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CRM has always purported to be about relationships, but it's often used primarily for sales. That's kind of a good news, bad news situation. The bad news first: CRM got a bad rap when it didn't become a sales panacea (mostly for adoption issues). The good news: It exposed a void in the mix that marketing automation rushed to fill ...

Not every buyer-seller experience starts with a customer expecting to be delighted. There are lots of purchases we make because we're forced to make them -- something we need breaks, or an outside entity requires us to buy something. We're not buying because we want to, or even because the purchase will make our business run better -- we have to buy or we're stuck...

If you're a vendor, the idea of providing visibility is a winning notion. It's what's driven social CRM-related software tools and analytics to their current prominence within the market, and it's why the "Internet of Things" is so alluring. ...

When people talk about the customer experience, the thinking gets lofty quickly. The word "delight" is dropped a lot, people cite things like the American Girl Store or Nordstrom -- and soon over-the-top seems like what the norm should be. ...

If you're in business, you're going to face a customer relationship issue that's your fault. It happens. We're human -- and though we may strive for perfection, the best we can do is get close to that goal ...

"Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them." ...

The Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2013, Part 1: Greenberg Through Rampen ...

When you write regularly about CRM, you realize what a challenge it can be to keep a blog going. The same themes come up again and again, and the technology does not radically change from release to release. So being a great CRM blogger requires something else -- the ability to understand the always-fascinating human behaviors that CRM is supposed to document, analyze and influence...

This story was originally published on Oct. 18, 2013, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series ...

This story was originally published on Aug. 29, 2013, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series ...

Companies that sell direct have it easy. They have control over hiring their salespeople, control over marketing messages, and control over service and support. There's only one entity to blame if the buyer's unhappy, and that's the seller. ...

Technology and social media give businesses new ways to interact with customers, to build stronger and longer-lasting relationships, and to create two-way conversations that lead to better products and happier people at both ends of the conversation ...

The buyer-seller relationship we most often think of is one in which all the responsibility is loaded on the seller. The seller convinces the customer to buy from it, then provides support and further marketing to keep the customer loyal ...

There's always a lot to digest after Salesforce.com's annual bacchanalia, Dreamforce, which drew 135,000 registrants this year. Some of it is about Salesforce's announcements, but a lot more of it is about the implications of those announcements, the people who attend, and what goes on around the show. ...

There's one thing in the post-industrial world that's never affected by economic slowdowns, changes in customer preferences, or technological advances. In fact, production of this commodity seems to pick up when there are disruptions, and each year an increasing quantity is produced, regardless of market forces ...

CRM technology often gets blamed for the failure of customer initiatives -- and sometimes it's deserved. In many cases, though, the technology works exactly as advertised -- as far as technology can work. ...

CRM technology is all about collecting data -- which means it should go hand-in-hand with the trend toward increased use of analytics. Often, though, what is analyzed is not what's important. ...

One of the phrases CRM vendors love to toss around these days is this saw: "CRM makes every employee a salesperson." I'm sure the VP of sales loves this vision, in which he suddenly is served by a quadrupled or quintupled number of salespeople, many of whom he doesn't have to manage and to whom he doesn't have to pay commission ...

If you talk to any sales consultant -- or marketing consultant, for that matter -- you'll probably get an earful of comments laden with the jargon of "sales-marketing misalignment." To the layperson -- or business person who refrains from paying for expensive consultants -- all this means is the ongoing conflict between sales and marketing, the single dumbest reason that otherwise worthy businesses struggle...

There's always been a dichotomy between the promise of CRM and the reality of CRM. The promise is something like this: CRM can become the nucleus of your business, unifying sales, marketing and support around a shared set of data about your customers. Not only will it make your relationships with your customers better; it will make relationships among people in your company who connect with customers better...