Bottom-Up Web 2.0 Culture Influences CRM Software
by Joe Taylor Jr.
by Joe Taylor Jr.
Seattle-based software company Entellium made waves in 2008 when it released a CRM suite influenced by video games and online social networking sites. While winning praise from users and critics alike, the system's rollout stalled when federal prosecutors charged the company's leaders with wire fraud. However, as the underlying trends that inspired the Rave application keep growing, pieces of the company's code have been snapped up at fire sale prices by former competitors. These two forces could lead to some major changes in the ways that companies envision and deploy customer relationship management tools.
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The phrase "Web 2.0" first emerged in the early 2000s, as IT analysts, writers, and conference organizers pondered the effects of new technology and a new economic reality. If "Web 1.0" was about the Internet as a destination, "Web 2.0" would leverage the power of the World Wide Web as a platform on which individuals could collaborate. Popular Web services that emerged from this mindset included blogging services, search algorithms, networked storage hubs, and social networking tools.
Gaming and Modern Web Tools Shape a Generation of Service Professionals
As application developers dropped the vowels from their products' names and found new ways to incorporate "tagging" and "profiles," new blogs and community hubs accelerated electronic gaming culture. By the time that most young Americans reach college age, many of them will have spent as much time socializing online as they spent in classrooms. In-game play has become more collaborative over the past decade, enhanced by live voice chat and the ability to network with more experienced gamers.
From an IT manager's point of view, a call center full of hard core gamers with active online identities might feel like a security nightmare. But, for customer relationship management application developers, a tech-savvy audience holds the key to delivering on the promise of CRM in the workplace. Where past generations of sales and service professionals often resisted CRM implementations, new waves of prospective users offer open minds for tools that integrate into their existing lifestyles.
Guiding CRM Evolution from the Bottom Up
Therefore, many new CRM tools offer greater flexibility for employees to help evolve systems instead of forcing team members to work within narrow boundaries. Like online communities, workplace networks of friends and acquaintances can use CRM tools to form alliances and accomplish shared tasks. However, instead of embarking on missions and raids in fantasy kingdoms, service professionals can team up to solve customer problems. Instead of tagging photos and making comments on social networking sites, agents can add their own opinions and ideas on shared case files and discussion boards.
Allowing groups to organize themselves and permitting customer service agents to spend time on spontaneous collaboration might sound like tactics that fly in the face of current corporate standards. Therefore, developers have wisely integrated gaming elements into the latest CRM applications that allow agents to track their own efficiency and productivity. By encouraging playful, healthy, transparent competition, agents keep themselves and each other focused on the tasks at hand. With Entellium's code and ideas living on at other vendors, industry analysts expect this latest wave of CRM tools to make an even bigger impact.
Sources
TechTarget
The McKinsey Quarterly
Destination CRM
About the Author
Joe Taylor Jr. is an internal business consultant for a Fortune 500 company, who writes about finance, culture, and design. He holds a bachelor's of science in communications from Ithaca College.
Gaming and Modern Web Tools Shape a Generation of Service Professionals
As application developers dropped the vowels from their products' names and found new ways to incorporate "tagging" and "profiles," new blogs and community hubs accelerated electronic gaming culture. By the time that most young Americans reach college age, many of them will have spent as much time socializing online as they spent in classrooms. In-game play has become more collaborative over the past decade, enhanced by live voice chat and the ability to network with more experienced gamers.
From an IT manager's point of view, a call center full of hard core gamers with active online identities might feel like a security nightmare. But, for customer relationship management application developers, a tech-savvy audience holds the key to delivering on the promise of CRM in the workplace. Where past generations of sales and service professionals often resisted CRM implementations, new waves of prospective users offer open minds for tools that integrate into their existing lifestyles.
Guiding CRM Evolution from the Bottom Up
Therefore, many new CRM tools offer greater flexibility for employees to help evolve systems instead of forcing team members to work within narrow boundaries. Like online communities, workplace networks of friends and acquaintances can use CRM tools to form alliances and accomplish shared tasks. However, instead of embarking on missions and raids in fantasy kingdoms, service professionals can team up to solve customer problems. Instead of tagging photos and making comments on social networking sites, agents can add their own opinions and ideas on shared case files and discussion boards.
Allowing groups to organize themselves and permitting customer service agents to spend time on spontaneous collaboration might sound like tactics that fly in the face of current corporate standards. Therefore, developers have wisely integrated gaming elements into the latest CRM applications that allow agents to track their own efficiency and productivity. By encouraging playful, healthy, transparent competition, agents keep themselves and each other focused on the tasks at hand. With Entellium's code and ideas living on at other vendors, industry analysts expect this latest wave of CRM tools to make an even bigger impact.
Sources
TechTarget
The McKinsey Quarterly
Destination CRM
About the Author
Joe Taylor Jr. is an internal business consultant for a Fortune 500 company, who writes about finance, culture, and design. He holds a bachelor's of science in communications from Ithaca College.
