For the longest time I've firmly believed that voice enablement will be key for CRM Apps of the future. Having worked on integrating products like Jott, Ribbit and Oracle's CCOD into the Siebel CRM/OnDemand application in the past, I can acknowledge the power they can bring to the table in simplifying a sales persons daily activities. Remember a large part of sales is ensuring that you're on top of all your activities and keep the ball rolling.
Also hooked onto the voice enabled search Google offers on iPhones. It's remarkable how in a relatively short duration Ive become so dependent on this service.
Now imagine a road warrior or never in front of the machine sales rep (arent they all that way ;-)
who can get access to all their CRM data on their mobile device, but through voice.
Wouldnt it be awesome if you bring up your fav SFA app on the iPhone and "Speak" show me latest brief on "Hush Communications" and the newest content available in the 360 for Hush Communications just paints on your device. You review the brief on "Hush" and walk into the meeting with them.
Customer reminds you that you still havnt sent them the latest quote so you pop-up the phone and "Speak" - "Email Hush Quote to Mike Myers" and boom the quote you had previously created for them but forgotten to email appears in Mike's inbox.
You step out of the meeting and "Speak" - "Change - Hush Opportunity to Closed" and "Create Task - for Hush - Work on final order approval with Mgmt"
Then there's also the more traditional get all your voicemails and their transscripts in the app on the right record kind of scenarios as well.
Anyways most of these scenarios I've prototyped myself and they're very much in the relam of doable with services like Jott and Ribbit. So its only a matter of time till Sales Reps get hooked on these.
Then again voice enabled sales apps have been touted since 2001 we enabled Siebel. But I think were's getting closer.
It all started cause I needed to access “My Account” on comcast.com to view some info. Since I had not accessed the account in months, I had some trouble signing in (to put it mildly) with my password (which I had obviously forgotten).
What ensued was not just funny but a classic example of how a large corporation just simply loses customers due to poor (read crappy) support/service.Comcast has tried to provide every tool on the planet to help you with issues, suggestive help, call a number, chat with a rep online blah blah blah. Sadly none of them worked for a simple problem of resetting my password.
So I try logging in a few times and then realize I’ve obviously forgotten my password. I click the very friendly “Forgot your password” link and this is what it shows me.
Its telling me that my secret question has expired (whatever that means, since I had never set one) and then actually wants me to still submit one to proceed.
After giving up on forgot password I roam the site a little more to see if I can call them.
So I see this posted prominently on the site.
We're here for you 24/7. Just Ask Comcast 1-800-COMCAST (1-800-266-2278)
Mind you this is at 10:00pm US Pacific time. I hit the IVR at Comcast the options available are;
- Issues with your service
- Billing inquiries
- Upgrade Service
- Downgrade Service
- Pay-per-View
So I hang up since neither of these options relate to website “My Account” login issues.
Then I see this tool which suggests that I chat with someone online right now. That sounds simple so I click it, enter literally 15 fields and then am presented with a set of pre-canned FAQ’s .. so no live chat :-(
Not to give up yet, I click one of the FAQ’s that looks really promising and here’s what it says.
Error Message: "Incorrect Password. Please try again. OR We do not have a
reminder question on file for this User Name.
To restore your account access, please
re-create your User Profile."
If you have forgotten your password, simpl
y answer your reminder question correctly and you will be allowed to
reset your password. If there is not a reminder question on file in our databa
se to retrieve your forgotten password, you need to re-create your profile. This is for security purp
oses as passwords are encrypted and cannot be retrieved.
To re-create your profile and overwrite the existing profile with that User
Name:
1. Click here to create a new profile.
2. Complete appropriate fields
3. Ensure Account Number and your Phone Number match the
information
on your Comcast Account
4. Click the Submit button
5. Your account access should now be restored
Adding/removing/changing account numbers tied to your profile.
