The CRM Forum, Mumbai, India, October 2007

I was invited to conduct a session on 'Social Media and the Customer Relationship' at the CRM Forum organised by Marcus Evans at the Le Meridien, Mumbai, 29th-30th October.The event was aimed at achieving business excellence through an integration of information, people, policies, processes and technology strategies-effectively executing CRM on its own.

The CRM forum aimed at providing a platform to receive top notch knowledge in capitalising the concepts of CRM, latest trends in customer strategies and technologies, and developing organisation cultures to achieve customer satisfaction , along with advanced applications in the areas of creating a ynergistic partnership between marketing and IT to drive forward CRM initiatives, utilising brand strategies, the media, as wll as data warehousing and data mining.

The event unfolded with an interesting presentation by Dr. G. Shainesh, Associate Professor at the IIM Bangalore, India, where he talked about identifying the consequences of the shift from CRM with technology orientation to a business strategy. This was followed by an interesting case study presented by Mr Gautam Anand, Vice President, ITC Welcom Group on creating outstanding service levels and designing a service design.As several industry experts including Anupam Jalote, Chief Process Officer, Bharti Airtel, Dr. Wolfgang Messner, Director Capegemini shared their experiences, my session on Social Media, and its impact on customer relationships and consumer behaviour was well received.

As I focussed on Corporate Blogging as a potential tool for engagement and reducing the perceived indifference of organisations to consumers, Gaurav Lalla, Director of Internet Marketing,Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces emphasised the need of organisations to listen to customers and use the internet as a medium for the purpose.His reference to the utilisation of Second Life as an upcoming medium to conduct brand led dialogues with avatars was interesting.

The event was well attended by delegates from several sectors ranging from Banking and Insurance to hotels, healthcare, retail, telcom and airlines.