Is a Twitter acquisition pending? A Snap Analysis
Back in June most of us got surprised by the news that Microsoft has acquired LinkedIn. Neither of us deemed this a bad move from a company point of view. There ae just too many potential synergies between MS Dynamics CRM, Office365, Azure on one side and LinkedIn, as the leading business network on the other. At that time many of us, including myself, were musing about when Twitter will be acquired, and by who. #MSFT acquired #LinkedIn – Twitter now the last source of global personal #data. Is it up for grabs? Who would buy? #AAPL? #Google? — Thomas Wieberneit (@twieberneit) June 16, 2016 thinking of it – @SAP might find Twitter a good match, looking at their recent offerings #bigdata #AI #analytics https://t.co/sgUpcLgRBK — Thomas Wieberneit (@twieberneit) June 16, 2016 My initial guesses have been Apple or Google, then suggesting SAP to have a look into it. Thinking of it I could have added Oracle, IBM and Salesforce or media companies including telcos into the mix. In brief, a lot of companies should be interested in the treasure pit of data, behavioral data, that Twitter holds. Why? There are multiple reasons. Twitter is the last remaining independent social media outside Facebook and the big Chinese ones that the big western companies will not get access to; Tencent, Alibaba, Momo, etc. are rather buying it themselves than being for sale (to a western company), Facebook doesn’t need to. Twitter has a profitability and growth challenge, but an interesting technology and, importantly, is a great source of real time information about a lot of topics, from business to consumer....
The Secret Sauce for Companies Lies in Distinguishing Themselves Where It Matters
Note: The below is an interview by Natalie Khomyk covering some nuts and bolts of CRM and digital transformation. It was originally published by Data2CRM on their blog. Thanks, Natalie for talking to me. Indeed, Thomas, you have an impressive and outstanding list of achievements, and truly in depth knowledge of CRM, digital innovations, and customer engagement. Could you share with us the 3 most exciting moments in your career? What is your source of inspiration (if it isn’t a secret)? Thank you for the praise Natalie. There surely are no secrets involved. Originally, back in 1995, I actually only stumbled into what became CRM by joining a company that did distributed sales force automation systems and later got acquired by SAP. A lot of what you just called inspiration comes from day-to-day life. I want to help people and organizations. As customers we are surrounded by businesses and organizations on one side and technology on the other. Organizations, especially businesses, communicate with us and try to get and retain our loyalty increasingly using technology. Sometimes with, sometimes with less of a strategy. This often bothers us as customers and ultimately harms the businesses. Who of us does not have countless experiences of bad service, strange and perhaps intrusive advertisements, products and brands that do not live up to promise, … Combining the topics of people, process, strategy and technology to solve problems and to find creative solutions is exciting. Having over 20 years of leadership experience in the software industry, business development and consulting, you are currently CEO at two companies: Epiconic and aheadCRM. And here question splits into...
Customer Experience Management and Customer Expectations
In the past weeks I found more and more articles like this one that talk about the importance of continually exceeding customer expectations to be able to deliver a positive customer experience. Only this way, companies get advised, will they achieve customer loyalty and advocacy. I, frankly, find this more than a bit disconcerting. To me this seems to be a very wrong objective to put the sole focus of customer experience management on. Minimally it is a very short sighted objective. Not to be misunderstood. As a customer I like my expectations exceeded, too. Why is the objective wrong, then? Where we are at … For a starter, and that may be true for many other customers, consumers as well as business customers, we have grown to expect very little. This is probably following many disappointing encounters where already the basics go very wrong. I am talking about basics customer experience failures like: Being ‘targeted’ by and served with irrelevant marketing e-mails, or plainly with too many of them Complicated onboarding processes Unavailable, uninterested, or plainly overly busy in-store personnel, or the personnel not having information at their hands Long wait times in the customer service lines, even in chats Inadequate solutions to problems Different experiences when using different channels, like the necessity to repeat information Delivery windows that span a whole day Information about delays not being provided Confirmations that differ from the agreement Privacy policies that almost need a law degree, are very long and that put the customer on the back foot Loyalty programs that clearly rather serve the company than offering value to the...