CRM is a 4 letter word

If you use, or are required to use, a CRM tool at your current job I am sure you’ve got something negative to say about it.

No disrespect to Salesforce, NetSuite, Oracle, ACT!, or any of the other 46,000 ‘tools’ available, but honestly, stop and think about what you’re building. Then take a good hard look at what a CRM tool is supposed to do, by definition.

Why not let me, the user, decide what to call a campaign and what to call a template. Why not let me link things together sensibly instead of forcing me to use whatever architecture your developers came up with? Why not give me better and more convenient control over my sales territory information? How about drag and drop simplicity for building ROI and participation reports?

Most importantly, why can’t anyone give me a tool that actually lets me manage/monitor/maintain my customer relationships by synching up my entire staff’s communication with my customers, in a drill-down dashboard view (Google), with look-back and trending (Google)?

I don’t know about you, but I’d kick and scream to get the budget for a product like that (Google). If only to see, in real-time, how happy my customers are with my products, and how my staff is working to keep them happy.

Case in point: I received a call from a Bell customer service rep the other day, inquiring about my satisfaction level with their products and services and seeking to upgrade my subscriptions.

I asked them, politely, if they were kidding.

They paused then started into paragraph 2 of the canned speech.

I asked to speak with their supervisor, which took them a bit by surprise as to this point I hadn’t said more than 3 words to them. They told me that they would be only too happy to answer any questions I might have, and wondered if I had a problem I needed to discuss.

“Do you have my customer record in front of you?” I asked.

“Sir?”

I clarified by saying, “Do you have my customer record in front of you showing what Bell products or services I currently subscribe to?”

Stammering, he replied, “Sir, I have your name and phone number that is part of your account…”

“And what does it say about my current Bell services?” I interrupted.

Hesitantly, he says “That is why I am calling, sir, to see if you are happy with our…”

“Clearly you’re in a call centre, so tell me, what products or services are listed under my name in front of you on your screen?”

From the other end I could hear the hundreds of other reps chatting gayly away, but my guy is dead silent.

“I haven’t used Bell for phone or any other service for almost a year because of their deplorable lack of customer empathy. Please take my name off your list now.” and I hung up.

Summary: If you have customers, treat them well. If you lose a customer, update their record THAT DAY. If you’re inclined, conduct a post-mortem interview to identify what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening to another customer.

R.I.P. Professional driver, closed course.

Honey, how much could we get for one of the kids?

I love cars. I just wish I had the money (and damn good reason) to get me a kick-ass little sports car, like a Donkervoort or an Exige S. You know, nothing ridiculous, just a toy.

I really love going to Car Shows too, although I haven’t made it out to the Canadian International in a couple years (kids and all, see?), but I’m going to try and make the next one coming up in February. There’s something about seeing a brand new model under those lights all shiny and quietly awaiting the open road that makes the crowds and the shitty food acceptable.

But that’s once a year. The rest of the time I get my fix by google image searches, YouTube searches, 5th Gear (hilarious show), and the boob tube just like everybody else.

I’ve often wished I was the dude throwing the M3 around the turns or the CTS rocketing down the salt-flats, but lately it seems that auto manufacturers are looking to cut costs by cutting their drivers out of the spots in favour of CG models and impossible environments… I think that sucks.

It’s like comparing Return of the Jedi to Revenge of the Sith! Oh sure, Sith had some amazing backdrops and incredible effects, but there’s no way Jedi would have anywhere near the following (even today) if Yoda wasn’t a puppet (I also believe Mark Hamill couldn’t have pulled off such a heart-wrenching performance watching his master fade away if he had to fake it – grin).

It’s not too long now that a company will figure out how to render CG so seamlessly with live footage that we won’t be able to tell the difference (I expect that Avatar may come close), but until that day, I wanna see cars on the street, cars in the dirt, cars bouncing up boulders and drifting around corners.

But when that day comes, what will befall our wonderful drivers? Will they become obsolete? Will automakers leverage technology to reduce insurance and production costs for their new lineups? What other helpless souls will be cast aside as expendable legacy system redundancies?

Will you?

Will current CRM marketing automation one day turn into pay-as-you-go automated corporate-scale marketing strategy inferred from social behavioural analytics, cloud-logged purchase history and geo/persona-targeting from web leads captured through intelligent forms that will put us “marketing types” in the unemployment lines right beside our beloved Professional-driver-closed-course buddies?

Are we too going to be replaced by code-writers and free widgets? For me, I’ve already got a background in computer animation and post production effects compositing, so I should be ok, but the rest of you are screwed.

Maybe I’ll tip a bit of my Starbucks out the window of my Donkervoort as I pass… You know, respect for my homies.