Michael MaozIt could appear that I do not share the convert’s ardour for Social CRM. As one of the first to publish a paper on community-centric support resolution (2003), I’d say the truth is more akin to passing from puppy love to a more complex relationship. The challenge that ‘social’ initiatives share is in tying interactions back to the customer account. While one might think that fostering communication and interaction is enough, most of us would argue that the end game is to enrich your understanding of the customer.
Where would one keep information about the client, or customer, or citizen, or student, visitor, partner or prospect? The BPM vendors and the MDM and the Social vendors will tell you to keep everything dispersed in ten separate systems and bring them together only to run the business rule. I know how that works in reality. Like my daughter this week who tried to book a dental appointment and was denied coverage and then three organizations provided three different reasons why she could have / should have known this would happen. None actually let her know ahead of time. The three did not have a consistent answer as to how to solve the problem. Ah, but one did use business rules. “We sent the notification,” said they. “How do you know?” asked I. “Because it is automatic,” the agent replied. “Do you have a notation in the account record that it was sent?” naively I asked. “Talk to the hand,” said the agent (ok, not exactly – it was just the sentiment). Where is the account record? Here, there, and nowhere.
The account record is central to any effort that an organization will make to manage, to the extent that it can manage, a customer relationship. And don’t get me going by saying that ‘managing the customer relationship’ is a fallacy. It isn’t. That weak-minded point of view is the refuge of those who are afraid of taking responsibility. You cannot manage the customer – true. You can manage what you, as an organization, want to achieve with that customer. It is your balance sheet, and the profits and losses are your responsiblity, as is living up to the brand promise. You have made a promise to manage your side of the relationship, and the Account
Record is still a good place, and perhaps the best place, to assemble information for current and future interactions. And for analyzing past interactions.
So: how many “Social Software” vendors own the Account Record?
Category: CRM Customer Centric Web Innovation and Customer Experience Leadership Social CRM Social Networking Social Software Tags:
8 responses so far ↓
1 Bookmarks for May 3rd through May 4th – Social CRM ( SCRM ) Consulting Services | Social CRM World ( SCRM ) May 4, 2010 at 10:02 am
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2 Social CRM and the lost art of the account record. : : crm May 4, 2010 at 1:05 pm
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4 Axel Schultze May 4, 2010 at 7:13 pm
This is very close to my heart: Account Ownership.
Here is a scenario: Assume the purchase manager from Ford moves on to a next position and a new guy comes in. I guess approximately 25,000 people make that change in their respective CRM systems – and it may take a year or so until the last change happened. Maybe right at the time the new guy just got promoted and the change goes on. OK 25,000 sales people ‘own’ the record but what for?
Now let’s take another assumption: The same person leaves the company and updates their record in one system. May it be LinkedIn or any other and we aggregate those data and present it to our 25,000 sales people the moment when Mr Purchase Manager changed the position. Only 1 person – not 25,000 needed to make change.
Let’s assume an average sales person has 2,500 records in his rolodex. We all know that 50% are always outdated. The value of that rolodex is greatly diminished while at the same time our 5,000,000+ sales people (in the US alone) are constantly busy updating the “account they own”.
There must be a better way to deal with it. Networked account management is probably the best we can get today. It required a networked application architecture – but a possible way to exit the permanently outdated database dilemma.
Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
5 Walter Adamson May 5, 2010 at 3:29 am
You’ve made a great point – and a fabulous last (full) paragraph. I’ll be quoting “You cannot manage the customer – true. You can manage what you, as an organization, want to achieve with that customer”
If you find the answer please let me know, it’s an important question.
Walter Adamson @g2m
http://xeesm.com/walter
6 maxisservices May 7, 2010 at 12:14 am
Well said about customer relationship management in working around with account records…
7 Marc Perramond May 10, 2010 at 11:56 am
We’ve been account-centric since 2005, at times almost to a fault. But I couldn’t agree with you more — when it comes to B2B, the account object is the most meaningful hub for managing ALL customer interactions.
8 Links 05/18/2010 May 18, 2010 at 3:30 am
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