Talk:Customer relationship management/Archives/2012

openErp
removed spam link from see also section, all links are from wiki but the toplink was some silly comparison of openerp compared to other erp software. the link can be removed because there is already a comparison table of various erp/crm software on wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.145.207.178 (talk) 12:28, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Open Source
vTiger is already mentioned on this talk page. The following link gives the Open Source CRM software at Source Forge arranged by number of downloads. vTiger is at the top closely followed by Compiere ERP + CRM Business Solution--Timtak (talk) 04:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=CRM&search=Search

Article Not Professionally Written
This article contains an entire section dedicated to an analogy of a rock band playing on stage. While there is nothing wrong with that in a traditional sense, it is not appropriate to write in an encyclopia-style informative article. If someone could rewrite that section and not fill it with confusing verbiage, I think this article would better conform to Wikipedia's standards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.180.52.207 (talk) 05:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I've re-written it, please let me know if it requires more re-writing to conform

MLFungwiki (talk) 06:36, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It is definitely looking better. Thanks for the quick re-write! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.184.11.116 (talk) 02:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm surprised that there is little mention of the open source solutions on this page- vTiger and Sugar aren't mentioned- yet Salesforce SAP etc are. David Esrati (talk) 20:30, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

tagged with 'expert attention needed'
I've added the tag to draw attention to this page by some experts in the field. I work in IT, and was expecting something covering that aspect of it at least (user features, backend systems, etc). However, even the pure business side of this article makes no sense at all to someone not in sales or marketing. It could use a lot of clarification and simplification, perhaps separate articles for the IT and Business aspects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Intelligentfool (talk • contribs) 20:32, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

"Marketing module"
I quote: "Marketing sub module primarily deals with providing functionalities of Long-term planning and Short-term execution of Marketing related Activities within an organization" Is this actually saying that the marketing aspects of CRM deal with (wait for it)... MARKETING ACTIVITIES??? Well, as any 8 year old would say "Duuuh!" If only I had the time to do a total revamp of this page. It is sorely needed. Apauza 09:31, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Aspects of CRM
Why are these "aspects" here without attribution? I'm not sure why I shouldn't delete this out of hand. Some non-commercial source must have written an article defining CRM. hubris 07:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Can we add in something about CIS - Customer Information Systems ? Would that be relevant? talk 14:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.58.152.238 (talk)

CRM: a strategy or a technology?
In my humble opinion the intoductory statement CRM "...involves using technology..." is wrong. It is basicaly "...a strategy employed for managing a company’s interactions with customers...", etc and for achieving that, the company can decide to use technology or not. Maybe there should be 2 separate pages one for the CRM itself and another for technology tools for CRM purposes.--Franfig899 (talk) 10:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. If CRM is truly a strategy with a core knowledge, this article should address it, and describe within a section what are the technology associated with the implementation of the strategy. A deeper, more specific article should address the CRM software. Now it is all mixed up and confusing for a layman. --Jasón (talk) 22:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

"Linkspam" question
Hello, I am the founder of CRM Today, an informational portal dedicated to CRM and many related business fields like call centers, data mining etc. The site is totally operated from Athens, Greece and its the only non-US and non-UK site that is recognized globally for its useful and high-quality content. I was really surprised to see that you deleted our posts as "linkspam". I am a newbie in this amazing project so maybe I miss some guidelines, but I would appreciate if you could send me your comments and feedback on this. In fact we NEVER do linkspam (you can check search engines and other sources for this), I just believe that a site with 800+ FREE informational documents is really worth listed as a useful resource for our related business/technology terms. I apologize if I did something wrong and I do welcome your comments to fix them as you are from Greece also. :)

PS. i.e. I really cannot understand why our site is not worth get listed under the External Links for the term "Call Center" (we have 100+ unique free documents on this field) but Bitpipe's listing is. Your feedback is much welcomed at apada@tee.gr or posted here. Many thanks.


 * Your edits weren't confined in just CRM but also included some promotion for some "greek tourist guide" on Greece and some catamaran-related commercial site, which were also removed, together with all their like that wasn't yours. (See your contribution history.) There have been repeated attempts in the past to promote these exact same sites. Your objection regarding links to other CRM solutions, though, is probably worth to mention. Perhaps these links should be removed too, or yours restored. I'm moving your comments on the CRM talk page. Etz Haim 21:45, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Who is plagarizing whom?
Is the wikipedia CRM article plagarized on this page: Cylution? -pinano-


 * No, it's not, pinano. Cylution did exactly what Wikipedia wants people to do. --24.34.109.80 02:40, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello pinano,

I noticed your comment about Cylution. I'm the webmaster of Cylution and used indeed the text of wikipedia on CRM in the secion Definition CRM. Maybe I'm wrong but I did understand that this text is released under the GNU Free Documentation License and free for use. I provided two links under the definition. One indicates wikipedia as the source. The other indicates that the definition used in this section of Cylution (a bit different from the source) is also available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation.

If this is not the prober way to do it, let me know.

