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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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.

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.

March Madness - Non-NCAA: Copious CRM Tidbits - News, Personal, References, Coolness

March has been one of the more incredible months for sheer action when it came to the world of CRM. First, every CRM-related company, large, small or medium had some announcements that were actually significant; then the social gang decided to get in on the CRM action, declaring Twitter "Social CRM" and some of the CRM oldies but goodies decided to get in on the social "thang" trying to find ways of figuring out how good ol' operational CRM fit in - or didn't. I was busy as....hell throughout the month rockin' through 5 cities (counting NY twice) and doing 5 speaking engagements - and moving my miles for 2009 up to nearly 30,000 already. I even went to Chicago and did two....webinars. Plus I have a really great business-personal announcement too. Which those of you who use Twitter - a.k.a. Social CRM-NOT, or Facebook will already know. AND some really good stuff got published that I'm going to point you to.

So, we action, drama, intimacy and love here, people. Let's get this party started.

Get This Party Started

Okay, I figured that I'd get this party started with a "Get This Party Started" by Pink video - though clearly the video isn't Pink's official one. If you'd rather see Pink's version, click on this to go to it.

First the Personal Business Stuff

The most exciting thing - for me at least - being a narcissistic sort of being - is that I've been asked to be the Chairman of the CRM Magazine conference this year. This year meaning in 2009 - and on August 24-26 in NY. And, I accepted. I'm totally pumped for this. We're already just about done with the speakers and their slots and will be announcing them this coming week (I think). Sponsors are next on my agenda so all you vendors out there, pony up, babies!! You won't be disappointed - or maybe you will - I can't speak for you. I have to admit, I have a few trepidations because I've never chaired a conference before and I'm finding out that its a LOT of work. A LOT. A WHOLE F-ING LOT. But its a blast because I get to work with David Myron, and Josh Weinberger and Marshall Lager and the whole CRM Magazine crew - and they are a crew. They are also incredibly cool to hang out with. Believe me. No wait. Don't believe me. Come to NY (what a segue!), get a conference ticket and see for yourself. The only thing I'll tell you about the conference right now is that there is going to be a Live Performance of CRM Playaz at the conference with me, Brent Leary and some selected guests. I'll post links to this as soon as I have them.

I just finished a slew of presentations ranging from the Linkage Conference on Customer Value in FL, to a private presentation for GLG Group private equity and hedge fund customers to webinars for InsideView and Sword Ciboodle and finally an incredibly well produced, classy effort by Liminal Group, run by the inimitable Scudder Fowler. The latter event which I did in NY at the knockout beautiful Asia Society - amazing venue - was co-sponsored by Sage, who of course you know well from their CRM products and partnered with both CRM Magazine and InsideCRM. Josh Weinberger did an astonishing series of tweets via that ever-controversial CHANNEL (not social CRM application) Twitter that just rocked (or as Gen Yers and pretend Gen Yers like me say RAWKED). Here's the current way to access the four of them that could be accessed - needless to say though of course if it were needless I wouldn't say it - dumbest expression in history - which is why I'll keep using it. Where was I? Oh yeah, The GLG one can't be seen and I can't find the Linkage one (but I'm working on it) but here's the links to all the others and the appropriate notes.

In order of appearance (click on image to go to the appropriate page) (Again, these are for archived presentations - ignore the registration note on the images)

Sword Ciboodle Webinar: Serving them right: Maximizing the value of customers in a downturn - and beyond

InsideView Webinar: Real Customer Insights and Strategies in the Year of the YoYo

Liminal Group:

This is a rebroadcast (a very high quality one) of my presentation on The Era of the Social Customer. Also presenting at this event are Dave Van Toor, SVP of Sage CRM, who I've spoken of on these pages, and Penelope Trunk, a Gen X Business Leader who is an expert in managing Gen Y in the workplace. Here's a link to a sample of my stuff at this conference.

