“Customer self-service” really means more effort and thought about your customers up front

I’ve written a lot about CRM and customer service. Bad service can sabotage even the best CRM strategy, but adapting service to cope with the evolving customer and, more importantly, evolving customer expectations is difficult. It’s doubly difficult in businesses where the view of service persists that it’s a cost center. (Hint: it’s no longer … Continue reading →

Whether the discussion is B2B, B2C or B2Any, personalizing the conversation is key

Last week, I spoke at Social Business Atlanta. My talk was on the three P’s of avoiding social CRM failure (the article that started that train of thought rolling can be found here), so I served as the voice of caution and/or the source of comic relief for the event. The other speakers were among … Continue reading →

1-800-FLOWERS commits the cardinal sin – again

Building a customer relationship starts not with CRM but with a good product or service, and the ability to deliver it. That’s the foundation of your business. If you fail at that foundational aspect of your business, no CRM program’s going to save you. That said, I have just identified a company that is on … Continue reading →

Applebee’s: if you’re in a social media hole, put down your shovel

Will Rogers once said, “when you’re in a hole stop digging.” He certainly did not have social media in mind, which is a pity when you think about it: he would have killed on Twitter, and he could have checked Yelp! for customer reviews of Wiley Post’s flying abilities. However, it is a saying that … Continue reading →

Listening to your customer via social is good for service, but listening to competitors’ customers is great for sales

Here’s a scenario for you: a company gets a social analytics tool and starts messing around with it. Initially, as is the case with most businesses, early applications are akin to “ego surfing,” where the company looks for mentions of itself (a handy exercise if you want to find issues to direct to your support … Continue reading →

Retention prevention: Charter axes social media support

Social media-enabled service is a trend whose value seems painfully obvious: if someone’s asking for help from your company on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google +, it’s a smart move to respond to them for a number of reasons. First off, they’re customers, and they have a problem. That should be reason number one. Second, … Continue reading →

Gibson Guitars makes social media music out of Delta’s sour note

There was a great post this week on 1to1 media’s blog about an airline wrecking a guy’s guitar.  Yes, again – this time it was not United, but Delta Airlines, and they managed to squish Dave Schneider’s 1965 Gibson ES-335 guitar between a service elevator door and a rail on a loading dock. They squished … Continue reading →

The Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2012

You want to learn about CRM, or you want to refine and expand your understanding, but you don’t know where to start? Well, the blogosphere’s one good place to start learning, but it’s become a crowded, confusing place, clogged with blogs of disparate quality and written by people with motives that are less than mostly … Continue reading →

A holiday idea: practicing the business of kindness (BBC-style)

While running around doing Christmas shopping, I happened to hear an episode of the BBC’s “Global Business” on the local NPR station. It was about what they called “the Business of Kindness.” What they really were talking about was the idea of building relationships with customers, with suppliers – with all the people one does … Continue reading →

CRM “success” and “failure:” both are built on the user experience

Do you have a visual representation of your CRM system? I think companies have this early on, but that drawing gets put away as the work of implementation begins and is never seen again. That’s a pity, because a visual representation is a great way to see how your CRM is working, who it’s touching … Continue reading →