Freddie Webmaster Cylution

Site CRMONLINE.RU - for russian region
Welcome to CRMONLINE.RU - http://www.crmonlone.ru

This site should be interesting for people who want to know more about CRM (Customer Relationship Management). We are talking about all problems of CRM market in Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine. Expert's Counsil of CRMONLINE.RU help CRM market of ex-USSR to grow and delivery consulting for seekers of CRM systems. Please, send your letters to e-mail box inf@crmonline.ru

Operational vs Collaborative
IMHO there is the same ...(thing) just in the another hand :-). "Collaborative" is just another buzzword, promoting additional peaces of CRM software sales. But factually "to collaborate" is "to operate", isn't ?--AndriuZ 15:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Agree. There seems to be a lot of original research in this article. I'll take a stab at cleaning it up when I have some time. --JPotter 00:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Added some information
OK you guys:

I added some information and clarifications, and switched a few sentences around.

We are supposed to improve the article, not complain about it. I partially agree with one of the discussers, that later in the article it appears to be a generic sales pitch from some company; but I don't know which one.

From my research into CRM, each company that markets CRM software tools defines it their own way. Then they make the tools to get their customer to do CRM their way. We need to discuss, IN GENERAL, what CRM is, and what its advantages are.

Look at my changes. What are your thoughts? 147.240.236.9 21:25, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks - they look good :). Perhaps someone more experienced can comment as well. I went ahead and got rid of the promotional language from the rest of the article, although there is like NO real information there so its kind of funny :). Just another star in the night T 22:18, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * By the way, you mentioned you knew of some whitepapers. If you could provide any references for this article that would be great :). Just another star in the night T 08:37, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Intro section is totally incomprehensible
The intro section of this article is not an introduction. It is not comprehensible by a competent reader of technical English who isn't familiar with the particular buzzwords of this field. Folks who actually know this subject should find a way to explain it (if there is anything of substance to be explained) in a way which is comprehensible to the reader. --FOo 06:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. "Create a customer-based culture"? What the fuck does that mean? I thought websites like Wikipedia were supposed to be immune from the meaningless Newspeak jibber-jabber of the pointy-haired bosses and "consultants." - would rather remain anonymous

It's not just the introduction that's incomprehensible. Perhaps the BS-laden article best describes CRM though ;) --John Lunney (talk) 18:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Restored material
I restored most of the material deleted by User:S.K.. It isn't linkspam. The only two products mentioned were CiviCRM and eBase, both of which are free CRM software. The companies listed that provide CRM services to nonprofit organizations are widely recognized as leading providers of this service. Moreover, the mentions that I added here do not include links to any of their websites, and I do not represent or have any affiliation with any of them. The only reason I mentioned them is because I think anyone involved with a nonprofit organization who reads this article would find it useful to see them mentioned.

The onle external link that I did add was to a white paper about CRM for nonprofit organizations published by Idealist, an organization that provides Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits. The white paper is an overview of the technologies and strategies used for CRM by nonprofits. However, I agree with S.K. that the other external link he deleted, from www.eweek.com, is not very useful and not worth including in this article, so I did not restore it. --Sheldon Rampton 16:10, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Hagen article
I restored the Paul Hagen article which was deleted as "linkspam" by User:Sleepyhead81. I don't see how the Hagen article qualifies as linkspam. I was the person who added it originally, and I have no relationship with Idealware, the website that published the article. Idealware is an organization that writes reviews and articles about software, and the Hagen piece is simply an overview of CRM techniques and strategies for nonprofit organizations. It doesn't push any particular vendor or product, and I added it because I think it would be useful to organizations that are trying to learn about CRM. --Sheldon Rampton 21:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Once again, I've restored the Paul Hagen article and another article that User:Sleepyhead81 has deleted. After his last deletion two week agos, I posted a note to his user talk page asking him to explain why he regards these articles as linkspam. He has not responded, so it seems to me that at this point the onus is on him to provide some explanation for his reasoning if he still wishes to dispute their appropriateness. --Sheldon Rampton 16:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Complete Overhaul
I've edited the whole thing, first off for readability. It was really really painful to read, akin to some of the worst marketing I've come across - and I've seen enough. To be honest, the whole thing reads 1:1 like the waffle I regularly get sent by our marketing department. But at least they have the excuse that they're (trying to) write marketing...

Apart from marketing waffle, I removed several sentences that I could make neither head nor tail of. I'd suggest that you don't just go and put these sentences back in as they were; they're incomprehensible, so rewrite them in plain and simple english if they are important. If english is not your mother tongue, then feel free to ask me for help in your formulation. But there's absolutely no point in having an article that nobody can understand.

I also tried to remove redundant information (things were being repeated over and over again), as well as a couple of sections that didn't seem to add much, and made a lot of claims without any sources. The whole thing is a lot shorter, and hopefully more readable. If you really want the removed sections back, please consider revising them wholesale, and considering whether they might not be better placed in one of the other sections - and maybe shortened significantly... And list some sources. It read to me like marketing (as if lifted from a brochure ), and we shouldn't be trying to sell the idea of CRM, but explaining what it is.

