In the last Dreamforce 2011 conference, a lot of emphasis was placed on the social profile within their Service cloud.  That is, having that user’s relevant Facebook and Twitter stream on the agent’s window.  Along with Data.com and Dun and Bradstreet, you can have accurate data from that user.

As well, Salesforce also recommends the monitoring of social media analytics with Radian6. 

But I feel we’re missing some key components in the call center.

I’ve been an advocate of a unified messaging system as I know a lot of calls or personal emails never make it to the CRM.

Let’s face it, customers will communicate with you when they want and how they want.  That may be by phone, fax, email, or text chat.    Some customers will vent out their frustrations indirectly via Twitter or Facebook.  (You better pray if that user doesn’t have over 1 million followers, because you don’t want bad press coming from person with influence.  Conversely, you’ll accept any kind of good press from this user!)

When choosing a CRM and Service Desk application, make sure you look at your organization and see what media outlet you use to connect with your customers, whether it’s built in or an add-on application.  And choose wisely.

Every media outlet has its time and place, and you have to staff your customer service agents accordingly.

In the video below, Lauren Carlson from Software Advice speaks with Sword Ciboodle’s VP of Marketing, Mitch Liberman and CEO of the Americas, Richard De Francisco, about the future of the call center.  It’s a great interview and overview of what I have been preaching, but you’ll have to ignore the background noise.  The video was shot from the CRM Evolution 2011 conference last August.  As you can hear, it was quite busy!

Here is the interview on YouTube:

I am starting to see a trend for companies using Radian6 and other social enterprise monitoring products.

Companies are responding to people’s complaints or queries directly through social media. Wake up everyone, it’s not the just the 1-800 Call Center anymore.

With social enterprise monitoring products, companies look for keywords such as their own company, other band names (i.e. competition), and mis-spelled names. By scraping the web, they find as many social media sites as possible to find negative and positive feedback.

The monitoring software allows them to drill down and find out exactly what people are saying or thinking about the company, good or bad.

By responding in real time, this helps improves the public perception of the company.

Success is making customers happy, one customer at a time. Hopefully, that customer will share their experience via Facebook and Twitter.  And that’s the power of spreading the message, virally.

The Facebook Fan Page

Another trend emerging with companies using social media monitoring tools are treating their Facebook Fan Page as serious as their own corporate web site.

Social media *is* an integrated marketing plan for any business.

By having a contest and engaging Facebook readers to “post on your wall” whether it’s a testimonial or uploading a video, that’s the community companies want to see.  And with 700 million users on Facebook, that’s a large sample pool to choose from.

But it doesn’t end there.  Eventually you’ll want to draw your readers to your web site and make those conversions.  Loyal  and repeat customers are the best customers.  I think everyone knows that.

Again, it doesn’t end there.  By using Heroku for Facebook, you can build real anything as a Facebook app, including a storefront from your goods, without even leaving the Facebook page.  Now you have two store fronts, one web and one Facebook.

What used to be a brick and mortar industry with real storefronts, sales clerks and cashiers changed with web ecommerce over a decade ago.  Now that revolution is changing.

However, will customer service agents and help desk call centers be a thing of the past?

In all the years I have covered Dreamforce, this was the first time a major announcement or acquisition was missing in one of the 2 keynotes.  In a way, you can call this “What have we been up to in the past 8 months with all of our acquisitions?”.

As this was the largest tech conference with over 45,000 registered attendees, it makes me wonder how Oracle Open World 2011 will outdo and outshine Salesforce?  The Moscone Center is only so big, and any bigger, you’ll have to call in the fire marshals.

VMware, ironically, had their user conference in Las Vegas at the same time, while pushing their private cloud vision, which eventually means buying more hardware and VMWare software.  The Salesforce public cloud vision model is about integrating public services, and we saw it at Dreamforce.

This year, the key message was the usual Social, Mobile and Open message, as opposed to the Social, Mobile and Cloud agenda.  No need to introduce the cloud… we’re already here.  But at Dreamforce 2011, Salesforce outlined the framework for their cloud, either by the new features (some from acquisitions), partner integration, or simply success stories from customers.

