Inside the Biz with Jill Dyche

Understanding Social Personas

In which Jill reveals her secret. (Okay, one of her secrets.)

There are some things that only a few good friends know about me. For instance, I like running on the beach. I watch Animal Planet religiously. I enjoy napping in the back of the station wagon, even when it’s parked in the garage. And—I’m not proud of this, but here it goes—on occasion I eat my own poop. The secret is this:  I’m really a dog. And I have 800 Twitter followers.

Don’t go looking for these factoids at www.twitter.com/jilldyche. That’s someone else. Or IS it?

You see, when I started using Twitter I had to reconcile different areas of my life. I like to tweet about professional stuff, including customer relationship management (CRM), social media, and information as a strategic enabler. I also like to chat and share info with my non-work friends, many of whom are hiking buddies, dog rescue advocates, or fellow charity volunteers. Sometimes my work tweeps aren’t necessarily aligned with all my goodwill activities, nor do they always care about my doggie sagas. (Amy is blind, Lu is 14 with vestibular disease, and Colby has epilepsy.)  Likewise my non-work buddies think MDM is simply the acronym for the new slogan, “Mutt Dogs Matter!”

Since Colby comes the closest of my three dogs to having opposable thumbs, I set her up on Twitter. And thus I adopted a new social persona that lets me communicate with a subset of my friends in a more meaningful way, without bothering the rest with humdrum observations or irrelevant news.

[Hiking and dog buddies: go ahead and skip the following paragraph.]

Sound familiar? The definition of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the ability to differentiate customers in order to distinguish their treatment. That applies to our sales force, our customer service reps, and yes, to marketing. Why e-mail a customer a discount code for a product he already has? Why ship a catalog aimed at newly-marrieds to a single grandmother? Why pitch cat food to… You get the idea.

Your social persona means more than just having the answer to “Which Superhero are you?” or “Which Barbie are you?” (No, I’m not kidding.) It represents a circumscribed collection of behaviors and preferences, not necessarily your entire set of behaviors and preferences. Social personas—alright work friends, personae—encompass similar attributes and are more narrowly defined. Our social personas help us refine our networks, participate in new on-line communities, and invite fresh collaborations. Social personas essentially allow customers to segment themselves. And they’ll segment themselves in a far more accurate and nuanced way than a marketing department ever could. The implications on sales uplift and return on marketing investment could be staggering.

Indeed some savvy companies have discovered Colby, and are pitching her products according to who she is and what she, er, says. Colby buys bully sticks from Value Pet Supplies (@valuepet); attends fundraisers on behalf of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary (@BFAS); browses the aisles of Red Barn (@redbarnfeed); and has even been known to watch Vet TV (@veterinarytelevision). Colby is a Coonhound, but she’s also a consumer. Those with a stake in the $45 billion pet care industry are cultivating relationships with her.

[Hikers and dog friends: go straight to the end.]

This adds a new wrinkle to social CRM, especially to the already challenging practice of customer segmentation. Most companies still struggle to transcend the well-worn practice of demographic segmentation, seeking to enrich and integrate their customer data to enable more sophisticated behavioral, preference, and usage-based segmentation and with them more intelligent ways to engage and interact with customers and prospects. Persona-based segmentation should be next on their lists.

The hard part of social personas, of course, is establishing the connections between social identities. The very hard part is collecting and structuring that data, then integrating it with the rest of the customer’s profile in a sustainable way.  One could argue that companies have yet to accomplish this successfully with their on-premise structured data, never mind social media data.  But the time to start planning is now.

Among Colby’s followers are @BuckBasset, @Otis_the_Pug, @WinterKitten, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger (@Schwarzenegger). You can follow Colby on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Colby_the_Dog. She’ll follow you back just as soon as she finishes her bully stick.

They’re Baaaack! IT Spending in Retail Returns

In which Jill peeks into the pipeline—and sees retail for a change!

In the arena of retailing, we’re all players. But many of us are also spectators, sitting high up in the stands and watching as the game plays out. Lately, the retailing game has been a blood sport, and household names—Circuit City, The Sharper Image, and Linens n’ Things among them—have been casualties.

We’ve been working with retailers since Walmart got its first data warehouse (my partner, Evan, was one of the system engineers on their first Teradata installation), since Kmart beamed POS data over satellites, and the apocryphal diapers-and-beer saga went mainstream. In those early days, it was all about analyzing POS data. Subsequent merchandise management and supplier exchange initiatives cemented the need for IT as both a strategic and operational enabler.

