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What is CRM?

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What Is CRM ?

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Two CRM definitions ...

Customer Relationship Cycle

Customer Relationship cycle is a term used to describe the progression of steps a customer goes through when considering, purchasing, using, and maintaining loyalty to a product or service. There are five distinct steps: acquisition, maintain, maximize, loyalty and retain. This means getting a potential customer's attention, teaching them what you have to offer, turning them into a paying customer, and then keeping them as a loyal customer whose satisfaction with the product or service urges other customers to join the cycle.

Customer Life Cycle

This term is often confused with the Relationship cycle, Customer Life Cycle is the natural life cycle of a person that based on the life’s experiences and major events. This person will purchase products and services from your company based on likes and needs for your products and services.

4 Types of CRM ...

In the late 1990s, the Meta Group, now part of Gartner, came up with the definition of the CRM Ecosystem. This is our take based on the latest CRM 2.0 developments.

Operational CRM

Operational CRM is the combination of applications & processes that manage customer transactions such as campaigns, sales, order entry, customer service, warranties, collections & post-sales, among many others. Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, e.g. to sales, marketing and service staff. Interactions with customers are generally stored in customers' contact histories, and staff can retrieve customer information as necessary.

The contact history provides staff members with immediate access to important information on the customer (products owned, prior support calls etc.), eliminating the need to individually obtain this information directly from the customer. Consequently, many call centers use some form of CRM software.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM is the combination of applications & processes that help understand customer trends, metrics and behavior using data modeling, data mining, data quality, and marketing automation techniques. Analytical CRM analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes:

1. Designing and executing targeted marketing campaigns
2. Designing and executing campaigns, e.g. customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling
3. Analyzing customer behavior in order to make decisions relating to products and services (e.g. pricing, product development)
4. Management decisions (e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis)
5. Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of data mining.

Interactive CRM

Interactive CRM is the combination of applications & processes that manage customer interactions via the website, call center, email, offices, events, direct mail, SMS & account statements, among others. Interactive CRM covers aspects of a company's dealings with customers that are handled by various departments within a company, such as sales, technical support and marketing. Staff members within the departments can share information collected when interacting with customers.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM is the combination of applications & processes that help collaborate and promote a dialogue between the brand and the customer to help with product innovation, viral marketing & word-of-mount using blogs, microblogging, social networks (public & private), social bookmarketing, among other social media toolsets (user generated content, RSS, comments, ideas, videos, photos, tagging, etc.

Aplicor Presented Product of the Year Award by CIS Magazine

Aplicor Presented Product of the Year Award by CIS Magazine —

Aplicor, Inc., a global software provider of on-demand CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software as a service (SaaS) business solutions, was presented the Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation's Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, the leading publication covering CRM since 1982.

Congratulations to our friends at Aplicor!

The Best CRM Blogs of 2008 - Inside CRM

We recommend that during the 2009 you follow these 20 blogs selected by InsideCRM - The Best CRM Blogs of 2008 - Inside CRM.

There are 4 in particular that we follow here at Solvis:

1. PGreenblog and CRM 2.0: The Conversation, Paul Greenberg
2. Brent’s Social CRM Blog, Brent Leary
3. Social Customer Manifesto, Chris Carfi
4. CRM Mastery Blog, Jim Berkowitz

And for the latest about CRM in Latin America read Jesus Hoyos' blog - CRM en Latinoamerica.

You can also get the latest CRM's RSS feeds in both Spanish and English - CRM Universe.

The New B2C model: Social Networking and CRM

The other day I was cleaning up my emails in Outlook and moving some newsletters subscriptions to my Gmail account. During this process I was very surprise that many companies (some of them CRM vendors) do not have the basic functionality to change my email or profile in their email or CRM systems. I had to unsubscribe my old email and then subscribe my new email, and in a few occasions I had to delete my customer profile completely and then create a new one. In both scenarios these companies are loosing important data that the customer can update and they lost the opportunity to know more about me.

I wish they had some sort of OpenID standard or were using Facebook Connect to update my basic information. In my CRM blog about Latin America I wrote a few times --- Spanish content: Mi visita a Salesforce.com en México & CRM en el 2008 y el 2009... Mis Observaciones --- about the use of Salesforce.com and Facebook apps to do just this... where the user can use his or hers Internet identity to manage interactions and transactions with companies. Take for example the application from Startbucks Idea in Facebook and how users can share ideas using the "share this" option within Facebook.