If there's something I took out, which really deserves to be in, then I apologise. But I really felt I had to be drastic!

I haven't really added anything (apart from expanding minimally on one or two ideas), nor did I remove any links. I haven't really changed the structure (2 sections switched places). Perhaps the whole thing still needs an overhaul, but at least it ought to be halfway readable for now.

There's also a couple of pseudo-contradictions in the text, with operational and collaborative CRM overlapping to large extents. But I only tried to make it readable, not logical Steevm 05:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

French in Intro?
Why is there French text in the introduction of an English article?

Hosted vs On-Premise CRM
Why was the section "Hosted vs On-Premise CRM" removed ? The comment in the history said "Removing copyright violation that is likely an attempt at pr spam"But where is the copyright violation? Invenio 02:11, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Whether or not it was spam, I think that it was very unencyclopedic. It didn't explain what hosted vs on-premise is, but rambled on about the history of CRM and various vendors without getting to the point. Because it was so unencyclopedic, it definitely read like it had been lifted from somewhere. You could always shorten it, rewrite it to include just the factual information and then repost it of course. Note that whilst I didn't delete it myself, I was definitely tempted to drastically cut it when I first read it.

I really think that it needs to be reduced to at least a quarter of its length and just be informative. What is hosted CRM? What is on-premise CRM? If the history is indeed relevant, I'm sure it can be rephrased in a single sentence ("Numerous expensive failures with on-premise CRM led to an increase in demand from smaller businesses who favoured on-demand solutions, mainly due fears concerning the cost and complexity of on-premise solutions.{citation needed}." Sentences such as "However, on-demand CRM software is not always as simple as the vendors would have you believe." are completely out of place - and probably the reason this section got deleted in the first place.

Steevm 05:28, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Steevem. Excellent explanation. Don't quite get the balls-section though. You like people having balls?

Invenio 01:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Just had a look at the history. Some nitwit added the balls...

Invenio 01:23, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I removed the bit about balls... ;) Steevm 16:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Possible spam in section "CRM for Nonprofit Organizations"?
Not sure about this salesforce.com stuff. Looks biased to me.

"salesforce.com, a popular CRM service that is on demand, offers its products for free to nonprofit 501c3 organizations."

I don't mind having a list of CRM systems here, but it should be unbiased.

Also, I believe it should be definitely clear that 501(c)(3) is a US-centric regulation. Other countries will have different interpretations of what's not-for-profit.

Invenio 02:24, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite needed
I added the template to the article because the article is long, rambling, and full of obtuse business-speak. The Return on Investment for CRM section is not written in an formal, encyclopedic tone. There are also no sources whatsoever. Budding Journalist 03:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I second this. I've started off by taking out most of the ROI section - most of which is completely unacceptable for an encyclopedia Steevm 16:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It looks like the whole ROI section got removed (no real loss there). What's the general consensus regarding the rest of the article? Does it need a complete and utter rewrite from scratch, or not? Steevm 15:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)


 * a while ago I added loads of sources but then some nimwit removed them all.... not sure how to get them back —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.84.48.37 (talk) 20:34, 24 February 2007 (UTC).

It definitely needs a rewrite. I suggest nuking it back to non-commercially attributed information only as a starting point. Oh - that would be everything. hubris 07:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Permission to Include External Link
I'd like to include an external link to Computerworld's Customer Relationship Knowledge Center


 * Customer Relationship Management Knowledge Center Computerworld Magazine - The CRM research center includes the latest news, features, analyses, forums, best practices, research links and more.


 * You might want to post something to this effect on Beestra's talk page (but read the info posted there on links first), asking for an opinion on the matter. If you check the history, you'll notice it was Beestra that removed the link both times.
 * What is your motivation for adding the link? Steevm 17:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Constituent versus Customer Relationship Management
I don't know much about CRM. How does Customer Relationship Management compare to Constituent Relationship Management (like the open source CiviCRM)? Should wikipedia have a different article for the constituent kind of CRM? Any opinions? --Paulie Peña 02:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Seeking guidance on revision to this page
There has obviously much work that has been put into this page. It needs a re-write however, since it focuses much on CRM theory and not much on the business cases around CRM. I work for a vendor (salesforce.com) and want to be transparent about this. I fully agree with Wikipedia's culture that these entries should not be biased or vendor driven. But I offer objective help (vendor agnostic) that may help streamline this section. I'm simply asking from all editors what is the best way to do this?

Regards,

John Taschek VP, Strategy salesforce.com jtaschek@salesforce.com

possible NPOV conflict and commercial agenda
I removed the following from the collaborative crm section for now:

Studies have shown that feedback through SMS or mobile email provides greater efficiency relative to alternative channels. Part of this has to do with the ease of use of particular feedback channels. A study of telephone feedback showed that if consumers cannot get through to customer service centres, 31% hang up and go to a competitor. 24% of consumers give up all together. In addition, in a separate study, it was found that a bad experience with a customer call centre led to 56% of callers to stop doing business with the organisation concerned. (Ian Brooks May 2006) Other studies have shown similar findings; a separate study in the trade journal Quality Progress showed that only 4% of unsatisfied customers complain, whereas 96% of consumers go to competitors. Additionally, 90% of defecting customers do not come back (Scriabina, Fomichov 2005).