In some areas, multiple
Comcast accounts can be viewed by logging into one profile. In these areas, simply login to your accou
nt and select UPDATE MY PROFILE from the bottom right. From here, use the drop-down menu to add and
remove accounts.
In other areas, only one Comcast account is allowed for each profile. In th
ese areas, you will need to cancel your existing profile and re-create it with your new account information.
To do so, follow the steps below.
1. Log in to your account and select the UPDATE
MY PROFILE section
from the bottom right
2. From here, select the CANCEL option on
the bottom of the screen
3. Follow steps to cancel profile
4. From the successful cancel screen, select the re-c
reate profile link
5. Follow the steps to create your profile
When I try all the crap that's been mentioned above I get the message below saying your account already exists …. Please login or call us
At this point I’m ready to move from Comcast … seriously. This is the second time they've pained me as a customer. The first was a ridiculous excuse for not being able to exchange my set top box for a HDMI one even though I had bought the HD service from them and was paying every month for it.
Now getting ready to send this to their VP of Customer Service. Who has a picture and profile posted online. See if he can really help.
The only question I really have for him is, have you ever used your own system Mr Germano??
A tell in poker is a subtle but detectable change in a player's behavior or demeanor that gives clues to that player's assessment of his hand. A player gains an advantage if he observes and understands the meaning of another player's tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable
Off late I've detecting a number of tell's through LinkedIn so wanted to share my top three and see if others have noticed it and agree. Or am I reading too much into the LinkedIn body language.
#1 - LinkedIn profile updated to 100%.
#2 - Posting status updates that read like " ... looking for newer challenges ..."
#3 - Adding recruiter to network. Evaluate and appraise or departure from company usually occurs in a few weeks or months.
Its a wonderful tool that can be private or public or both, corporate or personal or both, logical or illogical or both well hopefully you get the point.
So here are 5 reasons why I think its wonderful ... and weird
#1 - Wonderful cause I can keep in touch with my network and if I feel like shouting out "I need caffeine" on a Wed afternoon I can. Weird cause now I can see virtual colleagues shout out about things like "Gummy Bears".
#2 - Wonderful cause it allows me to communicate with friends and family quickly and easily at the same time. Did you know that you could "direct message" someone by putting "d username message". Weird that Twitter allows me to do the same thing I used to did with my IM status a few years ago and yet its so much more engaging and powerful.
#3 - Wonderful cause with Twitter I can open conversations with people in my industry or area without having to visit tradeshows or events or ever having to meet them in reality. Well you might say that no big deal cause more collaboration and networking tools allow that. Weird cause its a best response I've seen from complete strangers wanting to engage in a short 140char conversation.
#4 - Wonderful cause I can now get all my news from the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan et al. Weird cause it makes me wonder if they realize how much folks like me rely on them to feed me tidbits ;-)
#5 - Wonderful cause big media and spammers have still not figured out how to abuse Twitter (blatantly). Nothing weird about that, its cool.
... and all this is with very few Following and Followers.
I'm not sure if you need 1000's of followers or need to follow 1000's on Twitter to get value out of it. Though I can clearly see folks in sales and marketing doing that, especially those that might be companies of "1" or "they" are the brand.
If harnessed appropriately Twitter or micro-blogging tools like Twitter can be yet another amazing collaboration and productivity channel within an enterprise. Imagine mgr's using it to keeping in touch with their large distributed team's, Smaller teams leveraging it to stay tight, sales or project teams updating each other, salespeople using it to mine and harvest, marketing using it to drive messages and test the mood.
For me Twitter fills the gap between an IM and a Message Board or Email Group.
Speaking of email groups I wonder when Microsoft starts offering micro-blogging as part of Hotmail or Outlook + MSN Live or Sharepoint for internal use. I use them as an example cause they have the tools and web properties to make this happen. Imagine you could tweet through Hotmail or Outlook and create your network or look up tweets on MSN Live later. Thunderbird could do that as well, except they don't have a web property like that to persist the network and content. The only other company that I can see doing this is Google with Gmail as the client and one of their properties. Wouldn't that be cool.
