Articles by Christopher J. Bucholtz

Every tool has a purpose. That's never more clear than when you see a neophyte do-it-yourselfer trying to use a tool for a purpose other than what it was designed for. For instance, anyone wielding a hammer while trying to fix a car's engine is probably not going to succeed. I've also seen people trying to drive nails with the rubberized handle end of a screwdriver. This was equally unsuccessful...

The way the concept of CRM is defined during the sales process can sow the seeds of its ultimate failure. Because the decision makers are often sales managers rather than actual salespeople, the pitch is usually made that CRM makes it easier for the managers to manage their sales staff. Which is true But what's in it for the sales staff? They're th...

I'm ensconced at the Swan and Dolphin Hotels at Walt Disney World in Orlando this week for IBM's concurrent Lotusphere/IBM Connect shows, and all the announcements here paint the picture of a company and a partner ecosystem that is going all-in on collaboration. (Paul Greenberg runs them down nicely -- and does so in a CRM-centric way -- here.) Big...

Do customers suffer from a split personality? I say this not because of encounters with clearly rattled fellow shoppers during the holiday season. I say it because of the numbers that consistently come out when customers are surveyed -- and the other numbers that seem to be in the forefront of most buyers' minds. The latest survey (neatly summariz...

In our careers as consumers, we've all encountered employees from time to time who display a shocking lack of manners, aggressive ignorance of what their company sells, or a toxic attitude that suggests we're seen as an enemy rather than a customer. "How in the world did this person get this job?" we might ask as we hang up the phone or flee the s...

This story was originally published on July 14, 2011, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. Whenever I talk about CRM to people who aren't CRM experts, I find the discussion devolving into an examination of the real common denominator in all of this: the human aspects of doing business. The "R" of relationships resona...

This story was originally published on July 28, 2011, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. By now, most people understand the power and the value of adding a social component to your customer relationship management strategy. Perhaps you're not yet ready to go to full social CRM, but you no doubt recognize that there...

Social media is often held up as the wind sock to gauge how fast the winds of change are blowing. When Google+ gained 25 million users in just six weeks, it was used as evidence that people had become willing to shift the channels and methods they used to communicate at the drop of a hat in our new, technologically accelerated age Of course, since ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote famously in his essay "Self-Reliance" that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." These days, many people drop the "foolish" out of the statement and thus completely pervert the saying's meaning, creating a justification to bash the idea of consistency Consistency is a good thing -- it's the tendency tha...

Each dollar spent on CRM yields US$5.60 in benefits, according to a recent report from Nucleus Research. Though the findings are interesting, the methodology is questionable. The 70 participating companies were customers of a firm that had been profiled in case studies, meaning that they were not necessarily typical CRM users. Still, it's worth n...

This story was originally published on Sept. 15, 2011, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series Social CRM has been contemplated and debated, defined and refined, cussed and discussed. These many years of excited conversation about what SCRM could do for businesses and what businesses need to do to make it a reality have ...

When the so-called experts dispense advice about CRM implementations, whether they're first-timers or replacements of old systems, they always include a caveat about the future. You need to solve today's problems with the new system, but you also need a way to "future-proof" your investment so that the next set of problems to present themselves don't force you back into the CRM selection process...

I like the saying, "Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude toward us." It's a nice quote, although it was uttered by John N. Mitchell, a convicted prevaricator who participated in the Watergate conspiracy and ended up in an Alabama prison as a result. (Apparently, his attitude wasn't all that great.)

As a CRM journalist, I always enjoy talking to integrators (or resellers, or VARS, or partners, or whatever term they choose to describe themselves). It's always an interesting contrast to speaking with vendors. The discussion you have with a vendor is like taking an anatomy course; the discussion you have with an integrator is like speaking to the coroner.

What's the ultimate goal of CRM? As much as I and others of my ilk might talk about the positive interactions, good feelings and peer-to-peer relationships that result when CRM is done well, they're just happy means to an end. The end is, and always will be, inflating the bottom line. While a lot of executives have no problem tracing this A-to-Z l...

My friend Hank retired from the Coast Guard after a 20-year career, and now he's pursuing a second career of service as the executive director for the Alameda Food Bank, another truly worthy career path During a recent party, we got to talking about work -- me about CRM, him about the food bank. As it turns out, the food bank had a need for CRM, mu...

CRM is a business tool. Lke any business tool, its objective is tied to money -- either making more of it through increased sales, or saving it through greater efficiency. Perhaps because CRM is rooted in sales force automation and hard sales, the customer's path through CRM has mirrored the customer's path through the sales funnel. The objective ...

One of the great conundrums about CRM is the disconnect between its stated intention and what it's usually really used for. Theoretically, CRM is supposed to help businesses build better and longer-lasting relationships with customers. In actuality, it's usually used to simply manage customer data as a tool for sales. The idea of really becoming c...

Social CRM has been contemplated and debated, defined and refined, cussed and discussed. These many years of excited conversation about what SCRM could do for businesses and what businesses need to do to make it a reality have created more questions than answers for many companies That's created an aura of complexity around SCRM. Sure, there are co...

I worked on an exercise in messaging for a CRM vendor this week, and it was both entertaining and frustrating at times. It was entertaining to hear smart people offer clever takes on what they do (and, perhaps more colorfully, what their competition does), but it was frustrating to realize that the definition of "CRM" is becoming increasingly complex and, I fear, confusing.