Feedback through text has many advantages; not only does it allow the consumer to give feedback at the point of experience (in-situ) but additionally it allows companies to capture insight from a wider consumer base.

- The (anonymous) [|user] that added the text appears to be linked to http://www.fizzback.com. fizzback.com appear to be a company that provide text-based feedback services, so I suspect that the above is simply pushing a commercial agenda. The original author has also received a warning for posting unsuitable material relating to fizzback.com. In the light of this, I have moved the content to the talk page.

Whilst the studies may or may not support the above statements (see below), I don't think that it substantially improves the section, as collaborative CRM in itself is only dealt with in 3 sentences. 2 paragraphs on the oh-so-great benefits of SMS/mobile e-mail strikes me as completely out of place before there is substantially more content dealing with collaborative CRM. At any rate, it needs to be substantially shortened and I would like to see less "a study" and more information about who carried it out. The first source listed (Ian Brooks), for example, does not make it clear whose study it was, or even whether the source refers to the "other" study or to both the initial "a studies".

The second section "a study in the trade journal ..." is already a lot better in this respect. However, none of the studies seem to bear out the improvements offered by SMS/mobile e-mail (of which there is no mention); no, they simply underline that traditional methods are destined to fail if implemented poorly. The whole things smacks of someone quoting figures support a point - the point they want you to believe - without the figures really supporting the conclusion they are drawing.

Any thoughts? Steevm 20:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I wish you all luck in defining CRM in Wikipedia. There are two problems with this. 1. Based on numerous studies we've done over the past decade (via CRMGuru.com and more recently CustomerThink, there are differing points of view about CRM. Some see it as a strategy to make money from customers, others as tools to automate customer processes (e.g. sales automation), and some see it as a way to treat customers better (e.g. deliver a better experience). 2. You ask for expert help, yet the whole notion of Wikipedia seems counter to that. I've been practicing and studying CRM for the past 10 years. Other colleagues of mine for two decades or more. Yet we don't always agree on what CRM is, either. And if one of us so-called experts posts something on Wikipedia, it won't stay for long until an enterprising software vendor or other party promoting their personal POV "corrects" what experts have to say.

Honestly, I don't see how Wikipedia's approach can work with something like CRM. It can't be cleanly defined because there is no "final word" on what it is, or isn't. CRM has been around as a buzzword for more than a decade and we still have debates about it. How will a community written encyclopedia work? Customerthink (talk) 04:58, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Well it can work, as long as we include all the various definitions that exist, and include the support and criticism in each case. That could make it a very interesting article, as the differing interpretations on what is an incredibly common expression within the outsourcing industry (in which I have the pleasure to work!) would be very instructive. I absolutely believe we should contain a page on CRM. We shouldn't shy away from it because it's a vague term which means different things to different people. That itself makes it interesting. There are plenty of other such concepts with their pages in Wikipedia. Plus it is just the sort of thing that someone may come to Wikipedia to find out about... It is our duty to try and make sense of it! Tobycek (talk) 13:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)



Request for input before I do an edit on the Introduction
Hello, my name is Mei Lin Fung and I have been in this field since its inception as a pioneer.

I would like to edit the introduction.

I am working directly with Oklahoma State University's Spears Business School (ranked in top 10% nationwide) to develop Certification and professional training for people who are involved with Customer Relations.

Paul Greenberg is the author of the top selling CRM text book "CRM at the Speed of Light" and I wrote the Appendix on Customer Lifetime Value that is in all 3 editions.

When Paul and I spoke to the Singapore Public Service officers in charge of eGovernment, we realized that we both need to speak and write more about the role of Trust in CRM.

The concept of earning and keeping Customer Trust is a key business idea that has not been highlighted in this description of CRM in Wikipedia.

Bob Thompson and I were the first posters to the discussion group CRMTalk started in the late 90's which he started and I helped get going as an active poster - today, it is called CustomerThink. I worked in Intel in the mid-80's where I was the alpha-business user for the internal Distribution Sales tracking system. I was hired by Tom Siebel in 1988 to adapt it to telesales and telemarketing. It was a skunk works project within the Direct Marketing Division at Oracle which he ran for which I was the Division Controller. Kevin Kraemer was the Technical Support manager for the group and he and I designed and developed the first "sales and marketing automation system" which became the prototype for CRM systems that evolved.

I am working actively on customer relationship building in the US, Singapore and China, working with corporations, non-profit and government initiatives.

The State of Oklahoma declared October 17, 2007 Customer Care Day.

