Inside the Biz with Jill Dyche

Le Plus Ca Change: Business Intelligence Evolves

In which Jill explains a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to BI.

I’ve been in and around Paris and consider myself pretty Paris-savvy. But Paris has changed. For instance, there was a used bookstore in the 8th arrondissement that would provide a cool haven and a thick black coffee on Saturday afternoon. It’s gone now. And my old apartment, owned by the ex-ambassador to Liberia, has been recently renovated, no longer one of the Seine’s grande dames but more like a sterile government building. Then there was my favorite brasserie, Le Verneuil, tucked deep in the heart of the 16th, its surly waiters insisting that the salad arrive après the oysters. Le Verneuil was a respite for French women doing their daily shopping, expatriate hipsters, and urbane professionals, all seeking a hearty prix-fixe lunch and a chilled Sancerre. It’s gone now, but it was there. I have the ashtray to prove it.

I’ve been in and around business intelligence, and consider myself pretty BI-savvy. But BI has changed. For instance, there are new dashboard tools now that are more user-friendly and efficient than ever. Open source has dramatically reduced the cost-of-entry, and applications can be just as complex and differentiating. Columnar databases have also delivered cost savings and increased processing speed. New development methods are emerging. And BI is in the cloud, offering targeted solutions for companies short on resources or thin on development chops.

Back to Paris for a minute. While the city has endured changes, many of them ill-advised, certain stalwarts persist. My Passy metro station is exactly as I left it (minus a few cigarette butts). The M6 train still deposits me at the Saturday market at Corvisart, itself a decades-old presence, right down to the goat heads suspended from the butcher’s stall and the white asparagus abundant in spring. The Hotel de Ville, the Arc de Triomphe, the Tour Montparnasse—itself a controversial and unwelcome symbol of change in the 1970s—and the venerable Eiffel Tower endure. Indeed, they are part of the permanent Parisian landscape.

And so it is with BI. Whatever evolution occurs, there are certain principles—best practices, if you like—that live on. Creating a sustained development pipeline based on business requirements is a BI staple. So is managing diverse BI development efforts under one program umbrella. Acquiring and retaining BI-specific skills, and enhancing them over time, is a proven best practice. And delivering data that is truly integrated—not just co-located—to support evolving analytic capabilities is critical, as is the ability to manage and support ever-growing data volumes.

The fundamentals that have shaped BI are consistent, no matter what side of the firewall you’re on, no matter what tools you use, no matter what neighborhood you live in, no matter how you eat your oysters. There may be changes, or even wholesale replacements. Consider them carefully and adopt them when the time is right. But just in case, be sure to steal the ashtray.

photo by pedrosimoes7 via Flickr

Meeting Customers Where They Are: When Social Media Misses the Mark

In which Jill watches Social CRM consultants get naked—and throws them a towel.

Don’t look now, but I’m about to marginalize social media for CRM. For those of you still reading, I’d like to share a recent client experience with social CRM. The V.P. of Customer Service at a Top 20 U.S. insurance company had a vision for using social media tools to help insurance agents, and then call center reps, to interact with their customers.

This client spent entirely too long Examining the Role of Social Media in Customer Relationships. There were off-site meetings with key executives in marketing, customer support, operations, IT, and sales. There were strategy documents. There were alignment and ownership discussions. There were cocktail confabs, private appeals to the CFO, and even a few ad-hoc debates in private Yammer groups.

And yes, there were the social media experts. I sympathized with the two guys who came in to lead a discussion of how social media can be a strategic game-changer. They wore t-shirts and alternately spouted clichés about customer loyalty and the importance of transparency. They had the bad manners to tweet as they presented, but the good sense not to use the client’s name. The tone was “let’s get naked and party—online!” One of the consultants proclaimed, “You can’t do CRM without going social.”

Daring? Yes. True? No. You see, the insurance company had already tried enticing agents to use social media. In turn, the agents tried enticing their customers, many of whom they’d known for years. The fact is that social media, bright and shiny though it may be, is still one of many communications channels. In a survey of agents, most admitted that they were available by phone “during 90 percent of the business day, and often thereafter” but they nevertheless tended to use social media “occasionally or when I’m bored.”

