CRM may have become one of the Top 10 tools used by managers, according to a recent Bain and Co. global survey, but that cuts no ice with our higher education institutions. We are still producing streams of graduates and post-graduates who have little or no knowledge or understanding of CRM. Not only do they not know why it is important, but also they don't even know what it is. Indeed, they might join the world of business without even hearing the expression, "customer relationship management."

Of course, there are a few noble and notable exceptions that only go to prove the rule. Table 1 lists some of the schools that offer educational programs in CRM.

Most of these schools offer single or half-units dedicated to CRM, which can take between 15 and 40 hours to complete. Other institutions include some CRM subject-matter in courses on information technology, database marketing, e-business, strategic marketing, business-to-business marketing or relationship marketing. You can try your own Google search; you'll find there are very few opportunities to learn about CRM in institutions of learning.

So, what's going on? Why is a fundamental and widely applied business discipline—CRM—not being taught in our universities? I think there are three reasons: structure, networks and resources.

I think the answer lies mostly in the structure of business disciplines within universities. The tradition has been to organize academic departments on conventional business functional lines. We have marketing, accounting, operations, human resources, business strategy and finance faculty. These may be enhanced by some technocrats in economics, IT, statistics and law. There might be a few staff from business disciplines such as organizational behavior and leadership.

CRM, is, of course, a cross-functional business discipline. It sits nowhere, but it belongs everywhere. It could be claimed by marketing, IT, operations or strategy subject-matter experts, but it is generally owned by no one. Structure should follow strategy, the experts tell us. These rigid structural divisions—silos, stovepipes—in universities can only inhibit the development of cross-functional educational offerings.

Professional bodies Another reason for the lack of CRM offerings in our universities is the absence of professional bodies in the field. Marketing faculty are members of discipline-based professional associations such as the American Marketing Association or the Chartered Institute of Marketing. They attend conferences where they network with, and learn from, other marketers. Finance, operations and IT specialists have their own forums. Where is the equivalent association or network for CRM academics? It doesn't exist.

I'm sure that many people think of academics as earnest searchers after truth, doing original research, creating new knowledge and passing on the fruits of their experience and wisdom to their students. Isn't this what scholars do? In truth, most universities are midsize, bureaucratic enterprises that demand much of their people in terms of teaching, research and service. Faculty members often use the teaching resources that are readily available to them: books, case studies and interactive games, for example. There are several hundred books aimed at Marketing 101 students. It's the same for IT, finance, operations and HR.

The faculty's needs for a convenient, well-structured, proven solution to their teaching requirements are well met—as long as they sit within the conventional academic disciplines. There are few equivalent resources available to those who wish to teach CRM. Most of the books on CRM are produced by consultants and vendors whose readerships are not fee-paying students.

Adrian Payne, director of the Centre for CRM at Cranfield School of Management, noted when I spoke with him, "Until recently, no credible, academically researched models or frameworks encompassing all the diverse elements that comprise CRM have been available." That is, however, only a first step. Teaching resources that make it easy for faculty members to instruct the subject have to follow. That will allow the faculty with an interest in, but little knowledge of, CRM, to teach the subject with some degree of competence.

Merlin Stone, one of the most prolific CRM authors, reckons that all MBA-level students should have a clear understanding of what CRM is and what it can deliver. Beyond this, he suggests that, "All marketing students should understand direct marketing, database marketing, e-marketing and CRM—each one is inextricably tied to the others."

The lack of resources, networks and supportive structures means that the educational needs of those who lead and implement CRM programs are not being satisfied in the traditional way, through higher education. Is there a vacuum? Yes—but only a partial one. Online communities such as CRMGuru.com have filled the gap. Being a self-help community, it provides the resources and networks that leaders and managers need. Add to this the hands-on training offered by vendors to clients' users and the odd training program from professional bodies such as the Institute of Direct Marketing and Chartered Institute of Marketing, and you have pretty much covered the territory.

We wouldn't educate our finance or marketing people this way, let alone our engineers, doctors and lawyers. Must this remain the status of CRM education?

By Peggy Carlaw

Social media is getting to be an ever more popular tool for connecting with customers and providing customer service. On the plus side, it can be a positive generator of customer satisfaction and sales. For example @DellOutlet has generated over 1.5 million followers and $6.5 M in sales on Twitter since they first launched in June, 2007. Why? Twitter provides an easy and quick way to for customers to get service . . . and they save money by being alerted to the latest sales!

