Its that during the first blush of honeymoon, when I was most prone for what would be a sale based on the good will engendered - and that I was looking for - the sales representative completely ignored the central rule of customer experience. Pay attention to the customer. This one would have a tangible financial benefit too - a FIOS monthly subscription for a high bandwidth solution.

I should have suspected something then but since it was early, I was in a forgiving mood - and just let it ride.

Already somewhat less enthused because of Verizon's lack of response - I began to use the Droid 2. It was fine. While the experience is not nearly as smooth or as good as the iPhone, it's not bad, Android is a highly promising system, the phone/OS had a few features (a pulldown summary of actions menu) that were not on the iPhone and highly utilitarian besides being cool. So all in all, I was willing to overlook the issue of the non-responsive service person. But I understood Laptop Magazine's C+ rating for Verizon when it came to customer service in 2010. They didn't rank real well (tied for lowest I believe) and apparently, it was deserved.

But, now, the story gets so much worse.

On January 18, I had to make a client visit to Fredericton New Brunswick. When I got there I realized I had forgotten to "turn on" the international data roaming service (the $64.99 deal). I didn't think much of that either way, because I was given to understand by both friends of mine who used it and the Verizon Wireless guy who sold me the phone and services, that I could do that easily from the Web. The service was called Global Email and when I checked in early January, it was easy to find. So I got online and went to where Global Email Service's link resided. And, it wasn't there. Nowhere to be found. Non-existent.

Huh?

Of course, since I knew that it had been there, I did what any human with an internet connection would do in this circumstance - I googled it. I found the page with the link. Clicked on the link. It was broken. I tried half a dozen ways to find an unbroken link to the Global Email program. No dice.

"What the...." I thought  "Something is amiss, askew, astray." I began checking Verizon forums and here's what I found out.

On January 16, the day that the Verizon iPhone was announced, the links to the Global Email program were deliberately broken by Verizon and were replaced with a new program that I won't even dignify with a name. But it charged $100/mo for 200mb. That's right. 200 megabytes. In other words, what was apparently the best program in the industry, in the space of 1 day, became the worst.

I doubt that it was a coincidence that this new horrible program was launched the day the iPhone was too. Clearly designed to prey on iPhone users and to align with AT&T's gouging of customers for international data. And I do mean gouging. I'd love to hear Verizon's explanation as to how costs have gone up SO much that they went from unlimited data down to 200 mb with a more than 50% price increase. This is just another Verizon attempt at price gouging - in this case under the cover of the release of the iPhone 4.

Interestingly, this isn't the first time they've been accused of price gouging either. In 2009, David Pogue, the super-influential, highly respected technology columnist for the NY Times did a column on how Verizon charged customers for data use monthly even if they never downloaded any data.

The pricing isn't what I want to focus on here - though its certainly an aspect of what I think that Verizon has done so, so, so wrong.

Verizon and Customer Experience: What Did They Do? What Should They Have Done?

Here's the problem. Its not the program that replaced the one that sold me on them - though there is that - but its the way that they handled it.

How should they have handled it, you ask?

An anecdotal answer: there was this software company for a consumer software product which had pricing for lifetime updates - which I already had purchased. This company decided that they weren't going to offer lifetime updates any longer. But instead of just changing things unannounced. 90 days before the change, they told their customers about it and gave them a chance to buy the lifetime updates. Then 60 days, then 30 and then 15. Ample time, ample attempts.All lifetime update purchasers were then grandfathered in.

By comparison, think about how Verizon Wireless, this paragon of false virtue did this. What are their mistakes and what could they have done to at least minimize damage if not do something that would have supported a good customer experience? I'll answer that, not because I think Verizon gives a damn, but because there are answers that might help another company. Verizon itself is an obviously customer-ignorant company. Okay, first, what did they do. Then what they should have done:

1. They changed the program unannounced - this is the cardinal sin. What could they have done, other than succumbing to the greed that the Verizon iPhone seemed to open the gates to? First, give their international customers some notice. Meaning if you had a Droid 2 Global or other international phone, the likelihood, if you make some obvious assumptions, or if you don't trust that simple judgment, do some basic analytics, is they are international travelers who want to use or have used the Global Email program at some point. I can't believe that Verizon Wireless didn't know they were going to do this 30 days before they did. So, in the interests of transparency - and an honest relationship with their customers and future customers, tell the f--ing truth via an email to the holders of international phones - and to the store sales reps and service reps who can inform prospective customers that there are going to be changes to the program in 30 days that should be part of your consideration for purchase.
2. I read in the forums that they are still offering the original plan to their business users but no longer to individuals. I don't have confirmation of this. But under the assumption its true, they would have been wise to remember something. I'll explain in the form of an anecdote involving a smart telco - not a Verizon Clueless, er,...Wireless-like telco. This would be a story about Orbitel, the Colombian carrier. They had a policy. Any individual customer with residential service who they could identify as a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) would be treated like a high value customer. Why? Because they knew, even 8 years ago, that this person was an influential person in the business environment they worked in. They would remember their treatment and hopefully, when it came to commercial service, act accordingly. If anyone from Verizon is reading this, I hope you get the hint. You sure didn't by eliminating a class of customers who are potentially influential in their enterprises or who run small businesses.
3. Deny it all you want, but its obvious by the release of this new onerous international data program on the day that the iPhone went public, that you care more about your future iPhone sales than your existing customer base. A wiser move, even if you ignored all the above I've mentioned, would have been to grandfather in customers who had purchased international phones prior to January 16. Give them the option on the old plan as they need it - since I'm sure that one of the attractions of purchasing an international phone from Verizon was the international data plan. So let them continue with the old plan if they owned a global phone before January 16. Period.