There is good work underway to establish Customer Relations as a multi-disciplinary field well beyond the confines of IT, the Wikipedia entry should reflect that work and I'm volunteering to do so and seek your input (if you have any) before I begin.

MLFungwiki (talk) 19:08, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

ok, I'm working my way thru it. Just started with the introductory paragraph today.

MLFungwiki (talk) 19:11, 20 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Hello Mei Lin Fung,
 * thanks for your work on improving the article, you seem to be in a good position to do so given your experience.
 * But looking at your last edit on 30 January 2008, I'm not sure it was in line with the style to expect from an encyclopedia (see Manual of Style for some general guidelines). Your analogy of a rock band while certainly illustrative for me seems to be not the more "factual" style I would expect in general. Probably I'm too much of a technical person, but maybe you can present this in another way?
 * Another detail: In the first sentence, you write There are many aspects of CRM which were mistakenly thought to be possible to be implemented in isolation from each other. One of the main pillars of Wikipedia is the concept of verifiability using reliable sources. So while you might have come to that conclusion, without providing an independent reference for this judgment, this would be original research, for which Wikipedia is not the right place.
 * I hope you don't take this personal and let it discourage you from continuing to improve the article. But by following the Wikipedia guidelines, it is more likely that your edits will stay in the article.
 * Thanks, --S.K. (talk) 11:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Dear SK

Thank you so much for guiding me, as this is my first "toe in the water" in Wikipedia.

I do think we need an illustration for CRM - so let's stick with the Rock band analogy as it seems to have helped you.

CRM is evolving, and therefore the factual basis possible for more mature concepts, may not make sense here for the following reason:

By looking in the rear view mirror, we may miss the new turns in the road, better to sum up the current consensus of people looking forward than those looking back. The unfortunate situation is that CRM implementations have had a spotty success rate due to ignoring the linkages which I'm highlighting in the Rock Band analogy.

Can you advise if I have correctly provided the citation for the first claim under "Aspects" for "mistakenly" assuming its possible to piecemal implement CRM? If not, do go ahead and correct it. It will be nice to start collaborating.

I truly appreciate your quick response and kind manner of providing feedback. It feels like I have entered a most civilized community, and I do hope you are a good indication of the rest of the CRM talkers.

Mei Lin 00:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I've revised the entry to take out the rock band analogy but to leave the gist of the content intact. Please let me know what you think.

MLFungwiki (talk) 06:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello Mei Lin & SK,
 * I'm really glad about the renewed interest in creating a quality article here. I'll be happy to help in any way, although I'll refrain from contributing due to Conflict_of_interest.
 * Mei Lin, I also have my reservations about the rock band analogy. At the very least, it is not as understandable in cultures that don't have rock bands.
 * I also feel that the CRM page should redirect here and be available as a disambiguation page, similar to USA. I think that most people looking for CRM are looking for customer relationship management.
 * - Kingsley2.com (talk) 00:37, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello Mei Lin,
 * I had no time for Wikipedia lately, so only now get around to reply, sorry for that.
 * I have made some minor editorial changes to the citations using so called Citation templates, which allow for uniform formatting as well as adding metadata for easier extraction of this information with tools like for example Zotero.
 * From a content point of view, I really appreciate you taking the time to remove the rock band analogy. It might be "more dry" now, but to me it fits better inside the encyclopedic context of Wikipedia.
 * Thanks again for improving this article,
 * --S.K. (talk) 10:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

A lot of corporate marketing talk in the article
This article has an unusual amount of corporate marketing talk in it. At the same time there is nothing about campaign management, automated CRM, different kinds of CRM activities. ~vlad —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.14.75.136 (talk) 09:11, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup, it still needs a lot of work. I'll try to do some improvements if I have the time, but please go ahead and add some information on the missing items if you can. Klausness (talk) 11:43, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

CEM redirected to this site
Why? It is definately not the same thing. CRM relies more on gathering of data, where as CEM, customer experience management, is more connected to emotions and customers as individuals. ingaausa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.146.28.37 (talk) 12:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Same amount of corporate bullshit, though. And the indicated difference seems hair-splitting.   bishzilla     ROA R R! !    04:33, 6 June 2008 (UTC).

Redirecting CEM into CRM, it's obvious mistake because of unprofessional editing and shallow thinking. Simply, CEM is a complement for CRM by adding value and changing pure transactions into productive interfaces. In contrast with CRM, CEM aid firms to focus on improving the customer experience with the brand across all physical and electronic interfaces. In this view, relationship is only one part of customer experience. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.107.192.10 (talk) 16:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Request to add a link to a resource dedicated to CRM Implementations issues in Midsize Organizations
I, Robert Fisher and a few fellow sales managers have built a thorough online resource dedicated to our experience as SMB CRM implementers. Our site, www.whyCRMdoesNOTwork.com explores the issue of Customer Relationship Management failure in midsize businesses from an insiders' perspective to help decision makers recognize, avoid or overcome the problems that CRM entails. This little 10 page site was online in 2003 before anybody talked about CRM failure. Hundreds of users have since contributed to the development of our body of knowledge. We feel that there is room in this Wikipedia page for the comments of in-house implementers alongside the valuable contributions offered by software vendors, consultants and university professors. We also feel that the unique needs of midsize businesses deserve to be considered in this page. We hope that you will agree. Thanks a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.215.16.154 (talk) 21:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Customer Experience Management
All,

Currently, customer experience management is redirected to CRM. This reflects poorly on Wikipedia, as CEM is clearly different from CRM (as usually defined).

