Customer Relationship Management of Vocera Communications

Vocera, Inc. is a wireless communications company headquartered in San Jose, California. It specializes in network-based software systems that provide voice communication for mobile personnel in hospital, retail, hospitality, government, manufacturing and other in-building environments with a dispersed workforce.

Vocera has more than 600 installations in North America, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, ranging in systems with 75 to over 4,000 registered users. Customers include Royal Cornwall Hospitals, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center2, El Camino Hospital3 and the Orange County Public Library.4

Vocera supplies technology for telecommunication via an IEEE 802.11b/g-supported wireless LAN. One of its products is the Vocera Communications Badge, a wearable, hands-free, communication system.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is used to refer to (expensive) software that many organisations have been implementing over the past few years. This is a wrong perception.

CRM is much more than software.

It is an entire business philosophy that aims to coordinate and focus business processes on acquiring, retaining, and servicing customers.

All CRM practitioners emphasize that CRM is not merely a technology - but it certainly does require technology to help coordinate the customer-related activities of the various departments of an organisation. It is largely due to the advances in technology, and the increasing sophistication of the Internet browser that has enabled the modern CRM systems to be so widely deployed.

An area that is overlooked is that of the cultural adoption of CRM. Merely installing a system, and not paying enough attention to the ’soft’ side of the implementation will lead to poor results. Implementers need to make sure that:

* Staff get sufficient training regarding the philosophy behind CRM, as well as
* How to use the new software effectively.

While the early CRM systems were exclusively implemented in large organisations, a number of low-cost hosted CRM applications, as well as (free) open source systems has lowered the costs to such an extent that it is now feasible for small businesses to consider implementing CRM.

CRM - so much is being said, debated, discussed and speculated but sad part is that much of it is more of the same. I guess that's temporary phenomenon because there is little that is available and there are too many to talk about it, another side of the social networking power - gets everyone to talk, share, express, couldn't have been any other way. But I suppose we may re-live the experience of dotcom days, may be in slightly different shades of color. As I said earlier, more than what is being talked about, I'm excited about stuff that is still to be discovered and to be talked about. Here is one of such side-effects of the social CRM revolution - emergence of 'Social Customer Experience Designers' - a creative specialist community that will have power to revolutionize how social technologies are put to use between enterprises and customers.

Almost every small and big marketing company, advertisement company, PR company, even the web development company is morphing itself to become a Social Media or Social Business company. I like it instantly (facebook style). Sometime back I was talking to one of the creative design vendors who has done some work for me on the topic of social CRM. I was innocently telling him what we do, what I see in the market and some other observations. For a while this person kept listening to me with mysterious smile on his face and then came a big surprise to me. He revealed that his company does social CRM consulting also. I always thought that his company is into web designing, log designing, animation and all that stuff but social CRM? I must be sleeping when the world moved over. Anyway, it's never too late. So I reconciled with the fact that it is happening all over the place, happening faster than I would imagine and happening much more than what can be tracked and observed. To test my hypothesis I further did some small study of such companies that I thought are into pure play brick and mortar publishing, marketing etc. and I was not sure if they would have anything on social consulting, social business designing etc. But I realized that more than 80% of such companies have already moved over to their 'social' powered avataar. So I think even before enterprises could get ready to digest the social technology soup, world is getting full of services with entire 9-course meal on social stuff.

Now before you think that I'm being a cynical, having self-entertainment here, let me connect this observation to my prediction. Fast forward the social stuff to another 3-4 years and what you will find? We will have thousands of social tools, platforms etc. floating around, possibly many of them free of cost and amidst all of that enterprises struggling to cross the line beyond the commoditized social CRM maturity (social communities, CRM integration and horrifying social analytics etc.). Some smart enterprises will figure out how to creatively design few user engagement experiments that offer not only a good enjoyable experience to the customer but also provide opportunity to create mutual value that didn't exist before. Bingo! There begins the real future of the social CRM. As my colleague friend and social CRM enthusiast Harish Kotadia reminded me that it will happen faster than we think, and that will simply mean that competitive battleground on the social platforms will become an intense affair.

So I sincerely believe that value creation in the world of social CRM is going to happen in the customer engagement side, customer experience innovation side. And I tell it to myself that we haven't seen the real social CRM yet, it is yet to begin. To make real social CRM happen, enterprises will need to deep dive into their customer's life, their life-style and tap into their imagination. It is the Social Customer Experience Designers in the enterprise who will have deep understanding of the customer community pulse, who will be the advocate of the customer community and who will design the future of the customer experience ahead of time. That thrills me.

