Jesus Hoyos - CRM in Latin America

CRM Idol begins today with representation from Latin America and Spain.

This is a cross-post of Paul Greenbeg's post about CRM Idol where Latin America and Spain are well represented as judges, media partners and participants.

Primary Judges - Esteban Kolsky (Argentina/USA), Silvana Buljan (Spain) and myself (Puerto Rico and the rest of Latin America, including Mexico).

Extended Judges (Media Partners) - Valdir Ugalde (Mexico/MundoContact)and Elsa Basile (Argentina/CallCenterNews)

Vendors - B-kin Market Interact (Spain), Blitz (Perú), Negoxia CRM (Uruguay) and EngageBusiness Solutions (Argentina).

Here is Paul's post....

Final CRM Idol 2011 Pre-Competition Update #4

By Paul Greenberg | August 15, 2011, 4:00am PDT

Summary: CRM Idol 2011 begins today. Finally. And We’re all ready. Contestants are. Judges are. Mentors are. The general public? Who knows?  But those that are in the thick of it know what they have to do. So I figured we’d do one final update to get you up to speed and introduce the competition and let [...]

CRM Idol 2011 begins today. Finally. And We’re all ready. Contestants are. Judges are. Mentors are. The general public? Who knows?  But those that are in the thick of it know what they have to do.

So I figured we’d do one final update to get you up to speed and introduce the competition and let you know what’s happening with it.

CRM Idol 2011 - What is it Again?

The bulk of the details are on the website but to reiterate at least the short version. CRM Idol 2011 is the first year competition that is designed to help small “CRMish” software companies get not only a moment in the sun, but have access to some of the top influencers and thought leaders in CRM and, if they are lucky enough to make the finals and even win, get access to tools, publicity, subject matter expertise and potentially partnerships and money that could propel them to success. The stakes are actually pretty high as evidenced by the prize list. But even those who don’t finish will have make connections that they otherwise wouldn’t have made that they, of course, are welcome to follow through with after the competition, and also, hopefully, would have learned something that they otherwise might not have known in how to deal with influencers - and had that moment in the sun - which could be parlayed into something even bigger. Remember, most of the American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance alumni stars weren’t necessarily the winners.

The Remaining Stuff

There have been three prior updates - all links to them available at the CRM Idol website.  So feel free to take a look. Also we’ve been continually updating things using the Twitter hashtag#crmidol - well worth following if you care at all about this competition. So there is no dearth of information. But we do have some significant stuff to pop onto the page so here it all is.

New Contestant

At the last minute, one of the contestants, who I’ll let remain nameless, showed a good deal of disrespect for the whole competition and pulled out after very little activity during the preceding weeks, citing “a change in corporate direction away from the product” and “emails from (me) to junkmail.”

Even though they were going to be at a disadvantage, we opened the remaining slot to the waiting list (thanks to a discussion on Twitter that turned the tide to that idea) and lo and behold, Nick Carter, CEO of AddressTwo jumped into the fray, despite the consequences, showing an admirable, “lets do this” spirit. So, welcome to AddressTwo who you can find on the CRM Idol website as the new 40th contestant.

New Judge

During the EMEA mentoring phase, we needed one more.  Admirably, Wayne Thompson jumped in.  He is now our newest (and final) Extended Judges Panel (Influencer) Judge.  Here’s his bio in his own words.

“Wayne Thompson is Sr. Strategy Consultant at Knowledgetech Consulting, Inc. Previously, he managed his own consulting firm, advising start-ups and leading technology companies on media strategies, product development, and go-to-market execution plans. Wayne was a co-founder of Gartner’s Sales Automation and Mobile Technologies services. In his spare time, he hosts and produces monthly podcasts at www.pmwarstories.com.”

Welcome, Wayne and thanks for jumping in, dude.

 

New Rules - Big Rule Change

Due to the growth of the contest and the amount of contestants, and to the fact since this is the first year we are still feeling our way around, the primary judges felt that an hour demo/briefing wasn’t enough to choose the finalists, so we’ve changed the rules a bit. Following the 40 demos in the Americas and 20 in EMEA, we will choose 12 semi-finalists in the Americas and 6 in EMEA. Each of the semi-finalists will have a one hour further phone interview with a judge or judges to gather more detail about the company and from those interviews, the finalists will be chosen. The finalists requirement of the video will remain the same.

The good news is that 5 more companies in the Americas and 3 more in EMEA have a chance of moving forward than before. The bad news is that this is a last minute change but it is the first year and we are the judges so we have to do what we have to do to make this competition work.  The rule change is necessary because just a single hour isn’t enough to really pick the companies that will have the best shot at winning.

