CRM and Unified Communications

My last blog focused on how Unified Communications (UC) can empower the contact center by directing nontraditional call center calls to the center.  Most people think of UC as a way of combining multiple contact points for one person to a single point of contact (thus John Smith’s office phone, cell phone, email, IM, etc. can all be directed to “ring” on his cell phone).  This is the common way UC is explained, and it can be very valuable — but it can also result in TMI (too much information).

Everyone may be created equal, but we can’t give all of our customers, peers, bosses, and the world at large equal access to us or we’d never get any work done.  We need to prioritize who can contact us and how.  Thus with UC we can identify specific people (our boss, our spouse, our key customer) to reach us at our #1 end point (maybe that cell phone) while other important people get directed to voice mail — or as I pointed out in my last blog — this is a perfect opportunity to now direct those folks to a contact center where an inside sales rep or pool admin can hopefully handle their needs in one call (OCR = one call resolution).

So there is a natural marriage between UC and CC (contact center).

Where does CRM come into play?

CRM (customer relationship management) has become such a muddied term.  It has become far too generic.  To some it does mean contact center software (and it can be that), to some it means the software or software as a service (SaaS) that outside sales reps use to keep track of their accounts, where they are in the sales cycle, etc. — and that is a good definition. . .but CRM is much bigger than that.

CRM is really broken into two broad categories:  “front office CRM” and “Back office CRM.”

Front office CRM are the applications that actually touch the customer directly — the voice on the phone in the contact center, an internet interface where they can place an order, customer service (again online or over the phone) or the live customer service rep (CSR).  Any part where the customer is directly interfacing with your company is a form of “front office CRM.”

And a logical touchpoint for UC and CRM to link.

The holy grail of the contact center for years has been OCR – one call resolution.    Any problem that isn’t resolved in one call, or any sale that can’t be closed in one call (”we have an internet special where for the same price you are paying today you can add XYZ. . .”) costs lots of money.  Any customer service call that takes too long or requires “follow up” also begins to alienate your customers making them more inclined to leave you for another firm.

UC can dramatically improve the goal of OCR — whether that “one call” is a phone call, an internet access or even your face to face outside sales rep.

It all has to do with the “hand off.”  Inside a contact center this can be done with intelligent routing (which is really what UC is in a larger scheme of things).  We route the call to the most logical, not the first available, agent.   With UC we are now moving beyond the barrier of the contact center and able to route the call to best person no matter what department they work in, or even WHERE THEY ARE physically.

Setting up skills routing takes time, but the rewards are immense both in customer satisfaction and in cost reduction.

All of this so far focuses on the connectivity between front office CRM and UC, but back office CRM can increase this cost reduction by quantum factors.  Using a data warehouse (or perhaps data mart) to identify your most profitable customers you may choose to always route them to a specific department or person — not blindly treating all customers the same but giving platinum treatment to platinum customers.

By contrast your lower value customers (in margins) can always be routed through an IVR (interactive voice response) unit and routed to newer agents. . .  The dirty little reality in sales is that there are some customers that are not worth having because the amount of work they require (and work = expense to your company) may mean you actually lose money by having them as a customer.  Back end CRM identifies who is profitable and thus worth retaining.

One to one marketing is a myth.  We do not market to all of our prospects and customers in the same way and we shouldn’t.   Back end CRM’s information on customer profitability can help determine who we route to whom in our dynamic, unified communications world.

This blog is speaking in generalities — as if we had all the money and time in the world to link all of these disparate systems together.    The good news is that many of these systems are already begining to be linked — Cisco with Salesforce.com, Aspect with Microsoft,  Avaya and SAP, Nortel offers integration to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and implemented Dynamics internally.   The idea is to take advantage of the technologies you may already have in place such as a legacy  Siebel implementation maybe using AT&T’s Siebel Solutions offer) to improve relations with your customers and business partners through a streamlined “one call resolution” that goes far beyond the silos of “outside sales,” “engineering,” “customer service” across your business.

The Contact Center, CRM and Unified Communications

In my last blog we discussed the impact of social networking on unified communications and concluded that while UC and social networking are all forms of communications one is “push” (in social networking you post and someone reads it at their own pace and discretion) whereas most of UC (unified communications) is “pull.”

In UC it is the recipient, the “end user” who determines who can reach them at what end point through a single point of access.  Boy that sounds verbose.  To put it more simply, in today’s world most people have an office phone, a cell phone, maybe a home land line phone, at least one email (usually two or more:  business and personal), some still carry pagers, and then we have Twitter and the social media platforms.  The promise of UC is that the end user defines where s/he “is” (maybe the cell phone) and all forms of communication are routed to that one source — even if they are sent to another (the office phone, email, etc.).

