A blast from the Social CRM past

I found myself picking up Paul Greenberg's CRM At The Speed of Light last week - just the five-plus years after the fourth and final edition came out.

Paul's approach to CRM (and particularly the shift in orientation from company-empowering to customer-empowering models) aligns very well with the 'Art of Making Partners of Customers' approach delivered by The 10 Principles of Open Business.

So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to find a section by social customer champion Chris Carfi AND his reference to my own example of trying to put the customer in the driving seat (literally) through what I called a small experiment in vrm (Vendor Relationship Management).

I was buying a Toyota Yaris for my wife and tried to switch marketing/search roles with the vendors. I marketed to them that I wanted a vendor (via blogposts and tweets). They were given the role of searcher (usually the one we customers take up). For the details read both my blog post from March 2008 - and Chris's own take on it.

Any half decent social monitoring connected to any decent CRM would have delivered any number of wannabe vendors to me. But they didn't come.

When I was reminded of all this by reading Paul's book, I tweeted to Chris. He was blown away that the example is now six years old. Frankly, so am I. Because the gaps it revealed in the capability and philosophical will to serve the needs of the customer are still as wide today in too many companies.

I've worked with many companies since then to help them close their own gaps - by designing processes for the discovery of real time needs (through openly published conversation) and delivery against them, in developing systems to ensure the work and the data flow to the right places, in generating the desire to change required of a customer-led (rather than self-serving or even customer-centric) approach across the business. Yet still it is not the norm.

We still have that Yaris. It's been a great car - and continues to be. But at some point soon we'll change it. I wonder if at that point I can repeat my experiment and get a better result?

Connecting the dots. Creating change

Take this (via Mark Earls)

"What can we do, what do we need to do, to improve our differentiation?”

And add this. (via Neil Perkin)

"Everyone sat inside... organisations has the leverage to transform the model of the business they are in. When they try, the temptation is for the business to wrap such ideas in short-term ROI, judge it by existing rules, implement it through an existing structure, make it fit an existing process. You don't manage innovation. You need to get the organisation, with all that process, all that hierarchy, all those assumptions, out of the way

Sprinkle in some of this. (Via Chris Carfi)

"There is a transformational thought, a "transforming idea," and a point at which the group "gets it" and starts to gel in the new world."

And... do not relax.

Surprise surprise! Social media is everywhere people are

Two new reports come to my attention today. They strike me as offering just the kind of ammunition you may need if you are battling to make the case for social media while those around you persist in reaching for their telephone directories...

1. How associations are using social technologies.
This is from Principled Innovation (via Chris Carfi)

2. Social Media in the enterprise (in the inc.500, actually)
Looking at its growth in corporations (via Alan Moore)

Bottom line: Social media is getting everywhere. (image by victoriapeckham via flickr)

Oddly enough, that's because people are everywhere.
And everywhere people are they will form groups, disintermediate and disrupt.

Choices? Join in their journeys or be an obstacle they will overcome.

Mobile operators. Take a seat before you read this

The VRM project had a bit of a bash this week.
The key learnings from it are brilliantly summed up by Chris Carfi at the Social Customer Manifesto in The Principles of VRM

Among the implications of these Doc Searls pointed out is:
"A free customer is more valuable than a captive one".

What's your relationship like with your customer? Do you like to think in terms of capture, lock-in, owning relationships?

Take a look.
Mobile Operators (among others) are advised to sit down first.

Doc speaks:

Why we blog. Bloggers understand. Broadcasters don't

One slide from BlogHer's social media survey stands out for me (pictured left, via Chris Carfi on Twitter) because it reveals the value of blogs and blogging. It's about the relationship, it's about communities of passion and trust and it's about people coming together with shared interests.
The best social networks perform all these functions. The greatest value emerges when people combine with purpose. It's clear from these stats that that's exactly what bloggers are doing and also what they think they are doing.

It's the community/conversational/let's get together and get something done feature I think media companies often miss, reverting instead to using blogs as broadcast on the cheap.
Some people just never really get how things are meant to be used, do they?

A picture of the intention economy - and a second experiment in VRM

Well, here's another of my poorly-put-together diagrams. It came to me after my testing of a one-man-vrm in trying to buy a car.

It's pretty clear that tools, and simple ones at that, which can connect these two intentions are available. Put together shrewdly we may have a way of helping the vendor side catch up with the consumer?

Rather than search for myself, (and/or deciding for myself)which are the most likely candidates, I thought I'd try a little more VRM (vendor relationship management) - this time aimed at the people who should be best equipped to pick up on my clear intention! That is, if you're pitching tools which can do this job, the least you should be able to do is be alerted to my intention to find you, from this posting alone (though I will twitter away, too).

So please, either email me your suggestions for good tools which could help, or just post your thoughts and suggestions below. Thanks

Who wants to sell me a Toyota Yaris? (Part II)

My little experiment in VRM has become a little more pressing. Just to recap:

"I'm in the UK.
"I want a low mileage Toyota Yaris in either T3 or TR spec, registered late 2006 onwards (new shape one). Must have aircon of some form. Ideally 1.3 petrol but will consider 1.0. Probably go for the five door. My wife prefers silver (and it will be her car). Ex-demo would be ideal. Will consider new if you can do the kind of deal that makes me accept the ludicrous VAT costs involved.
"Don't need to do part-ex."

It's more pressing because the car it's replacing is now sold.

So it's just as well this blog (and my tweets) is not the only place sharing this story.
Chris Carfi at the Social Customer Manifesto has picked it up and done a great job on it, and that in turn has been picked up by Topix

By the way, the man whose garage has serviced it and carried out the MoTs for the past five years has bought it for his partner. That speaks volumes for his faith in his own work, don't you think. So here's the recommendation for you: Serviceman in Huntingdon, Cambs.

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Communities Dominate Brands & The Obvious sign up for the Call Centre Customer Manifesto

More support for the Call Centre Customer Manifesto arrived today in the form of this post on Communities Dominate Brands.
Thanks to Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore for that. This comes in the wake of backing from Christopher Carfi's Social Customer Manifesto.
And the facebook group in support of the cause "No More Call Centre Monkeys" starts today with 47 members. Let's see where it ends!

UPDATE: Just seen Euan Semple at TheObvious has joined in, too. Thanks Euan!

Details of the Manifesto: HERE

Social Customer Manifesto backs the Call Centre Customer Manifesto

Great to see that Christopher Carfi at the Social Customer Manifesto has given his support to the Call Centre Customer Manifesto we've launched on this blog and as a facebook group "No More Call Centre Monkeys"

The group is ticking along, 40-odd faces signed up. But we need more. The corporates like (hate?) big numbers. So please, if you're already a subscriber, share the word with anyone you think might want to help us make a difference.

If you blog, please post about it, too. If you hang out on consumer forums - likewise.

If I can read only 100 blogs, which should I read to be most up to date?
BTW, big Congrats to Chris for making the top 100 blogs you must read to be first with the news in the blogosphere. A great one-hit for your RSS reader!