New Prizes

We have several new prizes already in the hopper since the last update. Here they are:

Qontext

For those of you who don’t know them, Qontext is a solid collaboration platform and service with a real strength in how it integrates with other systems including of course, CRM.  They have generously offered the following:

Each CRM Idol winner gets the Qontext Enterprise Social Collaboration pro service FREE for up to 25 users for 1 year, including:
* Document Management including MS Office integration with Click-To-Edit, check-in/out, versioning, previewing, etc.
* Threaded Discussion
* Shared Bookmarks, Photos, Presentations
* Video Streaming
* Online Polls, Surveys, Quizzes
* Rich Text Blogs and Wikis
* Desktop client
* Mobile clients
* Integration with NetSuite, SugarCRM, Salesforce.com, Intel ECA360, LeadFormix, HRnet, et. al.

Mindshare

Mindshare is a sterling enterprise feedback management system. Richard Hanks, their President is an accomplished author - and pretty funny guy too.

They’ve offered:

The use of their Customer Feedback Management product/service free for six months.

What that means is that each winner will get a web based customer feedback survey, real-time analysis and reporting for 6 months.  The estimated value of this prize is between $20-$25,000.

BPT Partners

BPT Partners is a company that I co-own with Extended Panel Judge and industry thought leader Bruce Culbert (and several others). We do the industry training in Social CRM. We are offering 4 VIP seats to its social CRM training in any venue or combination of venues to the winner of each the Americas and EMEA. That means that the winner can use the seats to the 2 days of training one at a time in multiple venues or all four at once in a single venue. They can give the seats to customers or use it themselves. Est. value: $6000.00 U.S.

There are several more in the works that are actually incredibly cool and will be a huge benefit to the winners. Take my word for it. I’ll announce them as soon as I can. Promise.

They really are cool.  Seriously.

So that’s it for now - except for some more prizes, the next things you see will be the reviews of the contestants.  They will be up 48 hours roughly after the demo is done.  Watch for them on multiple sites.

Enjoy the ride because its gonna be a good one!

Here we go.

 

Please, improve your customer experience!!!

Had my share of customer service issues this week with TDBank, Comcast, Vonage and Netflix (price increase)... I will forgive for now this price increase from Netflix assuming that the content of the streaming changes - with more cash they should be able to get more content ... let's hope... Now, the other companies demonstrated that the reason most of them have financial issues is that they are still focusing on acquiring customers and managing churn... but they are not working on maintaining nor maximizing the relationship with WOW customer service... the customer experience is really bad!

Posted via email from JesusHoyos.com Posterous

10 Steps to integrate CRM and Social Media (#SocialCRM, #scrm)

10 steps to integrate CRM and Social Media? We know that we need more than 10 steps. How many? Many more! It all depends on the level of maturity your organization has within your own CRM ecosystem and most importantly in the way you manage customers today. If you are still thinking products and branding, you still have a long way to go to integrate CRM and Social Media. Why? Integrating CRM and Social Media needs to be about converting conversations into transactions. It is about going beyond the Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers and Video views. We can talk about transparency, openness, collaboration, engagement and so on, but at the end of the day it is about improving sales and reducing cost in the new business model where we, the people (customers, influencers, advocates, etc.), are in control of the conversation.

Many of my customers and prospects in Latin America have been asking me how to connect these conversations with CRM. Some of these companies are at different levels in understanding what Social CRM is all about. Some of them just have a Facebook page, some have private or public communities, others are just listening, and some have Twitter integrated somehow into their CRM. I have seen agencies doing all of the social media work, or just part of it, and many companies have a need to integrate social media monitoring with the call center.

Who are these companies in Latin America? Mostly B2C companies such a CPG, TV/Entertainment, Call Centers outsourcers, universities, hotels, telecommunications and banks. Some of these companies are small business in Latin America, local and national companies, others are multinational corporations and big brands. But all of them are looking to engage the customer with Social CRM.

The need to implement Social CRM is definitely there. By looking at my customers needs, learning from my recent engagements, by watching the market and conversing with fellow analysts and consultants, I came up these 10 steps to start implementing Social CRM.

1) Understand your Conversation Map. Listen and understand the social media conversations from advocates to influencers and from detractors to consumers.

2) Understand the Social Graph of your customers. This is very important - it refers to your current customer in your CRM system, marketing database or customer datamart. Are they on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, external communities, etc., etc?

3) Have a Social Graph of your Best Customers. Are your best customers using social media?  Can you start engaging them for your own pilots? Can you engage them? What other types of customers can you engage? Again, these are known customers in your CRM system or Loyalty Program.

