The Relenta blog

Eric Gill (1882 - 1940)

What does it take to be successful at customer relationship management? If you think CRM software, think again. CRM software can be easy or difficult, simple or convoluted – all kinds of things – but within its range it’s always neutral, and serves the purpose you assign to it. It follows that CRM software is just as good as the people who work with it.

A similar way of looking at the relationship between users and their tools is nicely expressed by British sculptor and typeface designer Eric Gill:

Bad workmen quarrel with their tools because good workmen don’t use bad tools.

"Let he who has not sinned
cast the first stone"

There is a business theory which states that you should regularly fire the bottom 5 percent of your customer base. My theory is that this theory is theoretically flawed, because:

1. It takes two for a customer to sink to the bottom 5 percent. It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it?
2. Every customer is a learning aid. Getting rid of the difficult ones deprives you of the opportunities to improve, both professionally and personally

In any case, isn’t it better not to hire customers who aren’t your match in the first place?

Just received this automated email in response to a contact form submission:

Please take a moment to make sure your request includes the email address so we can respond back to you

Is it possible that your automated replies need a reality check too? In Relenta, go to Settings > Autoresponders.

This is probably the biggest single lesson in my entrepreneurial career: Things you don’t do are as important as things you do do.

“They don’t understand the definition of work, then.” -- George W. Bush

Here are the things we don’t do, in the order in which we stopped doing them:

1. Custom development
2. Multiple concurrent projects
3. Phone sales and support
4. Free one-on-one product demos
5. Private label and other partnerships
6. ETA on releases

This may well be wrong, but we would rather be happy than right.

Delaying software releases is like going through the six stages of grief:

Indeed!

1. Shock and disbelief “WTF?!! We’ve already padded all our internal estimates by a factor of two and are still six months behind the schedule. This can’t be happening!”
2. Denial “Nah. We’re almost there. There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll answer all these forum posts as soon as the release is out.”
3. Bargaining “Hey, let’s stop doing what we do and release some BS intermediate update just to shut up ‘em up.”
4. Anger “These people have no appreciation for our hard work. Homicidal bitching is all we ever get in return.”
5. Guilt “We should have managed expectations more proactively. Now we let all these nice people down.”
6. Acceptance “Hmm… Apparently good things take time. We still have the best app in the world and it gets better every day in every way.”

What happened?

In the design world, there is a saying: “Quality, speed, cost. Pick any two.”  In our case, cost is already picked for us because we’re a small team; speed means “features” or “front-end” and quality means “infrastructure” or “back-end.” Back in 2004 when it all started we chose speed and quickly built Relenta into the killer app that it is. Our motto was “Put it out there fast, deal with problems later.” Eventually the time had come when simply adding features was no longer sustainable. For example, some of you may recall performance problems we had two years ago, and that was merely tip of the iceberg. Shifting focus to the back-end and freezing feature development for the time being was the only way forward.

Why did it take so long?

The development of an app of Relenta scale requires completing a seemingly infinite number of steps, which even Greek philosopher Zeno (490 – 430 BC) maintained is a theoretical impossibility as in The Achilles and Tortoise paradox.

Paradoxically, the last couple of years were our most productive ever in terms of sheer output and innovation. Problem is, you can’t see it because it’s all in the code and application architecture. On top of that, the progress didn’t always happen linearly. We had to trash significant pieces of work along the way, setting ourselves back sometimes as far as months at a time and going back to the drawing board.

What are the lessons learned?

In retrospect, we should have implemented a policy against issuing ETAs and other wishful thinking statements such as “coming soon” and “almost there.”  So here goes:

Regular releases instead of empty ETAs

What else? Writing this post a year or two ago wouldn’t have hurt. Oh, and a policy against procrastination also seems like a good idea, when we get around to it.

The journey seemed long and disenchanting, for so it was. On the bright side, we are introducing a completely refactored application, so you can rest assured that your email and CRM house is built on a rock. In the last almost two years, 99.9 percent of our development action was on the back-end, therefore we can’t really show you most of the results. However, a few good things are happening on the visible side as well. For now, here’s a sneak peek at what we already have in store for you.

2-line object lists: more details, fewer clicks

2-line views

In line with our 1-click philosophy, we’re introducing 2-line views of the message, contact and activity lists.

All-new calendar with drag-and-drop

All-new calendar

Тhe entire calendar is rebuilt from scratch. We’re introducing weekly view; event duration; drag-and-drop action to change event date and time. You can also click anywhere on the daily, weekly or monthly view to quickly add the event, and resize the event icon to change its duration.

