Visitors to these pages hear a lot about social CRM, and the ability of networks of customers to self-serve.
One of the assertions that is sometimes made is that customer service delivered by a customer-generated wiki is equivalent to service delivered through a company-generated knowledge base.
Here's the question. Is this really true? And if so, where is there a good illustration of this principle at work?
Julian Baggini’s book ‘Complaint’ is part of the Big Ideas series published by Profile Books. Baggini’s titular stable-mates include ‘Violence’, ‘Moral relativism’, Democracy’ and ‘Identity’ offer a clear signal that this is no ordinary book on complaint.
Baggini is on a mission to restore complaint as a form of personal action that unerpins social change. “I want to reclaim complaint from the forces of progress and wrestle it from the hands of lawyers who see it simply as a means to personal gain”. This is most definitely not a book that validates the moans and whinges of customers who can’t be bothered to read instruction manuals.
Baggini writes about complaint and religion: “Complaint is a secular, humanist act. It is resistance about the idea… that suffering is our ordained lot;” and about complaint and social progress which “has been achieved because people have complained about contemporary injustice”, though much contemporary complaint that positions itself as...
Sometimes you can find truth in the most unexpected places.
I rented the 2009 movie “Up in The Air” this weekend, not really knowing what to expect from this George Clooney vehicle. It’s billed as a drama, a romance and a comedy, but I think you can add tragedy and didactic to that.
Maybe you’ve seen the movie.
If not, here’s a brief synopsis. Ryan Bingham (Clooney) works for an Omaha based corporation whose team travels the country firing people when bosses are too timid to do it themselves. Bingham lives out of his suitcase, flying from contract to contract 320 days of the year. He loves his uncluttered life in the air.
He is unmarried, has no children and no permanent place to call home. He is estranged from his family. He is disconnected from people and place. He does, however, have one shining goal - to be only the seventh person to rack up 10 million frequent flyer miles. As a sideline he gives occasional motivational speeches on how to become...
EDS’s failure to deliver a CRM system originally costed at £47.6 million (US$70 million) has ultimately cost EDS owner, Hewlett Packard, £318 million (US$465 million) in damages!
The long-running legal battle - it started in 2004 - between BSkyB and EDS is finally over. There will be no appeal. Hewlett Packard, which acquired EDS in 2008, has negotiated a settlement of £318 million for a bungled CRM implementation.
Here’s what happened. In 2000, BSkyB, the UK’s largest satellite broadcaster, called for tenders to design, build, manage, implement and integrate processes and technology for a new CRM system for Sky’s Scottish contact centers. EDS won the bid in the face of keen competition from PwC, but then failed to deliver the project. Sky eventually sacked EDS and, in 2002, brought the project in-house.
Instead of the intended CRM project going live in July 2001 and being completed by March 2002, Sky contended in court that the functionality for the CRM system...
BP used to be British Petroleum. Then it reinvented itself as Beyond Petroleum, extending the enterprise beyond black gold and becoming a major investor in new energy technologies.
All that counts for little now that the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is becoming clear.
BP has agreed to create a $20 billion fund to compensate those affected by what is being called - in a ridiculously understated fashion - an ‘oil spill’. BP will pay $3bn into the fund in Q3 2010, with a further $2bn in Q4. BP will continue to drip-feed the fund with an additional $1.25bn per quarter until the $20 billion is paid in full.
I don’t want to comment on matters of engineering fact but I do want to make some remarks about BP’s parallel public relations catastrophe.
I can imagine in the first few frightening hours, BP’s lawyers and public relations teams presented to BP’s board their views on how the company should respond. It’s clear that the lawyers won. “...
What is Google?
On one level it’s the world’s most popular search engine, which users bless every time they need information in a hurry. On another it’s a digital business empire that owns Picasa, YouTube, DoubleClick, Gmail, Maps, Earth, Checkout, Calendar, Desktop, Blogger and hundreds of other businesses, services, products or applications that delivered revenues of US$24 billion and net profit of US$6 billion in 2009 – not too shabby when the world was teetering on the edge of chaos.
Impressive as these are, none of these statistics adequately describes Google.
At heart, Google is the world’s biggest data company. Just for starters Google logs all the clicks of all its users of all its services. Add the data entered into forms, cookies that track your movement around the web, server requests and so on, and you have a massive dataset stored on an estimated million or so servers – yes, a million.
Google knows more about you than your partner, more...
BSkyB’s legal case against EDS is over, and the loser in terms of both money and reputation is EDS. EDS’s new owner, Hewlett Packard, has already paid £270 million in damages to Sky, and more may follow.
The case has significant ramifications for all CRM outsources, indeed, for any IT outsourcers.
The bare bones of the case are these.
In 2000, BSkyB, the UK’s largest satellite broadcaster, called for tenders to design, build, manage, implement and integrate processes and technology for a new CRM system for Sky’s Scottish contact centres.
EDS won the bid in the face of keen competition from PwC, but then failed to deliver the project. Sky eventually sacked EDS and, in 2002, brought the project in-house.
Instead of the intended CRM project going live in July 2001 and being completed by March 2002 at a baseline budget of £47.6 million, Sky contended that the functionality for the CRM System was only completed in March 2006 at a cost of about £265...
BSkyB’s legal tussle with EDS has concluded and it’s now timely to reflect on the allegations made by claimant, the judgement reached by Justice Vivian Ramsey and the case’s consequences for IT outsourcers and their clients.
The bare bones of the matter are these.
In 2000, BSkyB, the UK’s largest satellite broadcaster, called for tenders to design, build, manage, implement and integrate processes and technology for a new CRM system for Sky’s Scottish contact centres. EDS won the bid in the face of keen competition from PwC, but then failed to deliver the project. Sky eventually sacked EDS and, in 2002, brought the project in-house.
Instead of the intended CRM project going live in July 2001 and being completed by March 2002 at a baseline budget of £47.6 million, Sky contended that the functionality for the CRM System was only completed in March 2006 at a cost of about £265 million.
The claim
Sky alleged that EDS made fraudulent and...
I recently sat on a Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals panel for a discussion on consumer rage. It was a fascinating event, and, sadly as it turns out, quite timely.
The consensus of the panel and attendees was that consumer rage was on the increase and in extreme cases posed a threat to the health and safety of customer contact staff. You can find my presentation at http://tinyurl.com/y9v6y9j
We now have a tragic example of the catastrophic effects of consumer rage.
Police in Northern Territory (Australia) have charged a 45-year old male, known as Bird, with nine counts of attempted murder, one count of unlawfully setting fire to a building, one count of intending to cause serious harm by causing an explosion and one count of recklessly endangering life.
Nineteen people were injured in an explosion allegedly caused by Bird, and four remain in hospital.
The man...
Sir Vivian Ramsey, judge in the long-running BSkyB vs EDS case has instructed Hewlett Packard, owner of the EDS business, to pay interim damages of £200m (US$317 million).
Sky had alleged that EDS had made fraudulent claims and negligent misrepresentations to win the bid to design, build, manage, implement and integrate the process and technology for a new CRM system for Sky’s customer contact centres.
The judge has found in favour of Sky who claimed damages of £709 million (US$1.13 billion).
Damages must be paid by February 17th 2010, though HP is seeking permission to appeal the judgement.