The success of Salesforce starts with Customer Service.  And from that, the moral of the story is listening to people is more important than ever.  This means a closer contact with your customers including building relationships.  Social is nothing new.  It was always there.  It’s the connectivity to public cloud networks that’s the game changer.

Let’s start by looking at some of the components to their strategy and their key message, “Welcome to the Social Enterprise”.  (aka Facebook for the Enterprise)

Salesforce isn’t just CRM anymore even though their stock ticker is CRM… it’s a suite of enterprise applications including Chatter and the Service cloud, as well as a platform-as-a-service with Force.com.

Their model is a networked ecosystem that connects your business with other businesses.  CRM is great, but now you can include the next generation of social information available on public social networks.  Thus, the secret they outlined is:

1. Step 1:  create a social customer profile, & keep track of your social database
2. Step 2:  build an employee social network
3. Step 3:  create a customer & product social network

Let’s look at some of the changes and features that will get you there.

Mobile

Tablets and smartphones are outselling PCs, so the shift to mobile computing has already happened.

If you’re familiar with Kindle Cloud Reader, LinkedIn, or apps like app.ft.com, then you’ve already experienced HTML5.

HTML5 is viewed by many analysts as the future of mobile development.  While most people may think the iPad and iPhone are the winners in mobile technology, I feel the market is still in its infancy and the choice of tablets and smartphones will change rapidly.  What you will be using next year has yet to be invented.

Salesforce.com made a bold prediction by placing HTML5 at the core of their mobile strategy with an upcoming product, touch.salesforce.com.  In short, it’s a fully functional cross platform HTML5 based mobile web application.  No longer are they tied to specific models with native apps.

Salesforce customers and partners can access all the data and customizations performed on your Salesforce.com traditional web page and it will come through your mobile device via HTML5.

touch.salesforce.com will be available early in 2012 but the price has not been determined.

Social

Let’s face it, “Social Networking” belongs in the Call Center, and Salesforce has a strong vision for the social enterprise.  People complain on social media sites before they even call customer service.  With the Service Cloud, Facebook and Twitter comments are populated to your customer database social profiles.

Salesforce.com joined forces (no pun intended) with Dun & Bradstreet on Data.com, which builds on the earlier acquisition of contact provider Jigsaw back in 2009.  It’s all part of the social profiling and the partnership will provide Data.com users with access to 200 million businesses.

Jigsaw uses a crowd-sourcing model to collect up-to-date information on user’s contacts, with other users of the service contributing data and helping keep records clean of errors. Jigsaw is not available in Europe.

As well, we finally got an in depth look on how Radian6 can help you evaluate and measure what’s being said about your company and products.  By monitoring and interacting on social media sites can improve public perceptions of a company. The Radian6 acquisition which was announced in late March 2011.

Open (and Platform)

Database.com, the social enterprise database which was announced at last year’s Dreamforce 2010, is now generally available.  A Data Residency Option (DRO) for Database.com was added, allowing companies to choose what data they want to have in the cloud and what information they want to keep in-house.  Basically, Database.com’s Data Residency Option lets companies choose to keep their data in their own data centers while still working with Salesforce apps.  A big plus if you ask me.

When Chatter was announced in 2009, the product was similar to having everyone in the same room all the time.  I wrote about it being a limited resource to internal only people and systems, but now with Chatter Connect API and Chatter Groups, it is now open to external customers and partners.  The success of Chatter depends on external collaboration, and that includes more than people.  It included data (files, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) talking back to you.  I am excited to see Chatter Approvals, for example, to have external systems like approving an Expense report without having to go to another application including Microsoft SharePoint.

By take advantage of a set of REST (REpresentational State Transfer) programming interfaces, it will now connect Chatter to other web services.  This opens the doors to ISVs and partners to build additional value-added services.

At the end, there will be more adoption for Chatter and Chatter Plus and therefore makes the app “stickier”.  Just like Facebook, and we all know how addictive that can be.

The social revolution requires a new platform, and the explosion of apps (Facebook apps, Android apps, Apple apps, and even Heroku apps) proves it.  The number of new apps developed every day is explosive.

The big news last month was Heroku now supports Java.  The Heroku platform currently has triple the number of customer applications built on it than it did a year ago and another programming language will be revealed shortly (other than Ruby on Rails and Java).  Also worth mentioning is Heroku for the social enterprise package with pricing packages starting from $4,000/month.