I'm still thinking about how viral I want to get this discussion. I wonder if Verizon has the actual corporate intelligence and chops to realize that this is a serious mistake that damages their relationship with a significant class of customers - who's connections as you can probably guess span the globe and certainly can impact Verizon's business in the U.S. A genuinely customer-centric company would never have made this mistake. Verizon, much to my regret and chagrin, isn't a customer-centric company. They don't hold a candle to the smarts of an Orbitel, or to widen the net beyond their vertical, to the customer-centricity of a Zappos or Amazon. They are merely big, sluggish and distinctly wrong when it comes to how they treat their customers. To me, that's sad. Pathetic really. I guess 4G technology doesn't mean they can think at that speed.

2011 CRM Forecast - What's Up Wit' Dat - Part II

I'm presuming that you've already read Part I of this 2011 CRM Forecast, oui? If not, scoot on over to ZDNet and do that before you read here. This is a continuation of Part I, not a repeat of it. I would HIGHLY suggest that you do this in order. :-) 6) Knowledge management replaces enterprise content management as a core requirement for large businesses - This might sound self-evident but it isn't. One of the most important conceptual transformations going in business is around the idea of Service Dominant Logic (SDL) which to put into its most simplified form would be - "rather than speak of the features and functions of technology that you need, try to think about the jobs that you need to get done. Then go from there." This dovetails directly with the idea that in order to understand the value of SCRM or CRM or any strategy or technology or process, you have to proceed from the standpoint of the self-interest of those involved as potential buyers or users. So what you are attempting to create is a commonwealth of self-interest. What are those things that can be done that will make the jobs of the persons involved easier when it comes to engaging customers? Knowledge management, unlike enterprise content management, isn't only the collection, storage and organization of documents but is the accessibility of information that answers questions. What it also involves is the delivery of that information and the timeliness of that information. That means it can be via FAQ, web self service knowledgebases that are accessible by both employees and customers; it can involve the delivery of dynamic knowledge based on ongoing wikis and threaded forums; it most certainly involves a highly effective search mechanism. This year we are starting to see the integration of knowledge management with CRM - especially around customer care through companies like eGain, Coveo, and perhaps most visibly, Inquira. In fact, while none of them made the Watchlist candidates (Inquira just barely missed) that's mostly due to this being a new and important technology integration and one that I didn't monitor as much as I should have - which I will rectify in 2011. But as more and more information becomes available, as more and more customers are providing answers to other customers questions through communities, social networks and threaded forums; as more and more customers are requiring increasing information from companies to make buying decisions and as more and more customer service reps are expected to respond with answers instantly, knowledge management becomes increasingly important. In 2011, KM will bubble to the top as a noticeably critical factor in both running effective customer service operations and in answering customers' questions. No longer will just content management (go here to download this document or look at this FAQ) be enough. KM in 2011 will rise to the top as a critical component of Social CRM and in the ensuing years be redefined and then adopted by the larger enterprises around the idea of "answering questions" not just "storing content." (9)Customer experience reasserts itself loudly as the core of CRM and SCRM - This one is kind of a no-brainer in a way. The core of traditional CRM even though it was always operationally focused was still the improvement of the customer experience and it was recognized that this was in fact the foundation for the success of how customers related to your company. But over the past few years, as CRM became more and more technology and process driven (rather than enabled) the core message disappeared into a dusty archive. Then along comes the distinctly right-brained focus of Social CRM. Then a flood of companies focused on collaboration, social software, community platforms and even those calling themselves customer experience management (CEM) vendors and strategies poured over the market. Traditional CRM vendors decided that they had to add social functionality to their traditional offerings adding another dimension. The market was confused about what to call itself, the vendors confused about how to message. But that forced the customer-driven intelligentsia - e.g. thought leaders, journalists, and analysts to rethink the value locus for companies at the point of interaction with the customer. There were two things that seemed to be generally agreed upon. First, there really is a social customer who is distinct from the customer of seven years ago. Second, and most germane to this forecast, is that the customer experience is the locus that we've all been missing and should be what companies focus on - whether the vendor thinks its providing or the practitioner thinks its implementing CRM, CEM, SCRM, a community (platform), listening, acting, social software, SMM, what have you. As a result, there is an increased focus on the customer experience on the practitioner side with programs primarily being evolved through loyalty/advocacy programs (see KLM's Club China, Marriott Hotels Rewards program, eBay's mobile efforts, etc.) or the messaging of vendors, which is dramatically shifting around to a focus on customer experience. You need proof? Check out the messaging of SAP, Oracle, Jive, etc. and you'll see a decisive shift in that direction. In 2011, not only will the focus of companies move in the direction of improved customer experiences through provision of products, services, tools, and consumable experiences, but the vendors messaging will both continue to align toward that end and the products that they provide will reflect that message. NOTE: Vendors, beware. Just because this will be happening at an accelerated pace, that doesn't mean that there will be a CEM market in 2011. CEM is not a market. It's a strategy that integrates with operational CRM strategies (I really don't care which one you think is dominant). Don't try to revive a market that was never really there by that name. Your messaging is around the customer experience, not a CEM market, right? (6) Co-creation and customer driven product innovation becomes more than just an advanced idea. Gains significant ground in the B2B space as a core necessity - Ideation isn't just a fad. Sure, in the past 2, 3 years, it was left to a few visionary thinkers like Steven Vargo, Robert Lusch, Graham Hill, Wim Rampen (I'd love to be included here but really, I'm just sipping at their fountains) and a few forward thinking companies like Procter and Gamble, Samsung and SAP. But the reality is that, as 2011 and beyond march ahead, customer driven product innovation is becoming something that companies are beginning to see true value in - with exactly the mutual benefits that we devoutly wish that SCRM would provide. In that same IBM Institute for Business Value mentioned above, they found that 78% of the customers would involve themselves in product innovation with the aforementioned companies. While I'm not sure how they derived this figure, the key is to see the picture being painted here - customers are more interested than ever - especially in the B2B space if you still believe that sort of thing - in participating with the company in the things that matter to them - the creation of the products that they buy. (8) Microsoft Azure emerges as a true cloud provider at the level of Amazon as cloud computing considers its rise to becoming a primary technology infrastructure - This may be my only vendor-specific forecast for 2010 because I think despite the hype of "we are cloud providers" that comes from an incredibly large number of the other technology vendors, Microsoft is the ONLY one poised to be true provider with the scope of Amazon, through their extraordinary Azure platform - a 9 billion dollar investment so far. I think they have the technology, the infrastructure, the platform and the storage capacity. They are willing to host someone other than themselves on their cloud infrastructure too - unlike the other claimants to the throne. Microsoft's sin if you will is that they are terrible at marketing Azure, which is a pity because as y'all know, its not good if no one knows about it. (5) Application marketplaces will become commonplace as companies look to platform providers to fill ecosystem needs, not just CRM - I think that we're already seeing a quantitative leap in the number of apps marketplaces out there. As we all know, salesforce.com was the first to do this with AppExchange, the first truly successful business applications marketplace that gave partners a chance to show off their wares - some of which have been quite good. ITunes of course, was the first great consumer marketplace to add applications with the launch of the iPhone. There have been multiple others since ranging from RIM having a Blackberry marketplace to Jive Software launching a marketplace in 2010 for their partners to provide the apps, add-ons, plug-ins to make Jive, not just a community platform but a community ecosystem. Of course, Google and Android are also in the mix as always. This is a trend that has nowhere to go but up in 2011. What could be wrong with easily consumable applications that support the ecosystem needs of the companies that are wedded to a particular vendor's platform? Expect to see a proliferation of these applications marketplaces in 2011. NOTE: Vendors, one cautionary note. I saw salesforce.com go through a period a few years ago when they were starting to ignore the difference between strategic partnerships and building an app on the AppExchange. Thankfully, they righted that ship reasonably quickly but not before I witnessed two instances of exactly that kind of thinking. Learn from that. An appexchange is no substitute for a strategic partner. Might sound self-evident, but if a company as smart as salesforce.com did it, what makes you any smarter - other than learning the lesson. (10,000,000) Yankees rebound and win the 2011 World Series - This one is, of course, the one that I am more likely to be right about than any other. 27 World Series, 49 pennants. That is substantiation enough. Forecasts I'd Like to Make But I Can't Defend There are a few things I'm just going to say. The problem is that these are just things that either come straight from the gut or are likely wishful thinking. I can't defend them - unlike anything else I have above. Those are defensible and I'll fight you to the death on them - My Forecasts, Right or Wrong as Patrick Henry, esteemed American patriot said during the War for Independence in 1776. Or was that My Country Right or Wrong? Whatever.