NOTE. This one costs $25.00 to see the entire rebroadcast. But, if you type in CRM20 its 20% off - meaning $20.00. The times and dates are:

Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 12pm - 2pm ET

Thursday, April 23, 2009 - 12pm - 2pm ET

Worth it. really. Click on the diagram and see the page for details and registration.

PERSONAL BUSINESS ANNOUNCEMENT

This one has me psyched! I've been honored with the chairmanship of the DestinationCRM/CRM Magazine national confab in August this year. That means that I get to speak, be MC, play around, put together the speakers lists (we have over 130 submissions/requests to speak), develop the program, play around, help drive sponsors and attendance and, play around. We have so many speakers of note and quality that we have three tracks this year. I'll keep you posted but for now just let me tell you that:

1. Its August 24-26, 2009
2. Its in NYC at the Marriott Marquis
3. There are marquis names speaking (what a segue)
4. I don't have the pricing but do have the sponsorship package.
5. I'm totally pumped about this.

Know why I'm pumped? I get to work with some of my favorite people in the world of CRM (and, in the world for that matter). That would be David Myron, who is the Editor in Chief; Josh Weinberger, who is the Managing Editor; and Marshall Lager, who is the Senior Editor. Truthfully, that's even more appealing than the conference itself, which is entirely exciting. They are wonderful people who are just a joy to hang with.

Period.

Status of the Microsoft-Salesforce Shootout

I figured it was time to let you know where the MSFT-SFDC configuration Shootout stood since it seems to have disappeared. Seems to have might be the operant term here. Its alive and well. And proceeding. For those of you who don't remember, about a year ago, I was upset with Steve Ballmer's declaration about the badness and "non-existence" of salesforce.com's configuration tools and the goodness of the MSFT CRM configuration tools so I put it to the test. Microsoft and salesforce.com agreed to a configuration shootout with each of them providing a team who would build certain processes and tasks and an independent panel of judges would decide which one did it better. The results would be announced.

Well, the rules are done; the tasks/processes are done; both Microsoft and salesforce.com have had them for a couple of months (the slow response is my fault not theirs. I've been on the road. Both have been exceptionally cooperative). Next steps are the following:

1. Finalize the agreement between the companies on the rules with the judges.
2. Start the shootout
3. Judge
4. Declare winner
5. Publicize results.

I'm estimating that we're either going to do this in the next month or so - OR we'll announce the results at the DestinationCRM/CRM Magazine conference in August. That's a little bit self-serving on my part, but might still be a cool thing. Any preferences? Next 4-6 weeks? CRM conference? Who cares? Let me know and I'll bow to the will of the people.

Now...The News

There is a news plethora, panoply, and pandemic. Let's look at it.

