• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

Learning Something CRM-ish From Brexit

July 7, 2016   CRM News and Info

This summer has started out to be anything but a somnolent day at the beach. The Brexit vote for the UK to leave the EU is enough to disturb your slumber, and that’s not the only thing on the plate.

european union Learning Something CRM ish From Brexit

To be frank, it appears we are at one of those major historical transition points that might happen a few times in any of our lives. Without being overly dramatic and without stirring up a hornet’s nest of political debate, I would still like to discuss CRM in all of this.

You might think that CRM is the furthest thing from the central issue confronting the unhappy European divorce — and you might be right — but please bear with me. As one who studies the intricacies of the interactions of two species of humans — vendors and customers — I have to say that the incipient breakup looks an awful lot like dissatisfied customers taking agency and leaving the established structures that those in authority have set up. I’ve written two books on this theme and will not try to recount them here, but following are some parallels:

  • A customer attrition rate that makes the going concern unable to function properly;
  • Bad word of mouth by customers about the vendor leading to rumors and half-truths ricocheting around the installed base and amplifying the problem; and
  • A vendor community surprised by the outcome. No one ever thought things were so bad. (This is pretty much what Marie Antoinette was thinking.)

If any of this sounds like the kind of thing you work assiduously to avoid in your job, that’s good. It also signals what’s so CRM-ish about the Brexit vote.

A World Without CRM

The Brexit vote is both a vivid reminder of what life could be like if CRM never happened, and a reflection of how much better things between vendors and their customers are now.

Note, I didn’t say things are perfect between vendors and customers — at least, not yet — but I doubt there are very many people who think things are much worse because of CRM. Let’s just say that at least through making the attempt to reach out to customers through many channels and to understand what’s important to them, the vendor community at large has dodged the bullet that struck Europe in its body politic.

If the British were the only people on Earth unhappy with the EU arrangement, then there would be reason to dismiss them as a bunch of cranks. However, the Brexit vote exposed fault lines in other members of the trading sphere as well. France and the Netherlands are talking openly about their own referenda on leaving the EU for instance.

If CRM had never happened, things might have been marginally better in the UK; at least no one would have been conditioned to think that leaving a vendor could be as simple as voting out and moving on. We see this all the time these days in the subscription business model. Those vendors work like dogs to prevent the revenue losses associated with customer attrition. That’s at a microeconomic level, though, and Brexit is at the macro level, so the fallout is much more severe.

There’s no government outreach to citizens that is similar to CRM. That’s in part because where are citizens going to go? They can vote politicians out of office — but how often do they vote a government out?

Now that Brexit has happened, there’s a new possibility for citizen behavior, and customers — or citizens — have to be listened to in whole new ways. In my humble opinion, this is when CRM becomes an indispensable tool for government. All of the advanced social, mobile, and analytic tools accessible by vendors need to be tailored to governments and citizens. CRM for government changes any democracy from a representative one to a participatory one without even a word change in any constitution. How?

CRM Bonanza

The Brexit referendum was supposed to be nonbinding — and frankly, it would be best if someone remembered that, but it’s now beside the point. If Brexit is nonbinding but politicians are beginning to implement it, then it says quite frankly that any such future vote could be as disruptive. This means that politicians and others involved in government never can get so far out of sync with constituents again.

For CRM vendors, this could be a bonanza, of course. It comes at an especially good time. If the same need for CRM had developed at the turn of the century, implementing services for billions of people would have proven impossible. However, with today’s good, fast cloud computing and a plethora of supporting technologies like analytics, social media and mobile delivery systems, the stage is set for the blooming of very different approaches to living together. Phrases like “What would Watson do?” must be just around the corner.

I was never a fan of Brexit, and the news seems to be full of reports that the winners (the somewhat loyal opposition) had padded their case for leaving with a few stories that were not exactly factual, which is disappointing.

However, I doubt that cigarette can be unsmoked at this point. Had CRM been in place before the vote, the government might have had a chance to steer public opinion. That’s water under the bridge at this point, and the learning from this debacle is that we need to apply the same CRM strategies in government that we’ve honed in business these last 20 years or so. end enn Learning Something CRM ish From Brexit


Denis%20Pombriant Learning Something CRM ish From BrexitDenis Pombriant is a well-known CRM industry researcher, strategist, writer and speaker. His new book, You Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty, But You Can Earn It, is now available on Amazon. His 2015 book, Solve for the Customer, is also available there. He can be reached at denis.pombriant@beagleresearch.com.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

Brexit, CRMish, from, Learning, Something
  • Recent Posts

    • NOT WHAT THEY MEANT BY “BUILDING ON THE BACKS OF….”
    • Why Healthcare Needs New Data and Analytics Solutions Before the Next Pandemic
    • Siemens and IBM extend alliance to IoT for manufacturing
    • Kevin Hart Joins John Hamburg For New Netflix Comedy Film Titled ‘Me Time’
    • Who is Monitoring your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Apps?
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited