What got me to laugh, aside from the restaurant’s clientele, which one of my children defined as the newlywed and nearly dead, was how much social software and concepts seemed to be (and yes, I have always wanted to say this) ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. At school I was not a sharp enough knife in a very sharp drawer of knives to ever really get that expression, but now I think I do: the Social Endeavour is leading us in stages that have the shape of things past. Why? Because for all of the Madison Avenue advertising and carnival barking, the reality of the small town was that the local business had no choice but to engage with the customer. The customer could communicate at City Hall, and the coffee shop, and in the local paper, and at the PTA meeting – basically they could project themselves – or ‘scale’ the message.

I think this is where we are now. We are scaling globally to act ‘locally.’ Social may or may not ‘sizzle’ this year for IPOs or corporate agendas, but we are on an inexorable path to deliver tools to the employee and to the customer to help each understand the other. I have been calling this the Intent Driven Enterprise for the past ten years, mostly to deaf ears, but not entirely. The idea is that customers sometimes do and sometimes do not know their value to the enterprise, and quite often the enterprise fails to capture and make available the value of the customer to those people and channels where decisions are made during an interaction. The failure to align the customer’s intent with the business intent – and all of the corporate and social information that such an interaction entails, results in asymmetry. The engagement fails one side or the other. But when we get it right, we are returning the relationship to a form last experienced in the small town.

I hope that the ardor for ‘Social’ does not dampen in 2012. If it does it will be the Igby Goes Down of the enterprise. If you did not have teenagers in 2002 you may have missed Clare Danes and Digby as he failed to deal with the complexity of growing up, but unless our plans for Social mature, you’ll get to live it for yourself. There is still a tremendous amount of work to do. I have two presentations at our March Customer360 Summit in Orlando, http://bit.ly/AnxS5V that expand on this: one that looks at how marketing and customer service will emerge as best friends, and why, and a second looks at the future of customer service and the Contact Center/multichannel interaction. I hope that I will get to discuss this with some of you then.

Examining how your organization/business/government/utility/school will succeed in providing an engaging experience that is profitable to you and rewarding for them will eventually be seamless. It will be driven by principles of the Intent Driven Enterprise. Thanks this week to Jeff Hagen of General Mills for allowing me to look at how his global organization is advancing customer engagement – and the mutual benefit that it is yielding.

Ah – why did I say that two weeks away from work is an anachronism? For the past decade I can’t say that there is a beginning or end to work. I walk the streets of Manhattan and I’m watching customers at the Apple store or Barney’s. I’m at a restaurant waiting for a table and I’m observing consumers on their devices. I’m on a plane or in the lounge and I am meeting other IT professionals and exchanging ideas on how their businesses operate. Am I working? Am I on vacation? Does work begin or end so neatly anymore for you? Would you really want it to? That is a whole other day’s conversation.

As always, I enjoy your emails and posts.

Speaking of journeys: I am off to spend time with a wonderful person who is a part of the Great Generation. Not yet 90, he lived through economic depression, war, great joy, the birth of a new nation, great sorrow that would have crushed others, small recoveries, greater joys that never eclipse sorrow but keep it from capsizing the ship – and is still hopeful. I recommend to anyone in this business who is not spiritually dead to spend time with the fading remnant of the oldest generation. Then the dross of our petty feuds, software vendors quibbling over maintenance, new Cloud Models, claims and counter claims, or IT teams under the ‘gun,’ – you are never under the gun unless you ARE under the gun. A new sense of balance will return to you.

This has been a remarkable year. I thank our clients for opening their doors and asking advice, but often in the asking reveal tremendous heart, passion, and dedication to the craft of IT and process improvement. You are such heroes, perhaps in a confined context, but great nonetheless – so thank you again. I started the year in Connecticut, but found myself, like so many of my wonderful colleagues, in cities large and small across the world. I try to engineer a three-year sweep of the world. This year was Boston, New York, Chicago, Austin, LA, San Francisco, Denver, London, Glasgow, Paris, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne and about six others. Next year will take a different course. But uniformly, Gartner clients are unbelievably good people, and the source of our best ideas. Wow.

May you experience calm, peace, and success in 2012, and we’ll see you next year.

I bring this up because a fair number of readers regularly point out that X, whatever process “X” is, is often confused with technology. Examples might be CRM, Social, Peer-to-Peer Support,Customer Service, or Social Network Analysis. They might go on to suggest that technology is never the solution, and the problem is always bad process design. Here’s the thing: technology matters, and it matters a lot. Without location-services, WiFi, NFC, HSPA+, HTML5, VoIP, SIP, UCC and Cloud Application Development Platforms, and the like, many interactions would be impossible. Full stop. We’d be back in the 1980s and the IT director would have hair like one of the Thompson Twins.

It is usually essential to first nail down the process and then go for technology, but not always. Often times we have to place small bets and see what happens. Like introducing gamification in the buying or marketing process. Or inserting QR Codes or deploying Google Goggles. Is anyone sure of where these technologies and concepts will lead? Would you prefer to ignore the possibilities inherent in them?

Getting past the trauma of 1996 – 2004, when many of us fell for the next big thing in Client/Server business applications, with the mistaken notion that business could only get better if we deployed a new sales force automation system, is not easy. And many of the same magazines and consultancies that offered the snake oil of “SFA technology equals better relationships” are back. The fear is real, but aren’t we better prepared now? Don’t blame the technology, and don’t ignore the technology. During the period around 2008 when businesses were suffering the most (and there may be no small degree of whistling past the graveyard today), no one blamed the CRM-focused software for the drop. But here we are in a shaky recovery and I have read several journal articles attributing better business results to the software. When things get worse it is not the software, but when things improve it is? Interesting.

So on we go, prepared, realistic but willing to take some risks to realize rewards: Social, Mobile, Analytics/Big Data, Cloud-Applications supporting (supporting!) a customer-centric organization and customer-centric processes. Cart behind horse. Horse collar, shaft, pole, fifth wheel: Form following function. Technology yoked to process. I’ll be talking to many of you this March in Orlando (http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/customer-360/index.jsp ) and in London in June at our conferences. I’m looking forward to it – the ‘buzz’ is getting louder already.

Where have we gotten and where are we going? From a market perspective the wave has crested. The vast majority of vendors are niche players: they don’t own an operating system, or a database, nor are they a development platform or infrastructure platform. They are not the system of record for a large enterprise. Bottom line: that likely makes them outsourced R&D for larger software companies that possess those elements, and not the most compelling stories for large growth companies with a 15 year lifespan.

Where are clients from an enterprise perspective on ‘social?’ Well, in our CEO Survey, #7 of the top ten priorities is, “Becoming more open and collaborative with customers,” and that can be seen as a vote in favor of ‘social.’ Boards of Directors do not mention “Social” or collaboration in their top 10 priorities. But when we drill down into Customer Service and Support, and into Marketing, Social and Social CRM are very much a part of the dialogue. The vocabulary has changed in the past 24 months from high level and conceptual to more granular and wrapped around top-line revenue growth and lower costs. Another way to say this is that “The Business of Social” initiative that folks on our team like Carol Rozwell and Sue Landry are overseeing is right on the money – it’s about data, facts, and measurable outcomes.

We are going to be fleshing out our ideas in presentations, Case Studies and Workshops at our Gartner Customer 360 Summit, 14 – 16 March in Orlando, FL. (http://bit.ly/rw6WON ). I’ll be running guiding two of the conference tracks in our program on “Differentiating the Customer Experience.”

Track A: Customer Service and Support
Track B: Customer Experience Management

You’ll have 18 chances to learn how to make the customer experience world class. But just as important, and fun? You’ll have a chance to network with your peers and share experiences on how to go from good, or great, to even better. If the past 12 years are any indication, I know I’ll see a lot of you there.