Perhaps the greatest thing about UC in this overloaded world is that the end user can actually decide WHO accesses their primary end point (in our example the cell phone) and who is “tier II” and goes directly to voice mail to be retrieved when time is available, or even “tier III” (unknown people, for example) who go to an admin or even get funneled to another department — for example, the call center.

You knew I’d eventually wrap back to the contact (call) center — after all the title of this blog is “The Contact Center, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Unified Communications.

Most people don’t “see” the connection between the contact center and Unified Communications (UC), but is actually pretty obvious.  UC is best suited to people with lots of contacts and who may be away from their physical office a lot (think of lawyers, physicians, business executives who attend meetings off-site, sales types, Realtors, etc.).   Do we really want the “unknown” callers to go to some over loaded voice mail box where it may never receive attention due to work levels?

How about shipping that call to a $9 an hour CSR (customer service representative) who can identify the purpose and see if there is a potential sale there?  If not a sale, how about resolving a problem or at least determing the correct person to handle the purpose of the original call?  The result is a happier initial caller, better customer service, maybe a new sale AND OCR (one call resolution).

The contact center vendors are beginning to understand this obvious advantage.  Genesys (an Alcatael / Lucent company) — one of the two largest contact center vendors (the other being Avaya) — has announced UC Connect.  UC Connect promises integration and interoperability between the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software platform and UC solutions from many of the major providers in the industry.  From what I can tell the only integration available currently is to IBM SameTime.

I haven’t seen it so can’t tell you how simple or complex (integration) this solution is — but Genesys claims it will provide connectivity to the Alcatel-Lucent’s MyInstant Communicator, IBM Sametime, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, and Siemens Openscape.   When?  How?  That remains to be seen.

Formerly with Siemens I’m very familiar with Openscape and love it.   If you are looking into UC be sure you take a look at Openscape — realizing that Siemens market share is far below Cisco and Avaya but knowing that feature / functionality is tops.  IBM integrated some of the Siemens’ Openscape code into Sametime — and initially Microsoft partnered with Siemens in their previous UC generation.  Great product, but again the caveat is Siemens market penetration, service coverage — so be sure you feel comfortable with your support and service  if you consider Openscape.

Avaya?  Cisco?  Genesys has taken the bull by the horn.  Granted you have to be a user of their contact center software, but they are one of the two market leaders in that field. . .

Genesys has raised the bar.  Cisco offers Cisco Unified Communications contact center system, proclaimed as “the Cisco IP solution for distributed contact center applications,” but it is a total Cisco (one vendor) solution not the open true UC offer now available from Genesys.   Stay tuned.

How do Twitter, Facebook and other Social Networks impact UC?

Unified Communications — the holy grail of both traditional networking companies (Cisco, Avaya, etc.) and some not so traditional network firms (Microsoft) has the lofty goal of bringing together your office phone, voice mail, home phone, cell phone, email and instant messaging into one point of contact.  You (as the end point) decide who can reach you at whatever access point you are at, through a central phone number or ID.  You can also identify who cannot get to you (for example that pesky sales rep goes automatically to voice mail, SPAM filter or admin).

Unified Communications puts the receiver in control of who can reach them and how they are reached.

Unified Communications, aka UC, has great possibilities to make time more productive — no more phone tag, no more voice mail hell of trying to reach someone for a deadline and failing.  It really is a time saver, can be a deal saver — and has the possibility of being an enormous money saver.  (You can have a central phone number but let many workers telecommute while still having the professional “front end” of your central business phone gateway).

UC is NOT UM (unified messaging) which centralized the voice and electronic mail together.  It is much, much more than that.  Yet not only has UM muddied for most what UC is and is not, now along comes social networking which has muddied it even more!

Twitter is a quick burst “push” technology that lets its users post what they are doing.  Others can follow these “tweets.”  Facebook and other social networks lets you keep up to date with your friends and LinkedIn lets you network with business associates you know, or whom you should know.

Let’s face it — UC and social networking are all forms of communications.

Do they dove tail somewhere in the middle?  Are they diametrically opposite?  Is one the death knell for the other?

They dovetail.

UC allows the recipient (end point) to determine who can reach him/her, how and when.

Social networks allow the sender (send point) to broadcast messages to individuals or groups.  There is no way to immediately reach the sender (even with a tweet or message on Facebook there is no way to determine when the sender will see it let alone respond to it).

So UC is the ying to social networking’s yang.  Opposite, yet complimentary.  One is casual and end points access it when they have the time and the need and the inclination.  It is a “pull” technology.

