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While we're on the subject of the customer relationship, it's important, even vital, that we do a better job of teasing apart customer types. It seems to me that the vast conversation about social CRM and the social customer has focused on the end consumer -- the business-to-consumer (B2C) relationship -- not the business-to-business (B2B) one. That's probably a smart over-reaction to the fact the about two-thirds of the economy consists of B2C transactions. ...

OK, some people thought my last post was somehow bearish on social CRM, but I don't agree. I am trying to be accurate about what we ought to reasonably expect, nothing more ...

One of Salesforce.com's challenges in driving Chatter's acceptance comes from positioning it for the buying public. That's a tall order since the company is simultaneously trying to establish a new product and its category ...

You could be forgiven if you thought Salesforce.com was done with announcements if you attended the soiree in New York last week, but if you thought that you'd also be wrong. Kendal Collins, CMO of Salesforce, told me that there will be another announcement on April 27 in San Francisco, and according to Collins, "This will be big." ...

There's a huge discussion raging on the Internet started by a provocative question from Bob Thompson: Can you do social CRM without social media/networks? ...

Over the last couple of weeks, I have maintained radio silence, hardly blogging as I tried to prepare a manuscript for publication. This piece is not the usual analyst fare with charts and graphs and interpretations. It's a simple book of my writings from the last year and a half ...

I've recently been looking at a couple of applications that don't readily fit into the idea of conventional CRM but which are nonetheless valuable front-office tools that can make CRM a better purchase. They strike me as important additions to the front-office suite for sustainability reasons, too ...

I recently read Tribes by Seth Godin and I think it might hold some clues to the future of CRM. Godin is a business blogger and author of more than a dozen books with titles like Permission Marketing and Purple Cow. He's not about the status quo, he's all over change and leadership like a junkyard dog. ...

I wasn't sure what the reaction would be to last week's column on customer experience. Maybe I hang around with vendors and other analysts too much, because customer experience is a hot topic among us, and it's generally seen as a good thing. However, judging by last week's mail and some further digging at the Harvard Business Review's Web site, it appears that there are at least two camps with decidedly different views on customer experience...

Customer experience reared its head in my life this month. My phone service went out, which was not a catastrophe for me because in addition to the landline (which went out), I have a cell and a nifty VoIP line that lets me talk through my computer. Parenthetically, I love my VoIP line because, though I live in the Boston area, the VoIP line has a 415 area code, which you may know is San Francisco's. I don't know if it's my heart that's out there, but certainly a piece of me lives in San Francisco, and for some reason that makes me happy...

In our industry, we live on innovation, and innovation takes capital -- something that has been in short supply over the last couple of years. Venture funding took a massive hit in 2009, but there are signs that the trend might be bottoming out. If it is, we might all learn to exhale again ...

I almost never attend a webinar unless I am speaking. When I need to know something, I usually get a one-on-one with a CEO or other leader of a company. They're very gracious with their time, and the tutelage helps me as an analyst, though often I don't run out and write something about my experience. ...

New research from Harvard Business School and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project give new perspective to the social media and social CRM phenomenon and raise a yellow flag for all those people proclaiming social media the second coming. ...

What exactly is cloud computing? The question just doesn't go away, and as the year starts, SugarCRM has just released a white paper -- "The Sugar Open Cloud" -- offering its definition and its argument for why its vision is superior. I am not sure about either ...

One of the reasons that sustainability is such a big issue for all of us is the way the marketplace has shaped up in the last few years. A telltale sign is the initial public offering (IPO) market. The once-vibrant activity of bringing new companies to the stock markets has shriveled up, and with it you have a graphic description of a relative lack of innovation in the economy...

"Sustainability" has been the key issue capturing my attention this year, so it makes sense to tease apart just what that term means for CRM. To me, sustainability is about business processes that are repeatable and, more to the point, processes that both sides readily engage in. However, in addition to the processes being repeatable -- the easier part -- the customers must have a stake in wanting to repeat them, which is way different from readily engaging the first time...

News that the economy shed an additional 85,000 jobs in December is enough to put a damper on any New Year's celebration, and it was a sobering reminder as we trudged back to work in January that we are only in the early stages of a recovery. ...

A new year! Blank screen! OK, let's talk! ...

Am I kidding me? Forecasting the year ahead? Sheesh! ...

Every year-end I write two columns. One looks back on the prior year's forecast; the other looks ahead. This is the first of the two, and it's time to compare my projections for the year with what actually happened ...