The global reach of the internet and access to billions of potential customers via their desks, laps and pockets through an abundance of communications methods from social media to email on a myriad of devices is a fine thing. The fundamental question remains, is the right person actually listening to the right message at the right time and in the right place to be able to make the right response?

The Martini-esque mantra coined by Sun Microsystems in the 1990s – anyone, anytime, anywhere on anything – was great for touting the need for a universal infrastructure. But that is just the open network plumbing that connects everything together and without some intelligence layered above it, all the universal network can do is raise the level of noise.

For first movers this is not necessarily a problem. Those quick-witted organizations who get in early to a new domain can often exploit it sufficiently before it gets too crowded and the dynamics change. Then when well-structured heavyweights get involved, consolidation kicks in, dominant players emerge making it harder and harder for new entrants to get a toehold. Witness the high street and Tesco, e-commerce and Amazon, social networking and Facebook, tablets and Apple.

Sometimes in the technology world it is slow-moving incumbents that take over, but often it is the fleet of foot, who were not necessarily first to market, but are first to volume. Market momentum, like Newtonian momentum, is about velocity – speed and direction – as well as size or mass.

So what about the majority of ‘wannabe’ suppliers who then become followers, can they ever hope to get their message out?

Sure any supplier can make a marketing push to set up Facebook pages, tweet on Twitter, have downloadable mobile apps and pay for search engine optimization on the web, but for all their digital SHOUTING, are they actually taking time to listen to their prospects and customers?

One way to get ahead in the game, even of those who currently dominate, is to use all the information available and listen carefully to user requirements, build relevant market intelligence and so outsmart the incumbents. Just as good salespeople pay more attention to listening and understanding rather than simply speaking, so good marketing, even in a highly connected digital age, depends on good listening. This is the key to businesses engaging in the current social networking boom – how much information can be collected, analysed and understood, rather than how much can be pumped out.

Unlike traditional channels that are more oriented to public one-way communications with perhaps only a ‘call to action’ response, today’s highest profile digital channels - social media, video, mobile - are personal and bi-directional or virally shared. They are also highly treasured and far more sensitive to abuse.

The negative reactions seen with the explosion of spam in email, pales in comparison to the feelings stoked up by misuse of these highly personal contact points. Even a service provider’s attempts at change can be viewed by the digital society as negative – e.g. Facebook’s continual tinkering with privacy settings – and so much so that they can cause significant and rapid uprising among highly connected and vocal users.

Businesses need to tread carefully and keep within the evolving online etiquette and mores as they develop their social media strategies. Most importantly they should remember the ‘two ears and one mouth’ sales mantra to listen carefully, build understanding and then reflect that back into the marketplace. Social networking brings many opportunities for businesses to build relationships with their customers and prospects, but these will need care and attention to avoid being seen as intrusive. For a more detailed exploration of the business use of social media, download Quocirca’s free report, “Community, Connection, Conversation or Channel”

Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Communication, Collaboration and Convergence, Quocirca

This week, Quocirca had a briefing with a security vendor which provided an insight into a fundamental change going on in the use of IT and one of the major drivers for that change. The vendor was Bradford Networks, named not after the city in Yorkshire UK, but the small town in New Hampshire, USA.

Bradford provides products to carry out a range of network management and control capabilities; network discovery, end-point management, network access control and policy enforcement around network usage. None of that is unique to Bradford, which is perhaps why, when it started selling this product line back in 2005/6, it focused on a niche – higher education. Not any old aspect of network usage in the sector, but specifically student dorms, or halls of residence as they are called than in the UK.

The problem Bradford helps university IT administrators manage is the wide variety and ever-changing identities of devices students want to attach to the network services offered in such places. Even five years ago, this included Windows PCs, Macs, gaming devices and early smartphones (mainly BlackBerrys). Today of course you can add Android devices, iPhones, iPads and others. The range of devices support by Bradford, which extends to CCTV cameras, door entry systems and firewalls is impressive.

Bradford has been successful selling to this niche in the US and also in the UK, where via a single reseller, Khipu Networks, it has signed up many universities, including Oxford, Nottingham and Durham. A case study for Durham University can be seen here.

What makes Bradford’s story interesting to Quocirca is the speed at which its business is changing. In the last couple of years Bradford says the profile of its business has switched from almost all higher education to 85% other sectors including healthcare, manufacturing and banking. Bradford says this change has been demand driven and is not the result of deliberate targeting (for example, it still has just the one reseller in the UK, but is planning to change that).

There are two reasons for this change in the business profile at Bradford. The first is the range of devices that organisations now have to support, as Bradford says: “Now the rest of the world has started to look like [the higher] education [sector]”.

But the second reason is perhaps more profound; the students of five or six years ago are the employees of today; the change at Bradford is surely a bellwether for the growing tide of consumerisation, a big driver for which is the entry to the work place of the IT savvy “generation Y”.

Of course, Bradford is not alone in addressing this issue. It will have to make its own case against a range of larger vendors all targeting end-point management and security. This includes end-point management vendors such as Kaseya, LANDesk and IBM/BigFix, but also IT security vendors – for example McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro are all now investing in managing end-points as well as securing them.

There is another vendor that could be added to both these last two lists: Microsoft. It too is in the end-point management business with it Systems Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) and recently announced InTune on-demand service, which Quocirca wrote about in a previous blog post. Microsoft is also in the end security business with its Forefront End-point Protection (FEP) product, which Quocirca wrote about here.

