Will Google enter the enterprise applications market?
It is a matter of time.

The recent GM announcement signal that the company is almost there. For many enterprises, the first business process to be put into place is CRM. Google will enter the enterprise application space in CRM to better leverage existing services.

Considerations:
1) gMail is becoming widely used in the enterprise. The cloud is proving privacy can work.

2) Email is the de facto CRM application. Sales, service and marketing all rely on email to connect with customers.

3) Google has great corporate data research with finance.google.com.

4) Searching for anyone (customer, prospect, etc.) involves a Google search in addition to searches in other services like LinkedIn, Jigsaw and Gist.

5) Alerts could be configured to prompt action based on search results.

6) Sales, service and marketing are becoming more about individual and less about the company due to social tools.

7) Microsoft and, Google partner, Salesforce are battling it out for cloud-based CRM. gCRM would be less robust, but give companies a reason to move from Office to Google Docs.

So what does Google need that they do not have today? I see 3 big pieces.

One, process across marketing, sales and service:
Process is a must. Organizations turn to a CRM system to give them best practices and process flows that they do not have. In my experience, all CRM clients are looking to improve process through technology — not the other way around. Process for marketing, sales and services organizations are very different, but all have a common thread of measuring the cost per call (also called contact, customer, or incident).

Two, sales pipeline and forecasting
Sales pipeline and forecasting is an extension of process, but it needs to be more flexible and dead simple to configure. Why? Because the average VP of Sales is on the job just 19 months. Every new VP of Sales will want to be measured by his or her own agreed to metrics, not by the old metrics that got the last VP ousted. This is very common and will be so for the foreseeable future.

Three, integration to back-end systems. Integration with back-end systems is one of the constants in CRM. This can be any system from ACD call routers to an ERP system. In the 30 or so CRM deployments I have been involved with, integration has played an critical part every time.

If Google will address these three missing pieces in a way that is robust yet flexible, gCRM will be a winner.

Had a great lesson in asking for the business from an unexpected source last week — my landscaper.

Now I do not have a regular service, but did have some work done last summer. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I have come to learn that lawn aeration is not optional. The yard needed it, so I looked around at renting an aerator. Running rate for 2 hours is $125. I called Derek at Rainbow of Magnolia who did the work last summer. For my small yard, he charged less than half of the rental price. Sold.

Now, turns out I happen to run into Derek all the time in the neighborhood village. He is a marathon runner and often catches me finishing a 10K while pushing my 2.5 year-old daughter. He chat about running or exchange greetings. After the aeration, he was all salesman — but not in a bad way. He wanted to make sure I was satisfied. Since I was, he asked if I needed anything else or would refer business to him. This caught me by surprise since it is not often that I see anyone ask for the business.

Not only did Derek ask for the sale but he asked for my help. He and his company are extremely charitable. This year, the entire company voted to donate 1 week of wages to their Rainbow of Magnolia Fountains of Life Charity to build an addition to a school in Uganda. Pretty amazing.

I am a repeat customer and will have Derek and his crew back in the Spring. If you live in Seattle and need some landscaping, give Derek a call and tell him Max sent you.

Amazingly my $0.02 on questions you need to answer in mapping out your Social CRM strategy still ring true:

• Where are your customers?
• Where do they go when they have issues with your products and services?
• Is that channel cost effective for you?
• How open is that conversation?
• How are you making them successful?
• What keeps them from flaming the CEO?
• How many are willing references?
• How many are actively referencing business to you?

Any others?

I have been revisiting the idea of customer intent and its implications. Social media has exploded given customers and prospects the ability to express intent. Buyers signal. Customers signal. Competitors signal. These signals are important data points for the Sales, Marketing and Service — the 3 big users of CRM systems.

A great recent example of this phenomenon is the Netflix price increase. Customers revolted and the company found itself in reactionary mode. Reid Hastings’ blog post will be remembered and studied for years. Is it a coincidence that Amazon’s (Disclosure: The wife works at Amazon, but does not read my blog) Kindle Fire announcement states the following?

There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less.

