InsideCRM

Buzzwords: the secret language of CRM

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:40:33 GMT

Last month, the eminently readable and undeniably talented Ginger Conlon wrote a post about buzzwords on the 1to1 Media Blog (which is one of the first things I read each day, and you should too, because it quite nicely puts things in a customer-centric...(read more)

Comcast self-service, revisited

The Inside CRM Blog — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:34:19 GMT

Frank Eliason took the time to respond to last Wednesday’s post about Comcast’s somewhat dubious idea of having customers hook up digital converter boxes themselves, which was indeed nice of him. However, some parts of Frank’s response...(read more)

Comcast’s new take on service: you do it, losers!

The Inside CRM Blog — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:28:08 GMT

Bu Chris Bucholtz Just today on the Focus Blog I wrote about a great study TOA Technologies did gauging the experiences of customers waiting for installers/delivery people in the cable, telecommunications and satellite industries. Sadly, the numbers are...(read more)

Who Should Lead the Customer Social Media Interaction?

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:11:31 GMT

By Guest Blogger Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Forrester Research I’ve had a number of interesting debates on who should lead the customer social media interaction in the last few weeks. In part, this question comes up because a great deal of social media...(read more)

Tomorrow’s Webinar: Ending the Roller-Coaster Sales Cycle

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:53:00 GMT

Tomorrow, I’m moderating a webinar with a couple of great guests – Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Businesses , and Bill Golder, the executive vice president of business development at Miller-Heimann. The talk’s topic will be “How to End the Roller...(read more)

Echosign thrives in the era of quick time-to-ROI

The Inside CRM Blog — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:40:01 GMT

We wrote about Echosign last year, and the company is not standing still. It might seem as if the idea of signing contracts on line was simple and left little room for new features, but CEO Jason Lemkin says that’s just not so. “We were strong in B2B...(read more)

KANA gives service a process to control service processes

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:54:48 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz There’s been a push recently – especially in marketing automation – toward making systems easier to use. First came things like campaign management, so the ordinary marketer could use the system without the need for a trained “expert...(read more)

LucidEra: shuttering SaaS

The Inside CRM Blog — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:33:36 GMT

News came today of the wind-down in operations of LucidEra, which offered an SaaS business intelligence product that we discussed with CEO Ken Rudin . The first indication I received of this was an email on Friday from Ken telling of a change in email...(read more)

How social media’s impact goes beyond lead generation

The Inside CRM Blog — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:08:03 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Everyone knows that social media is going to have a major impact on CRM (the concept and the technology), but as lot of people on the sales side struggle with exactly how that will manifest itself. There doesn’t seem to be any such struggle...(read more)

Is there a service innovation shortage?

The Inside CRM Blog — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:22:26 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz I’ve written about this in the past , but it bears repeating: All the CRM technology, process refinement, customer intelligence and sales efficiency in the world is worthless unless your company is truly customer-focused, and never more...(read more)

Gap-bridgers: Marketo delivers sales-ready marketing data

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:25:26 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the sales/marketing misalignment that exists at most companies, and we keep hearing from readers that this seemingly never-ending issue saps efficiency from their companies in ways that endanger...(read more)

Knotice-ing and untapped resource

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:53:01 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz When we talk about mobile CRM, the concept is generally understood to mean the projection of CRM into the field on the handheld device s of the people who use CRM data – initially, sales reps, but increasingly, other people, especially...(read more)

SugarCRM’s customers’ needs served with 5.5. beta

The Inside CRM Blog — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:45:16 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz We had a concept internally we liked to call the “CRM-isphere.” The idea here is that your business is like a cell; what you emphasize determines what system forms the nucleus around which the rest of your enterprise is oriented. For...(read more)

Word-of-Mouth 2.0, Treehouse Interactive-style

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:04:51 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz All the talk about social media and CRM the last few years is finally starting to really take root, turning up in vendors’ products with relentless regularity (as the news from RightNow last week indicates). It was pretty obvious that...(read more)

Right lead generation at the right time: DemandBase

The Inside CRM Blog — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:40:34 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz The most encouraging aspect of the current economic conditions (if there are any encouraging aspects) is that it’s forcing companies to seriously consider new sales tools that look at aspects of the selling process in different ways...(read more)

Guest Blogger: InsideView CEO Umberto Miletti

The Inside CRM Blog — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:12:13 GMT

InsideView’s a neat company, and I encourage you to read up on them if you haven’t already learned about what they’re up to. When business visionaries in the 1990s talked about how information would be the asset of the future, they were...(read more)

RightNow’s inside-outside May ‘09 edition

The Inside CRM Blog — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:49:51 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Next week, RightNow’ s going to release its May ’09 edition, and it’ll add a couple of things that I think will become pre-requisites for CRM in the very near future. Those two things are social media monitoring and analytics. Usually...(read more)

Step 1 to real CRM 2.0: Listening

The Inside CRM Blog — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:36:42 GMT

We often hear from users that the potential benefits of Social CRM or CRM 2.0 are not difficult to understand, but is difficult to envision how it would be employed and deployed in their organizations. There are a number of reasons for this: organizations...(read more)

Speech Analytics for the Little Guy

The Inside CRM Blog — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:27:27 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Upon calling for service, we’ve all heard that “calls may be recorded for quality improvement or training purposes,” or some similar message letting us know that our discussion would be captured and used somehow. But simple logic dictates...(read more)

Salesforce Sees Significance of Service

The Inside CRM Blog — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:58:26 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Not long ago on the Inside CRM Blog we spoke about service’s emerging importance as a pillar of CRM (along with sales and marketing). This week’s announcement of Salesforce.com’s Summer ’09 release backs that up; it was already clear...(read more)

Small vs. Big, and Customer Retention vs. Acquisition

The Inside CRM Blog — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:59:22 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz I’ve opined in the past that it’s hard for big businesses to scale up that small-business feel for customers, which I think is one of small businesses’ secret weapons. Similarly, it’s hard for small businesses to scale up the relationships...(read more)

Field service - a forgotten CRM impact point

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:58:59 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz For a long time, CRM was defined in part as a technology and a det of processed that included two critical areas: sales and marketing. That’s been the classic definition, and it reveals a lot about why CRM has had a hard time living...(read more)

Zuora aiming to disrupt billing as usual

The Inside CRM Blog — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:21:59 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Tien Tzuo of Zuora was in our offices the other day to talk about where the company stands after a year of operation. We’ve talked with Tien in the past (see here and here ), and it’s interesting to see how the company’s vision of billing...(read more)

SugarCRM is out to make some things moot

The Inside CRM Blog — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:50:37 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz SugarCRM rolled out its newest product today, and the ideas contained in it are reflective of the evolution that the company (and open source CRM) have gone through in the last 18 months. It’s a rapid evolution that’s seen a shift in...(read more)

United’s fat-unfriendly skies

The Inside CRM Blog — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:47:28 GMT

By Chris Bucholtz Back in the early days of aviation, when aircraft engines were less powerful and engineering types ran things, there was one airline that had a prominent scale right at the front of the checkout counter. Every passenger had to step up...(read more)