Partner success is an integral part of Salesforce’s success.  More announcements and success stories came from new ISVs to the AppExchange -  including Kenandy, Seesmic, Concur, Infor and Workday – to build new social and mobile employee applications in the cloud with Force.com.  I guess there is only so much stage time that you can promote, but I expected someone from Workday, which provides software-as-a-service solutions for financial and human capital management, to be up on stage with Marc.

And finally, Siteforce, a website development tool which also announced at Dreamforce ‘10 last year, will finally go on general availability in  October.  If you are looking at ease of use for developing websites, Siteforce is definitely for you.

Dreamforce 2012 will be held September 18-21, 2012.

Ye Olde debate on whether companies should issue all IT equipment including laptops, tablets or mobile devices is an everlasting argument.

Perhaps employees should use their own personal device, and charge back the company a fixed sum on a monthly basis?

I know many procurement departments who would be thrilled with this idea with less inventory and tracking headaches.

You can even argue employees will take better care of their own devices, for example, like dropping their mobile phones into the urinals?  When it’s yours, you take better care of your goodies.

And then there is security.  Losing your phone.  Or terminating an employee with all that IP and customer lists. (Don’t worry, they have them anyways).  That’s another ball game.

Below is a press release from United Planet to help businesses benefit from the ‘Bring your own Device’ initiative.

United Planet helps businesses to benefit from the ‘Bring your own Device’ initiative

London – The ability to develop web-based applications for all mobile devices will be the key to the emerging ‘Bring your own Device’ (BYOD) initiative, according to United Planet (www.unitedplanet.com), one of the leading developers of Enterprise Portal software in Europe.

Employees are increasingly using personal mobile devices in the business environment but whilst this ensures that staff are able to use their preferred mobile device and are therefore contactable outside of the office, it does present certain problems. Although BYOD can reduce the purchase and maintenance costs associated with mobile contracts, it requires companies to think carefully about how they provide access to business applications via multiple device types such as the iPhone, Android devices, BlackBerry, iPad and others.

Axel Wessendorf, managing director of United Planet, explains that: “It is vital that employees are provided with the same access to mission critical applications as each other, regardless of which mobile device they use. Companies can only profit from the advantages of BYOD when they are able to provide the same information from the company’s existing ERP or CRM system, for example, to each and every employee – without having to invest in separate software solutions for each device. That’s simply not cost efficient.”

United Planet’s platform-independent software, Intrexx, is designed to solve this problem. Intrexx not only allows the creation of web-based applications without the need for programming. Special page wizards also enable companies to generate mobile application pages for any mobile device with a few clicks of the mouse. One simply selects the target device, the data to be displayed and the required navigation elements – the mobile page is generated automatically. This enables visually stimulating web applications that are optimised for the relevant mobile device to be created in only a few minutes.

“Even applications designed to be accessed using an older Internet-capable device can be created with our software,” adds Wessendorf.

To find out what a complete mobile Enterprise Portal looks like, enter www.intrexx.com/tsum into the address bar of any mobile phone browser.

About United Planet

United Planet is one of the leading developers of Enterprise Portal software in Europe. Its Java based, standard software Intrexx enables companies to create Enterprise Portals, Intranets and Web Applications cost effectively, without the need for programming by using ‘drag and drop’ technology and pre-created solutions for quality management, document management and process management to optimise internal workflow. Intrexx runs on Windows as well as on Mac OS X, Linux and Sun Solaris, and incorporates several Business Adapters to ensure that third-party data from Lotus Notes and other ERP solutions can be easily integrated in the Intrexx Portal. A special Business Adapter for MS Office also makes it possible to integrate and edit Microsoft Office Documents without the need for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). United Planet is headquartered in Freiburg, Germany and also has offices in Windsor. The company is supported by over 100 Business Partners worldwide.

If you are now quite sure what ITIL is all about, here are 4 quick videos from www.itsmsolutions.com.

The 4th one on the list is the meat and potatoes for ITIL, which I recommend viewing (see embedded video, below).

These video introduces the student to the key concepts of ITIL v3 and its Service Lifecycle.

if you are running an IT shop full of IT Cowboys and Cowgirls, then it’s time to look at some formal processes, and a better way of doing things.