In any case, here are the unsubstantiated claims - the only ID will be a note that says, gut or wishful thinking.
1. Partner Relationship Management (PRM) finally ignites and takes off as a market. There are good products out there now (e.g. Relayware, Oracle Siebel PRM) but the market broke my heart twice now and I don't want it to happen again. (wishful thinking)
2. A few major practitioner companies come out with full-blown Social CRM strategies that they actually call "Social CRM." (gut)
3. Salesforce.com adds customer facing capabilities to Chatter making it a genuinely interactive community platform - Actually I heard Marc Benioff say they would have this in a year at a briefing in September but I'll have to see it to believe it. I think it's a matter of time. (gut)
4. Yankees get Cliff Lee (gut).

Finally, What I Didn't Forecast

You'll note that I didn't say anything about the cloud this time, since I think that's become entirely self-evident and a forecast on the cloud getting "bigger" isn't going to be a particular useful one from me. Gartner actually says that 75% of all SaaS deployments can be considered "a cloud service" now, according to Gartner star analyst Sharon Mertz (take my word, if she says, you can believe it).That's an interesting figure because that means that 25% can't be AND that, as I love to keep reminding anyone who isn't sick of me, there is a distinction between on demand and the cloud. In any case, according to my checklist, we can stick a forecast into it, its done. Next up, The Watchlists. Those are going to be more fun than ever before. I'm at Dreamforce so watch for my live tweets under the #df10 hashtag. Then a post, THEN the Watchlists. Bye. See you at the tail end of next year with my look back at how stupid I was this year. Not. Maybe not.