Keep your stories coming – they are always wonderful to hear.

The reason that the CIOs must go is that they are like the TV managers of Phil the weather forecaster in the 1993 film, “Groundhog Day.” Phil (Bill Murray) is disgruntled and kicks and bridles against the stupidity of his managers, but eventually gets the picture: if he stays in this job, he is going to have to show up every year and cover the same inane story to please the commanders of the status quo. And this is where corporate IT is today.

Let me step back: This week I had the good fortune to spend a couple of days interacting with several high tech teams from a start up. One in particular just knocked me out. The young CEO was demonstrating his next generation product – slick interface, open system, Cloud-architected, scalable, highly Social – when I just had to stop him mid-sentence with a question:
“How many developers did it require to build this?”
“We were just four guys.”
And that is when it hit me, again: 98% of corporations do not have “Four Guys,” – I.E., woman and men with the talent, vision, and freedom/drive to build new and innovative technology. I have had this argument with businesses before – many times. Even in a company with 1,000 IT staff, or 5,000, or 50, I will say: you don’t have three innovators.

At first blush it sounds cheeky – a little insolent – to say this to a CIO. That is not the intent at all. The CIO is caught in a dilemma of innovation versus conservatism. CIOs are our IT J. Alfred Prufrocks, best summed up by: “ - Do I dare
Disturb the universe?” And if they dare, by whose authority and with whose support? Where do they find the resources with the skills? We have eviscerated corporate IT, sucked the bones dry of their hematopoietic compartment. I asked the group of developers and product marketers in the room the other day – from the start up – why they had risked a start up and not gone to work for a solid corporate IT department. Their faces fell. It was as if I had insulted them.

What is that when young, creative IT savvy people eschew the idea of working in corporate IT? These people are clever, ambitious, post-enterprise. They have never been inside of a ‘department.’ To them that is like living in a Roach Hotel. A place the weak or gullible go to die. Houston, we have a problem. The issue is not about brains. Corporate IT has brainy people to spare. But they may not have the right skills, and the right initiatives under way. Just look around your organization – do you have a small, agile team that could build/procure, set up and manage a social enterprise system? Could they create processes for end-customers to participate in an ongoing idea-exchange with the enterprise and be real partners in co-creation? Then why are they not doing it right now?

The challenge is not software, and not hardware, and not budget – it is a leadership crisis that only mindful boards of directors and CEOs can re-mediate and set right. The time is now, the customers are waiting, and a new generation of precious young talent can’t approach you because you are surrounded by a sandbar of predictability versus deep water and a current of innovation.

In businesses where innovation flourishes, the difference is often driven by the CIO. It can happen, and when it does it is electric, and businesses thrive.

For those of you who live outside of the United States, the day after the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving is a runaway frenzy of shopping Saturnalia known as Black Friday. Retail stores open their doors anytime from Midnight Thursday and 6AM Friday, often to stampedes of shoppers. Think of Pamplona’s running of the bulls, but in this case it is the bulls who would flee from the aggressive humans.

But I digress. When I read the statistic that 10% of eCommerce was conducted by mobile devices in October, something just did not sit right. As Kermit the Frog would say: “10% – REALLY!” I did what I often do when vetting statistics. Being one of a cautious nature, I remind myself that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. Who knows who really said that first. Doesn’t matter. What do I do? For backup on facts, I SMS my children, and ask them to text their cohorts. This can yield about 50 answers from six US States and three countries in about one hour.  All from mobile/internet/social/shopping savvy consumers. So I put the question to them: “How much stuff do you buy from your smartphones, iPhones, iPads – or whatever mobile device you have?

