Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

According to Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light, CRM has moved from “managing” customers to managing customer engagement. “You need to change the way you deal with customers, because they’ve changed the way they deal with you,” he said.

Businesses today need to work with customers to cocreate value as collaborators—this is what customers want, Greenberg said. Organizations today should no longer be just “producers” or manufacturers, but instead should be aggregators of customers’ creative activity. Greenberg cited the Electronic Arts’ game Spore as an example. Spore allows customers to create their own creatures online to share with other users. According to Greenberg, Spore gamers created 1.9 million creatures in one month—and each customer paid EA $10 for the privilege of doing so. “Users create value for the company by creating value for themselves,” he said.

CRM 2.0 links closely with the way communication is changing overall. It’s part of a social transformation that impacts all institutions, not just businesses, Greenberg said. Today there’s a fast-growing segment that many consider to be "social customers." It’s not an age group; it’s a set of customers who participate in such activities as social communities looking for a way to solve their personal agenda, including sharing feedback with their favorite brands. These customers are often looking for “someone like me” as their trusted source of information, Greenberg said, citing a study that found that in 2008 the number one trusted source of insight on a product or service is “someone like me,” which vastly changed from 2003, when the primary trusted source was an industry expert.

So how can you reach these social customers? “Plum your own brain,” Greenberg said after rhetorically asking why executives forget that they’re customers when they walk in the office door. “You’re a customer too.”