Universal date format

Country-independent date formatting is applied throughout the app. The new dates look like this:

 
     < 1 hour        25 min ago; in 25 min
     > 1 hour        02:06pm or 14:06, depending on user settings

     > -1 day        Jan 30 or Mon, Jan 30 (current year)
                     Sep 28, 2007 (past years)

     Full date/time  Fri, Sep 28, 2007 16:34
     Date range      Mar 1 - Apr 1, 2011 or Dec 1, 2011 - Jan 1, 2012

The look–and-feel changes are beyond cosmetic

Ergonomic navigation

The new space-saving design minimizes the number of clicks and mouse movements. We’re adding the “+” shortcuts so you can create new messages, contacts, activities and social network updates with a single click wherever you are in the app. To save vertical space in the left vertical navigation bar, we’ve moved the switch-between-departments dropdown and search box to the top header.

Fewer clicks to better search

Universal search box

Aside from being faster, the new search box features auto-suggestions and the ability to apply your search query on the fly to messages, contacts or activities.

Better tagging functionality

Better tags

We’ve added tag auto-suggestions and the ability to delete tags.

We’re still testing and working out the logistics of the new system launch. For now the main take-home message is this: The application infrastructure upgrade will enable us to release new features in a fast and continuous fashion. Until then, take heart!

Here are our software design mantras that make Relenta what it is, nothing else and nothing less.

Simple is more, not less

We believe that the term “simple software” is popularly misused. Designing simple apps isn’t easy, and simple doesn’t mean dumbed-down. For us, simplicity is synonymous with more ability. Simple is the software that lets you get more done with less effort.

Live and let work

We believe in not forcing you to work the way we think is right. Instead, we give you the tools and get out of your way. When faced with multiple design decisions, we apply the one that makes fewer assumptions about what is good for you.

The 90-10 rule

We believe that less is more. Our goal is the software that gives you 90 per cent of the functionality that most small businesses need with only 10 per cent of the application weight. Why not the familiar 80-20 rule? Because we can do better than that.

The one-click zone

We believe that the #1 reason for poor productivity is data fragmentation across multiple apps, accounts and browser windows. Our goal is to organize any and all information required for running your daily life so that nothing is more than one click away.

Similarities, not differences

We believe that at their core, all small work groups share similar challenges. For this reason we are focusing on the similarities among our users and not on what makes them different. We build our software to be universally applicable to work groups in any trade or profession.

Amen.

Chris Bucholtz makes a few excellent points about various social CRM faux pas in a recent CRM Buyer article:

The worst thing you can do is engage in a dialog, but then leave the customer hanging as you try to iron out your internal processes. It’s better not to engage than it is to engage in a way that deepens the customer’s irritation.

Bucholtz warns against several specific scenarios that could screw things up for you. They likely would, unless you use the proper tools. I’ll use Relenta to illustrate the points (go figure):

…companies haven’t established the processes needed to transport customer questions from person to person.

Communication bits from social networks are synced into your unified inbox in Relenta. If team members who deal with it first aren’t in the position to take action immediately, then they can create a task, assign it to another person, and start an internal dialog using a built-in commenting system.

The risk [with paid-for support levels in a tech company] is that customers may figure out that they can short-circuit the process by purchasing lesser service packages and then skip around their limitations by going to a social media site.

Again, once the social media interaction is associated with a customer record in your CRM, anyone on your team can instantly see what level of support they’re entitled to. You can also decide on the spot if it would be beneficial to bend the rules if, for example, this person happens to be one of your best customer advocates.

Bucholtz warns against the danger of appearing unauthentic (methinks this warning is applicable to any CRM process, not just social CRM):

What you can’t get away with is a reliance on canned answers or automatically generated responses. While these may increase the productivity of your staff, they destroy the effectiveness of your CRM efforts.

Bring it on!

Being authentic takes a relaxed state of mind. With Relenta, you can get pending tasks, important facts and bits and pieces of conversations out of your head by pouring it all into a self-organizing system. This way your mind is freed from mindless work and can actually be mindful (and personable).

There are so many social media channels out there that it becomes very easy to allow all your resources to be absorbed in a grand effort to cover them all.

Once the relevant social dialogs are synced into your CRM — as they should be — they become no different from other action items that you are already working with day in, day out. And a large number of interactions with your customers and prospects is a good thing. If they want to talk to you or about you, it should be the case of the more, the merrier, right?

Lost for words

If a customer had had a bad experience with you, its negative impact may be worse than you think. Scientific American reports on the results of study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology:

Researchers at New York University and Carnegie Mellon University conducted seven experiments to determine how people’s expectations shape their memories. In one test, they exposed 30 students to the noise of a vacuum cleaner for 40 seconds. Afterward, half were told they would have to hear the noise again, whereas the rest were told the study was over. Everyone was then asked to rate how irritated they were by the noise. Students who expected to hear it again consistently found it more irritating. Other tests involving stimuli that bored and annoyed subjects all yielded the same results.

Think about it.