On the other side of such good news, we’ve been hearing for years that unhappy customers tell 10 people about a bad experience with a company. Not anymore! Today that same unhappy customer is liable to write about it in his or her blog, tweet to hundreds of friends (which of course gets retweeted to hundreds of their friends) or, heaven forbid, create a video to post on YouTube. If you’re United Airlines and break someone’s guitar, forget 10 friends. Three million people will hear about it within ten days via YouTube!

Remember those 2500 people trapped overnight in the Channel Tunnel when four Eurostar trains broke down due to freezing weather? One person in England reported hearing about poor customer service from 5 stranded friends via text messages. Imagine how many other people heard from those same 5 travelers! Videos posted on YouTube were watched over 7,000 times. And Twitter was all a-tweet over the whole thing.

The Preemptive Strike of Great Customer Service

Don’t wait until you have to mount a PR campaign to outweigh bad press. Launch a preemptive strike and call us now. We’ll have your employees offering the best customer service you can imagine. And guess what? We’re cheaper than the PR effort it would take to clean up the mess.

Republished with author's permission from original post by Peggy Carlaw .

I've read quite a bit lately about the suggestion that marketers become content curators in lieu of developing content of their own. If you have a strategy for integrating this content with your storyline this can be effective. However, in my opinion, too much reliance on other people's content can diminish your prospects' preference for your company as a solution provider.

People go through a process when deciding whether or not to engage:

First, the content has to catch their attention.

Second, they need to be interested enough to digest the ideas.

Third, they need to be motivated to do something.

So, here's my quandary with Curated Content. If it's not yours, who will they be motivated to engage with? 

I'm not saying all 3rd party content won't work to advance your relationship with prospects and customers. In fact, there's a big difference between curated content and 3rd party content.

Curated content means gathering content on subject matter you think your audience will find interesting from around the web.

3rd party content can be content that helps to build your company's credibility because you play a part in its development. Your company also likely paid the expert (cash, exposure, etc.) to produce it and guided the topic to ensure it relates to and supports the story your company is sharing with your audience.

Curated content - even if on subjects your audience cares about - has no relation to your company. Actually, if someone else is actually telling your story as their own, then I'd suggest you've got a differentiation issue.

It's been proposed that curated content will allow you to publish content more frequently, thus drawing higher traffic levels to your website or community site. I agree with that.

But what's the reason the traffic flows to you?

Is it because they're looking for information and they just happen to like the stuff other people are writing that shows up in your feed?

Or is it because they're interested in learning more about your expertise and how you can help them solve a business problem?

I'm not saying you need to rule out using curated content. What I am saying is to make sure that the balance between curated content and your content is weighted heavily in your favor.

Using curated content occasionally to support your company's ideas can give them more validity when done strategically. Using curated content instead of producing your own can disappoint if you're counting on it to drive vendor preference.

On the bright side, those other content producers you're helping out will really appreciate your support.

Just something to think about. What do you think?

Republished with author's permission from original post by Ardath Albee .

Harold Jarche recently offered a framework for social learning in the enterprise in which he draws from a range of colleagues (Jay Cross, Jane Hart, George Siemens, Charles Jennings, and Jon Husband, all members of the Internet Time Alliance) to outline how the concept of social learning relates to the large-scale changes facing organizations as they struggle to manage how people share and use knowledge.

Harold’s overall framework comes down to the following insight,

Individual learning in organizations is basically irrelevant because work is almost never done by one person. All organizational value is created by teams and networks. Furthermore, learning may be generated in teams but even this type of knowledge comes and goes. Learning really spreads through social networks. Social networks are the primary conduit for effective organizational performance…Social learning is how groups work and share knowledge to become better practitioners. Organizations should focus on enabling practitioners to produce results by supporting learning through social networks.

Indeed, Jay Cross suggests that the whole discussion needs framing in terms of collaboration, and I tend to agree. Yet, saying social learning occurs largely through collaboration means delving into the subtleties of how social networks relate to the organizing work of project teams as well as to their performance. After all, much of the work done in Enterprises involves multidisciplinary teams, often spread across departments, operating units, and locations.

One of my earlier posts posed the question Who’s on Your Team? to highlight the importance of social networking to establishing team identity and enhancing knowledge sharing across distributed, multidisciplinary teams. Its focus was on the importance of social software applications in the Enterprise to the ability of distributed project team members to recognize who is on their team at any point in time, and who isn’t. Organizational analysts refer to the challenge of establishing team identity as a boundary definition problem for teams, when members are spread across large distances whether geographic or cultural in nature.