Here is an outline of a possible post. I can put in references throughout, but I want to make the case quickly here before the end of the workday. In the interests of disclosure, I teach a certification course on CEM.

It's just a rough draft, but let me know if you think it's moving in a helpful direction.

-

Customer experience management is a systematic approach to managing, influencing and balancing those events and interactions that shape a stakeholder's (typically, a customer's) views of and feelings about a company. Management tools include business process reengineering, voice of the customer (or enterprise feedback management), customer relationship management, value chain management (supply and demand chains), human resources management, partner relationship management and value proposition development, among others. Since much of a person's experience of a company is not directly managed by it, a company must uncover and act on ways to influence people, through public relations, alliances, corporate social responsibility programs, and active participation in cultural events and conversations (through blogging and events, for example). Finally, when a company's reputation is at risk, or has already been damaged, customer experience management requires that the company competently manage that reputational risk, balancing out the increase in negative opinion and any potential damage to shareholder and stakeholder value.

The competencies required to execute CEM therefore include customer relationship management (strategy, design and execution), reputation management, crisis communications, and integrated strategic marketing. The emphasis on opinions and emotions require that these competencies integrate actionable information about stakeholder states of mind, making customer experience management explicitly focused on customer insight that reveals drivers of affect, conation, and cognition. Other frameworks, that allow for more explicit modeling of the cultural differences among stakeholder groups, include breaking down the experience into a hierarchy of values while identifying culture-relevant attributes and associations that reinforce those values.

While Pine & Gilmore provide a basic analysis of customer experience in The Experience Economy, advances in the field since 1999 have identified a more specific and actionable approach that is econometrically linked to business performance measures such as profitability and marketshare, and organizational design initiatives such as touchpoint design and management.

In particular, customer and employee measures of engagement can be seen (according to Gallup) to comprise confidence in a company, belief in its integrity (in terms of values and promise-keeping), pride in one's relationship to the company, and passion for the company. This range of components generally span rational, connative and affective measures, as well as behavioral ones such as recommendation and complaint behaviors, and can be measured through both explicit questions and questions whose answers can be analyzed through statistical methods. Gallup has shown, for example, that high levels of engagement, as measured through well-crafted surveys, are more strongly correlated to financial performance than satisfaction alone.

While it is possible that Pine & Gilmore's framework of interactivity/passivity crossed with relative levels of immersion can create some kind of predictable experience, modern customer experience management requires that the experience be more than predictable. An experience, being the result of a carefully crafted business process -- often with well-chosen and trained staff -- must provide a return to the company. The usual return can be measured in two key dimensions: brand equity, and conversion. Both of these have a total lifetime customer value measure.

Thus, the ideal experience management implementation must be able to measure the allocated costs associated with the people, processes and technology behind touchpoints, and the return in terms of total lifetime customer value. Touchpoint design and implementation, therefore, must result from a business case that uses brand equity and conversion targets that correlate to current and future revenue targets.

Given that experience management can lead to brand equity and conversion, it is important to design touchpoints to ensure that such brand equity and conversion is resistant to erosion from poor performance, sectoral competitive pressures, or undetected changes in market needs. As a result, it is critical to design and monitor touchpoints that are effective, competitive, and relevant. Good CEM requires a disciplined approach to service management, therefore, as well as a new type of business and competitive intelligence that captures experience measures across the sector.

Enterprise feedback management (EFM) is one component of such market monitoring. Designed appropriately, EFM organizes a company's voice of the customer program to accumulate customer attitude and behavior data at transactions, interactions and on relationship anniversaries. Good EFM carefully models the customer's lifecycle as well, since many critical moments in a product or service use occur separately from a customer's transactions or interactions with a company. A particular discipline of CEM is to model the customer's lifecycle in terms of "moments of truth" -- critical moments when brand equity can be created or destroyed -- even when those moments of truth might occur, say, in the privacy of one's home. Clearly identifying moments of truth for the customer can be supplemented by identifying, or creating, moments of truth for the brand.

EFM allows companies to determine which touchpoint combinations are most important to customers, and which are also important to building the brand. When statistical methods are applied to engagement or satisfaction measures at touchpoints, a company can determine how to optimize their touchpoint investments to improve customer satisfaction and engagement. Since surveys in an EFM system can also include details about product or service design and performance, EFM reveals the quality marks needed for a competitive product, service and experience offering. EFM systems allow monitoring of satisfaction and engagement by sector, segment, channel and touchpoint.

