First One to This Standard Wins

June 23, 2009 · Comments

Makers Mark Plant - vintage phone I’m thinking about social CRM. I should be. I’m going to be hosting an event about SocialCRM tomorrow with the guys from Radian6 (client). It’s even the cover of the most recent CRM magazine. I have some thoughts. ( As I’m writing this, I note that David Armano has a neat idea or two in this graphic and explanation.)

A Social Customer Request Sheet

  1. Why do I have to learn your phone tree? Once I get into your system, let me punch in some ID (give me 3 ways to do this), and let me customize. The truth is, you KNOW why I’m calling. Don’t make me go through your messy tree. Let it be keyed to me.
  2. Make your website all about me. Hell, Amazon.com goes about halfway there now. Why can’t you? If I’m a customer, then you have a sense of where I am and where I want to be. Can you help me get further along?
  3. If you’re going to make communities, please align them to me and my usage. Meaning, if I’m looking to talk to other parents about how I use my dSLR and my video camera to capture my kids’ lives, make the community site about that and not your new amazing dSLR. I’ll be a parent much longer than that SKU will be relevant to your company.
  4. Please give ME stats and don’t keep them all to yourselves. Why shouldn’t I know that I’ve called in 14 times and that I’ve had more than 24 agents working on my problems? I think stats would help alleviate certain customer service tensions, and they would give me more information to share, should the problem persist.

In short, if you’re going to think about social customer relationship management, then make it the other way around from the beginning. Make the customers the prime focus and not your company.

Could anyone do it? Not sure. What’s your take?

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  • steve
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  • Hi Chris. Great post. Especially relevant in light of what we saw at Enterprise 2.0. I added a few thoughts of my own about social CRM here (too long for this space): http://ow.ly/g04C.
  • Awesome post. I especially like the part about getting stats. Customer Service Reps know minute details about each of your calls, why shouldn't we be able to see this info? Great idea. I'll have to share this with some friends that work closely with IVR systems.
  • Re: 4 - you should also be able to find out what changes have been made to your account by yourself or by an operator. Also knowing when you phoned/logged in recently and any failed authentications (online or by telephone) can help identify account mis-use.
  • When you said, "you KNOW why I'm calling," I immediately thought of standard cell phone voicemail recordings that make sure you'll go over the minute mark and the cell phone companies will get one more dollar.

    The "please record your message after the tone. When finished, either hang up, or press # for more options". Don't we know this already? Is this new to anyone? Wouldn't I just hang up instead of being instructed to do so?

    I love just hearing the "beeeeeeep" every once in a while. I'm caught off guard, leave a more personal voicemail and jump off the phone in less than 30 seconds. Just by getting rid of this vmail annoyance, a phone company could acquire a lot of business. The iPhone didn't make me switch, but this would.
  • How about having enough customer service representatives to answer the phone? Why do I go through a menu, hopefully not the voice-recognition, only to get transferred to a live person whom asks me the same questions again?
    Why not empower someone to do their job by solving my problem the first time?

    I understand the theory of firing you worst customers, a la ING, who cause a drain on the system, but wouldn't it just be easier and simpler to treat everyone as a customer you want to keep since that is more cost effective?

    As possible social agents that could do more harm than you could imagine, why not make my life simple? Ask the Pepisco about Tropicana or the angry moms about pain medication, etc.
  • Yes and no.

    Yes, from the point that CRM should be at the forefront of any company's thinking. Your existing customers give you the platform to grow new relationships, so make sure you look after them.

    But is it realistic with current technology? Probably not. Are you going to have 1,000 different sections on your website to look after 1,000 customers? Not unless you're on a monstrous server with unlimited bandwidth and guys that can keep the accounts running effectively.

    With the phone tree, while it's annoying as hell (and I alluded to it in a recent post), at this minute in time I'd say for larger companies it's a necessary evil. They can't always know what you're calling about simply because callers get it wrong too. They call sales when they wanted service, or vice versa. Yes, some of this is the company's fault for having a crappy system, but the system also needs the user to use it properly too.

    I can see smaller companies implementing this kind of CRM over the larger companies. Less customers, less departments, more personalized. In the meantime, until technology and people use improves, we're stuck with what we have.
  • Danny,

    I have to disagree with you there. Technology is already there, and it does not require 1,000 or even 100 different sections. Using portal technologies is actually quite simple to customize content in a web site. Using analytical tools in place today is simple to get the necessary parameters to present the web site the way Chris presents -- to a certain extent (predictive analytics have not yet proven to work all that well - but then again, no one has used them long enough for the system to "learn" sufficiently on how to predict.

    The truth comes from two sides on why this does not happen (and after 20 years in customer service it has not changed much): customer service is still viewed - except by a handful of companies - as a necessary evil. Also, cost is a consideration. A system of predictive analytics can cost several millions of dollars to implement in a telco or financial institution and more to run --what's the return on that investment? until we learn how to track customer retention or loyalty well and can make that case with numbers, it is just not going to happen.

    American Express in the early 80s deployed a called-ID app that would let them know who was calling and greeted customers by name when they called the customer service line but customers got so freaked out they had to disconnect it. True, that would not happen today -- but if a company takes a step in the right direction and it fails, it won't try again due to the cost and lack of results.