Awareness of Fuzzy Team Boundaries and Collaboration Dynamics

My first post on this topic discussed research by Mark Mortensen and Pamela Hinds published in a chapter titled, “Fuzzy Teams: Disagreement in Distributed and Collocated Teams,” in an edited collection called Distributed Work. Mortensen and Hinds surveyed twenty-four product development teams, finding that, on average, only 75% of the employees on any given distributed team agreed on who is, and who is not, a member of their product development team.

More recently, Mortensen continued researching the topic by studying 39 officially defined software and product development teams. Reading Mortensen’s recent research made me think again about the import of social software in the Enterprise, but with additional subtleties in the interpretation that relates to social learning.

For example, my previous post implied that social software tools in the Enterprise, such as awareness/sharing tools (Yammer, Chatter, etc.), or collaboration tools (Wikis, blogs, discussion forums, etc.) assumed that increased information sharing would decrease such boundary definition problems among distributed teams. I noted,

The implications for collaboration are significant. At the same time that wiki applications such as Socialtext People provide increased awareness of the boundaries of a team, they also increase the likelihood of finding people outside the team with expertise relevant to team challenges, resulting in more boundary spanning across teams. Overall, information sharing within teams and across teams increases.

Mortensen’s recent research poses the issue in a slightly different, though significant, way. He thinks it is unclear that reducing boundary disagreement on distributed teams results in positive performance. Rather, Mortensen suggests that,

This study suggests problems in performance and transactive memory come about not because members have different models of the team, but because they are unaware that they hold such divergent models of the team. Furthermore, though not explored here, there may be potential benefits of boundary disagreement as a source of creativity-inducing variation. Thus I would encourage managers and members to pay attention to boundary disagreement and to focus their efforts on educating members not of the “right” model of the team, but of the likelihood of boundary disagreement occurring and its likely effects on team dynamics and ultimately performance. Armed with that knowledge, team members may, themselves, be able to assess and discount confusion or disagreement that arises from members working with differing underlying perceptions of the team.

In other words, lack of an agreement on who is a member of a distributed team does not present a problem that needs solving in order to manage performance. The awareness that differences exist about who is on distributed teams, and recommendations on how to manage those differences, point to the focus needed on collaboration from management.

Collaboration isn’t just about people sharing information to achieve common goals. Collaboration is about people working with other people to achieve common goals and create value. Even though goal-orientation is a big part of collaborating, collaboration requires more to achieve goals effectively. It requires shared experience. Indeed, one could reasonably assert that, as members of teams discuss their own assumptions about membership in the flow of a project, they develop increasing empathy for other team members and alignment between their own needs for information supporting performance and the willingness of others to either provide it or facilitate its provision.

Posted by Larry R. Irons

Republished with author's permission from original post by Larry Irons .

Guest post by Mike Dubrall

Despite the popularity of social media at the street level, many channel organizations have been holding back. Slowed by a potent mixture of financial, organizational, cultural, and intellectual impediments, some partnering professionals have not been willing or able to present a compelling case for social media investment. Instead, they have been hunkering down and hoping that they can be successful by working harder with familiar programs and tools.

Presenting Social Media Benefits

There are exceptions. Social Media for resellers is now all the rage at some companies who have been smart enough to envision the potential of thousands of channel partners Twittering away about their products. They are not hunkering down. Quite the opposite. These corporations have incorporated channel partners into their social media plans and are moving ahead with social media training and program support.

There are reasons for these initiatives, of course. Good reasons. From our research, Gilwell has found there are three important social media benefits that channel managers are beginning to understand and quantify.

#1: End-users are already using social media to get information about products. Depending on which study you read, 60-90 % of customers begin their purchase process online by gathering information and looking for current customer comments. Increasingly aware of this pre-sales activity, channel managers want to make sure their products are well-represented.

#2: Communication between vendors, resellers and customers is noticeably improved using social media. Messages, attachments, and links are sent and received more quickly (usually getting through all those pesky corporate firewalls) from smart phones, netbooks, and other devices. And using social media drives down the cost of communications, sometimes by as much as 80%. It’s just cheaper to post a video on YouTube and send out a link than to maintain/expand a usable partner portal or distribute (and redistribute) a bunch of PDFs.

#3: Social Media is extremely effective at building and maintaining more intimate relationships. A reseller can maintain weekly contact with 50 customers in just a few hours by connecting with them at their online spaces. This replaces the 50 phone calls and scores of emails flying off into the ether. Most important, social media is personal in a way that good salespeople and their customers appreciate.