• The Open Cloud Manifesto - To a ginormous thud, IBM announced an "Open Cloud Manifesto" which basically seems to be a response to Amazon, Google, salesforce.com and others leading the cloud computing market - such as it is at the moment. The OCM was notable for the presence of a few like SAP, Cisco, EMC and others, but even more notable by the absence of all the market leaders. For more on this by me and others go to my blog posting on ZDNET. Also, in that ZDNET posting, I left one important (and really good) take on it by Josh Greenbaum. His perspective is right on the money. His second to last paragraph: "This is truly a case of getting so far out in front of a nascent market that it starts looking a little silly. Can we please organize our efforts around defining value for customers, instead of moving quickly to create a vendor war over a market that still needs a lot more careful thinking and definition?" Amen, Brother Josh.
• Sage Announces SalesLogix Online Community - Sage continues its accelerating thrust into becoming a "practice what you preach and provide" CRM (enterprise) vendor. Yesterday, they announced a SalesLogix Online Community for SalesLogix customers that does what communities do - engages customers. This is another forward thinking move by Sage in their efforts (successful so far) to revamp so that they are what they eat. A great move and welcome one. Here's a video tutorial on how it works that's worth a look.
• Salesforce Adds Twitter to ServiceCloud - Aside from the sex appeal of this offering - kind of like Brad Pitt teaming up with Angelina "Twitter" Jolie after he's already been with Jennifer "Facebook" Aniston - this is a great move by salesforce.com because it provides a decentralized channel-friendly approach to their ServiceCloud offering. While this is not the first offering like this - SAP seized that ground months ago - what it does do is both provide a useful capability to the customer service offering, cement salesforce.com's credentials as a full CRM suite provider (in addition to their platform offerings) - though their marketing apps are still weak - as are most of the CRM suite providers' marketing apps - and, most importantly, add to their portfolio for innovation leadership. I'm going to be writing a ZDNET blog entry on this, but, suffice to say here, salesforce.com might be moving back into the leadership of a CRM 2.0/Social CRM offering with the integrations with external social networks, the Ideaforce. offerings, and a number of other pieces they've added to the puzzle in the last few months. I'm truly impressed. I was worried for awhile that they were becoming too conservative a company in the places they shouldn't be - but I'm starting to think I shouldn't have been concerned.
• NetSuite Joins PaaS Battle Royal - On March 19, NetSuite unveiled SuiteCloud, their Platform-as-a-Service offering, entering the already crowded fray. This took their already well regarded NS-BOS operating system and combined it with a number of new tools and the SuiteCloud Developers Network, a network similar to the SDN at SAP or the developers network at SugarCRM (is that also SDN?). What makes their offering interesting is that it builds upon the NetSuite suite that already exists and, unlike the PaaS offerings of most of the vendors, it covers the enterprise applications gamut - from ERP to CRM so to speak (STS). NS-BOS was already an unusual offering because of it's purpose - building vertically specific apps for NetSuite through mostly its partner channel. There is more news coming from these guys soon. Stay tuned here and ZDNET.
• Sage (Again?) Adds SalesLogix Today Appliance to Offerings - SalesLogix Today is an internet plug-and-play appliance which means its a pre-configured appliance with SalesLogix locked and loaded. While I can't say this is a bad idea, I also am not as excited about this one as I was about the Online Community. This simply puts them in the camp of Cast Iron for CRM offerings - and Cast Iron has a big lead there - with applications pre-loaded on their appliance for salesforce.com, NetSuite, RightNow, Oracle CRM OnDemand, Microsoft Dynamics CRM - all as SaaS offerings and a host of on-premise offerings too. Then again, Cast Iron doesn't offer SalesLogix..... All in all, won't be easy and I'm not sure of what a good value this is. I'm going to need to be convinced. Brent Leary has a box and is running a test. I'll report back when I hear what he has to say.
• WhasSUP, SAP? - SAP continued its smart mobile strategy (I wish they'd be as smart with SaaS) by forming a partnership with Sybase to create a mobile Business Suite 7. Sybase? Sybase? The database Sybase? The one that you haven't heard a word from forever? THAT Sybase? Yep. The very same. Interestingly Sybase has one of the most advanced mobile platforms on the planet with Sybase iAnywhere - their Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP). This allows you to take any mobile application and, get this, on the fly, adapt it to the mobile operating system or platform that any device has on it. So you can take an SAP CRM application that has been optimized for mobile delivery and send it to a Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone and Nokia Symbian phone simultaneously and it will in real time (that's what on the fly means here, dudes) be usable on that phone's operating system. No special moves made. On the fly. Sybase's mobile platform has been named #1 by Gartner this year. SAP, in conjunction with their RIM partnership, is moving to take a strong position - and maybe even lead - in the mobile CRM/enterprise applications battle -which is a big, big deal. Obviously, time and results will indicate whether they are leading or not but right now, this is one smart move. And...Sybase? Sybase?
• Microsoft-Neighborhood America Integration: Social & CRM Integration Continues - This one is not suprising and surprising. Neighborhood America, one of my favorite companies in the world with great culture and a very, very good platform allied with Microsoft CRM Public Sector and integrated their social networking platform with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Not surprising is that Neighborhood America is involved in a significant step forward for the CRM 2.0/Social CRM strategists out there. Surprising is that Microsoft took a huge, though a little tentative step and was the one who led the way. Not surprising though, is that it starts in the public sector. With the Obama Administration firmly committed to open standards, transparency and citizen participation, public sector is not only one of the natural places for CRM and social platforms to meet up but is of real importance in the restoration of faith in the government. Neighborhood America has a lot of background in public comment so they know something about the public sector. They also have the current president of the CRM Association on board, Michael Thomas, and they already had a proclivity towards CRM so their role in pushing forward in this integration is not at all a surprise to me. Microsoft on the other hand is just starting to feel its new innovation legs as they wobble back on land so they are a surprising player but a welcome one in the evolution toward CRM 2.0. To take a look at the initial integration go to the Microsoft Public Sector Idea Bank.
• Helpstream Named "Cool Vendor of 2009" by Gartner and 2009 Rising Star in Customer Service by CRM Magazine - What can I say here? I'm gonna crow a bit. I KNEW I was right. I had these guys pegged for something special for a good long time now. Top-flight application, ownership of the category Customer Service 2.0 or Community-driven Customer Service; great knowledge of what 21st century customers needed - and how companies needed to respond. Ate their own dogfood. Great management (personable too!) with guys like Tony Nemelka and Bob Warfield, among others. All in all, my closest thing to Application Nirvana 2.0. Now the rest of the world is figuring this out. I'm really happy for these guys. They deserve the recognition. Of course, now they have to keep deserving the recognition so to speak. Their Rising Star award isn't up online yet, but is out with the April 2009 CRM Magazine print edition.

