By Chris Bucholtz

What better way to fill those slow news Fridays than with a feature that is virtually limitless in its content? I’ll scan the news for the latest examples of CRMM (customer relationship mis-management) and share the most egregious, embarrassing and counterproductive with you. They say a wise man learns from his mistakes, but a wiser man learns from the mistakes of others. So, here’s your first such learning experience:

A media company was aiming for a friendly, warm way to invite people to its LinkedIn Group, so it sent out an email to people who had opted onto its list with the cheerful, not-particularly-original headline of “Where Everyone Knows Your Name.”

Then, unfortunately, some programming steps were forgotten, so that after that salutation, the letter that followed began like this:

Hello [FIRST NAME]

So, apparently in the LinkedIn group people would know your name, even if the entity inviting you didn’t.

Which knuckleheads pulled this cringe-inducing faux pas? What organization could have done something so counter to the idea of CRM as to make this entire event comically ironic and thus worthy of inclusion in this, the first blog post of its type to appear on Inside CRM?

Well, it was us, of course.

I was working from home that day, so I had no direct hand in this. But I felt like the captain of the carrier Enterprise when it went aground on a sand bar off San Francisco in 1983 – you may have been off the bridge, you may have been taking a nap, you may have been unaware of what the quartermaster/marketing department was up to, but it’s still your fault.

All’s well that end’s well, though. We’ve attracted more than 400 people to the group despite ourselves. If you want to join the group, let me know and I can send an invitation. And I can now manage a chuckle about this.

Barely.

Next Friday, I hope to talk about a CRM screw-up committed by someone other than us. I have confidence – it’s the start of the travel season, and the airlines hold so much promise…