The social media dudes advocated enlisting the CEO who, unsurprisingly, was busy doing things like communicating with Wall Street. (And I’m pretty sure that most of those conversations weren’t done using Twitter.) When he was finally asked to publically advocate instant messaging accounts for all agents and a corporate Facebook page, he e-mailed his direct reports a missive that said something along the lines of the following (although shorter, and a bit more colorful):

Who are we kidding? Our agents are our channel. We’ll give them every tool they want to engage our customers, but we’re not going to force them to use new tools for the sake of it. They know our customers—it’s their choice.

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m all over social media. But when you come right down to it, a company’s effective adoption of social media has everything to do with its knowledge of its customers. As CRM Magazine managing editor Josh Weinberger pointed out in a recent blog post, “that doesn’t mean you’re absolved of the responsibility to maintain the relationship.”

The fact is your customers should dictate the forum via which that relationship is maintained. And who your customers are, their behaviors, their preferences, and their history with you, has everything to do with that. Factors like tenure, demographics, product offerings, branding and other factors tells us that customers of the Auto Club are far less likely to engage the company via social media, and customers of JetBlue—who don’t interact with JetBlue as much as they stay tuned to JetBlue—are more likely to use social media.

And that’s just how the insurer decided to move forward. Our strategy, in essence, was simple:  “In Touch. Inform. Engage. Inquire.” 

We would establish a social media presence and start “pushing” interesting, relevant, and timely communications to an opt-in community of tuned-in customers. We would then gauge who was listening and use that data to refine messages to the customer segments most likely to use social media. Once there was some history and those segments’ habits and preferences were better understood, new segments could be determined where additional social media strategies could be deployed, and see how they were interested in keeping the conversation going.

Call it an experiment. Call it a community prototype. You can even call it “bottom up social media.” But unless you’re meeting customers where they’re at, don’t call it Social CRM.

Photo via MikeBlogs via Flickr

Happy Birthday, Jill!

In which we learn that when the cat’s away the mice will play, as Jill’s Baseline colleagues put up a special tribute in honor of her...29th...birthday.

Jill’s busy with birthday plans this week, so new insights will have to wait. We understand her birthday theme this year is “Kick-off and Cold Cuts,” in which everyone is invited to partake of a platter of ham and turkey while strategizing for how to plan next year’s birthday. From what we hear, party games include a Business-IT three-legged race and a rousing game of “Pin the Blame on the Data Steward.”

In Jill’s absence, and in honor of her birthday, we’ve decided to share some of our favorite recent "jillisms" (all via Jill's Twitter account).

"Apologies to all guys who own labradoodles. Didn't mean to imply you were pencil-necked, OCD, anal-retentive girlie-men (eg, pug owners)."
 
"I just went and washed my face with Noxema and cold water and I feel fresh as a daisy. Just thought I'd share."
 
"The Neil Diamond song, 'Cracklin' Rosie' needs metadata. Seriously."
 
"@NeilRaden Re: Friday's tweet: I'm tweeting a picture of a naked woman and you're asking about ad space? (I read it online, so dunno.)"
 
"Newsflash! Between Trader Joe's Cheesecake Brownie Bites and Costco's PetiteBrownieBites--Costco Takes it HOME!"
 
"David: 'I'm an a$$.' Jill: 'No, you're not an a$$. You just ACT like an a$$.' David: 'Oh. I didn't know that. Thanks.'"
 
"I'm obsessed with cushion-y hiking socks."
 
"I challenge anyone to find a Flamenco guitarist who isn't just flat-cool. Or a Christopher Walken imitator."
 
"There is no way you can be a Flamenco dancer without the aid of an underwire bra. (Unless, of course, you're a male Flamenco dancer.)"
 
"Haiku-du-jour: 'Spam on Twitter sucks. It makes me confuse my friends - with my enemies.'"

"I had a piece of carrot cake for lunch. There was at least 1 serving of vegetables in it. Plus the raisins. Shoot, it was practically salad."

And finally, a Jill tribute wouldn't be complete without mentioning one of Jill's favorite quotes from the sage guru of all that is Americana:

"You don't win friends with salad."

                                                   -- Homer Simpson

Thanks for the wit and insight, Jill! And Happy Birthday from Baseline Consulting!