Articles by Christopher J. Bucholtz

One of the great promises of the Social CRM revolution was -- at least in my mind -- the opportunity for quick, creative, smaller companies to develop the same sort of customer relationships that larger companies could afford to create. There's a gulf between small businesses, which may speak or even see their customers in a one-to-one scenario, a...

As hard as it may be for CRM veterans to accept, there are still a great many businesses out there who don't have an application to track the customer and to feed data to sales, marketing and service. These businesses -- mostly small -- are not in the position to afford an employee designated as the CRM decision-maker or implementer; like the other activities in these businesses, customer relationship management is just one of a number of tasks being juggled by an all-too-small group of employees...

Around the time the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed and signed into law, I was a reporter covering that area of technology. Specifically, I was writing about service, measurement, data management and the software that made all that possible for telecommunications companies. Little did I realize it, but this was a great laboratory to get ...

One of the goals often cited for implementing CRM is an improvement in customer loyalty. That sounds like a logical objective, and knowing more about your customers and the history of your interactions with them certainly helps you understand how to keep them coming back Still, there's a long way from the starting point to the ending point in the l...

As I've written before, social CRM best practices don't exist -- but only because in order to be most effective, each business needs to tailor its social CRM approach to its specific customers. However, that doesn't mean you're doomed to a long evaluation process and a tough spell of trial-and-error efforts that won't pay off for years. There are ...

One of the misconceptions that has bedeviled CRM has been the idea that it is simply a technology you buy and implement, thus solving your problems. Technology is a part of scaling your processes for managing customer relationships, to be sure, but in reality it's a link in a chain of decisions and activities that form your business' discipline around CRM. Any weak links will cause the whole chain to fail...

The emergence of the social customer is forcing businesses to think differently about how they reach the people to whom they sell, and much has been written about ways for businesses to cope with this. However, as is all too common in CRM discussions, the customer is often forgotten as we default to dwelling on processes and software that are decidedly business-centric in their nature...

This story was originally published on Oct. 28, 2010, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. When it comes to the broad topic of "CRM failure," you often hear the same tales: a too-complicated integration, an incompetent integrator or inflexible technology.

Wouldn't it be great if customers who had questions about your products could get the answer from other customers? Wouldn't it be wonderful if customers brainstormed on ways you could improve your service processes? Wouldn't it be tremendous if you could see trends in service needs and adjust your processes to meet them earlier and more effectively?...

McDonald's used to have a hamburger called the "McDLT." The peculiar selling point of this burger was that it was served in a two-compartment Styrofoam container that "kept the warm side warm and the cool side cool." The diner would then put the two halves together. I was blissfully unaware that warm tomatoes and lettuce were causing a crisis in t...

This week, I interviewed a small business owner who told me a very interesting story. He'd done some planning before implementing his CRM solution, and his new technology took rapid care of the problems he anticipated After that, however, he started finding new problems -- which he then found solutions for within his CRM system. As he climbed the C...

The past year seemed like one of marking time in CRM -- at least to me. The trends are all well spelled out: Social CRM will become a critical tool, service has grown in importance as customer acquisition has become more difficult, and the value of mobile CRM is becoming painfully apparent. So why aren't we acting on the trends? I've heard the excu...

This Christmas, I was sitting around with the in-laws after the presents were opened, when my father-in-law asked me a question that has probably been nagging him for a long time. "What is it that you do?" he said Well, I'm a writer, first off, but what is it that I write about? CRM. Explaining what that acronym is and what it encompasses was prett...

'Tis the Season. And it's better to give than to receive. And you'd better watch out. Besides being Christmas gibberish, those statements apply neatly to CRM. It's always the season to think about improving how your employees use CRM. It's better to give them tools that reward them for using them instead of making CRM a way to receive statistics a...

A few weeks ago, I was treated to a sneak preview of the Computer History Museum's upcoming exhibit "Revolution: the First 2000 years of Computing." Specifically, I was there to see a model of the SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Equipment) computing facility, but as a technology nerd, I reveled in seeing pieces of ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer), JOHNNIAC (John v. Neumann Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer) and a host of other early computers.

Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event is now 10 years old, and it's reached the stage where it draws a true sample of the Salesforce ecosystem. Of course, there are plenty of Salesforce personnel and vendors whose products work with Salesforce, but there is an increasing number of real customers. For me, one of the really exciting things is how many o...

It's always fun to see the flood of articles this time of year about the holidays. "Is Your CRM Ready for Christmas?" the headlines knowingly ask. "Are You Facing a Christmas E-Commerce Customer Experience Crisis?" ...

For all the talk of social CRM, there's not so much talk of social CRM successes. Oh, sure -- there are scattered success stories, but there's not a wave of SCRM home runs being hit out there. As a result, there's been talk of SCRM having "jumped the shark" or "outlived its hype." In talking to users, however, it's clear that the promise of SCRM i...

Developing good relationships with your customers pays off when all is going well -- but it can also pay big dividends when things go very wrong. In fact, as a recent case illustrates, those relationships nurtured through CRM can set the tone for your corrections and preserve your business The business in question is Hannants, a chain of hobby shop...

When it comes to the broad topic of "CRM failure," you often hear the same tales: a too-complicated integration, an incompetent integrator or inflexible technology. The reality is that technology is usually not the problem, nor is it integration or integrators. If you push, you'll find that the most common CRM killer is adoption failure. That is, ...