UC is more professional and allows the end point to be reached as needed (instantly) by those who should have that access as allowed by recipient.

I’m a user and huge fan of both technology camps.  UC keeps a busy person spinning many activities at once more in control — which in this world of constant demands is a refreshing technological advantage.  Unfortunately UC has been slow to catch fire — perhaps due to the economy or the inability of vendors to clear articulate its true value.  Given time UC is a natural winner.  It simply needs to be explained, cost justified and exploited.  As with everything:  what is the value to the customer?

Enormous.

The Irony of it All

My last blog posed the question:  “Is Microsoft the next Dinosaur?”  My point was that most companies have a lifecycle, just like products do and people do.

Microsoft may or may not be at the precipice of a decline — it is really up to Microsoft.  The thing I always admired about Bill Gates in the “early days” (and I was a UNIX fan since I worked for AT&T Computer Systems) was that he was always paranoid.  He knew the internet could eclipse the OS as far as the center of the IT universe and so out came Internet Explorer.  Microsoft tried to win the search engine war — and after repeated lack of success has what looks like a nice product in Bing.

But no sooner did I post my Blog and get lots of comments (most not so nice from Microsoft proponents) along comes PC World with an article that asks the very same question I asked: 

Is Microsoft Following GM’s Road Map?

Analysis: GM’s bankruptcy marks the end of an era. Is Microsoft repeating the automaker’s mistakes?

J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld

// Jun 3, 2009 6:00 pm

“Microsoft has faced a few serious bumps over the last 10 years but came out fine. . .Knowing the work Microsoft developers put into their products, I believe they are the saving grace of the company — as long as they are allowed to hear the voice of the people. This is an area where I’ve seen a problem.”

I worked for AT&T at the hey day of Bell Labs.  We had the brightest, most awesome minds around — just like Microsoft does today.   Microsoft ca be its own best friend or its own worst enemy.  Only time will tell.

Is Microsoft the next Dinosaur?

Marketing used to be pretty easy — not simple mind you, but easy.  Marketing consisted of branding, public relations, advertising, trade shows and the like.  One could choose print media, radio, TV, billboards and such.

The company was in charge of the message.  Does anyone remember “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit”?

Today the world is on its head.  My last post discussed the great new book, What Would Google Do.  That book focuses on the model of free core offers that are supported by the ancillary things the core touches.  Content is less important than how to tap into content.

And all of this stems from the explosion of information that came about with the Internet.

I started my career in the 1980s when AT&T spun off the “Baby Bells” giving up the gold mine of monopoly POTS (plain old telephone service) customers for the holy grail of “a computer is just a node on a network.”

That idea rang so true to me, who became a true believer in distributed computing and “information anywhere, any time, any place.”

Everyone else laughed.  This was the era of huge mainframe proprietary computers (the BUNCH were still around — Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC and Honeywell, although on the decline.  RCA had already exited computing.  DEC, Wang (no jokes please), Data General. . .these were the ‘mini” computer guys with 64 KB of RAM or LESS (yes, LESS) — names now gone as they either went out of business or were swallowed by others. . .

Microsoft is now on the edge.  It faces the same fate as the BUNCH and the minicomputer vendors if it doesn’t soon wake up and realize that they’ve been commoditized.   Software is almost a “thing of the past” just as minicomputers went the way of the buggy whip and the VCR.  Will anyone buy software on a CD or DVD much longer?  Why, when you can access SaaS (software as a service) online?

Why bog down your internet access device (computer seems so passe, doesn’t it?) with gigabites of software when it changes daily?  Why not just tap into a secure app that is FREE or nearly free?

Years ago I interviewed for a job at Microsoft and they asked me who their competitor was.  Fresh from Teradata and in a DBMS state of mind I said “Oracle?” The reply was:  “Google.”

Google?  Google???

But it only took me a second to realize they were right — he who owns the eye balls, owns the person.  Google may have begun “life” as a search engine, but now it is so much more — it is the gateway to the information highway.

Microsoft, I love you.  You’ve done amazing things –  Microsoft Dynamics, your unified communication platform rocks — but you need to realize that the world has changed.  Aside from being global, it is viral.  If you want to remain relevant start realizing what AT&T knew back in the 1980s — but failed to deliever.

A computer is nothing but a node on a network.

Stop focusing on delivering products for the computer.  Start thinking of the network.  Start thinking of the people as if they were on a vast buffet line (network) where they can pick and choose what they want.

Because that is today’s reality.  And it isn’t changing any time soon.