The real interesting thing about these two companies is one forget their competitive advantage and the other did not. Kindle Fire and the new Kindles look like winners, Netflix is left spinning Qwikster, which is already being compared to New Coke. Amazon listened to customers, Netflix did not.

This example shows the implications for CRM. Signals are positive or negative. Sales, Marketing and Customer Support have to be able to filter and respond to the signals that matter to their mission. In the end, it is all about how you support the customer across the customer life cycle. The next evolution in CRM will be how to focus on the signals and understand customer intent.

Consultants are trained to ask questions. Some good, most are bad and total waste of time and energy. This has the effect of making clients feel like you are wasting their time. I like to keep it direct and too the point. Inital client engagements are a success if I can answer these 5 questions in no particular order:

1) What do your expectations of a service provider?
2) How do you see out team helping you address challenges and opportunities?
3) Why are you changing providers?
4) How do we learn about the business since we are responsbile for action and implementation to ROI?
5) What are the good, the bad and the “do not repeat”?

I do not necessary ask these directly. It entirely depends on the client and situation. Think about what you need to know and why that knowledge will make you and you client better. Then ask those questions. Seems obvious, but it is not.

What is your go to question?

There is an old adage that is all too often followed, “Want more sales? Hire salespeople.”

Sales and who you hire to represent your company is critical. The success or failure of CRM, revenue generation and the company in general are dependent on how the organization learns from prospects and customers.

A terrific read on this by Veritas founder, Mark Leslie: The Sales Learning Curve

Social CRM is gaining momentum to be the next big buzz word. Some great posts on the subject have been making the rounds, but none more than “Why CRM ain’t CRM if it isn’t Social” by Dr. Harish Kotadia. His points are clear and intiutively understood by most CRM practitioners. In my view, social media makes it possible for buyers and customers to signal intent on an unprecedented scale. Buyers signal. Customers signal. Signals can be positive or negative to the organization. Most companies, even great CRM companies, do not understand this shift.

Before mapping out a social CRM strategy, answer these questions:
• Where are your customers? Where are your prospects?
• Where do they go when they have issues with your products and services?
• How open is that conversation?
• How are you making them successful?
• What keeps them from flaming the CEO?
• How many are willing references?
• Where is your organization’s focus?

CRM is about being customer-centric. Sales, Marketing and Service are the usual suspects of customer-facing departments. Each has created internal barriers to what part of the customer that they own. These barriers erode in a socially connected world. Marketing tweets how great the product is and gets a nasty reply from an existing customer. Now it is out in the world naked and transparent. Marketing likely does not even know who to contact in their own company to get the problem fixed. This is real and happening today. I have seen it. I will continue to see it for a long time.

I have been taking a look the the mobile banking space as it relates to CRM for financial institutions. Many major banks offer mobile solutions today and often cite mobile technology as their top innovation initiative. Expect the growth will continue alongside rising smartphone popularity, younger consumers’ spending, and comfort with mobile payment systems. American consumers have nearly doubled mobile banking use in the eighteen months prior to October 2010.

ClairMail caught my attention as the early leader. The company offers a mobile banking and payments platform that is in use at 8 of the top 12 US banks. There is a pretty good chance your bank uses ClairMail’s technology. The platform offers messaging, mobile web and smart client applications which provides 100% mobile coverage. Interestingly, the mobile phone is more secure than a web transaction and gives the bank and customer, real-time, actionable alerts and notifications. This ticks 3 big CRM boxes, acquisition, retention and conversation. Because of these capabilities the company has been successful in deploying at those 8 banks as well. 800% increase in customer adoption for their clients is truly impressive. Joe Salesky, Chairman, Founder & CSO has stated often that the challenge is to determine, “How can you (the bank) expand a relationship, when you have very little interaction with this customer (the bank customer)?”

The banks are ready and the customers of those banks seem to be ready. The company has a strong first-mover advantage. I would expect a shake-out of the space in the next 12-24 months. It remains to be seen; however, if this technology can adapt to lower cost footprints like the cloud. Banks are understandably fanatical about security. They may not have any interest in moving to the cloud.