With social media, the issue of customer intimacy comes up a lot both in positive and negative terms. Some channel managers worry about exposing too much of themselves to their resellers and customers, thinking that there should be a line drawn between their personal and professional lives. They view social media as potentially intrusive and sometimes describe social media as a waste of time.

Others view the sharing of personal information as an important step in building productive long-term relationships. For them social media is a natural extension of the restaurants, bars, gold courses, and sporting events where they have long spent time with customers. These channel managers think that the time they spend on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other sites is an investment in future success.

In the end, customers will make the decision about how they want to interact with resellers and vendors. If they decide it is through social media (and there is a lot of evidence that this is happening) then the organizations and channel managers that are already engaged will have a big advantage.

http://xeesm.com/mikedubrall

Republished with author's permission from original post by Mike Dubrall .

The healthcare industry made up less than 1% of the total online ad market in 2008. But as patient populations migrate to this information rich channel, that outlook is quickly changing.  Healthcare is now projected to be one of the highest growth industries in interactive over the next 3-4 years, alongside CPG, Media & Entertianment and Automotive.

To capture these new dollars, online content publishers are expanding their coverage on health to attract communities and the companies who want to reach them. As an example, iVillage this week unveiled a new health channel and a new partnership selling ad sales for Eatingwell.com. Customer engagement and digital agencies have developed vertical expertise to navigate this regulation-charged information exchange, and we are no exception. In fact, Quaero has a growing base of clients in healthcare and pharma because these clients value our industry expertise. The layers of complexity in healthcare require it.

VC funding has been flowing heavily into this industry, exclusively for development in the online channel, over the last 12-18 months.  Major players, such Everyday Health, who owns a portfolio of 25 online health sites, are filing for IPO.  Content sites, search, social, appointment setting, lead gen, education, and communities are exploding. The opportunities are limitless. 

And with the new healthcare reform bill on the floor this week, the need for information and education in this already complex industry will only boost opportunity online.  So here's to your health and the health of the online industry!

Republished with author's permission from original post by Julie Baker .

I like you. Do you like me? …

For some people growing up, making friends could have been challenging. Honestly, it kinda was for me. I went to a small, Christian school that pretty much sucked because of hypocritical parents and politics. I tried to fit in as best I could, but my parents wouldn’t always buy me the newest charms for those charm necklaces that all the kids were wearing. (Do any of you remember those cheap plastic things?) They also wouldn’t spend a bunch of money on “hip” clothes, which my friends had. I guess I could say I never really fit in…in a superficial social way. (Plus I was a kid that questioned things…which was a no no for kids to do, so most adults would say I had an “attitude” problem.)

Then we grow up. We get to make our own decisions on how we want to be, drop all the lame friends who didn’t accept us for who we WERE, and move on to bigger and better if we so choose.

When I think about then and now, I have no choice but to tie social media into who I am TODAY…both personally and professionally.  I know I’ve written in previous posts how important the people who are in my social circles are to me. We’ve all been able to encourage AND empower one another through our posts, tweets, and friendships on and off line. INFLUENCE. PERIOD.

Now think about this on a bigger scale. Think about all the awareness of non-profits that social media has contributed to.  Think of all the money that has been raised on a local, national and international level due to the efforts of those who want to help make a difference in the world.  Could this influence have taken place without social media? Perhaps to a degree…but I honestly don’t believe it would have been the same.

Back in December, one of my favorite marketing companies, Firebelly Marketing, was working with one of their clients, Untied Way of Central Indiana. They decided to do a little social media experiment. They took some of us local social media folks to help them out with a little video to spread the word about Live United Give United. Ch-Ch-Check it!

The response was great! It raised awareness for the cause and also increased the number of $15-$100 donations between October and December immensely. (Note, it was difficult to pinpoint the ACTUAL amount, but they did feel their efforts pay off.) Not only did it increase donations, UWCI also saw a big increase in Twitter followers and Facebook fans. That’s not to say it was ALL social media…but overall, there was a huge impact on this amazing organization.

On a personal note, I’m not a news watcher. I rarely turn my television on, so all of my news comes from the web….more specifically, Twitter. That’s how I heard about the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. I saw so many efforts from thousands of people who helped raise awareness and funds for these countries.

Social media as a whole has proven it has the power to be a game-changer…perhaps THE most influential game-changer of our time. It has taken all of YOU to be a part of that change…to be a part of each other’s lives…to be a part of mine.  Yeah…that makes me feel good.  How does it make you feel?

Republished with author's permission from original post by Lindsay Manfredi .