    Don't want to rant forever, but this is far from a technology issue. This is an MBA case study through-and-through: there is a way to make it work form the business sense but no one has figured it out yet. When someone does, most of the thoughts in this post will become a reality.
  • I think what you are describing in inevitable. Data rich customer service, now that's a thought.
  • Nothing drives me more crazy when I call into a phone center than to have to verbally tell the customer service rep my account number after I have already keyed it in at the beginning of the call. The whole point of me keying my account number in is so you can have my account information up and ready when we finally get to talk.

    Okay, the phone rep in India who introduces herself as "Julie" is a bit of a turn off too. :)

    Seriously though, much of the frustration we experience in dealing with "Big Co's" customer service channels stems from the fact that they are viewed as cost centers rather than profit centers. Talk to any manager of a phones operation and ask him what his most important statistic is and you'll find that it is cost per call. Sure there are other stats that are on his dashboard such as quality metrics (usually measuring seconds to answer, not issue resolution) but at the end of the day the drive is to either minimize call length, lower rep cost, or minimize calls.

    Businesses need to realize that they have only two major goals.

    1) Acquire New Customers
    2) Retain Existing Customers

    Just about everything we do in business should support one of these two goals. Web sites, call centers, and even things like clean offices and company outings all come back to support either getting new customers or making the ones you have happy enough to stay.

    Making "the customers the prime focus" is the only effective way to do business. The customers are the business. Your job is to get as many of the right customers for your business as possible and keep them for as long as possible.
  • I agree with #4, we implemented a self-service solution that provided customers with stats, what agent was working on their request, etc. and customers really liked it. It was really easy to implement too.
  • I especially agree with #4. I believe that the more information a customer has about the business and how it works, the easier it is to trust them and have the right expectation. The other day I ordered something from a store on Amazon.com because they included more information about shipping times, etc., and I had a better idea when it would come.
    If customer service could let the customer know more about how the call is handled as well as how many others have had similar problems and other information, the trust would be strengthened that much more.
  • Chirs,
    It's really something. I've been thinking for years that this stuff is obvious, and that you're just stating the obvious, but in reality, customer service that is good is still the exception.
    What is it with that? It's remarkable that websites are so bad from huge companies. It's incomprehensible that cell phone companies remain simply uninterested in their customers, or employees even. I can't understand it.
    Thanks for the post, hope you're doing great, you pirate captain you.
    Steve
  • Phil
    why not just have people? if i call i get a person. instead of me being on the phone with 5 people for 30min each until one of them finally can help me what if the first person i talk to could fix it right away? that's a 5 minute call for me and only requires 5 minutes of the company time as opposed to me using up 2.5 hours of their time. how does that not save money? i'd never switch companies if i got people right away.
  • True, Chris. I really agree with you: the standard will define the winner.
    I think that what we are talking about is what Jeremiah Owyang defines as the "era of social context", where user experience is customized based on the social profiles of the user. With the expression "user experience" I mean every user experience, not only a website interaction.
    The era of social colonization will make possible for user to experience the best CRM without having to share all the data but simply opting-in and -out fields that are important for them to share.
  • Chris - brilliance is often simple and your take on Social CRM is correct. Where offline and online CRM both miss the mark is that they assume that I am always the same person. We are multi-dimensional creatures that make different decisions under different circumstances.

    When I travel with my husband we stay (or used to anyway!) in 4 star hotels, choose fine dining options and go to spas and art galleries. When we are with the kids, we choose a high 3 star resort with a pool, family dining, ice cream and sometimes even fast food, and look for aquariums and theme parks. When I travel alone, it is a bed and breakfast, Thai and Indian and vintage clothing shops. The travel industry was the first one to the ecommerce game and 10+ years later, Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz don't have this figured out.

    Even Google and Amazon haven't figured out how to serve me information based on WHO I am today - right now. Amazingly, the answer is equally as simple as your take on customer interactions. Ask me and filter the responses based on situation and intent.
  • I like where you're going with this, Chris. I was talking to my girlfriend last night who was taking a quiz on Facebook. She pointed out that the test creator was able to select all the options and test questions. Hello market research.

    Set up a fun quiz on your Facebook Fan page. Make it fun and engaging for the customer and your response rate will go way up. Not to mention your knowledge of your market.

    Ultimately, it comes down to businesses being scared of social media. Get past the fear and embrace it so you can take full advantage of it, right?!
  • Indeed, it is all about focus. Where is the business focused? If not on the customer, why? If it is, then these (and other extensions along these lines) should be logical steps.
  • Someone will do this. Look, caller ID is ubiquitous. You telling me you can't set up your phone system to read my caller ID and ask me if I want to talk to Anne again, or someone else in the organization? I don't believe it.

    The first company whose automated phone system says "Hello again, Chris! Thanks for taking the time to call!" is going to get a lot of my business for a very long time.

    Come to think of it, my tiny little company can ANSWER the phone that way, too, can't it? Man, have I ever got work to do.
  • Nice. One problem is the notion of the "default" approach to customer interaction. The phone tree, website design, community building and information sharing defaults are all designed/executed to manage customers, not to establish healthy relationships with us. The M in CRM trumps both the R and, ultimately, the C. Kevin Kelly wrote a great piece about defaults on his blog today. Worth a read. http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/06/...
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