Solvis Consulting, LLC

What is CRM?

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What Is CRM ?

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Twitter Directory for Latin America

Jesus Hoyos started a directory (in a Spanish) of Twitter users that engage in conversations about CRM, Web 2.0 and Social Media in Latin America and Spain.  If you are a Twitter user in Latin America or Spain, we invite you to add your Twitter information to the directory. For more information go to Jesus Hoyos' blog - CRM en Latinoamerica.

7 Social Media Basic Steps

2009 is the year for social media...

Do a quick search on Social Media or Social CRM, and you will see the many articles about this trend. Many companies are already in. Are you? but you do not need to be part of the social media because your competition is. You need to be part of social media because your customers are already using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate and communicate, and you need to collaborate with them too. Web 2.0 are customer channels, and many customers are not using your traditional channels to talk to your company... How do you start?

Here are 7 basic steps to consider:

1. Search about your company, brand and content. Search in communities, in Facebook, MySpace, Blogs. Use Google Alerts and Google Reader to monitor what the Internet is saying about your brand. Listen, Listen and Listen... then come up with a strategy.
2. Start with a blog. You have options such as Typepad, Blogger or Wordpress. We use Typepad, but we recommend Wordpress. Problogger should be your starting point.
3. Create a community using tools like KickApps or Ning. A good example is VerticalResponse in Ning.
4. Create outposts or channels for consumers to connect to your blog and community. You need to be using Twitter, Facebook Fan Page, Facebook Group, Flickr, WidgetBox, YouTube, Slideshare, Diigo, Digg, delicious & LinkedIn.
5. Make sure you keep track of visitors and subscribers: Add Feedburner, FeedBlitz for email, Google Analytics and Sitemeter. Look into Radian6 for more advanced social media analytics.
6. Use SEM to promote your blog and community. Use SEO to improve your organic searches.
7. Use CRM tools to keep track of interactions and transactions. Tools like Zoho, Sugar CRM, Google and Salesforce.com have functionality to integrate website to CRM. Use Salesforce.com for Sites and for Facebook to integrate your CRM with your social media channels.

These are the basics to start your social media strategy. Use these steps as a quick guide. You will need to do your homework, plan your strategy and make sure you include CRM tools in your social media plans.

A few searches in Google about social media will take you to many good places. It does not matter if you are small business or a large enterprise, 2009 is the year to do social media. Your customers are already using social media.

Need help? See our CRM 2.0 services or contact us.

To know more about Social Media and CRM in Latin America go to CRM en Latinomerica.

What is a Customer Profile?

A Customer Profile is the collection of the customer’s interactive and transactional data that can be used to maintain the customer relationship. This collection of data is classified based on roles, categories and metrics that will facilitate the understanding of who the customer is.

This collection of data can be classified in 5 major types of data.

1. Deterministic: (address, name, telephone, email, etc)
2. Demographics: (sex, family, age, etc)
3. Transactions: (purchases, services, preferences, interactions, collections, etc)
4. Relatives: (families, house holding, roles, relationships, social media, etc)
5. Inferred: (predictive models, statistics, Churn, Best Customer, CLV, RFM, metrics, etc)

Two CRM definitions ...

Customer Relationship Cycle

Customer Relationship cycle is a term used to describe the progression of steps a customer goes through when considering, purchasing, using, and maintaining loyalty to a product or service. There are five distinct steps: acquisition, maintain, maximize, loyalty and retain. This means getting a potential customer's attention, teaching them what you have to offer, turning them into a paying customer, and then keeping them as a loyal customer whose satisfaction with the product or service urges other customers to join the cycle.

Customer Life Cycle

This term is often confused with the Relationship cycle, Customer Life Cycle is the natural life cycle of a person that based on the life’s experiences and major events. This person will purchase products and services from your company based on likes and needs for your products and services.

4 Types of CRM ...

In the late 1990s, the Meta Group, now part of Gartner, came up with the definition of the CRM Ecosystem. This is our take based on the latest CRM 2.0 developments.

Operational CRM

Operational CRM is the combination of applications & processes that manage customer transactions such as campaigns, sales, order entry, customer service, warranties, collections & post-sales, among many others. Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, e.g. to sales, marketing and service staff. Interactions with customers are generally stored in customers' contact histories, and staff can retrieve customer information as necessary.

The contact history provides staff members with immediate access to important information on the customer (products owned, prior support calls etc.), eliminating the need to individually obtain this information directly from the customer. Consequently, many call centers use some form of CRM software.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM is the combination of applications & processes that help understand customer trends, metrics and behavior using data modeling, data mining, data quality, and marketing automation techniques. Analytical CRM analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes:

1. Designing and executing targeted marketing campaigns
2. Designing and executing campaigns, e.g. customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling
3. Analyzing customer behavior in order to make decisions relating to products and services (e.g. pricing, product development)
4. Management decisions (e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis)
5. Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of data mining.

Interactive CRM

Interactive CRM is the combination of applications & processes that manage customer interactions via the website, call center, email, offices, events, direct mail, SMS & account statements, among others. Interactive CRM covers aspects of a company's dealings with customers that are handled by various departments within a company, such as sales, technical support and marketing. Staff members within the departments can share information collected when interacting with customers.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM is the combination of applications & processes that help collaborate and promote a dialogue between the brand and the customer to help with product innovation, viral marketing & word-of-mount using blogs, microblogging, social networks (public & private), social bookmarketing, among other social media toolsets (user generated content, RSS, comments, ideas, videos, photos, tagging, etc.

Salesforce.com Seeks to Redefine CRM via Cloud Computing Approach

Salesforce.com Seeks to Redefine CRM via Cloud Computing Approach.

— Launching what it calls "the only CRM built on an enterprise cloud computing platform," Salesforce this week declared: "Cloud computing's unique model has enabled Salesforce CRM to easily and securely connect separate Salesforce CRM deployments, allowing companies to share sales leads, contacts, and company information, without the need for complex integration software."  Launching Salesforce Winter '09, the company announced the free exchange of data between every company in its network.

Aplicor Presented Product of the Year Award by CIS Magazine

Aplicor Presented Product of the Year Award by CIS Magazine —

Aplicor, Inc., a global software provider of on-demand CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software as a service (SaaS) business solutions, was presented the Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation's Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, the leading publication covering CRM since 1982.

Congratulations to our friends at Aplicor!

The Best CRM Blogs of 2008 - Inside CRM

We recommend that during the 2009 you follow these 20 blogs selected by InsideCRM - The Best CRM Blogs of 2008 - Inside CRM.

There are 4 in particular that we follow here at Solvis:

1. PGreenblog and CRM 2.0: The Conversation, Paul Greenberg
2. Brent’s Social CRM Blog, Brent Leary
3. Social Customer Manifesto, Chris Carfi
4. CRM Mastery Blog, Jim Berkowitz

And for the latest about CRM in Latin America read Jesus Hoyos' blog - CRM en Latinoamerica.

You can also get the latest CRM's RSS feeds in both Spanish and English - CRM Universe.