Every now and then I get a customer service story that is so egregiously bad that it teaches the clear lesson that there is a line that can be crossed with any customer that just shouldn't and it isn't even a matter of corporate culture necessarily, but of an employee who is so awful that they should be called out. So, based on a story that my good friend and colleague, Gerhard Friedrich of RWD Technologies, told me today, I'm reproducing the story exactly as he wrote it - just so you can see what an audaciously disgusting employee can do and how the single individual can stain the reputation of a company that really can't afford the stain.

I'm also using this story to lead off my "Bad Customer Service Story Week" because Gerhard is a semi-rabid Red Sox fan (which means he is better than most of them) and this is my backhanded way of congratulating the Red Sox on their World Series victory.

So, Gerhard, take it away....

"A month ago, I took a flight from FL to...

Microsoft is an enigma wrapped in a puzzle wrapped in a riddle?

Not anymore. No riddle. No puzzle. The enigma remains kind of handy, though.

They are finally getting much more aggressive with their CRM strategy - though much of it outside the U.S. - and its about time. Its especially revolving around their "LiveCRM" initiative. They announced a whole series of things at their Convergence 2007 conference in Copenhagen this morning at 3:00am EST. (I was asleep, because that's what decent people do at that hour).

A few were of the ordinary "oh, okay, kind" that are not terribly surprising nor even that interesting. For example, the large outsourcers like Accenture and EDS - both questionable for their treatment of humans and data - are among the ones that will handle the enterprise accounts for Microsoft Live Dynamics CRM.

Ho hum. Too bad those two miserable companies are getting the benefit of Microsoft's kindness.

But there were some no so ho hum....

IDC tends to be at times one of the most traditional enterprise applications focused analyst organizations. They are solid, capable and do good, if a bit expensive work, because they have a bright crew watching trends and a number of excellent people who know how to drive business.

But their conservatism in their approach has been manifest with little discussion of the trends in CRM 2.0 and Web 2.0.

Until now.

Today, IDC came out, as always, with a content filled study called Social Networking Application Market Overview and Forecast, that forcasts a 120% growth in revenues derived from social networking over the next two years (by 2009). The report forecasts a growth that will reach $428.3 million by that year. A LOOOONG way from the $46.8 million it was in 2006. In fact, they think that by 2009, it will be a new application category.

IDC, in their wisdom, sees three types of...

As many of you know, I've generally been a Microsoft booster, rather than one of their silly "evil empire" detractors. When it comes to their new CRM initiative, I'm rather impressed.

In fact, I really like the idea of the single code base that Microsoft CRM Live is going to use, which is literally the only way a hybrid model could possibly work.

But that's not why I'm writing this.

I'm writing this because I think Microsoft is making a mistake right now that they need to rectify quickly if they want to compete in the on demand market at all.

I attended the Worldwide Partner conference and was treated incredibly well by Microsoft, had some excellent meetings, though am waiting on a couple of followups still, and was generally excited by what I saw, and so were the partners. Brad Wilson did a great job of the announcement of Microsoft CRM Live and there was a TON of press coverage for the product at the time, much of it positive and the buzz was actually...