Are you ready for this? They broke down the ‘statistics’ in about 30 minutes. First, none of them bought anything of any value like shoes, clothing, jewelry or anything else off of a mobile phone. They sure did a huge amount of comparison shopping, but little to zero buying. Second, they said that “eCommerce” probably meant “in a few countries in Europe and the United States.” Third, and presciently, they said, “does that include iTunes and mobile apps?” Wow. Holy. I went back to the “Statistic.” It said 10% of eCommerce was on a mobile device. It did not say that 10% of the money was via a mobile app. But it was in an article discussing in-store shopping. So, sure: there are gazillions of mobile apps bought, songs bought. Was that the point? Misleading but perhaps accurate.

Chalk this one up to any other consumer good you consume: Caveat Emptor – let the buyer beware. I say that with Pete Townshend’s 40 year old anthem, We Won’t get Fooled Again, from Who’s Next, playing in my head.  Here is a suggestion: before you fall too deeply in love with statistics about mobile eCommerce, connect up with your key buyers and see what they have to say. So far I haven’t seen too much sharing of information by buyers who are rushing to make quick purchases. Nothing like the social sharing about hotels, or items on Amazon, Zappos, or online sites. This will be a fascinating season to watch, primarily in the U.S. where the mass hysteria of ‘holiday’ shopping transcends the more sedate tone in other parts of the world. As someone very concerned with Customer Service and Support issues, I find it mind-blowing how little thought has been given to customer support for consumers on mobile devices. If the data about eCommerce and mobile is even remotely correct, there will be a lot of unhappy customers out there.

Let’s keep our ears and eyes open, and record as much information as we can, because we are approaching, but likely have not arrived at, a turning point in mobile eCommerce. For that I look to my colleagues like Gene Alvarez and Michael Gartenberg, and to you.

The challenge in ‘managing’ the customer relationship is that no one in the corporate office wants such a messy job. Managing growth, profitability, costs and competitiveness is the language of the executive suite. Minions to the C-Suite work to targets. Compared to those measurable management disciplines, managing the customer relationship is squishy – like nailing Jello to a wall. Yet we have no choice – manage we must. What does it mean to manage? It means to direct an effort with a degree of skill and focus. It comes from the Latin “manus” – or ‘hand’ – like in ‘manual’ or the original usage in Italy: maneggiare. That gives us an idea of the intent: be hands on.

Social Media initiatives serve to underscore this requirement of being hands on in guiding the customer’s experience with the organization. Ideally we’d like figuratively to hold each customer’s hand and insure that they have an acceptable experience with our business or institution. That can be expensive to scale. So we put processes in place, deliver information, simplify steps, aid in decision making, selection, set-up, handling of billing, delivery, payment and inquiry. It is all hand-crafted. CRM can’t be purchased because it is not a technology. As a business discipline, it is designed by you as the advocate for your customer. Technology is laid in behind the process, and analytical tools are put in place to measure efficacy, and feedback systems are put in place to test process integrity. CRM is an evolving, heuristic discipline. Social media are terrific in accelerating the evolution of our customer processes. They give the organization a willing cadre willing and ready to provide advice and insight on what works and doesn’t work with your business processes. But can we listen? Yesterday I was on the phone with my bank. Why? Because I was checking my account and there was a message that said, “Inclearing checks….. $312.72.” I’d never heard of this term ‘inclearing’ and so I typed it into the Search bar on the bank’s website. Nothing. So… of course: Google. Immediately the answer popped up. I checked the bank website: nowhere could I suggest that they add this search term. I called them. Hey: I’m an analyst – I can’t help myself. I suggested that they add the term. bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I could tell that all electroencephalographic activity had stopped in the service agents brain. “Thank you, sir, for your suggestion.”

We have to be at least as good as Google. Google listens without any human listening. But for customer experience improvement, a CRM discipline is the only option for a business to succeed. And that might explain why CRM is the top business term that clients searched Gartner.com for in 2011. “Social” has given new life and urgency to CRM.

