A weblog by Christopher Carfi, since 2004.
Chris Selland takes a look at Haystack, and has an initial reaction:
“For some, clearly this is an idea that makes sense. The type of engaged customer…and forward-thinking executive…should find the idea hugely appealing.”
He also asks a couple of great questions about Haystack, regarding “who’s going to pay?” and “what if the customer doesn’t want to be engaged in this process?”
Valid points, all, which we’ve tried to address. The conversation is happening here. C’mon over…
(Please note: Haystack links in this post have been updated since the original posting, in order to point to currently correct sites.)
If you look over to the right, you see the Social Customer Manifesto. It’s all about putting the customer in charge. REALLY putting the customer in charge. So, we’ve built something that lets customers take a significant step, and allows them to explicitly define and state the types of relationships they want with their service providers. Most significantly, this gives a customer the power to navigate profiles of individuals in an organization and choose with whom they want to work, as well the ability to be matched with individuals within the selling organization based on similarity of their backgrounds and interests.
We’re calling it “Haystack.”
What’s been broken with so-called “Customer Relationship Management” systems so far is that, well, they don’t really focus that much on the customer, do they? Under the rubric of “CRM,” there have been three primary classes of systems: sales force automation, customer service and call center automation, and marketing automation. All of these look at the world from the seller’s point of view. And all of them focus on how the vendor can crank more customers through a particular process in a given unit of time. They don’t necessarily help to truly build relationships between individuals. In fact, they are more likely to commodify it.
There has been a considerable amount of research done in this area, and there in an increasing body of data that suggests that building this kind of “enterprise social network” has measurable benefit for both customers and vendors alike. Perhaps the cornerstone of recent work in this area was done by Lichtenthal and Tellefsen, and is called “Toward a Theory of Buyer-Seller Similarity.”
“These findings suggest that internal similarity [perceptions, attitudes, and values] can increase a business buyer’s willingness to trust a salesperson and follow the salesperson’s guidance, and therefore, increase the industrial salesperson’s effectiveness. In contrast, the literature also indicates that, under most circumstances, observable similarity [physical attributes and behavior] will exert a negligible influence on a business buyer’s perceptions or a salesperson’s effectiveness. Thus, the key finding is that it is more important for buyers and sellers to ‘think alike’ than ‘look alike’.”
(n.b. The Lichtenthal and Tellefsen paper has an outstanding reference list that significantly confirms their findings.)
In a nutshell, here’s how Haystack works:
(click to enlarge)
In addition to trying this out ourselves, we’re starting to have some great conversations with folks like Collective Intelligence and Seedwiki about how this idea can grow.
Similarly to how Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are developing their book, Naked Conversations, out in the open, we are following a similar path with Haystack. We want customer feedback. We NEED customer feedback. (And we don’t want people to think we suck.)
Why we’re doing this? I think Peppers said it best here:
“Companies are faced with commoditized products. They’re faced with well-informed consumers who are bidding them against the competitors and are less loyal. The only real defense is creating a relationship with customers.”
To date, there just haven’t been tools like this aimed at the enterprise, that take this idea of creating real relationships between individuals and providing a means for customers to explicitly state their case, and determine with whom they want to do business at a real, interpersonal, non-synthetic level. So, we built one.
Naturally, a blog just for feedback about Haystack has been set up, and it is located here: Haystack Feedback Loop
[update] The Cerado Haystack Forum can be found here.
In particular, we’d love thoughts on:
This is going to be fun. Acorns. Oaks.
Delocator.net is a collaborative project designed to enable customers to more easily find unique, non-homogenized services. While the original Delocator site is aimed at routing around everyone’s favorite coffee whipping boys from Seattle, the creators have created the site for the following reasons:
“Each [Starbucks] store is designed to deliver the authentic coffeehouse experience. The only way to accomplish this and be profitable and competitive is by making all of the stores identical: the same beverages, food, ambient sounds and smells, even the same simulated coffeehouse interior wall treatments. Their products, services and spaces are quantified: eliminating any subjectivity or variance in their business practices, making all things measurable; homogenized: reducing the entire range of experience to one particular form; and commodified: everything is either directly for sale or in the aide of selling.
“Social interaction is even considered. All employees receive the exact same training for product handling, customer service, and store management, creating a cog-like work force that can be placed anywhere within the system of stores. The regulation of employees and store architecture both set a precedent for customer behavior, all unvarying, compliance-driven, and ultimately, non-social.” (emphasis added)
The vision of Delocator isn’t limited solely to enabling the revolucion de los lattes, however. They continue:
“The creation of other delocated database-driven web sites is encouraged. On the delocator.net web site, users are able to download the code necessary to establish a new database, prompting more sites and databases that may focus on other specific retail stores (fast-food, hardware, clothing, etc.).”
(Here’s where you can download the toolkit.)
This is certainly not the first, nor the last, effort of this type. However, the ease of use of the site and, more importantly, the ease at which the Delocator team has made available the tools to broaden the scope of this effort to other retail niches makes it something to watch.
Extra: The same idea can apply to hotels as well.
(hat tip: john)
Paul Allen, of Infobase Ventures, has posted a gauntlet of eleven things that an entrepreneur must do before approaching him for mentorship. Allen states that he is “getting more requests for mentoring from entrepreneurs than [he] can handle.” So, to ensure that everyone’s time is time well spent, he has put together his list of requirements for anyone wishing to approach him for advice. His requirements are:
Let’s break this down. Out of the eleven items:
I would tend to agree with the breakdown of these items. Have a solid knowledge of the marketplace and who you are going up against. Have a solid network of advisors who will not only support, but also challenge. Pay attention to the numbers, but don’t be slavishly beholden to them.