ClairMail recently released fraud management product to more quickly identify fraudulent transactions. This is a very interesting company and one to watch. Check the TechCrunch article: Clairmail Brings Fraud Management To Mobile Banking Technology.

This is a re-post, but I have had another great service experience with LEGO. Thanks! You are awesome.

I am still not exactly sure what kind of super-powers my son has. He does posses the strength to break unbreakable LEGO pieces. In my youth, I lost my first tooth by prying apart LEGO bricks with my teeth. It soon became a ritual. Every loose tooth led to LEGO munching. Still, my son does not understand how to harness this super-power. He broke into tears when he cracked the leg off of this guy.

In sales, the ultimate goal is to win the mind of the customer. Service is where a company will win the customer’s heart. With tears flowing, I went online to find LEGO Customer Service. A quick form entry and some checking to see which set our broken train conductor came from was all that was needed. A quick electronic response (less than 5 minutes) let me know that a replacement piece was on its way. Free of change and no questions asked. In 10 days, the package arrived. Here is where I was really impressed with LEGO Customer Service.

First, the letter was personal. An agent took the time to write a real personal letter to my son.

Second, LEGO apologized to one of their pieces breaking during play. Not every company that will say truly say sorry. Only the great ones do.

Third, the piece (from a now discontinued set) was good as new and free as promised.

I immediately wrote a note to thank LEGO and had my son add his own thanks in crayon. I have had LEGO since I was 5 and my son has loads of DUPLO LEGO sets. He plays with them daily. Today, I received another letter from LEGO thanking my son for his artwork. LEGO has great products. LEGO’s great service makes them a great company.

Thanks LEGO.

My friend, Robert Pease, wrote an interesting post arguing that sales equals support. I have been thinking about this idea as well recently. There are some interesting trends that anyone who is customer or prospect facing needs to consider.

Social media has made it possible to signal intent on an unprecedented scale. Buyers now signal. Customers now signal. The traditional walls that created internal barriers in the customer-facing organizations (sales, marketing and service) are eroding. It is important to understand that these signals are inputs. A lot of great companies who get CRM do not understand inputs. Essentially, signals are positive or negative. Sales, Marketing and Customer Support have to be able to filter and respond to the signals that matter to their mission. In the end, it is all about how you support the customer across the customer life cycle.

Why?

The traditional sales pipeline has been inverted. No longer is there an information gap between your prospect and customer and you. It is becoming increasing difficult to find the right decision makers and engage them. When is the last time a cold call worked for you? That well-timed email has better results. Responding to that tweet is even better than that. Sales needs to support the buy signal.

Marketing is tasked with engagement and building awareness. What is the barrier between you and customer if your product is a web-based service or a free application? Marketing needs to support the buy signal and deflect the negative signal.

Customer Service is about fixing the negative customer signals — fast. The only way to truly differentiate yourself in a signal based paradigm is through Customer Service. The negative signal is a customer who wants to stay a customer. In his post, Robert correctly states, “It is now the way you will engage, amaze, and retain customers.” By taking that view, your organization must also address the most overlooked area of customer service: Feedback mechanisms into the organization. Development needs to understand the customer service data and experience. Marketing needs to understand why customers are unhappy. Look at the companies who get the customer experience. Amazon comes immediately to mind. (Disclosure: My wife works at Amazon, but she does not read my blog.)

To be successful in this new social CRM world, it is important to understand the role of support in your organization. It is everyone’s responsibility. Social CRM as a trend has been generating a lot of buzz. Even Gartner says that Social CRM spending will soon top $1 Billion worldwide in their Predicts 2011: CRM Enters a Three-Year Shake-Up. I am not one to point at an analyst report and say “See, it is right here.” I point it out for 2 reasons. First, the trend is undeniable. Second, one of the authors, Matthew Goldman is very sharp and knows CRM. Matt and I worked together at KPMG.

CRM is about supporting prospects and customers. Companies that understand support across the three segments will dedicate people to look for the signals just as they would answer the phone.