For more information along with its corresponding online self-paced ITIL V3 certification classes (Foundation, Lifecycle Specialist, Capability Specialist and Expert) please visit www.itsmsolutions.com

• ITIL® V3 Introduction – 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgtgcNsqmjw 
• ITIL® V3 Introduction – 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjrfkn5G9Zk
• ITIL® V3 Introduction – 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zoUPyOywVg 
• ITIL® V3 Introduction – 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U1K3KmSDeI

I cannot stress the importance of a proper Helpdesk or Service desk implementation, preferable with ITIL.

There are way too many incidents that do not get logged properly in the system.  We call them “drive-by’s” (though this isn’t funny in some major US cities).  All incidents should be logged via an online web form, email, or telephone.

That being said, I can break down the top 7 issues that Helpdesk centers get on a regular basis, with the top 2 reason accounting for over 80% of ALL tickets.

1. forgotten passwords (especially with 2 factor authentication)
2. can’t access email, email not working (especially for those with mobile devices like Blackberry)
3. problems with connectivity to VPN
4. Hardware failure
5. Application problems
6. Slow PC, slow network, slow everything…
7. Printer not working

As you can see from the above list, you have a combination of incidents and problems.  And let’s not forget about the IT Cowboys who do changes on the server which can result in these incidents and problems in the first place!

That is why you need ITIL ready functionalities: Incident management, Problem management, Change management and Configuration management database.

But it’s not as simple as that, either.

Why?

Here is my take on the top 3 issues for helpdesk departments:

1. Having no or poor knowledge of customers
2. Managing the complexity of change
3. The pressure to handle increased call volumes, faster, across multiple departments in different time zones.

The 3rd item is the important one, and a proper helpdesk software can be the key to the success of your department and overall respect and reputation for the IT department.

It’s also an item that you have full control over, and making the right choice in software is important, whether you choose an on premise solution or a cloud based solution.

To be continued…

If you are self-studying the ITIL V3 exam, and did a few practice exams, it will be fairly clear where your area of weakness are.

Thus, here are some good short videos from www.ITILTrainingZone.com  that will help clarify some of the points. 

For some reason, Lesson 1 and 4 are yanked off, but the rest are still intact.

These videos are all under 10 minutes, so hopefully you won’t get bored and keep your attention span.

Remember, you need 26 out of 40 questions to pass the exam.  That should be enough motivation.

• Lesson 2 – Service Management as a Practice 
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JtvWXQ0eEI
• Lesson 3 – The Service Lifecycle
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaKB9CzUGJY
• Lesson 5 – Service Strategy
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihqDr_rD_A8
• Lesson 6 – Service Design
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk8Bi4DMl8g
• Lesson 7 – Service Transition
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnLJ3oOd90k
• Lesson 8 – Service Operation
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTLWPrvYEvQ
• Lesson 9 – Continual Service Improvement
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6O42Ym6v2o

These ITIL Training Video shows sample clips from the Online ITIL V3 Foundation Training Course. For More Free Videos and Full Course Details – Visit www.ITILTrainingZone.com – the home of Online ITIL Training.  Created by ITIL Experts for future ITIL Experts.

A Comparative Analysis of the Top 10 CRM Vendor Solutions

>> Click here for the link to the CRM Buyers Guide from CRMsearch.com

Juniper Media, a digital media company that delivers business technology focused content through online channels, has released the 2011 CRM Buyers Guide exclusively on CRMsearch.com.

This free research advisory is an independent and objective examination of the Top 10 CRM software systems delivered via the cloud or software as a service (SaaS) deployment. Expert analysis by Juniper Media analysts delivers a balanced review to business and IT leaders seeking practical and transparent CRM software evaluation.

“All of the top 10 CRM systems are impressive but each has different strengths and drawbacks. This report provides an independent basis for CRM buyers to align their most significant objectives with the top CRM applications and advance to a qualified short list,” said Chuck Schaeffer, CEO of Juniper Media. “Above all, CRM buyers seek out expert, objective and balanced content when making IT purchase decisions,” added Schaeffer.

The analysis report examines the unique capabilities as well as deficiencies in the sales, marketing and service software modules and notes clear identification of both the strengths and weaknesses for each CRM system. The report also notes social CRM capabilities, advantages and disadvantages for each CRM software product.