The only downside I see for that is that Twitter today supports umpteen clients and something like that from Microsoft or Google might not.
Read this interesting article "Predictive Analytics Can Pinpoint Profitable Customers" on DestinationCRM that is based on a Forrester report "Optimizing Customer Retention Programs" by Suresh Vittal. While I haven't read the report yet, this article really got me thinking.
In a slowing or contracting market new customers are hard to come by so the focus often turns to retaining existing customers. Of those existing ones the smart marketing guys soon narrow down to the profitable ones. Now this is where this new report makes it interesting. They further segment profitable customers into segments based on the likelihood of their response;
"Savables": Receiving an offer won't induce these customers to leave, but not receiving one might. This is the group that marketers must focus on.
"Sleeping dogs": An unwelcome marketing campaign can provoke this group to end the relationship altogether.
"Sure things": Customers who don't need to receive offers to stay.
"Lost causes": Customers who will leave regardless of the offer.
Of these the Savables are the ones where marketers should focus their dollars and that segment can be further split into sub-segments or customers as well since not everyone is equally savable.
Now this is where it can get tricky predicting behavior cause how do you determine that a "Savable" is not a "Sleeping Dog". I'm assuming that macro-trends matching the consumers profile might be one determining criteria, however it might actually be more interesting for companies to analyze their own pipeline and sales order trends to determine how successful they've been in selling to or converting these "Savables" after a campaign. I'll try getting into the report to determine what Forrester thinks might be determining factors for each of these segments.
But will surely keep an eye out on more about the Uplift model as we market through the current economy.
Havnt posted in a while and its not been that long really .. well maybe in blog terms its been eons (2months) and oh boy has the world changed in these two months. First we had the financial meltdown, marquee names like Lehman vanished, Barrack Obama was elected president, gas is back down to under $3 a gal, folks like you and me are wondering where all of this is going. Sure the world has changed from just 2 months ago.
Well a couple of things have changed on the professional front as well, after close to 10 years I've left the mother ship at Oracle/Siebel and ventured into a very exciting gig at a smaller but high growth, high potential company - NetSuite. Its a phenomenal place with very bright people and a very powerful product. In the new role I'm responsible for CRM product management at NetSuite.
There are a number of things already queued up that I want to blog about in the areas of CRM, NetSuite, Product Management, Scrum/Agile and personal experiences (like my really crappy experience buy a 3G iPhone).
So this blog is to get started from the break and start writing again.
Google's launched their latest we're not trying to go after MSFT product called "Chrome". Here's their description of the product ..
Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.
Now that I've installed and used the product a little bit, here are 3 things on the top of my mind.
Its not compelling enough (yet) to make me switch from FF.
The current EULA will make it next to impossible for use in a compliant enterprise.
Does this mean web coders will now have yet another fork in their code saying "If Chrome .. do this ... else".
Update: Haha .. I find it ironic that when I accessed my Hotmail account from Chrome I got this message.
We recommend that you upgrade your web browser so you can get the most out of Windows Live Hotmail. Upgrading should only take a few minutes. To get started, choose one of the browsers below:
BBS I would say is the grandfather of most social media applications of today .. much before FB or LN or Geocities or IM or IRC there were bulletin board systems (phew suddenly I feel old). Anyone could start them (well initially only a few privileged admins hosting them on their servers could conrol them ... but it changed over time), people could join them, there were conversations and threads, later came the presence and rankings as well.
So today when I saw that :) userplane is taking the good ol BB's or forums to a whole next level with Flex/Flash it intrigued me. What place would they have in todays microblogging, wiki world.
Well to me, Twitter of today is somewhat the forums + email alerts that I used to receive in the past. I would follow forums, folks would follow my forums we would have conversations and short bursts as posts (maybe not exactly 140 characters .. but short enough).
