Because Google is getting serious about the enterprise. I believe it is just a matter of time that they will release a CRM application. How serious is Google’s enterprise? Leading VCs are taking notice: Brad Feld: My Increasing Love Affair With Google Apps.

CRM is a logical next step, because of the transactional nature of CRM. Every contact, prospect, account, incident and opportunity are a part of a transaction. A contact point. An opportunity to extend the company message, brand and reputation. Most of those transactions happen today in email. Even social tools like Twitter or real time chat can be configured to work in an email paradigm. Enterprises are realizing that the Office functionality can be handled by Google Docs. When that hits a critical mass, the early adopters will start looking for Google Docs extensions. Google Apps has CRM partners such as Zoho, Applane which offer traditional CRM products. Zoho’s CRM is robust, however, its other products are Google Docs competitors. Applane offers CRM geared towards the sales lifecycle, which from the surface it looks like it does well. The approach, however, is not the holistic marketing, sales and service CRM approach seen in more robust CRM applications like Dynamics, Sugar and Salesforce. CRM is transactional in nature and email is transactional. When enough enterprises use gMail, it can become a platform for more robust, and profitable, applications.

Google clearly sees this. They have even posted a job listing. Google: Enterprise CRM Systems Business Analyst Job Post. Yes, this is internal (for now). If you were Google would you broadcast that you are building through your job postings? I would more likely build a CRM tool in-house and then turn it into a releasable product. Based on the skill set, I have to say that even the “CRM salt” in me is intrigued.

So what does Google need that they do not have today? I see three big pieces. Process across marketing, sales and service, sales pipeline and forecasting and integration to back-end systems. 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). 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 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. 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. I have been involved with 30 or so CRM deployments, integration has played a part in every single one. Google will need to consider how to approach these three critical pieces and make the robust and flexible enough to gather the market traction that gMail and Goggle Docs are beginning to see.

gCRM will happen.

Over the last few years, I have been able to successfully shed weight that dogged me for years. I am down 60 pounds from the day I got married. I joke with my wife (who does not read this blog) that she has 25% less husband. Believe me, she does not mind. After the bulk of the weight came off, I found that nearly all my clothing did not fit. Interestingly and unexpectedly, my wedding band started falling off my ring finger with regularity. So I put the band on my middle finger and there it stayed. I have found recently that the band was now loose on my middle finger. I have kept the weight off for nearly 2 years, so I figured that this is the new me and I need to get the band fixed.

I checked with a local jeweler. My ring size was now an 8.5. My band was a 10.5. So 25% less husband means dropping 2 ring sizes. Good to know. I have been a fan and customer of Blue Nile since buying my wife’s engagement ring from them. That ring is perfect for her and the price was so good that I did not mind paying WA state sales tax. Naturally after that experience, we bought our bands from Blue Nile.

Now I had a band that did not fit. I got in touch with Blue Nile and explained that situation. Regardless that these bands were purchased many years ago, they found my account and were very quick to respond that they could in fact re-size the band — without charge. The band looks brand new. The only cost to me was the $10 to send it back to them. Other jewelers were quotes in the 7-10x of that $10. Blue Nile customer service was great throughout. At every step, their email responses were through and fast. They delivered notices on expected ship dates and tracking. There was not any point when I was “band-less” that I did not know where it was — a huge relief.

Blue Nile has always provided great shopping experiences for me, but now I have no reason to look for jewelery anywhere else. Many thanks Blue Nile!

Will Google enter the enterprise applications market? Are they there already with gMail and Google Docs? Clearly, the company is targeting the enterprise. They are running print ads in Forbes saying as such. For many small to mid-size businesses, the first business process to be put into place is CRM. I would bet that 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. CRM is the next logical application.
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 Jigsaw and Gist.
5) Sales, service and marketing are becoming more about individual and less about the company due to social tools.
6) 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.

A solid read on this topic worth checking out: The Software Advice Blog: Will Google Enter the CRM Market?

Nice read over at Customer Think about showing the love. Great to know that I am not the only one who thinks this way (related post). Well done Ms. Hunsaker. Check it out.

Customer Think: Fall in Love with Your Customers for Best Customer Experience

Happy Monday.

Ouch!

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 2 weeks, 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 near 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.

The 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) are the standard Marketing Mix. This is not just “marketing fluff” the P’s are where the rubber meets the road in CRM, namely quote generation. The 5th P (Problems) still exist with quote generation today.

Product and pricing data are integrated with ERP systems. Promotions live with CRM and for the enterprise are often customer specific. Place in the CRM parlance is the here and now. Sales is looking to book revenue today. The revenue pipeline needs to flow so that the company can grow. It is amazing to me that 5th P (problems) still exist with product and pricing. These problems are identical to problems faced by CRM over a decade ago. Customer-specific pricing is everywhere and is not going away, yet the complexities of this pricing makes quote generation in CRMs nearly impossible. Too many companies have this problem and no one really solves it. Why? Likely the P (price) to fix the P (problem) is way to high and no P (product) or P (promotion) have incentives to fix it in the P (place).

When you know your customer (KYC), good things happen.
– Example, Client A increased user adoption to 70% of total call volume. ROI increase 25% in one quarter.

When you know your customer, you can spot trouble a mile away.
– Example, Client B re-organized and has a new executive sponsor. He has called the ROI model into question.

When you know your customer, the relationship goes beyond business.
– Example, Client C asks for advice on improving the ROI model and photography equipment for his vacation.

I have blogged a bunch on Gist over the last year. The Seattle startup has some nice traction going for it. It seemed pretty clear to me from the beginning that Gist would be a great CRM and/or Sales Enablement tool for the small to mid-size market. Check this nice blog on that at this link: Gist as a small business CRM tool.

More of my take on Gist can be found at: 12Sided, The Blog: Gist Posts

One of my rules is to always consider the front office and the back office needs and desires of any CRM project.

I recently came across a service process that generate a large volume of automated tickets. The process was over-engineered. Nearly all of these automated tickets were not true customer service issues. These were more like information notices. The sheer volume of these tickets obscured true customer service issues. The development team did not believe that it was an issue, but they did not have to live with the tickets. Compliance by customer service faltered. Agents took to their own ways of dealing with these tickets. Metrics were called into question. Standard stuff. Remember the usage and compliance needs to work the way that the users do — not the other way around.

In my experience, pipeline/forecast is one area of a CRM system that changes frequently. Fortunately, these changes require less coding changes through Windows Workflow Foundation (Dynamics CRM) and Workflow Automation (Salesforce). I have seen this both from the consulting side and as a user. Not going to comment on whether it is right or wrong, just that it happens, often, as a matter of fact in many organizations. Change in management, there will be a change to the sales process. New compensation model and the forecasts will change. It happens all the time and makes numbers from sales very short term and difficult to do long term trends. The best way to improve accuracy, find a sales process that works and then measure the core of that process. Less change, more value.