Bob Thompson
Three Perspectives on “CRM” Reveal Limited Win-Win Thinking
Earlier this year we invited CustomerThink members to take a short survey on their perceptions about CRM. One of the key questions was simply to ask for a definition of "CRM" without providing any options to select, or even giving a definition of what...
Pat Sullivan Is Back To Shake Up Small Business CRM
He's baaaaaack. Pat Sullivan, the CRM industry pioneer who launched ACT! and SalesLogix, has joined the board of directors of Infusion Software, effective July 19. More on Infusion in a moment, but first let's tip our cap to Sullivan for his commitment and focus...
Net Promoter and ACSI Smackdown
There's a lot to like about the Net Promoter Score that Fred Reichheld developed. Business executives are jumping on it as an easy to implement metric of customer loyalty that ties to business growth. But academic research is finding fault with the methodology. Tim...
CustomerThink Retreat 2007: Advisors Chart the Future
On June 5-6 at the Seascape Resort in Aptos, California, 16 of CustomerThink's global Advisors gathered for our annual Retreat. Each year we get together to discuss the top industry issues, how we can collaborate with each other and how to add value to...
Highlights From Global Study of Call Centers
The June 15 issue of BusinessWeek summarized a few interesting findings from a global call center study, covering 2,500 call centers in 17 countries. The research was led by Cornell University, but according to the study's web site: "The Global Call Center Project is...
SugarCRM Rides the Open Source Wave
Traditionally, to win in the software business, you've got to spend big in sales and marketing. SugarCRM, as part of the open source movement, thinks there's a better way. So far, the big winners often come out of the Oracle camp of take-no-prisoners marketing, where...
Google This: Who Will Buy Salesforce.com?
The media is abuzz about a Google-Salesforce partnership. (Personally, I'm more concerned about whether Paris Hilton will spend any time in the pokey.) The real question: Who will buy salesforce.com? At salesforce.com's recent developer conference (May 21 in Santa Clara, California), the company announced...
Unica’s Vision: “Marketing So Relevant, It Feels Like Service”
Yuchun Lee When I first met Unica co-founder Yuchun Lee several ago, he told me his goal was to create a billion dollar business. Seemed a bit far-fetched at the time, since the company had yet to book $10 million per year. Now, as...
FrontRange: Back From the Dead To Contend for SMB Leadership
As the large-enterprise CRM space has consolidated to the Big Two (Oracle and SAP, how boring), the SMB market has been a fragmented, muddled mess. CDC Software, Consona, and FrontRange would like to change that. Years ago, the top three vendors of SMB-focused CRM solutions...
Can CRM Stop “Middle-Age Spread”? (Lessons From Google and Toyota)
It's commonly believed that, as we get older, it's only natural to get a bit thicker around the middle. But the real reason we get fat is we get less active and lose muscle, while continuing to eat the same amount. Today Google made...
CRMGuru Is Now CustomerThink
In case you missed the announcement last week, we have changed the name of CRMGuru.com to CustomerThink.com. Long-time members may recall that our email newsletter was renamed CustomerThink in 2002 (formerly CRM.Insight) because of confusion about what the term "CRM" means. "CustomerThink" was created by...
Web 2.0 Powers Up People
Q: How do you hype interest in the Web, again? A: Put 2.0 on the end of it! It reminds me of the hype that drove interest in CRM, which didn't really ramp up until we all started to use the term "CRM." Until about...
Six Easy Ways To Lose Your Clients
Customer-centricity is like art. As a customer, you know it when you see it, or rather, when you feel it. You get those warm, mushy feelings like "they really care about me" and the urge to tell your friends. That's what prompted me to share...
Sell More by Showing Your Customers Some Love!
In my last blog, Why I Hate Sales Reps, I said my pet peeves were reps who don't listen, don't care about my problem, can't be trusted, or aren't available when needed. But some reps are different. They love their jobs and love taking care...
Why I Hate Sales Reps
OK, I don't hate all sales reps. But now that I've got your attention, let me explain. Sure, selling is one of the most challenging professions around. But then, don't we all have problems? For example, customer service managers are tasked to provide great service...
China in the Customer Management Groove
It's hard to believe that we've just completed the fifth annual China Customer Management Forum, held April 5-6 in Shanghai. It seems like just yesterday that Sampson Lee contacted me and said something like, "Hey, what do you say we start a CRM conference...
You Can Love Your Bank: An Interview With First Direct’s Marcus Golby
The U.K.'s First Direct set out in 1989 to turn around people's dissatisfaction with banking by giving them a purely telephone service alternative. In this edition of Inside Scoop, Bob Thompson talks to First Direct's Customer Services Director Marcus Golby about the company's commitment...
Why “CRM” Must Die for Customer-Centric Business To Thrive
As we ring in the New Year, it's time to bid farewell to "CRM." Why? Because after more than a decade it still doesn't have a commonly understood and accepted meaning. What if you gave an "apple" to a friend, who became annoyed because it...
Build a Customer-Centric CxO Team: CRM Resolutions for 2007
In the 2006 Rocky movie, Rocky Balboa, the aging fighter, gives some sage advice to his son. It's not whether you get knocked down, he says. It's about whether you get back up and keep fighting. Perhaps customer relationship management—which I define as developing and...
The Next Generation of Customer Management? Customer Experience Management
Since I founded CRMGuru.com in January 2000, interest in CRM has blown hot and cold. Now Gartner says that the good times are rolling: CRM software revenue jumped 13.7 percent in 2005 to $5.7 billion. One factor, the analyst firm says, it that buyers...