Now, let's assume you are a financial institution --- you write a simple Facebook app in Salesforce.com to calculate different financial options and capture important data to pre-qualify the customer. All of these can be done within Facebook. Helping you collect the proper data and even measure word-of-mouth metrics based on the number of friends and referrals. And now you can extend this with the Facebook Connect functionality... Get the idea? This is true Social CRM ... this is a new B2C model... via social networking we should be able to better interact with customers in a collaborative way. I think this is the future of CRM... all in the cloud. Of course, there will be data portability issues and data privacy hurdles to overcome... but the consumers will decide where are we going with all of this SOCIAL CRM trend.

After my frustration changing my profile and emails, and reading more about Salesforce.com Sites for Facebook and the release of Facebook Connect, I see this trend becoming a reality. Tim O'Reilly mentions this trend on his recent interview with Robert Scobleizer. Tim mentions the fusion of social networking and CRM apps - where the user should manage his or her data... and many CRM systems depend on others users to manage the data. Let the consumer manage his or her data. See the interview below. Tim's comments about CRM are at the very end of the interview.

I see a race in 2009 for all CRM apps to get into the social networking bandwagon. Most of the major vendors already started the race. I see CRM vendors integrating Facebook Connect, Twitter, Comments from blogs and many other 2.0 technologies into their apps. Multi-Channel interactions and transactions will need to include 2.0 technolgies... it is no longer chat, email, phone and mail....

By Jesus Hoyos

Collection of CRM Posts - CRM en Latinoamérica, Blog of Jesús Hoyos

Collection of posts written by Jesús Hoyos, Managing Partner of Solvis, on his blog CRM en Latinoamerica. A CRM blog in Spanish dedicated to the Latin America region.

CRM en Latinoamerica 2007

CRM en Latinoamerica 2008

Neighborhood America Partnership with Solvis Consulting Brings Company’s Award-Winning Solution to CRM Global Marketplace

Naples, FL (PRWEB) November XX, 2008 – Neighborhood America, a 2008 CODiE Award winner for “Best Social Networking Solution” for enterprises, announces a new strategic partnership with Solvis Consulting, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) consulting company with significant experience working in the Latin American region as well as the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico.

In today’s global market, knowing your customers is the key to keeping your customers. Neighborhood America’s ELAvate solution allows companies to optimize their existing relationships with customers, employees, and partners – those who hold the power to help the company succeed – by creating online networks for the purpose of driving business value. The partnership with Solvis Consulting will provide those companies with the right CRM strategy to retain and continually grow these networks.

Solvis Consulting conducts an in-depth analysis of the company’s structure and then recommends methodologies to transform business processes. Among those approaches is establishing a social media presence, to benefit from consumer feedback or collaborate with partners, employees, or stakeholders. As a partner, Solvis Consulting will offer its customers Neighborhood America’s enterprise social network solution.

“More often than not, CRM fails without a strategy in place,” says Jesus Hoyos, Managing Partner of Solvis Consulting. “We now have an ally in Neighborhood America, a company who can share their expertise with our customers and improve their chances of success.”

“The need for companies to connect people to solve problems and create business value is a global challenge,” said Dan Miller, Executive Vice President of Neighborhood America. “Our partnership with Solvis Consulting expands our reach into Latin America and aligns us with this exceptional team at the forefront of integrating CRM and social media strategies.” 

With the Solvis Consulting partnership, Neighborhood America continues its momentum of building strategic partnerships that deliver the services that enterprise customers are asking for, intended to optimize results. To learn more about Neighborhood America's partner program, visit http://www.neighborhoodamerica.com/partners or contact Judy Mod, Director of Business Development, at (678) 366-4696.

 

 

About Neighborhood America


Neighborhood America's ELAvate solution was named the software industry's 'Best Social Networking Solution' for enterprises, honored with the 2008 Codie Award. ELAvate enables companies to build online and mobile communities to engage consumers, facilitate ongoing dialogue around their brand, and gain continued business intelligence. Brands such as Scripps Networks, FOX News, and Adidas rely on Neighborhood America for its award-winning technology and commitment to guide them through the entire community-building process - from strategy, through implementation, to ultimate success. Learn how your company can gain a competitive advantage by visiting: www.neighborhoodamerica.com.

A Customer Definition

Without a concrete definition of what a customer is, your CRM strategy (processes, people, culture, technology), will always have the deal with the  "definition of the day". Every employee will have different perceptions of what customer is, affecting the overall customer experience.

Our definition of a customer is:

A customer is a person that has many roles, that can influence (or not) a buying decision, as a consumer or a contact in an organization (i.e. a business partner, a company, government, etc).

