I've spent a good deal of time trying to understand what are key drivers for improving customer relationships and ultimately increasing share of wallet and profitability and am still trying to figure it out. I've just about every traditional method to divine an understanding - customer satisfaction surveys, win/loss analysis and customer site visits. These are great starting points, but they only show a sliver of interaction - a sales transaction, a support case or a aggregated view of an organizations execution and how that influences the strength of customer relationships. Often these surveys generate the project of the day and don't influence the overall strategy - CRM by tactics.

If you look around - your customers are changing the game and where the game is being played. Admittedly, my experience from a market perspective is B2B focused and specifically technology, but a clear theme is developing in throughout the landscape - an effective CRM strategy is increasingly about sharing knowledge and expertise. Happy customers appear to share more and stay around longer as customers.

Share the Knowledge

With knowledge and community now in the forefront, metric based management is becoming increasingly irrelevant for managing effective CRM strategies - customers aren't interested in speed to answer or RONA's. I've never met a customer that said, "they answered the phone quickly and didn't answer my questions; nevertheless, I dig company X" or "I went to voicemail, that was SO COOL!". More and more the traditional channels for customer interaction and managing a customer relationship are being displaced by community based interactions, which may or may not be officially associated with a company. Examples of this are legacy bulletin boards, wikis and other new media platforms which represent opportunities for sharing expertise and are delivering exponential value beyond the knowledge base. MyCRM career could be used as an example of such a forum for enhancing implementations, your customers' experience and YOUR personal knowledge.

Social Media and the Customer

The race to leverage social media to target prospects is clearly underway, but social media, from my standpoint in B2B marketing, isn't about generating sales - it's about enhancing the customers' experience and an organizations influence within a market segment through sharing. Again - traditional metrics don't work and the traditional questions don't work, such as "how many people bought something because of the blog?" Social Media may best be looked at as way to provide access to people, information and services.

Historically in many organizations, the folks that used to do this were account managers - typically for high value customers, social media however; allows all accounts/customers to be created equal. Think about it - before the explosion of Web 2.0, "special customers" got access to analyst information, your product roadmap and the leadership within an organization and the other 99% of your customers got a knowledge base and some cool hold music.

Access to information is now a requirement, not a privilege. The Corporate Blog phenomenon is a great example of how businesses are sharing information with their customers and increasing the intimacy with their customers and establishing relationships across an organization and a customer community. Social media is creating places for customers to interact, converse and consume relevant information - industry, product and general fluff.

Social Media is also changing the way customers interact with each other - "groups", bulletin boards and wikis are popping up as preferred channels for support and as platforms for "word of mouth". "Customer created" groups center on sharing information - about your products, about the industry and developing relationships with peers. So what is your CRM strategy to raise YOUR customers' intelligence?

5 Ways to Raise YOUR Customers' IQ

• Blog about the industry, not your products - customer's don't want another pitch
• Recommend groups and networks where your customers congregate and share
• Provide information on conferences and events, even those your company ISN'T going to
• Syndicate industry news feeds on your customer portal and provide FREE educational webinars
• Use your technology to hear the customer and respond to the WHOLE community, because others have the same needs, they just haven't told you.