“This report is clearly done by CRM experts,” said Sanjay Rai Gupta of CRM Blog Guy. “It will be well received by the market as the report is balanced, actionable and without bias. This is not another speak-no-vendor-weakness, please-everybody marketing report."

2011 CRM Buyers Guide

This free research advisory is an independent and objective examination of the Top 10 CRM software systems delivered via the cloud or software as a service (SaaS) deployment.

Expert analysis by Juniper Media delivers a balanced review to business and IT leaders seeking practical and transparent CRM software evaluation.

This report includes:

• Detailed reviews and analysis of the Top 10 CRM vendors.
• Unique capabilities and deficiencies in the sales, marketing and service software modules.
• Social CRM advantages and disadvantages for each product.
• Clear identification of both the strengths and weaknesses for each CRM system.
• This report is not another sugar coated, ‘please everybody’ marketing collateral. It’s the real thing.

>> Click here for the link to the CRM Buyers Guide from CRMsearch.com

About CRMsearch.com

CRMsearch.com is laser focused on the issues and matters that most influence success or failure with CRM strategies, processes and software solutions. The website is an authoritative information resource and online community for business and IT leaders and practitioners seeking to advance their organization and careers by advancing their customer relationship management strategy, performance and results.

About Juniper Media

Juniper Media publishes technology content that helps business and IT buyers make better IT purchase decisions. Juniper’s technology focus, global reach, original research, editorial content, syndicated coverage, web site portfolio, trusted brands and information delivery network make the company the best in the world at delivering education, research and analysis to business and IT leaders seeking quick, trusted and fact-based content to develop short lists of IT solutions for purchase consideration.

When choosing a CRM system, I’ll be the first to say it’s a case-by-case basis.

A small 3 person sales team is different than a large company with sales teams spread across the continent.

Today, the defacto choice is Salesforce.com, and that makes sense because it’s easily scalable as your company grows.  Uhh, your company plans to grow, right?

There are a lot of good vendors out there.  If you don’t believe me, check out our CRM Vendor listing.  It’s so big now, that we sometimes lose track with the new ones as well as the ones that get acquired or simply close up shop.

But like choosing cold cereal at Safeway or local grocery store, there are about 5-10 good choices to any single category.

Features and pricing are the two largest variables.

Of course, marketing and branding will sometimes subconsciously make you choose one over another.

Salesforce Alternatives

Lauren Carlson of Software Advice wrote Salesforce Alternatives: 5 Cloud CRM Systems to Consider.

The article is not meant to downplay Salesforce, as it is a great CRM solution, but it is NOT the only one out there.  (again, see our CRM Vendor listing)  Thus, Lauren wants to make buyers aware of their other options.

She picked out five other quality cloud CRM solutions for consideration:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Sage SalesLogix
• SugarCRM
• Oracle CRM On Demand
• NetSuite OneWorld CRM

I know from my experience, a Microsoft shop who loves their Exchange and Outlook email will choose Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and that makes perfect sense in the overall usability for the Sales team.  The amount of training is greatly reduced, as well as the amount of resistance!

Companies who have an open source or open standard attitude will choose SugarCRM or vTiger any day.  These companies usually have a IT staff to back them up for configuration and customization.  (God save the IT guys!)

If your Sales and Marketing team work closely together (and yes, folks, that does exists, in harmony) then you have to look into a CRM package that incorporates your Marketing needs.

Here’s a brief summary:

For more information, go to Salesforce Alternatives: 5 Cloud CRM Systems to Consider.

If you enjoy doing exams similar to a “TV Game show”, you’ll enjoy this video.  That is, of course, if you get the answers right.  Getting them wrong will certainly leave you feeling dejected, and possibly in panic mode.

Here are 10 Q&A for the ITIL V3 Foundation from the www.itilsecrets.com site.

YOU’LL NEED TO PAUSE AND RESUME THIS VIDEO , as it is way to fast to read the questions and answer them correctly.  (Unless, of course, you are Ernie Miller)

Remember, in the real exam, you need to correctly answer 26 out of 40 questions to pass.

Here is the video on YouTube: http://youtu.be/oVz3YtEQ86U

Good luck!