The characteristics of this person are based on contact relationships, accounts, transactions, and  organization the person belongs to.  These characteristics are then classified by data attributes in the database and/or different systems and most be part of all business rules regarding people, processes and technology. These attributes are divided in 5 major sections: 

1. Demographics: age, sex, hobbies, preferences, dislikes, etc
2. Deterministic: title, name, roles, address, email, mobile, phone, etc.
3. Inferred: customer value, sales, complaints, satisfaction, segment, etc.
4. Relationships: accounts, family, friends, organizations, social media, etc.
5. Interactions & Transactions: emails, phone calls, purchases, cases, collections etc.

This definition needs to be implemented in all your processes and CRM technologies, and most be part of your CRM change management.

By Jesus Hoyos

Return2Customer Summary

Jesus Hoyos had the opportunity to be a participant of the Return2Customer Conference in Atlanta. He had the opportunity to listen to the lecture of Bill Price, Martha Rogers & Paul Greenberg, among others. The conference had 3 different tracks, all with excellent speakers and case studies. Congratulations to Art Hall and his team for an excellent conference.

Here are Jesus' tweets about the conference and you can read Jesus' blog, CRM en Latinoamerica, where he has a few postings in spanish.

Notes from some of the tracks/lectures Jesus attended:

Bill Price

1. Best Service is no Service - check out his book. It has the steps to improve customer service
2. You must improve self-service channels and then encourage customer contact
3. Listen & act: wocas - what our customers are saying
4. Each department should bear the cost of customer service... logistic, web, marketing etc
5. You must educate the customer
6. Snowball concept - increase first contact resolution - avoid repeat contacts or snowballs
7. Empower 1st contact agent, update FAQs constantly
8. Avoid confusion and mistakes in order to provide best service

Martha Rogers

1. Rules to break & laws to follow - check out her new book
2. Past 20 years, the US auto industry - spent $4k on marketing & incentives for every car sold
3. Nissan - move their marketing budget to CRM, SMS blogs, all interactive media and now spends $950/vehicle sold
4. Most classic business fundamentals assumptions are death wrong ... these are the rules to break
5. Create the most possible value from the customer & prospect
6. Product, brands & loyalty programs are not source of revenue ... it comes from the customer
7. Goldfish Principle - companies have no customer memory
8. Customer value is as important as well as sales & profits
9. 3 rules to break: Customer are scare, Customer create value, long term value is just as important as sales & service
10. Internet means customer trust is more important
11. Customer trust implies customer advocacy
12. Are companies destroying customer value?

Social Media - Panel

1. How social media is defined? ... interactions with customers - collaboration - share voice is give voice to customers... allow conversation, build relationships..collaborate based on information
2. 1.0 was about information 2.0 is about collaboration
3. Strategy areas for social media: understand your customers and key markets, revenue, customer service, then look at technologies... don't do it cause the market is doing it...
4. How to create interactions... experimentation, test, test...survey your customers... do your homework...participate in the conversation and collaborate...know your audience, objectives, goals, customers...
5. Dialogue needs to be open and you most take action ...
6. You need to be honest... do not moderate things that you don't like...allow the conversation to happen, take action...information is both ways... corporate moderation is OK...but you need to facilitate the conversation otherwise the customer will go outside to other places..do some internal moderation and let the community moderate
7. Today there is not an integrated CRM and Social Media solution... market needs to mature...this will be an ideal solution...
8. Text mining...capture behavior and determine metrics via BI....
9. Social media is collaborative CRM...

Paul Greenberg

1. Who is the customer? social customer -> customer ecosystem...
2. It is a social change not a business change...
3. This is a new era for everybody... a person like me and trusted source ...emotions, cool, me...
4. Consumers adopt "sexy/cool/style" content
5. The social customer is increasingly a mobile customer
6. Live Web ... Facebook, MySpace
7. Social media and social networks are different
8. CRM 1.0 is the company... 2.0 is what the customer wants - customer engagement - companies are not longer producers of content / products ... it is agregated with customer experiences...
9. Values of communities will be a critical factor ... let the community develop a level of trust... help customers help you...
10. 360 view is no longer the holy grail...it is a requisite...but...now it is a company like me...customer will buy from a compnay like them

Some of the common topics during the conference were:

• Lead management
• Marketing Automation
• CRM 2.0
• The Social Customer
• The new rules of business
• Customer Data
• Social Media
• Customer Service

Some of the vendors that participate: Market2Lead, Vtrendz, Marketo, SugarCRM, Oracle, myCRMCareer, Infor, OpenSpan & Neighborhood America.