Thomas Wieberneit

SocialmeetsCRM

Thomas is an executive with more than 15 years of leadership experience in consulting, software industry and in the armed forces. Thomas held various leadership positions in SAP’s CRM development organization for more than 10 years where he contributed to shaping and developing SAP’s CRM solution. He is an expert in CRM, in distributed software development and the introduction and application of agile development methods in enterprise scale projects. Currently he is responsible for building and driving the CRM consulting practice for CIBER in New Zealand and Australia.

What is key to the success of (social) CRM?

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Posted on 2011-12-09

Inspired by a blog post by Dr. Harish Kotadia I started to rethink about what the real key success factors for a social CRM strategy are. Harish used Walmart as an example, based upon their introduction of the “local” Walmart on Facebook. Walmart, being a retailer with more than 3,500 stores is surely a company for which the concept of (physical) proximity is important.

From the outset I contradicted him (how dare I ;-) ). My point was, and is, that companies like Amazon, Dell, even Apple, arguably have a social CRM strategy but are not exactly local (there is not even a single Apple Retail Store in NZ …). They all manage without being physically local. Some brick and mortar retailers are even able and willing to bring their store to their customers by various technical means (e.g. Tesco but also others). So, I argue that proximity is more...

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Customer Service - the Great, the Bad, and the Ugly

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Posted on 2011-08-25
We recently read Peter Shankman’s raving experience report about Morton’s Steak Houses where essentially the management of the restaurant chain went out of their way to provide a loyal, valuable (and influential on the web) customer with a surprise meal after he jokingly tweeted that he is hungry and would really enjoy a porterhouse steak on the airport. Morton’s made this happen and excited a customer who created a buzz on the web in terms of tweets and re-tweets, an intensely discussed blog post, numerous mentions in other blogs (including this one here).

The consequences of this not so simple action are obvious:
- An influential and already loyal and happy customer turns (even more) into an advocate. He talks about his amazing experience – and justifiably so
- A customer originated marketing message is sent that promotes the brand
- Morton’s brand perception increased even more (I didn’t even know of them before...
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Social CRM - A customer oriented view on the state of affairs

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Posted on 2011-08-16

I have spent the last week talking about CRM and SCRM to three retail companies. They cover different, although overlapping ranges and are of very different organizational maturity states. They are also on different positions on both, the CRM and SCRM scales. What they have in common are a desire to have a 360 degree on their customers and the opinion that it is important to excel on the service side. They also are looking for or running tier one enterprise systems with Oracle/Siebel and SAP. None of the three companies is looking at their main software vendors when it comes to “social software”.

The first company, a retailer in startup mode with a wide range, will actively pursue Social Media, for listening but also using it as a sales channel as part of their omni-channel strategy. They want to get the proverbial 360 degree view on the customer, who is “owned” in the marketing department, with PR, not marketing, owning their upcoming Social Media platform, an e-commerce...

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The future of CRM

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Posted on 2011-05-10

A few days ago @MarkTamis called me with a question: “Where do you think CRM heads to in future?” Uhhm, not that simple a question. It really forced me to think as all those thoughts, observations and discussions of the needed to be brought into a better structure.

To lay the foundation I need to start with a definition of CRM; as I like it I start off with the one that Wikipedia provides:

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...

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Social CRM needs a CRM system, doesn't it?

18 comments 4,860 reads

Posted on 2011-04-09

Some days ago Bob Thompson interviewed Graham Hill about his take on Social CRM. The interview covered a lot of topics, most notably the future of Social CRM about which Graham has a particular view and led Bob to ask the question whether it is necessary to have a CRM system to have Social CRM.

On a first glimpse this question sounds simple, but it really isn’t. From a business perspective it only matters that CRM is executed upon, if CRM is a topic. This is totally independent of systems, as are the possible paths into the future of Social CRM that Graham sees, which is a deviation from this post that I likely will look into in a later post.

My answer to Bobs question is a clear No – but Yes!

Sounds odd, doesn’t it? So let me explain.

CRM is a business strategy; so is Social CRM. In an earlier blog titled CRM vs. Social CRM – what is the difference? I discussed differences as I do saw them at that time. My view has slightly evolved since, but this is...

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Social Shopping = Groupon? Nope, this is only the beginning.

0 comments 1,511 reads

Posted on 2011-03-26

Some time ago my wife Nicole posted a small series of blogs about the topic of Loyalty on ciber.com. In these readable blogs she identified and summarised three main strategies of acquiring loyal customers, which are

• Every day low price
• Classic loyalty programs that base upon cash-back options or that are points based
• Hybrid models

To gain and retain loyal customers it is necessary for Retailers (or brands, or …) to get into a mutual engagement with the customers. In order to achieve this it needs something like a WOW!-factor. An important way to get this factor for Retailers is the usage of social media (or social CRM when being more advanced).

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Social Shopping - A Retail Future

0 comments 1,293 reads

Posted on 2011-03-07

A while ago I blogged about threats and solutions in the retail industry that have their origin in rise of social media; with this post I would like to continue on this topic, focusing on possible solutions for retail companies.

This blog also ties in to a recent article by Mark Tamis on Social CRM in Retail. In his article Mark describes an interesting and elaborate scenario that showcases a technology enabled, consumer and network driven decision process, using the example of buying a party dress. This example is interesting because, although the process is entirely consumer driven, the involved companies use the technology to add value to the customer, thus achieving a win-win situation.

What the involved companies (a retailer and a hairdresser) are doing is establishing customer loyalty by

• Engaging the customer
• Providing a superior shopping experience, combining online- and offline aspects
• Enabling the customer to get immediate feedback...

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Social CRM for Retail – Threats and Solutions

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Posted on 2011-03-04

Brick-and-mortar retail businesses face a combination of ever-increasing customer expectations, customers being “educated” to expect and receive promotions, and of course an ever increasing competition in the market place for their customers’ share of mind and share of wallet. On top of all this they need to realize that they do not control the communication to their customers anymore, let alone being capable of controlling the communication in between their customers. As many bloggers, including myself, and analysts already stated, the advent of extremely user friendly and ubiquitous mobile devices and web applications essentially decoupled retailers from communications between their customers and even led to their marketing messages becoming part of the “background noise” for lots of consumers – just something one filters out when it comes to getting serious information.

Of course there are exceptions, especially considering that retail businesses reacted to this threat...

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