United Airlines - Redemption or More of the Usual

As you probably know, by now, I've been a none too happy United Airlines flyer for many years, usually working to the point I get to a Premier Executive status and then I start flying other airlines. I've spent a lot of time using United Airlines as cannon fodder for my "bad service experiences" posts because they have historically and by comparison to many other airlines - notably Virgin America, Southwest, the airline that they are now merging with Continental - suffered in that comparison. I've trashed United to probably hundreds of thousands of people over the past 7 or 8 years of speeches. One of my 2009 ZDNet blog posts where I wrote about United's egregiously bad behavior with me and others probably got more response than any other post I've ever done (except perhaps one other). But...I still fly United. I like to say that the reason I fly United is because I'm already so vested in the frequent flyer program that I just don't want to waste my investment. And, like many others, who immediately agree with me, that's true. But, if I'm going to be honest with myself and, also, all of you, there is a reason for that too. I like the extra legroom of Economy Plus. For those of you who don't know it, United on most of its major flights, has seats that have been designed to do no more than give the patrons who have their butts parked in them, 5" of extra legroom. The difference is something like 33" regular seat, 38" Economy plus. There are no further privileges than that. Its not business, its not first class. Its more legroom. That can make a huge difference to flight comfort, especially to a frequent traveler like me. Its the difference between being cramped and being relatively comfortable (its not perfect by far). Its the difference between not minding the flight and hating it. To get the Economy Plus seats, you either have to buy them at a nominal fee when they are available OR you have to have an Elite frequent flyer status. It keeps me coming back - as does preferred boarding and occasional upgrades. But it is Economy Plus that is my game changer. I've had that discussion with many others and they tell me the same thing. That extra legroom is what they like about United. The complaints far exceed the billing and cooing but the that extra comfort is a HUGE plus, not a small one. SO..... This is what I now hear, from a good source. United, of course, recently bought and is now in the process of merging with Continental. They have trumpeted this in ads and even on the safety video that precedes all flights. They have stated clearly to Elite flyers that for now things are the same but expect some changes as the merger continues to evolve. Interestingly, and you'll see why in a minute, they don't say "further benefits" nor do they say "positive" changes. Its all bland, neutral and entirely colorless. Know why? Because one of the changes being contemplated is the elimination of Economy Plus because Continental flights don't have it. Now I'm not sure whether that's the causal relationship, but that's the reason for the discussion. Now, we reach a nodal point for United. IF they eliminate Economy Plus they are doing it, once again, for cost efficiency's sake, not the customer's. A decision that has been made by them that way over and over and over again. Which is why their service experience is horrible and pales by comparison to Virgin America's, or Southwest's. IF they keep it and either retrofit Continental or just leave it as is, they will be doing what the customers' demand, not cost efficiency, which in their case would not only be seen as a total shock but an awesome surprise - probably garner then a great deal of customer good will. IF they eliminate Economy Plus, they will eliminate customers like me - and I will lead a campaign for that to happen. IF they keep it, I will congratulate them publicly on their first wise decision in awhile and keep on flying them - and maybe even encourage a few to fly United or to keep flying United. But I wonder if they've bothered to proactively query their customers about their thinking. No one is saying they have to kowtow to their best flyers - but getting their input would be a HUGE step forward for this airline. Not just going to their site to read what customers say, but an active campaign via Twitter, Facebook, email to top customers and ask for their input. PROACTIVE. That's spelled p-r-o...United, you get the picture, right? This is a chance for United to either redeem itself a bit and keep a service that many of their customers enjoy and expect - or be their usual model of service experience decrepitude and be non-responsive. I challenge them to talk to their customers before they make what they are probably not seeing is a decisive moment whether or not the next time I and others are writing blog posts, we're writing it from either a United jet....or a Virgin America jet. Their call.

Following On More Than Friday: The Experts Worth Checking Out

Note: I'm actually on a vacation, just finishing an incredible cruise through the Mediterranean and now on Day 2 of a 3 day stay in Barcelona. All in all a dream vacation to tell you the truth. Best ever. But I HAD to finish this post. An addiction. If I left you out and I actually do follow you as an expert, I apologize and will update this list in the near future. Forgive me. I'm loving this trip to much to worry about the rest of it all. Also, please let me know who teaches you. Not just who you read but who teaches you something of value - and moves you forward. Either ZDNet or PGreenblog which will have this post will be great for the comments. Please.

There’s was this list going around a few weeks ago that seemed to be saying that somehow those on it were "the" SCRM Top 50 "experts." After seeing yet another list of another group of experts or influencers in CRM, I realized I'm having a problem with all of these lists. The problem isn't who's on the list, though about 20% of the people on it, I've never heard of - which is highly unlikely if they are influential. The bigger problem I have with lists like this is in this case is that a list like this is now calling the chosen ones on it, "experts." This particular list is saying that the top 50 SCRM experts are sorted by a combination of some sort of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn followers, friends and other connections. Hopefully, the use of the word "experts" here was a poor unconscious choice of words, because I'm hard pressed to understand how these criteria are linked to expertise.

Look, I have a really hard time seeing a combination of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn compadres as a measure of influence,much less expertise. How this T+F+L combo scrubbed with an algorithm or two qualifies someone as an expert, I'll never know. (hat tip to Groucho Marx). I just get the feeling that even beyond this list (no offense intended, list producers), we are reducing the value of expertise to something that means "someone will listen to you beyond your mom and/or dad." All it seems to need in the world of Social CRM is a comment in an #scrm hashtag or some SCRM related keyword in combination with retweets, Facebook wall posts and god-know-what on LinkedIn to be anointed the god of an industry. Now to the authors credit, they said in their post to not take the numerical order of the list seriously. Which I didn't.

Whatever.

It’s just not the way I roll. Or most of the people I know either.

Please forgive me if I sound somewhat grouchy, but I’m seeing lists like this everywhere that are based on some quantitative calculation that are then being acclaimed as definitive. Reality is that they aren’t definitive and they actually provide little value and more confusion than not.

Here’s my take on all of this. The value of an expert is that they are able to teach someone something in a way that the person learning can understand. In other words, not only do they have depth in a discipline or domain of some sort, but they also think about who their audience actually is and what they do and how they live and, most of all, how they think. The reality is that each person, regardless of their proximity to a particular demographic, thinks differently than the next person. They think in different metaphors. The expert – at least the experts that I think deserve that designation are those that think about that audience. They aren’t just people who spout stuff about a subject or who build up a big Twitter following or who have lots of Facebook friends. They are people who have an expertise that they can impart in the metaphors of their audience so that their audience really understands what they are trying to say. These are people who think about doing that too.

The people that I’m going to recommend here are those I look to for learning. They are the ones who actually teach me something. They don’t just rehash others stuff, they don’t spend their lives arguing their picayune niggling gripes about "definitions"; they aren’t in business to maneuver themselves into leadership positions. They don't backstab or spit at others due their own inadequacies. They've become experts because they've earned the recognition, not because they are trying to get it.

