6 ways to screw up with social CRM

By Chris Bucholtz Some things are more digestible in numbered groups: the five stages of grief, the 12 days of Christmas, the seven habits of highly effective people, the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Here’s one for you: the six ways people screw up social CRM. That’s not just a random grouping I came up … Continue reading →

Is the need for gamification an admission of failure?

By Chris Bucholtz I was a gamification skeptic – but, as I wrote on CMS Wire earlier this year, I became a convert, at least for some things. Gamification can certainly help smooth transitions, establish good habits and provide training to people on the fly, even when those people may not wish to be trained. … Continue reading →

Exceptions vs. Understanding: How Customers are Getting Smarter About Comments

By Chris Bucholtz Last night, I was seated at the bar of the 1400 in Alameda (housed in the historic pre-1900 Croll’s building), battling a crab dinner to the death. It’s hard to be dainty when eating a whole crab, what with the cracking and slurping and clinking of tiny forks and whatnot. Luckily, the guy … Continue reading →

CRM Means Relationships: Do Your Processes Allow Marketing to Sustain Them?

By Chris Bucholtz Customers don’t buy from companies, generally – they buy from people. That goes especially for return customers; if they interact with the same salesperson, and a relationship grows, the potential for recurring sales and up-selling increases exponentially. This doesn’t have to stop with your sales efforts – it’s something you can carry … Continue reading →

Customers’ Experiences with Technology Feed their Service Expectations

By Chris Bucholtz Customers are starting to become more aware that the experiences they receive from the businesses they buy from are the result of deliberate decisions. They’ve felt the effects of good and bad experiences, but today a newly aware class of customers is starting to consciously understand how those experiences come about. Part … Continue reading →

CRM’s Forgotten Features: Reminders

By Chris Bucholtz (Editor’s note: this is the fifth and final entry in our series on features in CRM that can expand your ROI – but which frequently go forgotten or ignored. Parts 1, 2 and 3 can be found here, here, here and here. Now, we say final – but if you think you have another feature that … Continue reading →

CRM’s Forgotten Features: Web-to-Lead Forms

By Chris Bucholtz (Here’s number four in our five-part series on features in CRM that can expand your ROI – but which frequently go forgotten or ignored. Parts 1, 2 and 3 can be found here, here and here.) When many first-time users envision CRM, many of them see this: a system that allows them … Continue reading →

Curing Pain Points in CRM Requires a Diagnosis First, then Treatment

By Chris Bucholtz I learned long ago that, for businesses to make significant changes or significant investments, it requires significant pain. I learned this while covering the telecommunications industry, a collection of enormous corporations that saw change as an opponent of revenue. Back in the 1990s – around 1996, and the signing of the Telecommunications … Continue reading →

ServiceSource: Understanding the Nuances of Coaxing Customer Renewals

By Chris Bucholtz We’re increasingly moving toward a subscription economy. Technology’s making it possible, pressures on cash flow within businesses make it critical, and the need to make each customer just a little more profitable make it ever more viable. But this economy puts a lot of businesses of all sizes into a new business: … Continue reading →

The Cost of Forgetting the Customer Experience

By Chris Bucholtz Last week, I wrote an article for CRM Buyer that said, essentially, this: you can’t control what your customer does, what he says, where he says it or who he says it to, but you can control the experiences he has with your company. If you do that right, everything else ought … Continue reading →