In all cases, the customer's experience must be carefully mapped, with contributing moments described and measured. One approach is to use an emotion map, which sequences the customer's experience at a touchpoint as a series of interaction, transaction or brand clarification events. Ideally this mapped touchpoint will be designed to create a memorable experience. Three approaches to make a touchpoint memorable include exploiting the peak-end rule (Daniel Kahneman), elaborative rehearsal (trying a product, service, or representative experience), and cognitive or emotion appropriability (internal transformation that creates emotional or economic value for the prospect or customer).

CEM can be used competitively to drive an organization's design. If the most desired customer segments have clear preferences about the kinds of experiences they want, a company can compete on experience, as implemented in a business and revenue model.

Pkward (talk) 21:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Customer Experience Management
All,

Currently, customer experience management is redirected to CRM. This reflects poorly on Wikipedia, as CEM is clearly different from CRM (as usually defined).

Here is an outline of a possible post. I can put in references throughout, but I want to make the case quickly here before the end of the workday. In the interests of disclosure, I teach a certification course on CEM.

It's just a rough draft, but let me know if you think it's moving in a helpful direction.

All of these comments have research behind them; I will add the attributions later. Am I right that this only appears in TALK, and not on the Wikipedia site? If so, please delete or move it to a private area, or ask me to do it and let me know how! Thank you! I'm a newbie.

-

Customer experience management is a systematic approach to managing, influencing and balancing those events and interactions that shape a stakeholder's (typically, a customer's) views of and feelings about a company. Management tools include business process reengineering, voice of the customer (or enterprise feedback management), customer relationship management, value chain management (supply and demand chains), human resources management, partner relationship management and value proposition development, among others. Since much of a person's experience of a company is not directly managed by it, a company must uncover and act on ways to influence people, through public relations, alliances, corporate social responsibility programs, and active participation in cultural events and conversations (through blogging and events, for example). Finally, when a company's reputation is at risk, or has already been damaged, customer experience management requires that the company competently manage that reputational risk, balancing out the increase in negative opinion and any potential damage to shareholder and stakeholder value.

The competencies required to execute CEM therefore include customer relationship management (strategy, design and execution), reputation management, crisis communications, and integrated strategic marketing. The emphasis on opinions and emotions require that these competencies integrate actionable information about stakeholder states of mind, making customer experience management explicitly focused on customer insight that reveals drivers of affect, conation, and cognition. Other frameworks, that allow for more explicit modeling of the cultural differences among stakeholder groups, include breaking down the experience into a hierarchy of values while identifying culture-relevant attributes and associations that reinforce those values.

While Pine & Gilmore provide a basic analysis of customer experience in The Experience Economy, advances in the field since 1999 have identified a more specific and actionable approach that is econometrically linked to business performance measures such as profitability and marketshare, and organizational design initiatives such as touchpoint design and management.

In particular, customer and employee measures of engagement can be seen (according to Gallup) to comprise confidence in a company, belief in its integrity (in terms of values and promise-keeping), pride in one's relationship to the company, and passion for the company. This range of components generally span rational, connative and affective measures, as well as behavioral ones such as recommendation and complaint behaviors, and can be measured through both explicit questions and questions whose answers can be analyzed through statistical methods. Gallup has shown, for example, that high levels of engagement, as measured through well-crafted surveys, are more strongly correlated to financial performance than satisfaction alone.

While it is possible that Pine & Gilmore's framework of interactivity/passivity crossed with relative levels of immersion can create some kind of predictable experience, modern customer experience management requires that the experience be more than predictable. An experience, being the result of a carefully crafted business process -- often with well-chosen and trained staff -- must provide a return to the company. The usual return can be measured in two key dimensions: brand equity, and conversion. Both of these have a total lifetime customer value measure.

Thus, the ideal experience management implementation must be able to measure the allocated costs associated with the people, processes and technology behind touchpoints, and the return in terms of total lifetime customer value. Touchpoint design and implementation, therefore, must result from a business case that uses brand equity and conversion targets that correlate to current and future revenue targets.

Given that experience management can lead to brand equity and conversion, it is important to design touchpoints to ensure that such brand equity and conversion is resistant to erosion from poor performance, sectoral competitive pressures, or undetected changes in market needs. As a result, it is critical to design and monitor touchpoints that are effective, competitive, and relevant. Good CEM requires a disciplined approach to service management, therefore, as well as a new type of business and competitive intelligence that captures experience measures across the sector.

Enterprise feedback management (EFM) is one component of such market monitoring. Designed appropriately, EFM organizes a company's voice of the customer program to accumulate customer attitude and behavior data at transactions, interactions and on relationship anniversaries. Good EFM carefully models the customer's lifecycle as well, since many critical moments in a product or service use occur separately from a customer's transactions or interactions with a company. A particular discipline of CEM is to model the customer's lifecycle in terms of "moments of truth" -- critical moments when brand equity can be created or destroyed -- even when those moments of truth might occur, say, in the privacy of one's home. Clearly identifying moments of truth for the customer can be supplemented by identifying, or creating, moments of truth for the brand.