I think userplane is on to something exciting, by combining their latest beefed up forums with IM and other products theyre feeding a market that is currently reaching a instant fatigue. To me forums always represented the balance between realtime and archived.
Recently came across this interesting post that lists 35+ examples of corporate social media in action.
While there are many interesting examples about things like blogs, forums, Twitter and Facebook being used in the corporate world, the one that intrigued me the most was the one from HSBC.
"HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums." Most-Networked-Executives
National Geographic has the most innovative one where they are using Google Lively.
National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.
A quick analysis indicates that 25+ of the 35 example enterprises are into blogging in a big way with community building and Twitter second and third. While there were some mentions of videos and Facebook and others the vast majority were using blogs as their main social media vehicle.
Maybe cause blogs are the easiest to get off the ground, have a conversation (if you allow comments) and keep fresh.
Another one that I'd like to add to the list is Oracle Mix, its a community building or social tool that allows customers to connect, share ideas and have a conversation with Oracle.
Backup generators is one thing that surely comes to mind going through the latest round of SaaS and SaaS platform related access problems this time with Google Apps.
With all the talk these days about cloud computing and how everything needs to be moved into the sky (err sorry cloud) I wonder where it would leave enterprises with large scale outages. Maybe that's where the hybrid - fail over model of SaaS with OnPremise replication plays a strategic role. Now one can argue that the cost might be prohibitive for smaller organizations and it would involve a number of factors like criticality of application * duration of outage * impact to business etc.
The most common real world analogy that I've seen repeated over and over again from SaaS offerrings is about the utility model and how everyone today gets their power from a single vendor who works on all the infrastructure, operations and issues. While we the consumer provide a per unit usage fee and forget about the rest. Would you run something critical like a general hospital by solely relying on the power grid? Why hospitals, these days it comes down to very small retail organizations as well who have their own battery or diesel powered backup devices to withstand outages and keep business running.
Well here are some of my observations around the power grid and SaaS analogy and maybe its a black box of opportunities for a number of vendors who might not currently be in the SaaS platform provider race.
- If we look at the maturity curve of the power industry, SaaS is a long way from it. - While there might be one front face vendor for an area ( like a PG&E) there are a number of up and down stream vendors who make the entire delivery happen. - There will be a lot of mergers and consolidations in the SaaS space if the power industry is any indicator. - The likelihood of a large number of ancillary offerings coming up around the space that offer backup products and backup strategies is high. Its akin to the diesel generator industry. - As consolidation will occur and single vendors per geo's or verticals will appear it will spawn a whole an entire industry segment of vendors manufacturing devices that feed from the power lines like the electric devices of today.
Though its a little unclear who will be the electric company vs the backup generators vs the device manufacturers (the Westinghouses, GE's of todays world). One thing is certain that if SaaS/SaaS Platform is to be successful in large enterprises there will have to be backup generators ... most likely onsite near to the delivery end point ... it will have to keep storing information or juice enough to make it a swift and viable backup in case of large scale disruptions or outages.
Finally there is a SFA product that actually increases productivity and effectiveness for the sales person than giving them yet another data entry tool. Thats been my one big gripe with all the SaaS SFA products out there today that claim to be the next generation of CRM products. I think they should actually be labelled next generation network based products. Cause they didnt do much for CRM/SFA but rather leveraged the internet to deliver the same data entry screens.
There's more coming from Oracle in the form of Sales Library, Campaigns and much more. Stay tuned for more on the new Social CRM Apps.
Google launched its take on virtual worlds today called Lively. I think its a good offering in a very amazing space. This is going to be the future of chat, interaction, dating, service resolution ... you name it on the web in a few years. Though I was a little disappointed with the product. Knowing that this is from Google, it didnt really blow my mind away or anything. They need to step it up on this one.
I'm hanging out at "The Oracle Lounge". Come check it out.