4) Establish processes & requirements to meet your goals and objectives based on current needs and the analysis from the above 3 steps.

5) Get ready to put together a social media plan based on the requirements and processes. Do you need to be on Facebook? Do you need call center integration? Do you need to integrate social media marketing with your marketing automation? Do you need a community to provide ideas and collaboration for customer support? Do you have a Social Media Manager ad policies in place?

6) Create specific use cases for your integration points to capture data. This is not just about technology but also about customer experience, culture and processes.

7) Have your traditional CRM ready for social media. Do you have the workflow, processes, rules, data structure, training, call center, people, etc., ready to manage communities and social media channels?

8) If your customer or influencers are already collaborating using social media, is your enterprise ready to collaborate internally? i.e. Social Business, E 2.0.

9) Like in CRM... Do you have the culture, people and change management attitude to really change?

10) Improve your CRM ecosystem - this should be step 1. Fix what is not working today!

What do you think? Would you add more steps, combine some of them? Start with a strategy right away? I would love to read your comments!

At the end, I think you definitely need steps 1 through 7. Start with pilots and small phases. Measure, learn and retry. Validate your success metrics, show ROI (short and long term ROI)... but start somewhere.

What to know more about these 10 steps? I have the Spanish presentation that I gave at the SAP Forum Mexcio about a month ago. Here is the English presentation I gave a few weeks ago at the Online Marketing Connect event (this was a webinar series with other speakers, you can listen to the webinar by registering here, go to Events, Focus Weeks, Social Media).

Weekly Podcast in Spanish about the CRM Industry

Last year whenever we got the opportunity to meet at any major CRM event, Esteban Kolsky and I, recorded a series of conversations in a podcast format to discuss the latest CRM news and events from our own different perspectives. But now we have made the effort to do these podcast every week. So far we have been able to meet this schedule! We have made 3 podcast in a row!

We select the latest news during that week and just converse in an informal setting. No fancy introduction, no background music, just the two of us discussing our ideas and analysis of the industry. Two different perspectives: Esteban from the North American perspective and myself from the Latin American point of view.

Follow our Spanish podcast here. And you can also find our podcast on iTunes or search by "Podcast de CRM" on iTunes to find us.

Social CRM Comes to Spain: My podcasts with @bruceculbert, @ekolsky and @pgreenbe

BPT Partners will be in Spain on March 21st and 22nd with their Social CRM Strategies for Business Seminar Series based on Paul Greenberg's book - CRM at the Speed of Light. I had the opportunity to participate on their first Social CRM Seminar last year (Feb. 9-10, 2010) in Washington DC. During the seminar I had a live blog with my comments in Spanish but I also included many of the Tweets from the participants - see coverage here - (when you get to the post press play to view the tweets and comments).

In the course of the last few weeks,I had the opportunity to produce 3 podcasts with Bruce Culbert, Esteban Kolsky and Paul Greenberg on my Spanish blog (see links below). The three of them are going to be in Spain delivering their respective lectures on Social CRM.

Podcasts at CRM en Latinoamerica

1. Social CRM: Podcast con Bruce Culbert, Managing Partner, BPT Partners
2. Social CRM: Podcast con Esteban Kolsky sobre el CRM Social y el seminario en Madrid (Spanish Version)
3. Podcast: Conversando sobre Social CRM con Paul Greenberg

This post has all 3 podcasts but with my comments in English. Bruce, Esteban (this podcast is in English) and Paul provide good insights about current trends and where the industry is moving with Social CRM. If you are in Spain (or in Europe), you most attend this seminar!!! It will help you in many ways... from how to start with your first steps towards a Social CRM strategy or by just implementing a change in culture in your company.

Enjoy the podcasts!

Bruce Culbert - Main Topic: Marketing and Social CRM

We discussed:

1. The Social CRM is part of your CRM strategy.
2. How companies can use Social CRM for B2B Marketing.
3. The global impact of Social CRM and the Social Customer (my example about how I found help for my TV in Spain).
4. Social Media Marketing vs using Social CRM for Marketing (i.e. lead genenration).
5. The advantages of using best of bread and the cloud.
6. The concept about that we are persons (Person2Person) not customesr or consumers.

 Bruce Culbert on Social CRM with Jesus Hoyos Feb 28 11

Esteban Kolsky - Main Topic: Customer Service and Social CRM

We discussed:

1. How to establish a framework
2. Tradicional CRM vs Social CRM - the same, different?
3. The global aspect of Social CRM
4. Do we have social customers?
5. The challanges to manage all the different social channels
6. The different aspects to manage a customer service with social media from communities to knowledge management and feedback management.