I'm done. See you guys with Episode #4 (later this week) of CRM Playaz. Got some announcements around that too. A bunch.

Every Now and Then A Mulligan

Customer service is something that affects me. And you, for that matter. We bitch about it, are delighted by it if its good, even though it should be expected to be good. What is absolutely apparent is that our expectations when it comes to customer service (CRM practitioner companies take heed here) are so low in general - meaning not about any particular company - that a good customer service "incident" is very noticeable. So I have a story to tell. Its of Verizon (who I never have liked and handled this one horribly) and their tech repair guy, Jay (who I think is a champion - both for what he does and who he is) and...well, let me get into it.

The Problem

On February 28, in the midst of a conversation with David Myron, editor-in-chief of CRM Magazine (news on that soon, dudes/dudesses) and a friend, I heard a pop and the phone that serves as my business line went out. Just dropped dead. I happened to be leaving town for the SAP Insider Conference that next day until the 3rd so I figured I'd call Verizon who has our land lines, and they'd fix it and boom, done. Actually, I did the whole thing online and they said (online) that it would be repaired by 7:00pm on Wednesday, right about the time I was getting back from the conference. Okay. That seemed good. I got back, went upstairs to make a call and check on the phone - and guess what? It wasn't fixed and notably there hadn't been an attempt to fix it. Despite the "commitment" of Verizon on with their specific date and time - which of course means that expectations are set pretty specifically, now aren't they? Apparently Verizon was unaware of that. This time I went back on line, set up a technical call for March 5, 2009 between 8:00am and 7:00pm - a horrible window length - because it locked me down to the house for the entire day - despite the fact that it was their problem. Thinking about this aroused my NY-genetic ire and I called to Verizon repair - on the phone - a different one needless to say (though I said it). The repair person told me that she didn't see the March 3 record though it turned out it was there and that she thought it would be repaired by today from the Central Office. No prob. But she would leave the March 5 (This call was March 4) appointment in any case. It wasn't. She didn't. So when I called March 5 in the PMI found that I had to schedule ANOTHER appointment for another day. I asked for a supervisor after a battle (though I was diplomatic and polite since it wasn't the tech person who I was talking to's fault) and was told one would get back to me that day in just a few minutes. I waited and waited. Never heard from a supervisor. For that matter from anyone until.....