However, as both posts point out, Microsoft is missing the point. As ever it lives in its own Microsoft bubble. Its end-point management and security products only address Windows PCs, not even its own struggling Windows Mobile operating system. Generation Y has certainly found there is more to life that Microsoft and Bradford Networks is benefiting from this. If Microsoft does not change its game its fortunes will surely head south like that of its new mobile devices partner Nokia.

For Microsoft this tide of consumerisation impacts two of its biggest product lines that account for over half its business; Windows desktop and Office. Quocirca would not be the first to speculate about the long term future of Microsoft. In its June 9th leader celebrating the 100th birthday of IBM, The Economist speculated which of today’s IT vendors might reach a similar age. Microsoft was not one of them.

Two recent Quocirca reports sponsored, by Kaseya, cover end-point security are available for free download: The IT Profit Centre and The total MSP.
 
Bob Tarzey, Analyst and Director, Quocirca

I needed to go to the US to attend a vendor’s analyst event.  This meant getting in touch with American Express Travel (AmEx Travel) in order to sort out the flights.  The vendor had, as usual, set up a rule that said “only economy class”, and as usual, I did my homework first and could show that by travelling out on the Saturday instead of the Sunday, I could travel Premium Economy and save enough such that even with the vendor paying for an extra night in the hotel, they would end up saving money, and I would travel without having to have my knees inserted in my ears.

Nice and simple?  OK, I expected there to be a bit of to and froing while the “rule” was checked to see if it could be bent in this case, although why a travel firm cannot advise their corporate customers on items like this in the first place and so give the option for the them to say “The traveller can either have one of their weekend days and travel economy, or give up their weekend and travel premium”, I don’t know.  But, the main thing was that the agent didn’t understand the argument. 

He said “I see what you mean.  So, you’re happy to travel out on the Saturday and save money.  Great – so that’s economy on the Saturday…”. 

“No, the whole idea is for me to travel Premium and still save money”. 

“Oh…”

Anyway, eventually that bit was sorted out.  I understood that the tickets would be non-changeable, and therefore, if there were any changes to be made, I’d face a charge.

Of course, a change was required.  Another vendor asked whether I could make it to their event in the same city, same week.  The two events do clash, but I could make one day of the second meeting by staying on for an extra day.

I phone up AmEx Travel.  All seems well, the agent allows me to change from the flight on the Wednesday to the flight on the Thursday.  I then have to remind him that this results in me having to pay a fee. 

“Oh, yes, you’re right.  That’s $349.86”. 

I pay and off I go.  I inform the other vendor, they book a hotel room for me and start setting up meetings and so on.

Again, nice and simple?  Then the horror starts.  The new travel plans come through. I thought I’d better check them.  Outbound – great, right day, Premium Economy.  Coming back – great, right plane, class O.  Hang on, what the hell is class O?  Off to the internet – Class O is the lowest possible economy fare.

Back in touch with AmEx Travel.  A completely bamboozled agent doesn’t understand what I’m on about, keeps me on the phone for 30 minutes while checking with the airline that I was booked in Premium Economy to start with, and then just says that I can either pay $1,100 to be put back in Premium Economy, or could revert back to my original tickets. 

Great – one of three choices: try and get vendor 2 to pick up a great deal more than I have already told them it would be (and know that they didn’t want to pay this amount), pay the amount myself, or drop vendor 2 from my travel plans.  Whichever way it goes, I’ll not be flavour of the month, and I could end up out of pocket. 

I ask to talk to a supervisor, get put on hold for a further 10 minutes, and then told that “someone will phone back before the end of the working day, oh sorry, what time is it with you at the moment?  Well before the end of your working day.  No – that’s in 10 minutes.  Within the hour, then.”

I eventually get an email the next day from a supervisor who just re-iterates what has already been said.  The only thing added is that as the “rule” was for economy, then when I requested a change, it automatically reverted to economy class.  As it is now the weekend, I reply, but know that I’m not going to get a response for at least 60 hours.

So, is the CRM software at AmEx Travel to blame?  I have no solid idea, but what is apparent is that the agents are not being trained in how the process of CRM works.  If AmEx Travel chooses not to train its agents sufficiently, then it has the responsibility to ensure that its software plugs the holes.  The costs of dealing with what should have been a simple change have been high so far – and will continue to get higher as time goes on.  When I asked for a change, the agent should either be smart enough to read what is in front of them and say “This charge only covers you if you travel back in economy – is this alright?” or the software should force such a message to the agent “This change will result in a downgrading of travel class – check with the traveller if this is OK before proceeding”.

I tweeted quite a bit on this – and was overwhelmed with responses from others.  Finance, telcos, utilities and retail all seem to be the same.  As far back as 2002, Jupiter Metrics said that expenditure on CRM was running at $9.7bn per annum, and expected it to rise to $16.5bn by 2006.  It can be taken then that billions of dollars have been spent on CRM – and yet the standard of customer service does not seem to have changed much during that time.

Why?  Because just throwing money at CRM technology misses the point – it is the process that matters, not the technology.  By getting the underlying processes correct, by acknowledging that rigid rules are far more likely to lead to massive numbers of exceptions, it becomes far easier to demonstrate flexibility to your customers – and so to appear to be more effective, more caring and so lead to better customer retentions – along with lower costs.  Poor process plus poor education combined with inflexible software just means that the poor customer service spiral accelerates.

At the time of writing, the situation with AmEx Travel was still on-going – updates will be posted here.
 
Clive Longbottom, Service Director, Business Process Analysis, Quocirca