An Epiphany

Reading is a favorite past time, and along the way I’ve learned a lot from books.  “SPIN Selling” taught me to look at the world from the customer’s perspective and try to solve problems.  “Crossing the Chasm” taught me that many products die not because they aren’t good, but because they don’t “cross the chasm” from early adopters who have a different fear threshold than the mainstream market.

This week I found a new book that is amazing, and just as earth shaking as those books were.  The title is “What Would Google Do?”, by Jeff Jarvis.  You can read a snippet of the book at Jeff’s site, link.

Jeff’s ideas definitely turn the traditional world of selling and getting paid on its ear.  He writes of the model of the product being free, andt he payment ancillary.  Google, he opines, doesn’t make money from its search engine but from embedded Google ads and applications.  It is a fascinating read, and it makes all the sense in the world.

If you haven’t read “What Would Google Do” run out now and grab a copy.  Just as the personal computer turned the world on its head, just as Microsoft and software over turned the hardware model of leadership, so too is the internet changing the entire world.   If you don’t want to wind up being a buggy whip manufacturer you’d better understand the new paradigm.

What would Google do?

Surviving and Thriving: Marketing in a Recession

Every day there seems to be more bad news:  Circuit City is out of business, closing nearly 400 brick and mortar stores.  Home Depot is shutting down its high end Expo chain.  Even Microsoft and Apple are seeing tough times.

But every cloud has a silver lining.  There are ways to market your business successfully in a recession.   The key is “knowing your customer” aka customer business intelligence.  Who is buying?  Why?  What are they buying, and what are the cross-sell and up-sell opportunities there?

Which prospects fit a similar profile (demographics) of your high margin customers?

So identifying the market is (as always) the first step, but in these economic times it is even more critical that usual.  “Know thy customer!”

The next step is knowing what appeals to them and then selling to them in a cost efficient manner that meets their profile and your product line.  This may mean more targeted email campaigns with coupons, or eZines –  lower cost ways to reach your audience than traditional print advertising, or even “Google ads” and other online paid advertising.

You must know your “value proposition” as you go back to your base and target strategic new prospects.  In one sentence (elevator pitch) why do they need you NOW?  Can you save them money?  Can you make them money?  Can you help them sell more to their own customers?

This is a time of opportunity.  Yes, it is scary “out there” — but as competitors fall away or draw back they leave a vacuum which a saavy firm can fill.    Realize that marketing is an investment, not a luxury.   Like any investment you need to have a plan to invest wisely.

Just like the Dot.Bomb bubble burst we’ll survive, and we can thrive.  This too shall pass.

Happy 2009!

Times are tough.  Businesses large and small are shutting down or looking for government hand outs.   Will GM and the other auto manufacturers survive?   Are we facing a depression??  Job loss is rising and it seems that daily we see new layoffs reported.    It is even rumored that Microsoft may lay off up to 17% of its workforce.  Link.

I’m not picking on Microsoft, simply highlighting the situation that our economic down spiral is just that — when one thing goes bad it impacts another line of business. . . from the mom and pop restaurants who lose customers, and thus so do their suppliers to the big firms who are household names.

Yet I started this blog saying “Happy 2009″ and I really am optimistic.   As FDR said so many years ago “All we have to fear is fear itself.”

There have to be opportunities — and with the new Obama administration about to take over it seems there will be a number of attractive areas.   Obama has promised global Internet access — so the network providers have a golden opportunity to come out of this downturn quickly.  The new administration is also very pro “green” — so if look for environmentally friendly solutions in your field.   The other attractive markets?

Government itself as a customer (federal for now, as the local governments who rely heavily on property taxes are “hurting”) and health care.  Baby boomers are aging and putting more and more stress on health care.  Again, the new administration is very interested in universal health care.  Keep in mind that Hillary Clinton, slated to be our new Secretary of State, was in charge of the Clinton Administration’s health care vision about fifteen years ago.  Back then I was working closely with the Chairman and CFO at Adventist Health System Sunbelt, and the CFO was on Hillary’s committee.  A lot of the visions then (electronic patient records that are patient-centric, not owned by individual doctors) are part of the vision yet today.

Tom Daschle has been named as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new administration.   In his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, he  discusses price controls (meaning health care providers need to find a way to improve quality to reduce costs).    Daschle is a big fan of Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) which has a two tier approach — everyone has access to a base level of health care and you can pay for private access if you so desire.

Time will tell what the Obama administration will do, but the time to begin exploring how you can take advantage of the new opportunities is now.  Welcome to 2009!