The Good Story of the Good Man

I received late on the 5th a call from a technician named Jay. He told me that he had been to the house that afternoon and checked the line outside the house and it was showing a dial tone. I told him it still wasn't working. He thought it might be the base unit of the Bang & Olufsen phone system I have. He then gave me some things to try and said, "if they don't work, call me tomorrow and I'll come back to help you." I thanked him, tried what he said, they didn't work and on March 6 I called him. He came within about 1.5 hours and he checked every single line and cord until we isolated the the problem (he isolated the problem - I watched) to a bad cord. Fixed that, and voila! The phone worked. Thing is not just that Jay went out of his way to make sure that this all worked but that he was dignified, good natured and calm the entire time he was at my house working on this. The power of his gracious nature was just simply...there. He went out of his way to help me figure this out and came back to do that - despite his protestations that this was "just my job." The reality is that this is the way he SAW his job - which means providing superb customer service above and beyond ordinary standards. Ordinary standards are baseline meeting of expectations - but Verizon would do well to learn that "meeting expectations" is considerably lower than decent service because of a history of horrible customer service. What makes Jay unique was his personal character and his expectation of his own standard which are set regardless of the expectations of the customers being low and of Verizon accepting those low expectations as fine with them. What Verizon would be smart to do - which is why they won't - is to sit Jay down and figure out what makes this good man do what he does and institutionalize at least his customer service practices. They won't be able to do that with his personal dignity and decency - there, he owns that franchise. I'm going to give Verizon a mulligan on this one because Jay was such a great technician and exceptional person. But Jay bought them the time. They'd better get their act together because if it weren't for him, they would have run out of time. Good human beings always trump bad companies - even if they work for them.

Sven, Just Shut Up

I doubt there is any human on this planet who a. can read and/or b. has an asset that doesn't know that we've been spiralling into a likely recession which could last awhile. That's pretty stressful I'd say, wouldn't you?

If you checked out my last blog post, you probably noticed that I called upon the majority of the CRM software vendors to take some business leadership and do something for people, not use the crisis to figure out a better sales pitch for software. I'm not saying don't sell software - if they didn't, it would make the crisis worse, since business would fall off, n'est ce pas? But don't use the crisis as the excuse to pitch. Provide people in pain with some help in finding pain killers.

Well, that goes to what I want to rant about today - and rant is exactly what I mean.

I'll explain.

My wife and I like to cruise. I don't mean use our '57 Chevy (since we don't have one) to go out on the mean streets and roam, but to go on ocean and sea traveling vehicles a.k.a. ships that take us to exotic climes where we can rest and relax and hang. Since we've been reasonably profligate spenders on these things, and tend to cruise on slightly upscale lines (as opposed to the heavily expensive super blue blooded ones) we get a lot of cruise pitches in the mail from the super blue bloods. Well, a couple of days ago, we got one dated October 3, 2008 that made the red part of my blood boil.

It came from the desk of Sven-Olof Lindblad, the presumptive President of Lindblad Explorations, the cruise line that is VERY expensive, that handles among other things the National Geographic cruises to places like Antarctica - in luxury of course. I don't mind that. I don't mind getting the literature and fantasizing about the lush locales and the stunning scenery and the life in the lap of luxury that they all promise. Hell, its fun to think about and its marketing at its most descriptively saccharine.

But this was different.

Here are the first four paragraphs - exactly as they are written. The heading is Sven-Olof Lindblad, which makes me presume that they want me to think this is a personal message straight from the jefe's desk. Signed it "Sven" in that fake pen-like signature. Note the personalized greeting.

"Dear Traveler,

It is Friday, October 3, 2008. The last two weeks have been remarkable. One major financial institution after another has collapsed or been bought or is waiting to be rescued by the government. The stock market has behaved like a gigantic roller coaster. And today, or by the time you get this letter, Congress will either have voted or not voted to inject massive government funds into the financial institutions. Confidence in government is at an all-time low.

