It has also been the first time that the
venerable Brent Leary chaired it,
stepping into the big footprint that Paul
Greenberg has left. Unsurprisingly, Brent did very well.
Of course, Paul, being Paul, was still
there as a speaker with an engaging presentation, concentrating on what he
calls the commonwealth of self-interest, on how to be highly successful because
of applying an outside-in view.
CRM evolution is part of a group event of
related conferences that all happen at the same time. This year, in addition to
Smart Customer Service and Speechtek, there was a dedicated event focusing on
DigitalExperience. This acknowledges how important this topic, that actually
touches all the other topics, has become in the past years.
It also raises the question again why these
four events are marketed as different events. With the possible exception of
Speechtek all topics are related enough to be warranted as facets of the same.
And they are, in my eyes.
I do not know, how the chairs do it, but
they continue to attract a number of high caliber speakers, starting off with Jarno Duursma as the main keynoter
of day one, followed by a very knowledgeable Barton Goldenberg on day two.
While Jarno focused on AI, which is arguably the most exciting topic these
days, Barton showcased how to actually get CX profitably done using a community
scenario. This breadth explains a good part of the value CRM Evolution and the
sister conferences bring. There are just too many experienced practitioners and
thought leaders to ignore this conference. This does not only show during the
presentations but also events like the ‘breakfast with influencers’ that
traditionally happens on day two, the various panels, and the interesting new
format of a closing town hall meeting, where every attendee participated as an
equal. This is truly a good idea.
From a numbers point of view, hoping that I
get them from organizer Bob Fernekees,
my impression is that the numbers have been up from last year, especially on
the Customer Service and Speechtek side of the house.
On the other hand, the noticeable change in
sponsorship that was already visible last year continued. Of the big brand name
only SAP is left. OK, well, Google Cloud being a Diamond Sponsor of the overall
event is not exactly an unknown either, which also shows the increasing
importance of AI in the customer-facing world.
Zoho stepped up as a Diamond Sponsor, too,
showing the ambitions of this exciting company that has set out challenging the
big four. From then on we see Freshworks, Zendesk and Twilio as sponsors with a
brand that is more broadly known. All the other ones, interesting as they are
(or may be), are more or less niche players – sorry, if I now stepped on
someone’s foot.
This is also reflected in the exhibition
hall. Although it was vivid at times, vendors I talked with did not see much
purchasing interest and some even doubted whether the presence was worth the
expense.
My interpretation is that this is because
this conference is more of a networking and brand-building event than a lead
generation event. There may have been some leads, but I do think that people
are there for learning, not for purchasing.
Having said this, I think that SAP missed
an opportunity to create more share of mind, something that SAP needs in comparison
to especially Salesforce and Microsoft. How can it be that a panel about AI in
customer facing applications consists of Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce
only? I do know for a fact that SAP has a lot of good things to contribute here.
And they need to do this more. Especially Salesforce and Microsoft can afford
being less present, because they already have the mindshare and, frankly, some
speakers clearly have their background here.
So, what have been my three highlights of
this year’s CRM evolution?
·
Different presentations and
panels show that (Conversational) AI and machine learning are of high interest,
not as technologies but embedded into business applications. This shows that
the vendors are going the right way
·
The intersection of marketing and
sales is a topic for businesses. There is a good interest amongst the attendees
and speakers delivered different and good perspectives on this field of tension
·
Organizations seem to struggle
with the same issues they had ten years ago. Data silos, organizational silos,
inertia. This means that they are still a ways from implementing truly helpful
solutions, because they do not have a strategy, not even talking about a plan.
What is also lacking is the ability to acknowledge culture as an important driver
to achieve this necessary change. This became abundantly clear when the
extremely knowledgeable and persuasive Silvana Buljan had an audience of
just six people for her highly interesting talk about how to use a cultural
transformation program to increase employee satisfaction and then sales.
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