December 1, 2013
By Marshall Lager, founder and managing principal, Third Idea Consulting; contributor, CRM magazine

New Year, New Strategies

Dude, where's my social?

Social media has come up briefly a few times in this article, but has avoided the spotlight. The reason, you may ask? It's no longer a trend, nor a prediction—it's mainstream and normal.

Businesses aren't wondering about whether to engage customers via social media anymore, because the answer is nearly always yes. "Social media has become part of the table stakes discussion for a large percentage of business enterprises," Greenberg says. "That doesn't mean that they are executing well, but social media communications, listening, and even analytics are now mainstream and in the mix as part of multichannel strategies for pretty much all aspects of customer-facing business."

This isn't to say that social is no longer part of the conversation, however. "In the continuum of people, process, and technology, social is technology—which is last," Pombriant says. "Vendors and their customers are engaged in a years-long effort to supply the cultural context for social. Social is proceeding as well as any other disruptive innovation. People have to figure it out and that takes time."

As social CRM fades as a separate term, absorbed into its proper home in CRM, the changes we've seen in the past few years will continue to bear fruit. "With the maturity in using social media, we will begin to move away from the mantras of 'content is king' and 'context is king'—neither of them is. Experience is king," Leary says. "Context provides you with the understanding of what's important. But just knowing that does nothing for [customers], unless you provide them with the right kind of experiences—which could be the right kind of content delivered in the most appropriate way. But the end goal is to create those great experiences to provide a better customer journey and a longer customer life cycle."

Upward mobility

Mobile technology is often mentioned in the same breath as social, so it's fitting to keep them together in this article. Unlike social, which has become part of the assumed capabilities in good CRM, mobility is still growing and changing. "We are solidly in the Post-PC era from a consumer perspective, and with the rise of the iPad, many businesses are also rapidly moving in this direction," Leary says."So it's no surprise that CRM apps and services have to be designed and developed with this perspective from here on in." He adds that most major vendors and young start-ups are already using responsive designs and creating native applications for iOS and Android devices.

There are some big numbers to ponder when considering mobile tech's effect on CRM. "There are 5 billion smart devices out there. They are part of the bulk of the world's life," Greenberg says. "With CRM projected to grow to $36 billion by 2017, according to Gartner, mobile CRM will be an irrevocable part of the landscape as the world goes mobile—which means, of course, so will customers and the business of customers."

Despite what could be a rosy future, though, there are still significant issues with providing enough bandwidth in enough places to make mobile CRM more than a luxury option. "Most of the intelligence for mobile CRM stays on the servers in the cloud, which then feed the devices. Mobile is being hamstrung by inadequate bandwidth from the wireless providers," Pombriant says. "Job one is getting upload and download speed parity and then increasing it. With that, we'll be better able to receive as well as send data, which will enable better knowledge sharing."

Delay of game

Another area of development to continue to watch is gamification. The use of gamelike elements to engage people and drive behaviors is a perennial hot topic, but it never seems to break into prime time. "Gamification is a good option for engaging customers, because no matter what the age of the person, people like to play, they like to achieve, they like to win," Greenberg says. "That's why Gartner forecasts gamification as a $2.8 billion industry by 2014. The promise is there."

The lack of adoption might be due to simple inertia, or failure to understand the benefits, but the bulk of businesses remain reticent where gamification is concerned. "I don't think the gamers have a good idea of where this is going yet, so how can we?" Pombriant says. "Gamification is the third plane in the stack waiting to land after social and big data. Next year will be an important building year, but I wouldn't look for a breakout."

In the end, clarity of purpose will likely be where gamification lives or dies. "Gamification is just another engagement strategy enhanced by social and mobile," Leary says. "If done with a lot of thought, it can be very helpful for customer engagement and employee satisfaction. If just done because everyone else is doing it, it won't work. As with most things social, it will augment and enhance certain traditional motivators, and totally replace others. But, once again, companies have to know what challenges they are trying to solve—and know what success would be—before jumping in."

So where are we?

The preceding are just some of the issues facing CRM in the coming year—combined, they could fill a book, not just a magazine article. We still have to wonder what it all means when considered together. Here are a few predictions.

If what we've seen has bearing on what we will see, it seems likely that partnerships large and small will be the new M&A. The ability of vendors to work with each other will condition the success of their applications platforms, and partnerships suggest interoperability in a way that takeovers just can't.

Businesses will continue to seek ways to make sense of the glut of data they collect. The technology to manage it is there, so it boils down to asking the right questions. Data flooding in from social apps will remain at Niagara Falls levels. We might start to see some truly breakthrough successes of large-scale predictive analytics, but those successes might just as likely remain hidden as trade secrets, at least in the near-term.

Proponents of social CRM will be able to take a break from touting the benefits and creative possibilities of the discipline, but they will have to start making a much stronger case for proving the financial results of those benefits. Mobility will continue to work its way into the discussion. Gamification will transform and exalt those few companies that use it well, and will be largely ignored by the bulk of businesses.

Of course, we can't truly know the future until it’'s here. Keep coming back to CRM magazine to see how well our crystal ball has done.

Marshall Lager is a freelance writer and founder and managing principal at Third Idea Consulting. He can be reached at marshall@3rd-idea.com.