CRM is dead and its history as the most popular shelfware product of the 1990's helped seal its consignment to the dustbin of small business and enterprise software history. Emerging from the famous Peppers and Rodgers book The One to One Future, CRM created a huge technology industry segment. Now companies and organizations are littered with data warehouses, data marts, query and reporting tools, OLAP solutions, even predictive analytics, but they still don't know how to sell to us and/or manage our relationships. Why? Smart companies today realize there are five Ps in marketing now: product, place, position, price and PEOPLE. The people have transformed into social customers. Does your company have a plan in place to deal with social customers?
In many organizations, CRM failed miserably primarily because of the cultural differences between line of business and IT professionals and their inability to focus the enabling technologies on relevant business initiatives to understand the basics of customer intimacy. LOB and IT professionals are still like the odd couple in many companies. Oscar is the messy sales guy who just cares about his next deal, and of course there is Felix the neat freak who has to have everything in order. Sound like an IT guy? No wonder CRM has been largely displaced within organizations by the need to manage the customer experience. That requires customer intimacy and the five Ps of marketing.
Some Social Customer Intimacy Basics
- Who are the customers and what are their demographics: location, male, female, age group, peer group affiliation and social network membership?
- What do they buy, when, and how much do they spend?
- How loyal have they been to your company and products?
- What mediums do they respond to: email, traditional adds, magazines?
- What conferences and events do they attend?
- What is their social status; married, divorced, single, how many children do they have and what is their sexual preference?
- What devices or channels do they prefer to receive information on: smart phone, PC, TV or snail mail?
- When do they take vacation and where do they go?
Remember: nothing has really changed in the social behavior of the good and bad customer. In the old days, the good customer and bad customer experience ratio and model of predictivity -- the prevailing rule number one -- one customer who has a bad experience will tell ten others, whereas the customer who has a good experience will tell two. What has changed today is that, thanks to social media, they can now tell hundreds vs. ten, and they can do it in seconds.
Blitzed By Bose
I bought my Bose noise reducing headphones three years ago (which I love on airplanes) and I have been getting blitzed regularly with Bose emails soliciting my business. To be honest, I think the company sends out too many emails, and they have never once asked me how I like their products in a traditional customer satisfaction survey. (Remember, this is what I call the first step in customer intimacy.) When was the last time you received a customer satisfaction survey from any company?The email from Bose that bothers me the most, however, is the "Mothers Day" email that I get every year. I have responded to this email for several years telling the company that my mother is dead, but they keep sending them. I think Bose makes great products and I applaud their Internet marketing, but they should know more about me. Why don't they? In fact, all companies should know much more about their customers these days, including your company. The technology is there, it's affordable, and now there is even Facebook to check out my friends and network. Bose does have some Facebook pages, and says it has 22,000 members; however, the last time I looked there were no posts on its wall. Curious indeed, but now I am one of their social customers.
The era of the social customer has arrived, organizations and companies that endorse the five Ps and develop new ways of interacting with them will profit in many ways. Those that ignore the social customer and their channels of influence will ultimately walk down what I call the boulevard of broken dreams. In 1991, Regis McKenna of Silicon Valley fame published an article in Upside magazine in which he quotes a CEO saying that "marketing is too important leave to the marketing people." This is truer today than ever because as Regis always said "marketing is everything."Until next time good luck selling and marketing to the social customer.