These experts have ideas that create the seeds of new concepts, or they provide unique frameworks in how they look at a subject, or they are able to advance a discussion in a way that didn’t seem possible twenty minutes before I read the article/post etc. They are thinkers who love ideas and love executing on the ideas. I look to different ones for different things. There are many others who I read that I enjoy but they aren’t the ones that consistently move me to another place in how I’m thinking about something. The ones that I’m highlighting are those that do make me think differently more often than not. I'm going to specify what each does - for me, at least. Others who aren’t on the list, please don’t take offense. Its quite possible I simply forgot to include you - and for that I blame a senior moment or two. Or I enjoy reading what you're saying and on occasion you too move me to new concepts and ways of thinking. But the ones here are the ones who consistently move me to change how I think and change what I think about, and they are my gods and goddesses.

I've listed them by category – The links to their name are to their blogs. Or barring that, to their twitter handle. They are in no particular order at all. All of these are regular or semi-regular bloggers or writers. These are not book authors who don't blog much. That means you won't see Joe Pine II or Lior Arussy here since they don't blog enough - even though they are expert when it comes to customer experience. Folks like them will get a separate post when I lay out the books that affected my life and impacted what I think in business. They also are not those who own the social sites or the aggregators, so you won't see Robin Carey or Bob Thompson here, both of whom are true influencers. Also, for those here, there are overlaps with some of these guys being experts in multiple categories but I’m only putting a person in one category. There is room for only so much knowledge between my ears before it fries my brain.

Social CRM

1. Ray Wang
- Ray is not only one of the most astute enterprise analysts I've ever met but he has a solid grasp of Social CRM and how to apply it in the real world which is something that is painfully needed in business now. He also has a heart of gold and a great head for business. He was voted the equivalent of the Analyst MVP two years running for good reason. He is one of the few must-always-read-even-if-you're-in-a-hurry pundits around.
2. Esteban Kolsky
- This man will frame you. Well, okay, so I'm taking some dramatic license here. He is a master at developing the kind of insights businesses need when it comes to SCRM and then creating frameworks that actually make some sense for businesses to apply. He does this on a solid intellectual foundation and a practical history as a former Gartner analyst. Plus he is really very funny.
3. Brent Leary
- He is the master at the application of SCRM to small business. Very few people can even understand how to apply CRM much less SCRM to small biz. Brent does both and straddles both worlds - CRM and small business as an influential. He can be found on the American Express Open Forum, BET, hanging out with Anita Campbell and of course among the glitterati of the CRM world too. Watch his real world examples of small business success carefully. Plus watch our show The CRM Playaz. Wicked.
4. Jeremiah Owyang
- A year and a half ago, Jeremiah was a social media rock star, now he's put the enterprise into his bucket and he's not only learned it but he's actually begun to master it. His insights into companies he's in touch with are not only priceless but actually usable when making technology decisions. I keep learning.
5. Denis Pombriant
- What can I say about Denis Pombriant. For all things SaaS, all things macroeconomic and all things SCRM, he's da man. He is the one who realized that salesforce.com was not only an upcoming company but would be something of a force of nature in the CRM and enterprise world. He called them a "disruptive innovation" when no one else did. Now he's talking about sustainable CRM companies - take heed.
6. Prem Kumar
- this guy is actually the chief SCRM evangelist at Cognizant - a company that is actually beginning to get it and Prem is a guy who totally gets it. He has a keen sense of the technology and a fine sense of the strategy.
7. Mitch Lieberman
- a former VP of SugarCRM, Mitch earned his way up to thought leader even when attached to a vendor. He is an astute analyst who sees SCRM with a depth of perception that most don't. What Mitch does uniquely is take an idea out there and then drive into it so deeply that you can see all the implications and questions that are contained in the idea. Plus he can do it with a sense of irony.
8. Martin Schneider
- Martin has achieved that rare consideration. He is a current vendor employee (senior director in fact) that actually transcends his company's particular interests. Not terribly surprising in his case, since Martin was a leading analyst in CRM prior to his sojourn at SugarCRM. (they seem to spawn these types at Sugar don't they?). He understands Social CRM strategy and writes short cogent pieces on what to be looking at when thinking "strategy." Not many do that - or write as well as Martin. Or can play in a rock band as well as Martin. He was even a pro at that!.
9. Mike Fauscette
- I've known Mike for 12 years (he co-authored my very first book with me on PeopleSoft in 1998) and he never ceases to amaze me. Currently the head of IDC's enterprise applications practice, he has perhaps the best grasp of social business in the industry and a laissez faire attitude that I love. He genuinely sees how business needs to run when it comes to CRM and SCRM because he was a practitioner himself and also worked for vendors. His experience is perhaps unparalleled among SCRM thought leaders. And that counts for a lot. Besides, the dude can really write.
10. Brian Vellmure
- Brian is a big idea kind of guy. Look to him when you want to know the difference between, say, traditional CRM and social CRM or understand a concept like. He makes it easy to understand and makes me think "why didn't I think of that?" constantly.
11. Michael Maoz
- Michael is the 800 pound gorilla of the 800 pound gorillas. He is the most utilized Gartner analyst, bar none, I hear tell, and there's a reason for that. He is foresighted - having figured on this social thing for the last 5-6 years. He is ruthlessly honest, not really worrying about anything but doing the best thing and the most honest thing for his clients. And he has a unique take on the social CRM world - one that's actually realistic, rather than some of the fantasies that are floating around. He is one of the few analysts who has truly gotten Social CRM and remained connected to an analyst firm. Michael is one of the Gartner analysts responsible for the new Social CRM Magic Quadrant that they are releasing, I think, at the Gartner 360 CRM Summit, that I'm speaking at multiple times - once with the subject of this particular paragraph. Coolio.
12. Mark Tamis
- Mark is a smart dude. He drills down deeply into concepts ranging from how strategies work (and differ in customer-driven enterprises to the depths of transparency and authenticity. He doesn't write enough but he writes really really well. Moves the needle.
13. Chris Carfi
- Funny, just as I'm writing this, Chris Carfi joined Edelman Digital as a leader of a group there that will handle Adobe and make sure they stay in the social age. There might be no one better suited than that. Chris is arguably the guy who coined the term "social customer" having developed his blog "The Social Customer" some 6 or 7 years ago; long before anyone else was even thinking of what that social customer might be. He is one of the few who started out in the social and CRM worlds simultaneously and managed to magically and accurately stitch the info. A long time compadre of mine who I think has miles to go before he sleeps in the words of the immortal Robert Browning.