Would it be fair to say we live in stressful times? I think so, because uncertainty in one form or another is all around us in abundance. Is this making you feel overtly concerned or nervous, even frightened at some level? That's stressful.

I don't want to be presumptuous, but I suggest you do what might seem counter-intuitive at this moment - make plans to travel somewhere with us in the next nine months. This isn't escapism or self-indulgence; its the antidote to toxic stress and uncertainty.

Focus on what has lasting value, what endures - Nature - and you'll be making the only fool-proof investment you can make right now, for the short and long term. Let me explain why."

The BIG Problem with This

Do you see what this....this.....(fill in favorite pejorative) is doing? This is opportunism at its most rank, its most foul, its most disgusting. Our really concerned friend Sven tries to take advantage of the stress and fear created by the economic uncertainty.As a benevolent buddy, Sven suggests something "counter-intuitive" like paying $40,000 so that you and your significant other could have "the antidote to toxic stress and uncertainty." Probably HIS antidote because of his stress and fear over what perhaps is Lindblad declining revenues (I don't know that though),despite the fact that the clientele Lindlbad has doesn't have the same monetary concerns most of us do. This is a man who rings entirely untrue when it comes to his concern for his customers. He clearly doesn't give a damn. That horrid line about the "focus on what has lasting value, what endures - Nature...." is nothing more than him using a peaceful image of something stable to get you to spend your money on Lindblad Explorations. Note that in his little missive above, he doesn't even say, take a trip - he says take a trip with us . So, I presume, the trip I am already taking with Celebrity Cruise lines (set up LONG before this crisis) won't reduce my stress or decrease my fear. Only Sven and Linblad Explorations can do that.

I don't care that he is trying to sell his product. I care that he is effectively lying to his customers about his reasons for it. As a result, I will NEVER take a cruise with Lindblad Explorations.

There is a line that a company shouldn't cross - and that line is deceiving frightened people - especially during a crisis. This is bottomfeeding. Sven should shut up because he crossed the line - and it wasn't the International Date Line.

If you make his "fool-proof investment" you've only proved yourself a fool.

The Audio

If you would rather hear me rant about this than read about this (a literary trick, since you've already read about this), here is the snippet of the rant I did on Brent Leary's wildly popular Technology for Business Sake radio/internet show yesterday, kindly provided to me by Brent himself.

Technorati : CRM, cruise, customer experience, customer service, economic crisis
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Helpstream is on the Way

A few weeks ago, I had a discussion with fellow Enterprise Irregular Bob Warfield, who is the EVP of Products for a company called Helpstream. I have to admit, when I saw Bob's rather cogent commentaries on the Enterprise Irregulars site, I became curious as to what he did and what the Helpstream company dealio was. I asked him and we set up a demo and a conversation between me, Bob, and Anthony Nemelka, the President and CEO of Helpstream and a long time industry veteran. In fact, Tony and I turned out to have a fair amount of friends in common due to his E.piphany and PeopleSoft days in particular.

But that isn't why I'm writing this.

First an apology. I meant to write this entry several weeks ago but my now memorable to anyone but me accident occurred and a few other things and this became the backburner due to any writing being backburner.

While still recuperating a bit and writing is still a little bit harder than it should be, I'm chomping at the bit to talk about Helpstream, because with a few caveats - the big one that I haven't seen it in a production environment - this is one of the best crafted CRM 2.0 applications I've seen to date. Period. End of sentence and definitive statement.

Why Say Such A Thing?

There are certain core concepts that define CRM 2.0 that are difficult to get arms around, because they turn the historic paradigms on their heads. One of the most significant, subject of myriads of articles, blog entries, books and even academic papers is the idea of what I think is somewhat cavalierly called "co-creation of value." The premise of business co-creation of value is that the customer is engaged in a series of relationships and interactions with a company that provides some result that is measurably mutually beneficial to each party concerned. For the company it could be purchases and re-purchases. For the customer it could be the value of participation leading to enhanced reputation with his/her peers or validation or even some monetary reward. There is a wide range of possibilities of what customer "value" is. More on that subject in a later tome.

