I want Apple to know that I’m their long-standing and loyal customer.

Here’s the ad a bit closer up:

So, not only don’t they know I’m reading this ad on a Macbook pro, but they also want to tell me the joys of owning a Mac, the same joys that I’ve experienced for eight or nine years and counting (and to be honest, I had the first ever Mac back in 1984, but I’m not holding a grudge that they don’t count those old ones).

What I Want From Brands

It’s very simple, I believe. I’m not 100% sure, so maybe you can correct me.

I want you to really care about me. I want you to remember me. That second one matters a lot. I want you to remember me, such that when I contact you at your touchpoints, you know how much I’ve done with you. I want you to know not to send me ads for the same laptop I’m using right now. I want you to give me some kind of relationship out of my loyalty such that I either pay less or get more for maintaining the relationship over the years, when you are the premium brand.

(Not just you, Apple. This could be written to GM or to Coke or several other brands with which I’ve had a lifelong relationship.)

I’m thinking that CRM is supposed to handle this. Companies should know that I’ve purchased their products. There’s SOME kind of key somewhere that ties it all together. Okay, I don’t blame Coke for not knowing much about me, but GM or Apple or places where I spend many thousands of dollars?

The only solution I think of in this case is a good simple database with that information widely distributed, and some kind of universal (or maybe opt-in) identity. Who knows? Maybe that’s VRM?

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?

I should state that I know Michelle Riggen-Ransom (marketing goddess) and Adam Darowski (UX prince) through meetings at various social events, like SXSW, the occasional Tweet-up, etc. When you know the people who make the things you’re using, there’s a whole sense that everything could be customized or something. When I talk to Mario Sundar at LinkedIn, I feel the same kind of thing: like they care about their user base. Well, with BatchBlue, they are passionate about their customer base.

Things I Like

In the fun category, I like the little touches they’ve thrown in. I went to upload my latest LinkedIn database into BatchBook and combine it with my Gmail accounts. That ends up being around 6,200 contacts (boiled back down with dupes to 4760). When I uploaded the CSV file, here’s what I got:

Yep, the little touches like that are great.

Because I can tag things lots of ways, it means I can sort them lots of ways:

I further like that I can upload pictures for contacts, should I want a visual reminder of who they are:

But what’s coolest is the list feature.

Messaging Distinct Sets of People

Here’s where BatchBlue does something that most of my contact systems do not. Plaxo shares a lot of features with BatchBook, and it has one over on BatchBook insofar as user data on there updates when the other contacts change their information. Meaning, if you’re connected to someone on Plaxo, and that someone changes jobs, phone numbers, email addresses, your files are updated right away. Okay, cool.

Try messaging more than one person on Plaxo. Ditto LinkedIn. Ditto Facebook.

Grueling.

BatchBook has lists. For every one of the tags you assign a contact, you can sort those tags into lists, then download those lists into distinct addressable groups. So, for instance, if I want to email all the people I know who are related to PodCamp, I can. If I want to message everyone in the Boston area, I can. If I want to message people I’ve labeled as “mediamakers,” I can.

That’s the clever bit.

A Quick Note About SuperTags

They also have this feature called Super Tags. Basically, you can add all kinds of other fields and metadata around certain tags, such that you collect even more useful, sortable data on different kinds of contacts. I haven’t dug into that yet, but judging by the way Michelle and Adam talk about it all the time, I suspect that’s a cool feature and that I’m missing out.

In the End

I recommend BatchBook for the list sorting ability, for the tagging and slicing ability, for the Super Tags (though I’m not 100% clever on them yet), and if you have no other form of client relationship management software, this would be a great lightweight tool. I’m not using their todos or several other parts of the software, but that’s okay. I think it’s worth it for what I’m getting. Hey, I’m not a DBA, and this is a whole lot better for me to manage than a spreadsheet.

If you check it out, I’d be interested to know your take.

BatchBlue Software‘s BatchBook might be just right for you.