CRM

1. Bill Band
- Bill Band, who has had years and years of industry experience is not an expert on Social CRM though he fully understands it. But when you're looking at traditional CRM and its practicalities and how those practicalities are evolving; well, there aren't many who can give you the step by step than Bill does. Forrester is lucky to have him frankly. I only wish he blogged more than he does.
2. Jim Berkowitz
- Jim is the "tool guy" for CRM. Want to get a unique take on vendor capabilities when it comes to enterprise software? JB is your man and reading him is the plan, Stan. (that so dates me.). Jim spends incredible amounts of time understanding how features and functions can be valued when it comes to enterprise software and the businesses that are going to apply it. If you're trying to understand the selection process, he's your man. If you want to know what tools to use, he's your man.
3. Mike Boysen
- Mike Boysen is an iconoclast. A kind of retro-iconoclast who places a great deal of emphasis on what works and what doesn't when it comes to CRM. While he's not convinced that SCRM is going to be the harvest of bountiful plenty that most of us think, he is convinced that it has it's place in the world of traditional CRM where he is an expert - and an expert with a wry sense of humor. A very wry sense of humor. Land on earth is the location for Mike and how he moves the discussion on CRM forward.
4. Don Peppers & Martha Rogers
- I'm only putting them under this category because they are key business strategists who have shaped the industry for decades and continue to make their mark - and I'm not sure where else to put them. They have been a team forever and they have a quality company that comes from quality thinking - and a quality staff. Not only have they been the creators of 1 to 1 relationship marketing - the forerunner of personalized insight and interaction, but they also sparked the industry discussion with their notion of Return on Customer (ROC) - which transcends ROI. Whether you agree with them or not on this (I do with modifications), they moved the needle and continue to do so with their 1to1 publications.

The Enterprise

1. Josh Greenbaum
- Josh is tough. Really tough. I've heard him at vendor conferences asking what are perhaps the toughest questions that vendors will get at any time during the conference. But the answers are translated by Josh in ways that provide what is one of the most coherent voices in the industry when it comes to interpreting the complexity of large enterprise software vendors and the practitioners implementations of the large "stuff."
2. Michael Krigsman
- Michael has a unique role in the world of experts and influencers. He documents failure so that success can be learned. What he's able to do, which no one else can, is identify problems that have damaged other companies and then provide a foundation for not committing the same mistakes twice. He is thorough, thoughtful and has the good of the industry and interested parties in and around it at heart. He is a must follow who helps the industry.
3. Vinnie Mirchandani
- Vinnie is best known for his blog "Deal Architect" (see name link) which covers all things topical and enterprise; but he is best represented by his other blog - New Florence, New Renaissance and his new John Wiley published book out at the end of this month - The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations - which takes a look at innovation and transformation in the business world from the perspective of a renaissance of new ideas. If he weren't a Tampa Bay Rays fan, he'd be perfect.
4. Dennis Howlett
- Dennis is a man of ascerbic wit, passionate belief and devastatingly accurate insight into the enterprise - and he has NO problem saying what he thinks often with a very sharp tongue. He scares companies but actually makes his readers (among them me) think. He is a powerful influencer who understands the enterprise software industry better than most - especially the financial/ERP end of it - and has the chops to prove it.

Co-Creation/Innovation

1. Graham Hill
- Graham is always one step ahead - he is an innovative and brilliant thinker, a no holds barred fighter for new business ideas and someone who makes you think, not about social business 101 but about social business 202. Thing is, he isn't just academic either. He has years and years of experience of doing this for companies. Years. Light years. Check out his Social Business Manifesto from last November, his very last Cust0merThink post. A critical post.
2. Wim Rampen
- Eighteen months ago, I didn't know Wim. Now I do. I'm glad i do, because he is also a key thinker in the co-creation/innovation, social business 202 world. Guy has a brain that must run hot because he is always applying the lessons of co-creation to real life. Not easy to do, given the infrequency of success that the combination has. But he is an optimistic guy who is a forward thinker that simply should be read.

Enterprise 2.0

1. Sameer Patel
- Sameer is an enterprise software industry veteran, who is not only one of the best writers on collaboration out there but also a keen observer of what's going on when it comes to trends. He is someone who gets down to the core of an issue or digs out a strength where others may just gloss over it. He is one of the clearest voices and strongest influences in the Enterprise 2.0 space.
2. Dion Hinchcliffe
- Dion is a superstar. Joining the Dachis Group in April hasn't changed a thing when it comes to his incredibly comprehensive, cogent blog posts - often for ZDNet (see blog link at name). He is someone who blogs less often but when he does, his blog postings are blockbusters. They establish frameworks, interconnections (e.g. between Enterprise 2.0 and SCRM), maturity models, technology models, you name it. What is astounding is how clearly he does it. He is a serious must read in this space. Deep, deep knowledge. Plus an aggregator of resources of the first order.
3. Oliver Marks
- Oliver, who is partnered with Sameer Patel in the E20 space is also someone who you need to read. He is an astute thinker who covers issues in the collaboration space as often as he covers techniques and approaches. Someone who gets down to the core and is scrupulously honest in his assessments with no agenda but reality.
4. Andrew McAfee
- While I'm always called the Godfather of CRM, Andrew McAfee is the father of the Enterprise 2.0 - and has been since his 2006 publication in the Sloan Management Review of Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. Honestly, aside from his deep commitment to the Boston Red Sox, the man has nothing wrong with him. He is the guy who created the SLATE model of E20 (see the article) and made the idea of using social tools internally at a company, not just interesting, but de rigueur. Someone that you must pay attention to because what he says in his writings and books is just right and provocative. Just get a load of his latest blog posting on the iPad, which is awesome, ascerbic, funny and pointedly right. He sits on the curve in a way that makes the curve move ahead of itself. If you catch my drift. But that Red Sox thing.....