In the early 2000s, as they struggled to implement customer loyalty programs and endured criticism for over-investing in CRM technologies, retailers curtailed their IT spending. They had data warehouses—often several—and kept their attention focused on enterprise applications and e-business capabilities. With the exception of some beleaguered grocers and a sprinkling of catalog companies, we didn’t see many retailers spending on either consulting services or new software solutions.

But things are changing in retail, due in large part to five key areas that retailing executives have earmarked as strategic priorities:

Social media: It’s one thing to create a corporate avatar, set up a Twitter account, and lure customers to your Facebook fan page. It’s another thing altogether to proactively collaborate with customers on product ideas, garner feedback on service improvements, cement your brand messaging, and monitor the buzz. Retailers are getting serious about social media. After JCPenney ran a contest asking customers to post photos in their Penney-purchased apparel, the retailer’s Facebook fan base began increasing by a few thousand a day. “It’s a much more significant part of our marketing mix and it will continue to be a bigger part of our marketing mix,” said a Penney exec about social media.

Survey software: Put simply, retailers are formalizing feedback mechanisms, and executing on their findings. Several retailers we work with have announced new “Voice of the Customer” programs, driven by C-level executives. While most large retailers continue to rely on market research, they’re combining it with customer surveys at the time of purchase in their brick-and-mortar locations as well as on-line. Discounts on future purchases not only get customers coming back, but shopping via different channels—customers who shop across multiple channels are known to be more profitable—thus increasing the retailer’s share of wallet.

Master Data Management: Retailers not only need to manage customer relationships, they must share that data across sales channels, locations, and brands. Retailers came late to the MDM party but they’ve taken a seat and are listening to the music. More than ever, retailing executives are seeing the business impact of so many silo-ed applications and are mandating a “single view” of their customers. MDM not only promises to help retailers harmonize individual customer records across channels and brands, it helps them reconcile their product catalogs and store locations and standardize pricing. Welcome to MDM, retailers, pull up a chair!

Retail in the cloud: Retailers still hamstrung by headcount and IT budget cuts are turning toward the software as service (SaaS) model to enhance both operational and analytic capabilities. Many are looking to hosted services companies like PivotLink and Retail Solutions to deliver self-service, web-based analytics or to provide POS and inventory data to suppliers. Larger retailers may look to outsource customer identification and data enrichment functions by leveraging third-party providers like Acxiom. Mid-market retailers in particular have been looking to the cloud to enhance their reporting and data quality capabilities without adding headcount or hardware.

On-demand reporting: As they increasingly compete on service, retailers are exploring ways to deliver customer intelligence to front-line sales staff. “We use a range of analysis tools, from basic reporting to statistical modeling tools,” explains Kakoli Seal, Vice President of Customer Insight and Database Marketing at Saks 5th Avenue. “But getting information into the hands of our sales associates so they can deliver superior service is a priority.” Saks 5th Avenue uses sophisticated clienteling software to deliver customer contact and other details to its associates. Similarly, a specialty retailer uses mobile dashboard vendor Webalo to deliver purchase history to sales associates, thus enabling them to advise customers as they shop.

With all the emerging technology hoopla, retailers are still focused on two main issues: managing inventory levels and retaining customers. Both involve a little art, a little science, and leaders who are willing to question established industry norms. Indeed the days of unwieldy enterprise applications and IT infrastructure overhauls are a thing of the past in retailing. In their quest to be nimble, retailers are seeking new solutions—and fast.

Interested in learning more about how retailers are re-embracing business intelligence? Read Jill Dyché’s latest white paper: Information for Everyone: BI Evolving in Retail. Download the paper here.

photo by NNECAPA via Flickr (under Creative Commons license)

CRM and Social Media: The Rules Still Apply

In which Jill reminisces about CRM failures past—and warns that past is prologue.

Last year a large brokerage firm engaged Baseline to review its customer strategy and build a CRM program plan. The firm’s customer service and marketing departments had collaborated on a CRM vision and now needed a tactical roadmap for moving forward. That roadmap would include things like an information strategy, new tool acquisition, and a plan for social media.

I love engagements that meld our experience with CRM delivery, customer data deployment, key technology recommendations, and building roadmaps. When the client signed the statement of work, I felt particularly happy, like I’d come home to discover Viggo Mortensen singing in my shower. Here was a project I could sink my teeth into.