And I would imagine, this Customer Experience Design business is going to be far more complicated, intense and deeper than just being fancy stuff as it might sound. Enterprises to upgrade themselves to Social Enterprises, they will engage such Social Customer Experience Designers to transform their customer experience. There will be much more stronger global knowledge base available about the customer profiles, micro-preferences, micro-behavior phenomenon etc. that we don't have today. These will be used to design the micro-experience differentiators that will change the game. Let me give an early example of what I mean by this micro stuff. I owe this one to Manish Khatri, my colleague friend and a fabulous retail customer experience expert. His take is that when you and I go for shopping on the way from office, we are a different person, having different mindset, different thinking pattern. It makes our buying behavior different than when we go to shopping from home, say with our family. These micro-behavior shifts happening on the same day in different hours of the day renders a traditional retail store ineffective to cater to such fluctuations because they are designed to service the customers with a fixed configuration of customer profile/expectation etc. Changing this design costs lot of dollars and productivity hours for the retail store owner. Given this scenario, a Customer Experience Designer will recommend a cost effective mechanism of engaging with different persona of the same customer using social technologies in form of different greeting mechanisms, differential offers, differential deal and possibly a differential store browsing options. This is where real social business transformation will take place. And that's the reason I strongly believe that it will change the way we do business, it will change the way how customer buy and I guess also redefine the product lines/services of many companies to provide next-gen experience not only of buying but also the experience of the life-style.

I'm keeping a keen eye on it. Let me also highlight that business of customer experience engineering is not new at all. But in the changing context, I think it is going to be far more intensified, specialized, deeper and innovative than it was ever in past. So be prepared to see a mainstream role of the 'Social Customer Experience Designers' all over the place if you are a budding creating customer experience guy and if you are an enterprise, well, it's going to be a really serious stuff, start thinking about it, experimenting ahead of time with it is going to prove its worth.
 
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Vocera, Inc. is a wireless communications company headquartered in San Jose, California. It specializes in network-based software systems that provide voice communication for mobile personnel in hospital, retail, hospitality, government, manufacturing and other in-building environments with a dispersed workforce.

Vocera has more than 600 installations in North America, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, ranging in systems with 75 to over 4,000 registered users. Customers include Royal Cornwall Hospitals, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center2, El Camino Hospital3 and the Orange County Public Library.4

Vocera supplies technology for telecommunication via an IEEE 802.11b/g-supported wireless LAN. One of its products is the Vocera Communications Badge, a wearable, hands-free, communication system.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is used to refer to (expensive) software that many organisations have been implementing over the past few years. This is a wrong perception.

CRM is much more than software.

It is an entire business philosophy that aims to coordinate and focus business processes on acquiring, retaining, and servicing customers.

All CRM practitioners emphasize that CRM is not merely a technology - but it certainly does require technology to help coordinate the customer-related activities of the various departments of an organisation. It is largely due to the advances in technology, and the increasing sophistication of the Internet browser that has enabled the modern CRM systems to be so widely deployed.

An area that is overlooked is that of the cultural adoption of CRM. Merely installing a system, and not paying enough attention to the ’soft’ side of the implementation will lead to poor results. Implementers need to make sure that:

* Staff get sufficient training regarding the philosophy behind CRM, as well as
* How to use the new software effectively.

While the early CRM systems were exclusively implemented in large organisations, a number of low-cost hosted CRM applications, as well as (free) open source systems has lowered the costs to such an extent that it is now feasible for small businesses to consider implementing CRM.

CRM - so much is being said, debated, discussed and speculated but sad part is that much of it is more of the same. I guess that's temporary phenomenon because there is little that is available and there are too many to talk about it, another side of the social networking power - gets everyone to talk, share, express, couldn't have been any other way. But I suppose we may re-live the experience of dotcom days, may be in slightly different shades of color. As I said earlier, more than what is being talked about, I'm excited about stuff that is still to be discovered and to be talked about. Here is one of such side-effects of the social CRM revolution - emergence of 'Social Customer Experience Designers' - a creative specialist community that will have power to revolutionize how social technologies are put to use between enterprises and customers.

