Paul Greenfield's got an amusing blog post over at ZDNet where he pokes fun at year-end predictions while making eight of his own. Some key takeaways for me from his piece:
- Companies are exploring social CRM software for different reasons. Large companies and enterprise users are fascinated by using social CRM tools to crack customers' Facebook profiles. Yet they're still approaching this from a highly automated place, and not necessarily the genuine service approach that they'll need to succeed. Meanwhile, smaller companies want CRM systems that resemble Facebook and MySpace, so they can reduce training time among their web-savvy new hires. Crafty.
- CRM tools will look and work more like popular "Web 2.0" applications. Along the same lines, developers are discovering that they can crib great user interfaces from Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. And if those twenty-somethings in the office can help veteran sales professionals understand the tools better, implementation rates can go up.
- APIs and plug-ins let CRM software do more with outside information. Instead of needing to find a vendor who can provide e-mail marketing, web analytics, and customer survey solutions, all you have to do is plug your CRM software solution into public APIs from third parties, like Emma, or Google, or Zoomerang. Costs plummet, because there are fewer cogs to design and dedicated support from outside vendors.
That's just scratching the surface of Greenberg's predictions and comments, and he promises more to come. You can read the rest of his post here.
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