Global CRM

Global CRM

Customer experience management is hitting the government (and the beltway) big time.

In the last two days, I've talked to two important organizations which both spontaneously had begun looking into CEM. One derives most of its revenues (near $1billion USD) from the US Government. This company has to compete for these funds, and they realize the standard procurement process -- presumably designed to level the playing field to remove non-proposal influences -- is not the only game they have to master.

The other organization is a US Government agency. They have two big constituencies: fellow agencies, whom they assist; and global stakeholders working to harmonize regulations, laws and behaviors with international standards. It may appear that the payoff in CEM (and CRM) for this agency is not primarily measured in dollars, but in value created. And that's true. But dollars count here, too. The agencies served by the organization I'm talking about can advance their causes through other organizations (NGOs and for-profit consulting and development firms). So CEM in this case is one way to assure that this particular agency gets more wallet share from the agencies it serves. That lets them build their budget, attract better talent, keep them longer, and become more effective.

In both cases, though, CEM is being introduced to provide relative competitive advantage.

Still, CRM is the bigger player in all this. CEM matters, but just looking at the new Google Trends reports (go to http://www.google.com/trends) shows that CRM is a Google keyword far more often than CEM. (You can discover some other interesting data by checking out this cool new search engine feature. Go Google.)

That's it for now ... gotta get a proposal and a strategy out, and then I am at last going to get my haircut. Then I'm rewarding my lovely bride with a dinner out. Every day is Be Nice to the Bride Day, right?