TPS aka Lean Quality Improvement in Healthcare

Buzz words about quality, accountability, pay-for-performance, evidence-based medicine, modernization/automation, workflow optimization, waste reduction, core measures and transparency are heard daily on the campaign trail and in the media. The recent economic crisis has fueled concerns and elevated the urgency of change from a preference to a priority in the minds of Americans.

Everyone wants change for the better, but how we achieve a positive and lasting change is a daunting challenge. Since February I’ve been working with with RWD Technologies, a firm who advocates of the Toyota Production System (a.k.a. TPS) as the solution of choice to improve quality in health care — increasing patient safety while reducing costs.

It is no secret that we at RWD Technologies embraced the Toyota Production System (a.k.a. TPS) as the solution of choice a few years ago, sending consultants to Toyota on behalf of Ford Motor company to learn the methodology directly from the source. For more than 15 years, the RWD Lean approach to business process performance has inspired innovation and independence within the culture of organizations at all levels, resulting in long-term, continuous improvement. RWD believes that their approach is one of if not the only systemic solutions proven to enable and empower organizations through a unique, lean approach based on TPS.

As hospitals and healthcare organizations have adopted the RWD TPS solution, they have seen dramatic and profound transformations which have minimized the kinds of “preventable errors” outlined in the new CMS Final Rule while optimizing hospital performance and patient outcomes.

Not only do I see how the collaborative processes has worked for hospitals like St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, Baylor Mediccal and others with each visit, individual hospital workers share their own individual contributions and enhancements.

The process is so continuous, that often, the worker supervisor is hearing about the new enhancement for the first time.

On a recent visit to St. Luke’s one worker commented about how she applied the inventory management process to her own surgical team, building on what she’d learned from other surgical teams. TPS truly is a marvel, a human-centric process where every step counts and the process is a continuous journey, not merely a destination. It’s been an honor to work with RWD to spread the word of how, in these difficult times, the methods Bell Labs brought to Japan that evolved into the Toyota quality process can make an enormous differences to the lives, health and pocket books of American healthcare.

A common theme

These blogs traverse from alliances to product life cycle management (PLM) to unified communications and customer relationship management. At first glance it would seem that the blog is all over the map!

In reality all of these subjects have a very common theme running through them. Every single one has to do with how people work together and relate together effectively. Technology can (and should) be an enabler in this effort, but in the end all of them come back to the human element.

I’m a mother and as a “mom” I spend time teaching and arbitrating. The skills it takes to be a successful mom are the same to succeed in business: listen to the needs of others. Decide how both sides can “win” and get what they want. Compromise. Learn. Admit when you don’t know or are wrong. . .

A while back there was a book entitled “Everything I Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Not me. I learn something new every day! We learn more by watching and listening to others and the day we stop learning is the day we begin to die.

So the key to success, Sandra says, is knowing what you want, continual learning and then listening (respect) for those around you. This ties into all the themes of this blog. Which take me back to alliances and why so many fail.

I’ve worked on all sides of alliances — I’ve acquired companies (M&A), I’ve run OEM alliances, I’ve created alliances (ISV, systems integrators and VARs) and I’ve killed a few relationships, too. Why do some succeed and some fail?

For the very reasons I just stated: companies don’t know what they want from the partnership, or they don’t communicate what they want to the partner, or the partner doesn’t communicate it to them. . . At one Fortune 100 company I stepped into a $20 million alliance that had been struck (prior to my arrival) between the leader in its field and my firm (the leader in our field). The deal had been struck by the CEO of each firm and $10 million annually funded by both sides.

Yet there was not one stipulation to the deal. There was no “goal.” There was no criteria for one firm giving the other beta or alpha releases of software for testing pre-release. There was no sales plan in place for joint “go to market” offers. Here we had the thought by executives that these two behemoths should be linked (and they should have been) but absolutely no thought was given to:

1. What did either firm want from the relationship? Sales? Prestige? Linking of products? WHAT?
2. Tactically how were the companies to work together? At an engineering level? Sales? Marketing? HOW?

So many alliances fail because someone, somewhere thinks that it is a “good idea” but none of the structure that would be put in place in any due diligence is done. Are the two companies values complimentary? Are their goals similar? Do they compete in some areas? If so how can they ally well and avoid the areas where they conflict?

Alliances can be hugely successful — but the only way they are is when your company first realizes what it wants from alliances and then puts a plan in place (a tactical plan) that it can follow in each potential alliance. Years ago I created a template I call my “PEF” (partner evaluation form). Before we even proceed to the first face to face meeting we must complete this document which asks these questions from BOTH company’s perspectives. The end goal here is success for both firms — and if you fail to plan you, plan to fail.