The other defining concept for CRM 2.0 is what makes it differ from plain ol' Web 2.0. Look at it this way. Traditional CRM is/was transactional and involved the provision of company value by managing how customers transacted business with a company to the benefit of the company - and, incidentally, the customer. This was done through the effective management and use of business rules, business processes, technology and some cultural commitments to making the life of the customer better so that he or she would purchase "stuff" and be committed to doing that in the future. Web 2.0 was essentially a consumer side or personal way of using internet technologies to communicate with like people or to garner massive amounts of information in real time or nearly so without the interference of any party outside the initiator of the interaction - or with the use of other parties by the choice of the initiator of the interaction. But the key was that the direction of the interaction was typically controlled by the initiator of the communication. That could be a personal, consumer or even corporate interaction with someone or something else. But it had no particular relation to business rules, processes or the enterprise. It wasn't "designed" for that. In fact, if you look at the classic Tim O'Reilly - no relation to Bill - thank god - definition in 2005 of Web 2.0 here's what you get:

"Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences."

In the interests of fair play in definitions O'Reilly tried a business revision in 2006 which went like this:

"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them."

What makes CRM 2.0 so important and compelling a proposition is that it provides the best of both worlds if done well - though, because it is a nascent concept, it isn't done that well or even that consciously yet. That means that not only are the tools, products, services and experiences provided for the customer to sculpt the kind of interactions they want with the company - but there is a major benefit for the company which uses the processes, algorithms, business rules, workflow and technologies to facilitate some sort of response to those customer results to get an optimal return from the customer - through feedback or new product development, for example - with the customer helping the company solve or create something that the company needs solved or created.

While this is something that, on the surface, makes complete sense and is certainly a step that companies should take - the bulk of the practitioners who have an interest in CRM or in social media or social networks don't currently see things that way. On the vendor side, which is my concern for this particular entry, the features, functions and characteristics necessary to define a CRM 2.0 application or service hasn't been particularly well done. In fact in the case of the vendors, while most of them are now starting to talk the 2.0 talk, they aren't exactly tearing up the catwalks with any fundamental changes to their applications that indicate they do get it. I would say on the major vendor side, the notable exceptions to this lack of change - meaning those that are trying to walk the walk are Oracle, SAP, salesforce.com, and, most pleasantly surprisingly Sage with SalesLogix - who have done a HUGE makeover that has done them a world of good. Several others are in the midst of making seriously credible efforts that could well succeed - including RightNow who I would put on the cusp and Microsoft - who still have a ways to go but are going in the right direction - albeit too slowly.

But I have to say, the purest CRM 2.0 I've seen in the customer service world - that third pillar or at this point, perhaps silo is a better term, of traditional CRM - is Helpstream who have actually done something that I find, at least from an applications standpoint, to be a real standout and a paradigmatic CRM 2.0 application service (I call it an application service because its on demand).

Social Customer Interaction + Company Rules = Helpstream

The two screenshots below are pretty much a visual definition of CRM 2.0. They are two of the most salient of Helpstream's strengths. The ability to incorporate the community into the discussion around solutions to customer service problems on the one hand and then the ability to parse that information/discussion and apply pre-configured business rules and workflow that will then trigger actions back at the corporate level based on those community discussions.

Imagine this scenario:

A customer goes online to report a problem to a Helpstream enabled system. His issue goes into a cue. A rep for the company using Helpstream logs in and sees the problem in an unclaimed area in the queue and realizes that he may be able to help solve it. The CSR (that's customer service representative for those who are unitiated into the world of whatever you want to call contact centers these days) then drags and drops the issue into his area and assigns it to himself.

This is where it gets interesting.