I had the privilege to Keynote a CRM Summit on the Gold Coast after meeting clients in Sydney. A poll of audience hands raised showed 80% lines of business leaders and 20% IT. Once one untangles the regional sense of humour (like the organizers insisting I wear a business suit and tie onstage and then discovering no one in the audience had either), it is easy to plunge into very granular discussion about the tools, frustrations, and business value measures that drive customer experience initiatives.

It could in part be the distance from the United States vendor hype machines, but in the region leaders just want to get things done. There is clear frustration at how stymied marketing and Customer Support feel in bringing more real-time marketing into the customer service process. Yet everyone said the same thing: software as a service, and Cloud Computing, were like log-jam clearing for CRM. Rather than queue behind logistics and finance and sales, Customer Service professionals are deploying products to support CRM processes with minimum help or involvement from IT. There is keen desire for local data centers and a fear of placing customer information in the United States, but these are minor issues.

The region is in the throws of a massive focus on customer excellence, and I heard at least ten separate success stories, some of which we hope to highlight at our European CRM Summit next year.

Thanks, Oz. Our Gartner Symposium starts here next week, and if you are not already registered – get over here! http://bit.ly/sosTpL

Why Big Data? Maybe start with “What is Big Data?” Essentially, it is big when standard, stand alone relational databases are inadaquate to search, gather, analyze and operationalize data. That can happen because it is coming from multiple sources and in multiple forms: Facebook posts, Tweets, YouTube video, QR codes, phone logs, IVR feeds, customer and product data.

Even when you capture the data, it is still a long way from becoming “information.” Think about it: 01010100011011110110010001100001011110010010000001101001011100110010000001100001
001000000110001001100101011000010111010101110100011010010110011001110101011011
0000100000011001000110000101111001001011100000110100001010  
Sure, any binary brain knows that means “Today is a beautiful day.” But I’d rather have it in five words – subject, predicate, object: thought and meaning. This is a big problem for almost all existing CRM systems, and beyond any Social CRM tool. There are software companies working on the problem, and trends in in-line memory and pattern based systems are all accelerating the creation of new forms of business process in sales, marketing and customer service.

The issues are as big as the data. Consider the case of making an offer during a sales or service engagement. Old school: make the pitch and maybe it will work. Big Data: Run sentiment analysis on the customer, match with ‘best agent.’ Run profitability analysis in real time, look at a statistical analysis of the customer’s psychographic profile. Cross reference with their “Social Graph” position for influence and clout. Determine offer. Yikes is that a lot of computing, and it needs to happen in real time.

So: if you are down in Orlando, whether one of the 1700+ CIOs or a line of business manager or BI guru, let’s talk about how you are going to respond to the opportunity of Big Data to Insightful Information for your customer initiatives.

Enjoy the show.

Then we take this well intentioned CSR and reduce their ranks. Winnowing them like the ranks of soldiers in La Bataille de Verdun – the Verdun campaign in WWI, wiping out over 300,000 soldiers in under a year. How is that for a morale dampener? Yet that is what is happening in banking, and in insurance, and media, retail services – cadres of CSRs are being ‘outplaced.’ In the 1990′s there was half as much work per agent. Now they have twice the work, and it is more difficult. Compensation has not kept pace with stress levels. How would you perform at your job knowing that the creeping forces of business process optimization, self-healing systems, knowledge management and customer self service were eventually going to leave you out of a job?

To think that the panacea that will give the CSR new opportunities for growth and advance is true for a tiny percentage of the overall agent pool. For five times more agents than will benefit there will be a reduction in ranks. The customer service function will be 30% externalized within ten years. That’s right: you may not have much of a formal contact center, and it will not much resemble that of 2012. That is what we will be predicting, researching and publishing in our upcoming year. It is both scary (for the CSR) and rewarding (for the business), and it is this duality that will require a fine balancing act. How we manage the next eight years of transition will define many businesses – for their vision and compassion or lack thereof.

Where will you end up on the scale between a hard knocks life and business Nirvana?