For all the talk of Social Media and CRM, it would be wise to take a look at a company that is already “social”. Spiceworks offers free IT management software and the primary users are SMB IT shops. Their model is media advertising around this targeted audience. In effect, they have built a social community around IT from the ground up. This has allowed them to “crowd source” product management, IT best practices, marketing and even support.

When you think of how social media may impact your business and CRM strategy, think about your client community. Do they “crowd source”? Think about how you can take a page from Spiceworks and build from the ground up.

I have been kicking the tires of Gist and I am very impressed. Gist has recently made some headlines as they scored $6.75M in funding. See here and here. Gist allows you to keep up with your contacts. Twitter, blog postings and even email. Armed with the right information, you can get “personal” that much faster for a more fruitful relationship. This is a sales dream. If you are client-facing, check it out.

Thanks to Robert Pease for setting up my account. Congrats to Gist on funding in a tough market.

Ray Ozzie Asserts Microsoft’s Position In The Cloud

Some interesting predictions and comments over at TechCrunch. Most of them centering on Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft. My opinion is that people are trying to define cloud as a something very specific when a more general definition is appropriate. Think “Transportation” rather than “Planes, boats, trains and/or automobiles.” Microsoft is in a good position as well as Amazon. No reason that both approaches will not be successful.

60% of Twitter Users Quit Within the First Month and this should surprise nobody. Social Media takes effort. Your client contacting you for support — and they are unhappy — takes effort. Your sales team takes time and effort to find the right people and relationships in an organization. There maybe opportunities for social media in these examples; however, social media will have a place in the enterprise when it proves value.

My CRM mantra: Keep it simple. Know your customers. Show them the love.

Came across the Amazon Windowshop Beta today. Very cool use of 3D browsing and AWS. New books, music and “Music Artists We Think You Should Hear”. When this is connected to purchase history, it will give iTunes a run for its money.

It is interesting how offhand conversations can turn to business. I was asked what I would do first in a CRM service deployment over the weekend. My answer was easy. I would learn what I already know about my customers behind my four walls then I would put it in the hands of the CSRs. No self-service, no social media or any other flavor of the month. Before the deployment, I can calculate cost per call (the $ metric). By giving the CSRs all the data, I have a direct correlation for cost per call improvement. That delta of cost per call metric is my ROI. From there I can build upon success and continue to improve.

Simple and measurable. Build off the success. Sounds too easy…

Happy Monday.

Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle provides art classes from drawing to metal and from stone to glass. I have been learning, blowing and working with glass there for 3 years. There are not many places where a layman like myself can get the exposure to professional teaching artists and equipment — especially in hot glass.

Every year Pratt holds an auction by established and emerging artists from the Northwest and around the world to help raise money for Pratt and the Seattle art community. I am very excited to have a piece of photography in this year’s auction.

You can check out the 2009 Pratt Auction Catalog here. I was glad to help and lend my skills for some of the catalog photography.

On Friday, May 15 from 6 – 9pm, stop by for Pratt Exposed: 2009 Fine Art Auction Exhibition. This exciting FREE event is your chance to see all of the auction art in person before it enters private collections.

Pratt Fine Arts Center, 1902 South Main Street, Seattle, WA 98144

I have been a fan of Wilco back to my post-college years in my hometown of Chicago. That is many, many moons. More than I like to count. Wilco is a talented band and has a dedicated fan base. Very dedicated. I received this e-mail from their list last night. Their new forthcoming album has been leaked. They are not trying to stop the leak of their new album, but steaming it themselves as well. Wilco is encouraging those fans who downloaded to to make a donation to one of the band’s favorite charities. Being a fan and knowing Wilco fans, this will work. Give them what they want and get something in return. Classic negotiation.

The Wilco Lesson: Know the customer. Make the extra effort and they will too.

Here is the e-mail:

Well, we made it nearly a month with copies of Wilco (the album) floating around out there before it leaked. Pretty impressive restraint in this day and age. But the inevitable happened last night. Since we know you’re curious and probably have better things to do than scour the internet for a download (though we do understand the attraction of the illicit), we’ve posted a stream of the full album at http://wilcoworld.net/records/thealbum/ . Feel free to refer to it as “wilco (the stream)” if you must.

We also have our usual guilt abatement plan for downloaders. If you have downloaded the record, we suggest you make a donation to one of the band’s favorite charities, the Inspiration Corporation — an organization we’ve supported in the past & who are doing great work in the city of Chicago. Information and donation button here: http://inspirationcorp.org/.

That’s all. Enjoy the stream. Tickets for summer shows, etc. http://wilcoworld.net/tours/ Note that we’ll be holding a free online midnight screening of the “Ashes of American Flags” film this Friday night (at both midnight US Central time and again at midnight Pacific). So get the popcorn or whatever together and be sure to log on and tune in on Friday.

Wilco HQ

User adoption is always a challenge for any CRM related project. I had a conversation last night that turned to a CRM project. A lot of very good work had been done on the metrics to measure a new self-service capability. The problem was that next to nothing was done to drive user adoption. Now this group had excellent metrics that no users were adopting the new self-service tools. This happens all the time.

The ROI is always in the adoption. Get people to use the tools. It is an internal marketing effort. Well executed, it can be very effective. Poorly done, it will incent the wrong behaviors. The process will be worse than before. I have seen both. Get it right the first time and get the ROI.

Xangati Helps Employees Visually Explain Trouble Tickets Through DVR Feature

Interesting read over at TechCrunch. Will be interesting to see how this technology evolves.