Friday, July 29, 2011

Challenges of Social CRM

Social CRM has become a major trend in the world of customer relations. True, there are lots of advantages of engaging customers through social media and then feeding the interactions or the results of them into CRM data that can be useful.

The reality, however, is that using social media does result if engaging customers in a leveling, interactive environment, which can raise expectations. If the company's internal processes and support are not well placed and effective, these higher expectations can lead to a big fall, perhaps even loss of a customer.

It's a fact, too, that properly using social media takes time, which means a requirement for resources. If those resources are not fully committed to the Social CRM, then it runs the risk of failing.

For more info on how to fail at Social CRM, check out this article.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

An Extensible Memory

A recent research study suggests that we are relying more on computers to supplement our memory. It indicates that when we know that some facts can be quickly accessed on a computer, we are less likely to remember those facts. But we are more likely to remember the folder in which they are stored.

Computers may be changing the way we use our brains, and therefore initiating a slow change in the very structure of the brain. Some microphysicists are suggesting that ultimately we may have brain implants to supplement the brain's activity - perhaps beyond memory and into behaviourial patterns. Seems a logical evolution, if not a natural one.


Saturday, July 16, 2011

Exit the Telephone

Long the mainstay of communications, the internet is finally pushing the telephone to the periphery. Yes, it's still used, but less and less. And it's being replaced not by cell phones, but by email and texting. email has assumed a general application and people of all generations use it frequently, often when a phone call would have taken place. Younger people like texting, as do some older folk. See this article for more.

For many young people, a cell phone is not for talking but for texting. That may change with the coming explosion in smart phone video calling - hard to say.

The internet has displaced lots of technologies that once were seen as fundamental to the world. Television is another technology that is on the way out. But the cycle is incomplete. The internet is simply an enabling technology, not the ultimate user. Laptops and tablets are simply tools that have sprung up to most expeditiously employ the internet. However, the long term prospect is that the internet will underlie other things we use, like refrigerators, ovens and cars. We see some of this already, particularly with cars. Ultimately, the internet will ultimately underlie the telephone and televisions and these end user devices, which after all are quite suited to their purpose, will cycle back to something like they were before the internet, only driven by the internet. Smarter and wireless, but still fundamentally the same as the old.