Articles by Christopher J. Bucholtz

Why do you go to work each day? Some people may claim it's love of the work. What they do is so rewarding and wonderful that they'd do it for free. "Don't tell my boss!" they joke. Hardy-har However, even the most fulfilled, self-actualized and altruistic person lives and works in a world where money talks. It takes money to keep a roof over your h...

As much as we may wax on about engaging, enchanting and delighting our customers, most of them are not expecting such an experience. In most cases, their purchase is prelude to something else pleasurable (in the case of B2C) or profitable (in the case of B2B). They want to get what they need and go If there's some service they're purchasing in addi...

If you live in the English-speaking world, you've been exposed to the stereotype of the snotty Parisian. One of the characteristics of this stereotype is that Parisians refuse to speak English. They know how -- but they won't -- and they turn up their noses at anyone who won't speak French In my experience, that stereotype is largely wrong -- if yo...

Most companies of any size have a CRM application. Every company says it wants to build great relationships with its customers. Almost as many businesses say they want to be "customer-centric." However, as any customer can tell you, the companies that attain these goals are few and far between What is it that's keeping businesses from doing what th...

The idea of the subscription economy is not new -- at least not to anyone who's familiar with the idea of software as a service -- but it's an idea that can sneak up on businesses. Many in the SaaS space started as more traditional vendors that saw subscriptions as simply a different delivery mechanism and a way to reach customers who couldn't afford massive upfront cash layouts.

I am a nerd with a goofy hobby -- I build plastic model airplanes. However, that hobby affords me a view of customer relationship issues in an interesting and intimate way. Most of the time, the vendors in this space get things right, realizing theirs is a niche industry and their customers really are in charge, especially since all spending in this sector is discretionary.

The concept of social CRM has been around so long now that, if you listen to the pundits, we should stop saying it and just include it as part of CRM. That assumes most companies have fully digested what "social" means and have made plans to use it effectively -- which is assuming a lot. That said, there's another area where social media needs to ...

Selling direct is a breeze -- kind of. You control everything -- you choose the salesperson, you provide the training, you establish the payment structure, and you decide on the marketing message used to reach customers, among other things. When you sell through the channel, howevr, things get complicated. You need to depend on your partners to hi...

Although it's often mistakenly viewed as a technology, CRM is really a discipline -- and it's not a solo discipline, like a martial art or meditation. It's a team discipline, one in which every customer-facing employee can make a contribution Whether those contributions are positive or negative depends on the teammates. In most cases where CRM is d...

Whenever the term "business intelligence" is bandied about, thoughts immediately turn to the customer. BI, it is thought, should allow you to learn things about the customer by correlation, inference and comparison. However, BI is a two-way street. In the course of using CRM -- which becomes the repository of data that BI then analyzes -- you also...

They say you must walk before you can run. It follows that you should crawl before you walk In CRM, however, there are a lot of businesses that talk at great length about wanting to run even though they haven't mastered crawling yet. They battle with the same old problems: adoption issues; technology decisions made before business needs are identif...

The rise of Internet commerce sounded a death knell for small businesses. Large e-tailers could wield massive buying power, had less overhead than brick-and-mortar stores, and could appeal to customers in new ways. They could collect customer data in the course of doing business, and turn around and use that data to better market to their customer...

The era of inbound marketing is upon us, but a great many businesses are fearful of it. Having worked as a magazine editor and a content marketer, I find the conversations very familiar: People who haven't written or who hate to write find many reasons not to, including some that make very little sense at first. Chief among them is, "I don't know what to write."

I started writing about service as an editor for Telephony Magazine back in the last century -- well, 1996, if you want to be specific -- but it might as well have been in the days of hula hoops and big fins on Fords. Service practices for telephone companies -- and for all utilities -- were still rudimentary, and they weren't getting any better.

CRM is sometimes described as the place where all your customer data resides. That's a nice image -- all that helpful data, chilling in its own hangout. That data works for you, though -- if you're just storing it, it isn't doing you any good That's why it's important to think about what you want to do with and learn from that data. We talk a lot a...

As tricky as CRM seems, it's nothing compared to managing relationships with indirect channel partners. I often joke that it's CRM to the second power: You must not only manage the CRM tasks you always needed to do to create a relationship with end customers, but also enable partners to sell, service and support on your behalf. When it comes to se...

Technology allows businesses to take care of customers in new and different ways. Think of the multiple options we have for customer service with many businesses today: phone, chat, text, email and sometimes social media channels. The challenge for businesses is to perfect their practice of satisfying the customer in each one. They all have their ...

CRM has always purported to be about relationships, but it's often used primarily for sales. That's kind of a good news, bad news situation. The bad news first: CRM got a bad rap when it didn't become a sales panacea (mostly for adoption issues). The good news: It exposed a void in the mix that marketing automation rushed to fill Marketing automati...

Not every buyer-seller experience starts with a customer expecting to be delighted. There are lots of purchases we make because we're forced to make them -- something we need breaks, or an outside entity requires us to buy something. We're not buying because we want to, or even because the purchase will make our business run better -- we have to buy or we're stuck...

When people talk about the customer experience, the thinking gets lofty quickly. The word "delight" is dropped a lot, people cite things like the American Girl Store or Nordstrom -- and soon over-the-top seems like what the norm should be. The experiences provided by the very best at creating experiences are great because they fit their product, t...