By Tom Niehaus - Director, Product Marketing & Presales

In the economic environment today it is vital to prove a return on investment (ROI) on capital expenditures.  Justifying spend in a call center is always a complex task.  The call center is often seen as a "cost center" and therefore reducing costs is the most likely approach that most executives take in justifying a project.  In my experience, executives always use one of two cost reduction measures in the call center:  Average Handle Time (AHT) and Training Time.  These numbers are directly related to human resource costs.  Once the project is complete you can either do more with less (handle more calls with fewer people) or do the same with less (handle the same call volume with less staff).  Either way there is a related cost and return that needs to be calculated.  

When dealing with these numbers there is a hidden accelerator that is often forgotten, "shrinkage".  And no, that is not a Seinfeld reference.  Shrinkage is a measure of how much time is lost to things like vacation, breaks, lunch, holidays, sick time and training.  Because reduction in AHT and Training means that the call center can do more with less, reduction in staff is often a consideration and justification for the project.

Shrinkage factors can range from 20% to 35%, depending on the workforce and staffing requirements.   This means that if you can create a savings from reduced AHT and Training then you can uplift (or divide) that savings by the by the converse of the shrinkage factor (65% to 80%).  Stated another way; if you can recover 65% to 80% of the cost of a new hire through AHT and Training savings then the additional 20% to 35% of the non-working costs are additive to your overall return. 

Assume that your company has a 30% shrinkage factor (70% is the employee cost) and you are buying a solution that will deliver the following:

So don't forget the shrinkage when calculating your potential ROI - it can make a sizeable difference in justifying the project spend.

Republished with author's permission from original post by Jacada .

Probably the biggest question most entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, and work-at-home people have about social media is how to make money from it. Everyone is aware of the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn to name some, but very few know how to convert that into more traffic, leads or sales. The thing is that people are spending thousands of hours in social media, but aren’t making thousands of dollars from it.

These days you can’t escape hearing about how wonderful and cheap social media is. That’s great – I use it regularly. As a businessperson, I’m always looking for the best possible return on my investment of time and money. Most people understand the key role of social media but don’t know how to monetize it. Unless you have a good handle on that, investing more in social media isn’t a wise long-term strategy.

I have something that might help.

I recently came across this new training program, “From Platform to Profit” which focuses on teaching a specific system of content syndication to help improve search engine ranking, build expert status, send more traffic to your website, and help you generate more leads for your business.

Two well-known online marketing coaches, Denise Wakeman of the Blog Squad, and Dr. Rachna Jain of The Mindshare Corporation are teaching it. The focus of this 4-week training is to help people create a content syndication strategy that works.

You are probably spending several hours a week on Facebook and Twitter, but ignoring the other 10 kinds of social media sites you could be using.

This means that you’re not using social media to its maximum potential.

And don’t worry, even if you’re not technical or an Internet geek, the training is designed to be easy to follow and easy to apply.

In just a few weeks, you’ll learn how to convert your text content to multiple formats, and, just as importantly, how to efficiently send your content around the Internet. Done correctly, content syndication has the possibility to move your business to a completely new level in terms of recognition and opportunities.

Learn more about From Platform to Profit (FP2P) here: http://diymarketingcoach.com/recommends/fp2p.php.

Republished with author's permission from original post by Achinta "Archie" Mitra .

When I was flying with KLM to Sweden last week, I noticed a stewardess welcoming a few passengers and offering them drinks. The others around them didn't get these "special" drinks, and were completely ignored. (Including me.)

Why?

Because the "welcome" passengers were frequent customers, with a status called Elite, Silver, Gold, Marble, Platinum, Titanium, or whatever. Valuable customers. KLM knew exactly who they were, where they were, and when they were flying.

I think those "welcome" passengers didn't mind the special treatment. In fact, if I had paid thousands of Euros on a dozen air tickets, I would expect to be treated as a special guest every now and then.

What if you could treat your valued customers in a similar way?

What if there are twenty customers in your retail store, and you could walk up to one of them and offer him a free drink? Only because he is a valuable customer who has had many purchases with your retail chain across different store locations?

What if your restaurant is almost fully booked, but you're keeping one table reserved for a valued guest who just tweeted that she's considering having dinner at your place?

What if you have a very popular product that is almost sold out, and you would be able to contact earlier customers within a radius of one kilometer, to tell them there are only three items left?

If I were your customer, and only if I really liked your service as a regular customer, then I wouldn't mind if you contacted me with special offers. In fact, I insist that you do! Everyone likes to be a special person sometimes.

Services like Twitter, Foursquare and Gowalla are already available and can be connected to businesses.

Why don't you use them?

(picture by Aaron Escobar)