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CRM Paradigm Shift: What technological trends have fundamentally changed the way organizations manage relationships with their customers?
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5 Answers
Social Networks - without a doubt. These networks have empowered customers to much more effectively interact with each other - in turn leading to dramatic changes in how organizations need to interact with those customers - both as individuals as well as within communities.
Most importantly, the biggest shift - which is just getting started - is that it is becoming the customer who is managing the relationship with the organization - not the other way around.
What he said... All kidding aside, I'd have to agree with Chris that Social Networks have changed the game of relationships... along with Mobile technologies.. i.e. smartphones and ipads are the new tools of the customer relationship business. "Stay Thirsty My Friends."
I may be completely off base here but I'm not sure any of the CRM technologies have changed how organizations manage CUSTOMER relationships as how much they are just now beginning to manage their own SALES processes.
There is very little in the way of technology that actually helps organizations get closer to their customers. The technology DOES however help organizations manage their sales people and their responsiveness to customers but doesn't actually engage them in the enterprise operations.
I've done quite a bit of research on this and see the *emerging* field of customer integration into the enterprise coming about in what I call "ERP 3"... We are just now barely on the edge of it with social media... But even the social media outlets from a customer integration perspective are only in their infancy.
ERP vs. ERP II vs. ERP III Future Enterprise Applications
http://www.r3now.com/erp-vs-erp-ii-vs-erp-iii-future-enterprise-applications
The first tech company that can master the ERP 3 paradigm will forever change the customer / business / technology dynamic.
Catherine, I respectfully contend that you give technology way too much credit. There is no technology in the known universe that has ever established or sustained relationships … only human beings can do that.
As Bill Wood points out in his excellent answer, CRM is not about customer engagement. It is about companies keeping tabs on organizations and people with the intent of selling more stuff to them. Customers are hardly ever involved in the selection, content, or application of CRM systems.
Prove it to yourself: if your company has CRM, ask ten of your customers if they have noticed. If your company does not have CRM, ask ten of your customers what they would do if you DID have it.
Technology does provide the mechanisms for communicating, but the notion of a “paradigm shift” in company-customer relationships because of CRM stretches reality.
Michael, Kudos. Technology - yes, it has brought us many benefits. While I certainly am not a Luddite, I have concerns that some practitioners and leaders believe "technology" is even more of a "silver bullet" than they believed a decade ago. One difficulty, that I perceive, about our embracing of the technology is that we have abdicated, in some cases, unwittingly, many of our decisions, purchasing in the software, or packages, the decisions of others. We can only create relationships with humans being involved with other humans. Moreover, we need to pay more attention to what decisions we do abdicate to the technology lest we lose more of our humanity.
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