We recognized the warning signs almost immediately. A long and random wish-list of new functions. Disproportionate energy around technology acquisition. Disagreements about outcomes. IT circling the wagons while pushing its enterprise app vendor’s CRM suite. It was just like the old days, only with a lot more talk about Twitter.

It’s almost as if this company—where everyone admitted that, when it came to technology, “we have one of everything”—hadn’t heard of the sins exposed in the heyday of customer-focus. It was as if they’d forgotten all the lessons learned, namely:

• Define your requirements before investing in technology
• Articulate end-state goals—and be sure they’re customer-focused
• Be willing to change business processes and job roles to accommodate new customer-centric practices
• Define customer value tiers—and focus on conversion
• Measure both hard and soft ROI
• Create a feedback mechanism to let the voice of the customer drive improvements

Traditionally blame for many of the classic CRM failures has landed squarely in IT’s lap.  But this time IT was off the hook. The business hadn’t been clear about the desired outcomes of its new customer-focused vision, never mind how it wanted to leverage social media to help deliver it. All the lofty mission statements in the world won’t get customers to return to your store or exalt your service on their Facebook pages.

We went back to executives in marketing and customer service and asked them to answer the following questions:

1. Can we agree on our “desired outcomes” for improving the customer experience?
2. When customers who participate in our social communities share more information about themselves and, how will we use this newfound information? How will we avoid mis-using it?
3. What existing capabilities and technologies can we leverage to deliver this new vision? What investments do we need to make?
4. Can we anticipate the organizational impact of these new changes? Are we willing to support them?

Once we collected their answers, we brought executives together and had them discuss each others’ responses. It was clear that while the business wanted to participate in CRM, they expected IT and line workers to actually execute. We helped them understand that their ongoing involvement—and the need to enlist their peers in the Sales, IT, and e-Business organizations—was necessary for customer acquisition and retention. And to instill customer-centricity into the

Yes, it was more complex than they thought it would be. But ultimately they got a comprehensive roadmap for deploying CRM, including a robust plan for incrementally-delivered social media capabilities. And I must admit that when we delivered the roadmap to executives, I felt newly happy. Like Viggo had just asked for the soap.

Commenting on the Comments on my Social Media Post

In which Jill discusses what to wear. Or what not to wear.

I recently wrote a blog post on social media and CRM, “Meeting Customers Where They Are: When Social Media Misses the Mark.” In the post I described a client meeting in which two cavalier, t-shirt wearing social media consultants spouted aphorisms about social CRM without understanding what the sponsors really needed, and where they were on the CRM continuum.

The post got a lot of hits, and a lot of comments. Thanks to those of you who weighed in on the topic, I think everyone made valid points. But the first paragraph of one of the more recent comments by a reader named “rune” took an interesting turn. Rune wrote:

hey- is wearing a T-shirt hitting a rough spot in some of you.. watch your customers, they all wear them.. are you in any way better then them.. come on. But multitasking while presenting is pherhaps a bit to much eaven for me. But do this kill the content of their presentation ?

I’d like to state here for the record that I do not in principle object to t-shirts. Au contraire! I say the more men wearing t-shirts in the workplace, the better!  A man in a t-shirt says, “Hey, I’m a casual-but-confident guy, comfortable in my own skin. Wanna beer?” Indeed James Dean in a t-shirt was nothing less than a gift from God. (You never saw a picture of him sporting a logoed golf shirt, did you? I rest my case.)

I particularly appreciate the so-called “Beefy T,” which has been worn by some of the greats, and in its latter years often morphs into useful cleaning implement. Many a dish has been dried, and myriad dirty dog paws have been wiped clean with a Beefy-T. The Beefy-T is smart and versatile. It’s up for anything. The Beefy-T is the George Plimpton of t-shirts.

But I am truly sorry if my blog post offended. My apologies to any t-shirt wearing social media consultants—their unfortunate sartorial judgment notwithstanding. Apologies to Zac Efron, David Beckam, Antonio Zapato Junior, and Marky Mark. Please keep up the good work, guys. And, in the interest of equal time, Pam Anderson and Eva Mendes can definitely rock a t-shirt. Bygones, ladies.

Finally a special apology to the good people at Hanes and Fruit of the Loom (and, to a lesser extent, BVD). You really are providing a public service. Most of the time.

photo by emdot 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