Beyond Social CRM: Customer Experience Tops 2012 Predictions

8 CRM Predictions For 2012

As 2012 takes off, it’s time for that fun annual event: predicting how customer relationship management (CRM) — and related disciplines — will evolve over the year. Here are my top eight predictions for what’s in store for CRM in 2012:

1) Growth Becomes Businesses’ Top Focus

Barring the collapse of the euro, revolution in North Korea, or Kim Kardashian coming back on the scene, the macro business story is this: We’re set for an economic rebound, which will allow businesses to switch from cost-saving mode into growth mode, meaning there’s great new potential for boosting the bottom line.

Accordingly, now is the time to begin preparing for customer experience and customer service projects. That’s because the businesses that will be best positioned to capitalize on growth opportunities will be the ones that have built the best customer relationships in their market.

Cue this 2012 business imperative: contact center modernization, including tight social media tie-ins — because today, you can’t do customer service any other way. To handle all of those requirements, we expect to see sharp increases in Salesforce.com Service Cloud adoption.

2) Blurring Business Functions

The rapid growth of social CRM has had a notable side effect: it’s blurring the lines between sales, marketing, and service, as companies attempt to open up their touch points with customers. For 2012, expect the same to happen — albeit in ways we probably can’t even imagine — with HR, finance, quality and manufacturing.

That’s because one of the chief concepts behind the creation of a social enterprise is learning how to get content and information to people more effectively. For example, who’s going to know more about solving a tricky technical problem than the engineers in manufacturing? Hence the new business imperative: learn how to connect them with customers. At the same time, also ask related questions: Can we take some of the resulting troubleshooting content and publish it, then use the resulting interest to create new leads? Going forward, can we streamline the customer experience by improving build quality?

3) Cloud-Based BI

Hardcore cloud-based analytics is another trend that’s on the horizon, and which will hit maturity this year. In particular, keep an eye on Cloud9 Analytics, which offers cloud-based forecasting and pipeline management. That’s important, because software such as Salesforce.com is operational, meaning that you’re focused on current operations: reviewing the sales pipeline, looking up contacts.

But what if you want to compare the current pipeline with the pipeline from four weeks, 12 weeks, or even two years ago? (Kind of like Facebook’s new timeline feature.) Previously, answering that type of business intelligence (BI) question often took oodles of infrastructure, including building a data warehouse. But with cloud-based analytics software, you’ll be able to much more easily generate time slices, showing you where things stood at any given point in time.

4) Mobility Keeps Moving

This might sound a bit techie, but HTML5 is taking off, and one of the key capabilities it offers is the ability to more easily create cross-platform mobile applications. In other words, expect HTML5 to add even more fuel to the burgeoning mobility movement, including more mobile CRM.

5) Legacy CRM Loses Out

Given the capabilities on offer from cloud-based CRM (including built-in mobility), in 2012, expect many more organizations to ditch their legacy CRM platforms — Siebel, Oracle CRM, Pivotal, SalesLogix. Instead, they’ll be adopting Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM On Demand, and Microsoft CRM Dynamics.

6) Facebook Backlash

In other sea changes, on the social CRM front, beware a backlash after Facebook publishes its S-1 as it prepares to go public. When people see how much money Facebook is making, they may decide to opt out of helping to enrich the social network. Although, to borrow from Gartner’s research approach, I’d only put the probability of Facebook fallout at 30% (i.e. not likely, but possible).

7) Voice-Controlled CRM

Call it the Siri effect: If I’m a salesperson, when will I be able to walk out of a meeting and tell my smartphone what the meeting was about? At that point, of course, my smartphone should be able to work with my cloud-based CRM application to automatically generate all of the required activities and follow-ups. In other words, thanks to Apple’s Siri, the bar has been raised. And we’re waiting.

8) Steve Jobs Biopic Storms Oscars

Ending on another Apple and sales-related note, Salesforce.com’s vice president of corporate strategy, Bruce Francis, surely has the year’s CRM-related Oscar forecast nailed with his “Death of a Salesman” predictions surrounding the inevitable Steve Jobs biopic. Think Aaron Sorkin, writing a script based on the biography by Walter Issacson, with George Clooney playing Jobs, and Meryl Streep bagging a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her portrayal of Jobs’s sister, Mona Simpson.

As with all of the CRM changes on tap for 2012, stay tuned for more details.

Learn More

With people spending more time than ever on social networks, at least one of your 2012 CRM resolutions should be clear: invest in social CRM to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and improve the customer experience.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Darvin Atkeson.

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