Journalists

This category bears explanation. These are the journalists, some who blog, some who write regularly for publications - all of whom have a leadership position in the CRM and SCRM world one way or the other. Each of them is a terrific writer as well as an original thinker. Each of them, to one degree or another, falls into that hazy space between journalist and analyst, meaning they are journalists with a well formulated opinion. Their advantage over analysts is that they write better. You should follow them. You have to. You NEED to. You want to. When I snap my fingers, you will. AND you will feel refreshed, as if you came out of a deep and satisfying sleep.

Oh yeah, since they aren't all bloggers regularly, I'm going to point you to their articles if need be in the link of their name.

1. Josh Weinberger
- Josh is flat out brillant, insightful, always on top of the CRM/SCRM industry and actually practically conversant with all the tools of the trade, ranging from the software that runs businesses to the B2C stuff we are now discovering might have business value such as Foursquare. Read anything you can of his. Just do it.
2. Chris Bucholtz
- Chris Bucholz makes the industry a bit stronger for his range of knowledge, his writing skills and his sense of humor. He is actually the former editor of InsideCRM now the editor and chief writer for Aplicor's Forecasting Cloud - a compendium of daily writings in CRM, ScRM and even some ERP as of late. But don't let his cogent thinking get buried in all the other writing. Even if he wrote alone it would be worth it.
3. Ginger Conlon
- Ginger is someone who tries to keep her profile low (she is currently editorial director of 1to1 Publications) but can't because she is so good at thinking about things. I asked her to contribute to CRM at the Speed of Light's 4th edition, because I think so highly of her. She is a veteran of the industry, though not very old, with a background as editor-in-chief of CRM Magazine in her past. AND she gets all the social stuff. All of it.
4. Marshall Lager
- Marshall is something unique in the CRM industry. A great writer, with a rapier wit who has made the transition from pure journalist to analyst/consultant without losing an iota of his writing skills - making him well qualified to get across the ideas that he has to.
5. David Sims
- This guy might well be the most literate journalist with an opinion in the enterprise software world - and possibly the funniest. Thing about David, who has been writing for years - for TMC as a columnist and blogger, CustomerThink, etc. is that he has strong opinions and is an original thinker, but he does it with a literary humor that both enhances and masks the insight. He is SO worth reading. I've been a devoted fan (and friend) for years of this man. You should be (both) too.
6. David Myron
- David is a tone setter. As jefé of CRM Magazine, and one or two other Infotoday properties, he is not only doing what superb editors-in-chief do (don't forget I have a degree and an editorial work history in journalism, so I know what it takes to be an editor-in-chief), juggling all the time, but his editorial content sets not only the magazine's pace, but often sets the industry's pace. Be aware, be very aware of what David says.

Analytics, Measurement

1. Michael Wu
- Michael is the Principal Scientist of Analytics (for real) for Lithium and its rare I read someone who understands analytics better and more...analytically than Michael. For example, he actually is looking at what makes for identification of a true influencer - rather than the gross oversimplification that's going on now with T+F+L = Superman as the going industry standard. He shows me something new in the world of analytics, without any overt Lithiumesque interest in the writings. Most recently he is distinguishing between communities and social networks in a two part post. Part 1 and Part 2. Gotta read this dude.
2. Jim Sterne
- Not only is Jim Sterne one of the granddaddies (metaphorical, peeps, metaphorical) of Web analytics - and the president of the Web Analytics Association, but he is now a pioneer in social media analytics, the current author of a successful book in the field called "Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment" and is a constant presence in the refining of these newly developed metrics.
3. Dr. V. Kumar
- Even though he's really more of an author than a blogger - in fact, I don't think he has a blog, I'm going to break my protocol and include him here because he had such a seminal influence on my thinking when it came to the measurement of advocacy. I always knew that Net Promoter Score, while a good start, was hardly sufficient for measuring the social customer's power in and value to business. When he extended Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to include Customer Referral Value (CRV) among other measures and asked four questions with number 1 being NPS - would you recommend this company to someone you know - I thought - 'ohhh-kay". But it was question 2 that was both an epiphany and a "duh" moment - "Did you recommend this company to someone you know?" that I knew that I loved this man. He is a distinguished marketing professor at Georgia State University, the executive director of the GSU Center for Brand Experience Excellence and a must read. His book is "Managing CUstomers for Profit" and its a great start to a new version of measure for social business.

Social Media

1. Brian Solis
- Hard not to think of Brian. He's a vibrant, visible presence and what I've always called one of the "Big 3" of social...whatever. (The other two are the aforementioned Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Brogan). He's easily one of most influential and most respected guys in the world of social media and is spending serious time putting thinking about Social CRM and what he sees as a successor to it, SRM. While I can't say I can fully buy into the SRM side of it, I do fully buy into Brian. Also, he is so active in social media that people forget that he is a highly successful PR guy and his blog PR 2.0 is actually fascinating. Plus he has a new book out called Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web which is a social marketing book more than a social media one. And really, really good.
2. Paul Gillin
- I've known Paul since he was the Executive Editor of SearchCRM about 7 or 8 years now. Not only is he an expert in CRM, but he is also an expert in social media from a standpoint that few others are. First, he has a B2B knowledge that is unparalleled in social media. Second, his expertise is eminently practical. Meaning he is not theorizing on definitions of things, he is telling you how to do something. Want to blog? Here's how, here is the supporting arguments on its behalf to your left brained boss, your right brained boss and your colleagues. Here are what you can and can't do...you get the picture. He has two books out now, The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media and Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business! and a third coming in January 2011 on social marketing.He is also the only columnist I read religiously in B2B Magazine - even with my secular behavior.