EFM allows companies to determine which touchpoint combinations are most important to customers, and which are also important to building the brand. When statistical methods are applied to engagement or satisfaction measures at touchpoints, a company can determine how to optimize their touchpoint investments to improve customer satisfaction and engagement. Since surveys in an EFM system can also include details about product or service design and performance, EFM reveals the quality marks needed for a competitive product, service and experience offering. EFM systems allow monitoring of satisfaction and engagement by sector, segment, channel and touchpoint.

In all cases, the customer's experience must be carefully mapped, with contributing moments described and measured. One approach is to use an emotion map, which sequences the customer's experience at a touchpoint as a series of interaction, transaction or brand clarification events. Ideally this mapped touchpoint will be designed to create a memorable experience. Three approaches to make a touchpoint memorable include exploiting the peak-end rule (Daniel Kahneman), elaborative rehearsal (trying a product, service, or representative experience), and cognitive or emotion appropriability (internal transformation that creates emotional or economic value for the prospect or customer).

CEM can be used competitively to drive an organization's design. If the most desired customer segments have clear preferences about the kinds of experiences they want, a company can compete on experience, as implemented in a business and revenue model.

Pkward (talk) 21:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Collaborative CRM
I found it that there is not enough information about collaborative CRM in this page. Are there anyone can add more such as samples of collaborative CRM? Aniechan (talk) 14:18, 12 October 2008 (UTC)nie

A good example of collaboratve crm software is a UK product called ClickHQ which is a seious business tool but facilitates team collaboration by giving each team member a face and a voice through the use of forums and blogs.

Geographic CRM
Geographic CRM - don't think that it's a true type of CRM. Geolocation services can be provided to any application, CRM system is just one of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.14.75.136 (talk) 15:03, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

In the section of Examples of customer/consumer relation hotlines & feedback
Some examples maybe ambiguous and I leave readers to make further discussion--222.64.215.118 (talk) 14:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The crmscribe.com links
I saw some edit skirmishing over these links. While crmscribe.com undoubtedly has an interest in having these links here, the explanations themselves seem unbiased, clear, and useful (at least to a layman like me). I agree that the external links section is where they belong; linking in the leading paragraphs would certainly give them undue weight. Rp (talk) 08:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Math Errors on Tables
I don't have the statistics, so I cannot correct, but at least one error is beyond just a rounding error. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ktpenrose (talk • contribs) 15:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The crmscribe.com Link
I feel this website has a lot more information than this page does. I would like to put an external link at the bottom of the main page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.239.163.65 (talk) 03:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No thank you. It is a couple of paragraphs of information with google ads; please feel free to read our policy on external links.  Thanks.  Kuru  talk  11:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Also, the goal of Wikipedia is to get information in the Wikipedia articles, not provide links to other websites with information. If there is "a lot more information" on those pages, the preferred solution would be to consider adding the part of that information that is encyclopedic to Wikipedia. Piano non troppo (talk) 17:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Really?
Seriously, I *dare* you to learn anything about CRM from this page. I will pay you money if you do. -98.108.142.175 (talk) 20:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Info about the topic of Customer Relations Hotline
--222.67.201.96 (talk) 01:54, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.americanexpress.com/australia/customerservice/resolve_complaints.shtml
 * http://www.elders.com.au/contact/
 * http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?as_q=Customer+Relations+Hotline&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=title&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_sdt=1.&as_sdtp=on&as_sdts=5&hl=en

Trend: cloud computing & SaaS
Is there really a trend to web-based CRM systems that use (cloud computing) and software as a service (SaaS) systems? Please let us know of a credible source, especially one that's not actually an ad for a vendor. wcrosbie (talk), Melbourne, Australia 07:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Contact Management link
So, contact management as a search entry comes to the CRM page - that kinda sucks, but I get it. However, to have a link in this page called "contact management" that comes back to this page is VERY annoying. Please fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.217.12.77 (talk) 15:21, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Dual focus: strategy and software
I'd like to point out that I couldn't find a good place to add the Category:Customer relationship management software link. This tells me that there should either be two separate pages (bearing in mind that this page was merged with the old CRM software page) or there should be a section that focuses on software separate from the management issues. --AlastairIrvine (talk) 14:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Why sales reps hate CRM
I think the Challenges section fails to get at the real core of why sales reps hate CRM. I hope that someday this article might do a much better job of getting at the real issues. Here are some links: --Westwind273 (talk) 20:30, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * http://www.bnet.com/blog/salesmachine/why-sales-reps-hate-crm/261
 * http://www.crmsoftwareblog.com/2011/04/wheres-the-leads-why-salespeople-hate-crm-and-how-to-make-them-happy/
 * http://www.yesware.com/blog/2010/09/09/5-reasons-salespeople-hate-crm/

Speaking of Challenges section. what the h does this mean: "But the challenges faced by the company will last longer for the convenience of their customers."?????? --crh1145 —Preceding undated comment added 23:49, 8 July 2012 (UTC)