Almost every small and big marketing company, advertisement company, PR company, even the web development company is morphing itself to become a Social Media or Social Business company. I like it instantly (facebook style). Sometime back I was talking to one of the creative design vendors who has done some work for me on the topic of social CRM. I was innocently telling him what we do, what I see in the market and some other observations. For a while this person kept listening to me with mysterious smile on his face and then came a big surprise to me. He revealed that his company does social CRM consulting also. I always thought that his company is into web designing, log designing, animation and all that stuff but social CRM? I must be sleeping when the world moved over. Anyway, it's never too late. So I reconciled with the fact that it is happening all over the place, happening faster than I would imagine and happening much more than what can be tracked and observed. To test my hypothesis I further did some small study of such companies that I thought are into pure play brick and mortar publishing, marketing etc. and I was not sure if they would have anything on social consulting, social business designing etc. But I realized that more than 80% of such companies have already moved over to their 'social' powered avataar. So I think even before enterprises could get ready to digest the social technology soup, world is getting full of services with entire 9-course meal on social stuff.

Now before you think that I'm being a cynical, having self-entertainment here, let me connect this observation to my prediction. Fast forward the social stuff to another 3-4 years and what you will find? We will have thousands of social tools, platforms etc. floating around, possibly many of them free of cost and amidst all of that enterprises struggling to cross the line beyond the commoditized social CRM maturity (social communities, CRM integration and horrifying social analytics etc.). Some smart enterprises will figure out how to creatively design few user engagement experiments that offer not only a good enjoyable experience to the customer but also provide opportunity to create mutual value that didn't exist before. Bingo! There begins the real future of the social CRM. As my colleague friend and social CRM enthusiast Harish Kotadia reminded me that it will happen faster than we think, and that will simply mean that competitive battleground on the social platforms will become an intense affair.

So I sincerely believe that value creation in the world of social CRM is going to happen in the customer engagement side, customer experience innovation side. And I tell it to myself that we haven't seen the real social CRM yet, it is yet to begin. To make real social CRM happen, enterprises will need to deep dive into their customer's life, their life-style and tap into their imagination. It is the Social Customer Experience Designers in the enterprise who will have deep understanding of the customer community pulse, who will be the advocate of the customer community and who will design the future of the customer experience ahead of time. That thrills me.

And I would imagine, this Customer Experience Design business is going to be far more complicated, intense and deeper than just being fancy stuff as it might sound. Enterprises to upgrade themselves to Social Enterprises, they will engage such Social Customer Experience Designers to transform their customer experience. There will be much more stronger global knowledge base available about the customer profiles, micro-preferences, micro-behavior phenomenon etc. that we don't have today. These will be used to design the micro-experience differentiators that will change the game. Let me give an early example of what I mean by this micro stuff. I owe this one to Manish Khatri, my colleague friend and a fabulous retail customer experience expert. His take is that when you and I go for shopping on the way from office, we are a different person, having different mindset, different thinking pattern. It makes our buying behavior different than when we go to shopping from home, say with our family. These micro-behavior shifts happening on the same day in different hours of the day renders a traditional retail store ineffective to cater to such fluctuations because they are designed to service the customers with a fixed configuration of customer profile/expectation etc. Changing this design costs lot of dollars and productivity hours for the retail store owner. Given this scenario, a Customer Experience Designer will recommend a cost effective mechanism of engaging with different persona of the same customer using social technologies in form of different greeting mechanisms, differential offers, differential deal and possibly a differential store browsing options. This is where real social business transformation will take place. And that's the reason I strongly believe that it will change the way we do business, it will change the way how customer buy and I guess also redefine the product lines/services of many companies to provide next-gen experience not only of buying but also the experience of the life-style.

I'm keeping a keen eye on it. Let me also highlight that business of customer experience engineering is not new at all. But in the changing context, I think it is going to be far more intensified, specialized, deeper and innovative than it was ever in past. So be prepared to see a mainstream role of the 'Social Customer Experience Designers' all over the place if you are a budding creating customer experience guy and if you are an enterprise, well, it's going to be a really serious stuff, start thinking about it, experimenting ahead of time with it is going to prove its worth.

Wow anjali, it is really great work to share marketing strategies of Vocera Communications and i am sure it would help many other people. Well, i am also sharing some important information on Vocera Communications.
 

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