Sales

1. Anneke Seley
-Anneke wrote a book on Sales 2.0 and she blogs on sales 2.0 and she knows sales 2.0 better than you do. She is a long time industry veteran with insight and is a delightful person. You'd think the latter is enough to make you want to make you read her blog but, honestly, her insights are the real reason.

Customer Service

1. Natalie Petouhoff
- I've known Dr. Nat for years. Many years. Though she's a lot younger than me. She is formidable. Tres formidable. While she is currently heading up all social media efforts at Weber Shandwick (good move, WS), she is still one of the foremost experts in "social" customer service that you will find in the world. She has a solid research background and methodology, an intuitive sense of what's right when it comes to treating customers well that overlays that, and is just a good person who is able to turn that goodness into something substantial and interesting. I'm not sure where her new position will take her, but I'll follow.

Marketing

I can't say that I really can find anyone that rocks my boat here though there are many that I read ardently. I think this is a transformational period and there's a lot of both good stuff and noise out there but I can't clearly distinguish one from the other yet, so I'm going to leave this category alone. Though some of my social media experts are also marketing guys - so just reiterate them.

Public Sector/Politics

1. Andrew Rasiej
- This guy is amazing. He not only runs PDF - the Personal Democracy Forum - one of the most influential progressive institutions in the country - with an activist bent - but also is one of the jefés of TechPresident, which could be the most significant political blog in the country. He's also a true New Yorker - acerbic and honest and an ardent Yankees fan. A perfect person.
2. Alan Weber
- This guy, now at Altimeter Group with Ray Wang, Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang and a host of other superstars, has serious chops when it comes to the comings and goings of the public sector and the future of government as it links to the new technology paradigms. I have to say that I almost envy his depth of knowledge, ability to extract information from sources and his analytical skills. Public sector ain't easy to decipher yet, somehow he does it.
3. Alan Rosenblatt
- Alan is the Associate Director for Internet Advocacy at the Center for American Progress - the most powerful progressive think tank in Washington DC (I sit on their New Media Board of Advisors). Alan is also a tireless champion for constituency engagement utilizing the new social tools to empower citizens. He blogs for multiple sites including TechPresident, the CAP blogs and the Huffington Post. The man has mad advocacy knowledge and skills and if advocacy is something you think is important, whether in politics or business, then Alan is your man. Just read him, and if you meet him, offer him a single malt and you'll get the conversation you're looking for.

Mobile

1. Sheryl Kingstone - Sheryl works for Yankee Group. She is the Yankee Group star (no disrespect to any other Yankee Group analysts when I say this). She is the analyst most responsible for "the Anytime Anywhere Enterprise" that Yankee espouses - which of course includes a mobile component. Sheryl has been one of my ongoing beacons for mobile trends for as long as I can remember -which of course means since she was about 6 years old. I trust her thinking and judgment.
2. Michael Gartenberg
- Michael has been a bastion of mobile insight forever and a little longer. He is now at Altimeter, was at Forrester and was always someone that people just listened to. Among them me. For me, in the mobile world, he (and Sheryl) are it. 'Nuff said.

Others

These are those who either defy classification or who's category doesn't include that many but are exceptional thinkers who are actually ahead of the curve.

1. Doc Searls
- Doc is in his own category - and that would be Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). In principle, VRM is an important addition to the scholarship of social business. It helps define the customer's individual behavior when it comes to all businesses that he/she interacts with - in reality or potentially. It dovetails from my standpoint with what I call the personal value chain of an individual customer. Doc, one of the authors of the seminal Cluetrain Manifesto, drives VRM like no one else. Whether or not it becomes the "movement" (the labor movement for customers) it should be, remains to be seen. But what doesn't remain to be seen is Doc Searl's importance in the social business landscape.
2. Thomas Vander Wal
- What can I say about Thomas Vander Wal? He is the father of folksonomy and social tagging. He is the person who developed the social stack that I use for my discussion of social characteristics in enterprise software (that is software mimicking human behavior). He is constantly evolving new ideas on how to humanize the software and business processes that are supporting 21st century business so that business is able to gain greater insight into their customer base. YO'd be wise to read him because if you do, you'll be ahead of the curve - one that your business needs to be ahead of.
3. Lisa Stone
I love this woman (you know what I mean). She is a co-founder of Blogher, recently named one of 2010's 100 most creative people in America by Fast Company and one of the most generally astute bloggers anywhere. I am a fan who simply loves what she does. Its also nice that she's the significant other my my dear friend and influencer mentioned above Chris Carfi, making me thrilled to know them individually and as a couple.

Vendors Who Have Blogs that Transcend Pitches

I'm not going to go into a breakdown of each of these except to say that please check them out. Each of them has a unique perspective that's interesting and transcends their merely mortal business interests, though clearly doesn't ignore them. In the case of SAP, they have so many blogs that I've chosen the properties of SMT that they are the chief sponsors for and have some of their staff writing for. Also, interestingly enough, I'm noticing that the blogs that I do follow in marketing are mostly vendor blogs. Not sure what to make of that except that the marketing industry is still working it all out.

Okay. All in all, I've got the links for you. Click and read. Follow the yellow brick road.

1. Lithium
2. Attensity
3. SAP
4. Infusionsoft
5. Eloqua
6. Radian6 - in this case, look at the bottom of the page for their extensive list of blogs and podcasts
7. SugarCRM
8. Aplicor