 Esteban Kolsky on Social CRM with Jesus Hoyos Mar 1 11

 

Paul Greenberg- Main Topic: Sales and Social CRM, and everything else!!!

We discussed:

1. Social Media, Social CRM and the challanges for B2B and B2C organizations
2. The customer experience - the global and local aspects!
3. Social CRM in Sales vs Collaboration
4. Social CRM, are we there yet? Are we just scratching the surface or are we doing Social CRM implementations?
5. Knowledge Management - from content management to collaboration
6. The customer is in control of the conversation - CRM vs. CMR

 Paul Greenberg on Social CRM with Jesus Hoyos Mar 4 2011

 

Note: I used Skype and PrettyMay to records the podcasts.

My Interview with Margot Heiligman - Globetrotting Social CRM Latin America

Margot Heiligman, Director of Solution Management at SAP Labs, inverviewed me about some examples related to Social CRM in Latin America as part of her Globetrotting Social CRM series. In the inverview I explain a few key examples of some companies doing Social CRM in the region and provide 6 steps to start your Social CRM strategy.

Read Margot's other posts about Globetrotting Social CRM:

giffgaff – The UK Telco Gets SocialCRM Better than Most: Globetrotting SocialCRM

Land of the Tiger: Bharti Airtel’s Show of SCRM Prowess – Globetrotting SocialCRM

Procter and Gamble Leaders in SocialCRM – Globetrotting Series

CRM in Latin America: relationships carry more power than data - www.forecastingclouds.com - Forecasting Clouds

Chris Bucholtz interviewed me a few weeks ago about my thoughts regarding CRM in Latin America. Here is the article - enjoy!

CRM in Latin America: relationships carry more power than data - www.forecastingclouds.com - Forecasting Clouds.

Nov 19 - Webminar: How to integrate Social Media with your CRM

MundoContact (CRM and Contact Center Portal in Latin America) and Solvis (my CRM consulting company) are patronizing a Social CRM webminar where I will present how Social Media can be integrated with CRM systems. In the past few months I have seen 2 trends regarding Social CRM in Mexico and Argentina. Mexico's agencies and some brands are looking for social media solutions to capture leads from social media marketing efforts, and in Argentina, I have seen the implementation of Social Media Centers to take care of customer service issues found on Facebook and Twitter.

During the webminar. I will be speaking about what it means to integrate Facebook, Twitter, Social Media monitoring tools, community platforms, CRM and Call Centers. And since social media is not about technology, I will also speak about what you need in terms of processes and people to be ready to execute your Social CRM strategy.

See Solvis Press Release here.

To register click here.

Date: Nov 19, 2010

Time: 11 AM (Mexico City time)

The webminar will be in Spanish.

Social CRM comes to Latin America

At the Congreso de Call Center and CRM in Argentina, I had to opportunity to have a demo of ProContactCRM and its integration with Facebook. The integration is based on managing a Facebook queue from comments within a Facebook Page or Group. Very basic and simple functionality, but what I like is that you can respond back to the Facebook user from within ProContactCRM, and allows you to create a case and then manage the work flow (watch demo below - in Spanish).

Speaking with the folks at ProContactCRM, this is a functionality that their customers have been asking about for a long time. Twitter and forums are next.

ProContactCRM (Argentina) is not the only Latin American CRM vendor integrating social media. TellWare (Mexico and other countries in region) is also integrating social media to its solution. Both vendors have specific solutions for call centers, telemarketing, customer service and collections.

At the event, I gave a two lectures about building communities and Social CRM, and found a diverse group of industries that ARE NOT using social media yet, but are looking to solve customer service issues found on Facebook, Twitter and forums. None in the audience were from a marketing agency - all call center and CRM practitioners. And this is my second trip to Argentina for my Social CRM seminar.  

Social CRM is coming to Latin America...

Managing International CRM Projects

This is the presentation about managing international CRM projects from the lecture I gave at the CRM Evolution Conference. One of the key points I presented was the ability to have address and name formats within your CRM software. What this means? Then when you select the country for the contact, your CRM software will allow you to have the specific name, telephone and address attributes for the contact, prospect and account/company. This will allow you to improve your de-dup logic and have better data for customer segmentation.

Agile and Scrum could be an option to quickly implement you CRM software in different regions but you need to have a master plan, you need a strategy. And look at your best practices and compare them with the local requirements - US-centric best practices in processes and functionality do not translate into best practices in some regions.

Managing International CRM Projects

View more presentations from Jesus Hoyos.