The thing that surprised me, though, was the lack of ANY mention of customers. No mention of who the entrepreneur is trying to serve; no mention of the problems being solved. Perhaps the belief is that if there is a market (and therefore competitors) and a group of advisors, the answer to the question of “who is the customer” is intuitively obvious?
The CEO Blogger’s Club had a nice bit on “sales people who are afraid to blog.” (hat tip: scoble). The gist of this group of sales folks:
“The first reaction of the sale team was negative, as they are afraid to see their client talking about prices or problems they might have when using company’s product, rather then sharing together feedback that might be much more constructive and usefull for the sale team itself.
What better CRM tool can we provide than a blog to get immediate inputs, feedback from users ? If a company has to choose one single kind of public to talk to , who should it choose ? Client of course. And who speaks to the client: sales team.”
I agree. Hang it out there. Learn. Listen to what the customer has to say. Implement the suggestions if they make sense. Say “no” if they don’t, and then explain why. Have a rational discussion.
Now, there are some sales people who are blogging…and who I would be hard-pressed to do business with. From a quick skim of his blog, Frank Rumbauskas appears to be one of those people. Don’t know him, never met the guy…but I was so put off by this piece that simply seethed with utter disregard for his customers that he’d have a hard time ever gaining my trust:
“Not in my house. My company gets calls all day long from people who want extra guarantees, names and numbers of references, previews of my book, etc etc before they buy. Instead of catering to these people, my customer service reps are instructed to say, “I’m sorry, but we cannot provide that. If you feel that way then don’t buy it.” Why? Because I would lose money having my staff spend time on these people.
When I sold telephone systems there were those customers who paid full price and those who drove hard bargains and wound up negotiating the price very low. Guess what – the customers who paid full price had my full attention whenever they needed help. I was always happy to drive out to their offices to assist them. Those who got deep discounts were simply told to call the 800 number. Not my job, sorry.”
I read this and I think “this guy is out for the quick buck, not the relationship.” I think “he’s trying to sell units of whatever he’s selling, he’s not trying to help me solve my problem.” I think “he’s not trying to partner with me. He’s not going to be there for me down the road, he’s going to be thinking about whoever his next ‘big kill’ is.”
I also note that he has trackbacks turned off. Pity. He might not even know this conversation is taking place.
Netflix has been down pretty much all morning. They were introducing some new social networking services for doing recommendations. Related?
(via SiliconBeat)
UPDATE: It looks like it’s finally back up. (12:20pm PST)
Just tripped across an interesting column about social networking spam or, perhaps more accurately, how one can use social networking systems more effectively without spamming everyone whose email address has ever crossed your transom. The salient bit:
The first thing you have to do is get the right frame of mind about why you’re using technology to help you manage your relationships. It is not so you can pretend to a larger number of people that you care about them when you really don’t. It’s so you can treat more people who you really do care about as you would like to treat them, if only your brain were capable.
ObReferences to Dunbar’s Number, etc.
CFO.com has a well-balanced article on enterprise social networking. First page is chock full of a little too much vendor rah-rah, but pp. 2-3 have some good details, esp. around some of the organizational challenges.
A couple of good quotes:
"[Enterprise social networking systems] make the most sense in industries in which deals are big and
relationships are a key differentiator. Companies that are spread out
geographically with a large number of contacts are especially good
candidates."
"There are trickier considerations, though. Privacy is the biggest.
People don’t want Big Brother reading their E-mails, handing out
ex-girlfriends’ phone numbers, or revealing confidential client
information…[one firm] worries about a revolt if it mines company address books, but has heard few complaints about E-mail scanning."
(Hat tip: Scott Allen)
I’m currently working on a story about social software for Bob Thompson’s CRMGuru online community (http://www.crmguru.com , over 200,000 members). I’m looking for good stories/responses to the following questions from folks who are willing to share them. If you have a story to tell* about your company, feel free to drop me an email.
1: Which companies are using social software (esp. social networking, wikis, and the like) in order to better connect with customers? There are quite a few stories regarding blogs and individuals using social networks successfully…how about organizations?
2: Is there an example (or two) of an instance where you have seen a company get closer to its customers as a result of these capabilities?
3: What have been the challenges / downsides for organizations that are attempting it?
4: Are there any things that organizations should consider if they are considering including social software (esp. social networking) as a part of their connection to customers?
So…any good stories out there?
* – PLEASE NOTE: Comments/emails may be quoted in the story. Please feel free to include your name, title, and company.
Over the past few years, we’ve done hundreds of interviews with both customers and sales teams to help companies find out why they are really winning or losing business. In one of our earliest projects, we asked our client to give us a list of customers to contact, including names, phone numbers, titles, and the like. Two days into the project, we realized there was a serious, serious problem.
When we started dialing the phone, we found out that none of the customers actually existed.
Well, that’s not strictly true. The companies existed, but a seeming majority of the contacts either had left the company, had incorrect or missing phone numbers, or had changed extensions. How could this be? The information had been pulled out of our client’s contact management system, for their existing customers. “It should be right…right?” asked our client.
An interesting bit today in SearchCRM entitled “Five Dirty Little Secrets of CRM” bears this out. In the article, Laura Preslan, a research director with AMR Research, states that one organization she is aware of used a social network discovery tool to “spider” their network for email and other personal contact lists. When completed, an analysis was performed that showed that only six percent of the contacts that were in the company’s social network showed up in their CRM / sales force automation tool.
Prediction: The “use social networking to clean up your CRM system” mantra will become a part of the marketing spiel of social network discovery vendors, augmenting or perhaps replacing the “use your social network to get better contacts and close deals faster” spiel.