Not only can the agent plumb the knowledgebase for answers to the service problems, but they can also check out and find "support tickets like this one" from the internal customer support system which might suggest an answer or go outside the firewall and search Web and blog matches for the customer service questions. That's a real boon. I know when I have a "customer service" issue that I don't want to deal with an agent for - a crashing Vista program or not being able to uninstall Google Chrome for example, I search the web and get the benefit of the external forums. Helpstream uses this advantage to its advantage and in context.

Users can access the service capabilities that Helpstream provides through a self-service portal and can not only create a ticket for their own problem but then do that multi-location search themselves. But there is another avenue that is there for the agents and the users - and that is online communities.

The Social Features: Customer/Agent Commmunity Collaboration

This is where Helpstream really starts to leap forward - though even with what I've already described this is a very good app service. As a customer of Helpstream, you can white label an online community accessible through the self-service portal or through the agent screens where agents and customers can discuss customer issues, solve problems and comment or rank the solutions, if that's what you care to do. It is truly collaborative and provides what is a new kind of customer affinity - a way for customers to participate in the life of the company and solve the problems as defacto agents - a true crowdsourcing capability that isn't offered by anyone as of yet that I know of - though if there is anyone I'm certain they'll let me know - because they have in the past. But what makes this an elegantly executed CRM 2.0 application - not just a social addition to CRM is that the discussion and feedback are tied to analytics, workflow and business rules (see the screenshot on the left above).

At the simplest level, Helpstream automatically captures valuable information about problems your customers experience with your products and alerts the right people in your company. This is done because you can customize the workflow and create custom business rules that are based on the customer discussions going on in the communities.

But the communities themselves are not pale representations. These are deep full fledged and highly flexible communities. You can create an open community that any customer can join or what they call a "gated community" which can be limited to specific types of customers and agents or singularly individual ones. These can be open and long term - or event driven.

Profiles can not only be personal and set up by the user - but CRM related data (history, transactions, purchases, ticket resolutions and discussion threads) can be linked to the profile. According to Helpstream, "a profile can track competencies, interests, knowledge, role, and anything else you'd like to customize into the system. They help match participants to appropriate content and they help personalize each experience." How well that works in a production environment remains to be seen since I haven't seen it.

Participation in the community is scored on the amount of participation and the ratings applied to the participation by the other members. That means you can find expertise that you would have otherwise not found.

I can attest to that method working, hallelujah.

Many years ago (13), when I had to hire Lotus Notes professionals for significant projects (full time hires) I used to troll the user groups on Usenet for Notes. I would read the discussions and the comments and responses to the discussions and if I thought that the Notes consultant was really smart, I would contact him or her and eventually hire them. It was a win- win for all concerned. I was able to recruit some of the best Notes pros out there to the company I worked for at the time. Well worth it. Helpstream does this using business rules and workflow alerts and notifications. A really smart move.

Finally....

Another "yeah, baby!" for Helpstream is that they integrate well with CRM. Not only they claim it but they also have a partnership with Oracle and they integrate with salesforce.com to facilitate the claims. If SAP is smart, they'll get on the stick and start talking to Helpstream right away.

The subscription pricing is fair. There is a free version which is somewhat useful though it doesn't allow you to customize any business rules and comes with a very few canned rules so it limits the utility of it all, but is still a good demonstrable overview of what the product can do. The pricing is done by the portal and then the user/agent, For example, the enterprise level of the community portal is $259.00 per month - again, that's for a portal - not a user. The user pricing for the enterprise service desk edition - which then means the CSR/agent pricing - is $79.00. All in all, reasonable.

They are also run by industry veterans - guys like Anthony Nemelka, a long time enterprise applications veteran - who crossed paths with me when he was at PeopleSoft and fellow Enterprise Irregular Bob Warfield who is a VP on the Helpstream premises.

Look, this is a company that simply is one of those who gets the way the world is going and then built something that works for it. They are young but they are ready and hungry and have something of substance here. I'm going to see what I can do to get them to show me a real live environment but I really really like how they think and how they engineer - and that's a helluva start.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, Customer service
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