For sale – the holy grail!
I think that over the years I have developed a reputation for providing sound advice and insight as far as all matters TCM and CRM are concerned. I have developed various websites on this topic, created the first DBM/RM discussion list on the Net, spoken at various national and international conferences, written countless articles and been quoted in a number of high profile marketing publications. So please assume for a moment that I know what I am talking about, and follow me to the land of Sonork.
Since CRM came up as a buzzword, I have been looking for proper CRM software. But I couldn’t find any. Why? Because contrary to what vendors and consultants want you to believe, true CRM software still doesn’t exist. And why that? Because CRM is not only about being customer-centric in your thinking and actions, but also about eliminating the guess work and bringing real knowledge about the customer into your decision-making. In other words: customer management is not about more accurate assumptions, derived from some analysis of customer data in your data warehouse, but about true and real-time knowledge of what your customers (even prospects) want RIGHT NOW!
The current CRM and BI tools are fine for many purposes, but hopelessly inadequate for modern marketing communications, because they are still about controlling the customer or her information. But that’s not CRM; that’s merely a more sophisticated form of the same old thing and thinking.
Now what would you say if I offered you a tool that put the customer into the driver’s seat? That would bring you a direct channel to your customer! That would bring you a direct channel to your prospects, too! That will make sure that no matter what piece of information you have to diseminate, it would always (!) reach the targeted audience!
Imagine you wanting to promote a new car or computer or clothing item or book or consulting service or, or, or… and every single person interested in it would be notified of it – the moment you hit the “send” button!
For the past year and a half, I have been working on such a tool, and now it is (almost) ready. Contrary to what you may believe, I have not set up camp in Silicon Valley and obtained gazillions of venture capital funds, nor have I gone public. No, I have dug in my heals right here in South Africa and collaborated with my colleagues in Paraguay and Brazil to develop a professional instant messaging application. South Africa, Paraguay & Brazil – hardly countries you’d think would come up with modern communication software. But as an inquisitive soul free of prejudices, this doesn’t bother you, and it better be not, because this ignorance could cost you dearly!
Called Sonork, the software allows you to create and control your own instant messaging (short: IM) network within less than 15 minutes. Sure, e-mail is cool – less so a portal – but IM beats it all. You slap it on a (private and secure) server, make the (branded) client software available to your (online) customers, suppliers, partners & colleagues and communicate with them in real time. Yes, real time as in “now”! You see when they are online, and you can take the opportunity to add a new dimension to your customer interaction or relations with your business partners.
Imagine! No more SPAM, no intrusions, no unauthorised access, no public security risks, just you and them – any time, every time. Fast, relevant and aimed at benefiting through serving rather than exploiting or abusing.
Our solution is secure (up to 1024bit if you are really paranoid), fast, stable, has central administration, broadcasting, groups up to 10 levels deep, connects to MS Access or any ODBC compliant SQL database, HTML based templates for 1001 purposes, and a plug-in architecture that allows you to develop additional services for the client software. Your total customer list can be up to 900.000 users, while it currently supports up to 50.000 concurrently connected customers. “Awesome!”, I hear you say, and darn right you are!
If that’s not good enough, Sonork can be integrated with no effort at all into ASP, PHP or CGI, enhancing your website with IM functionality. Still not enough? Then you will be pleased to hear that you can integrate – yes, fully integrate – Sonork into your existing CRM software or any software you want to pep up with IM capabilities.
Further up I said “almost” ready. The part we are working on is the one where your customers decide what they want to hear from you – a so-called “publish and subscribe” method. They – your customers – are in control. They decide the what, when, how and how often. All you have to do is fill your database with news items, and our software makes sure it is delivered to those – and only those – who have requested such information. This will result in every single bit of diseminated information reaching exactly the audience that it was meant for. “Meant for” not as in the company-centric “I want you to see this” but in customer-centric “I want you to send this to me”. This is simply unheard of!
Trust me – we have been using it for our own internal and external communication during its entire development process and beta testing. The thing is fast, stable and highly flexible. The server software fits onto a single (!) 3.5″ disk and that already includes the client software, which – needless to say – gets preconfigured by the installation routine!
I truly believe that Instant Messaging is the future of permission-based, 1-1 marketing. Therefore I have spent all possible effort and brainspace on making this application as beneficial to all parties as possible. No matter whether you are currently using a simple mail-merge with your email client or a fancy CRM suite to communicate, Sonork is improving on that to an order of magnitude! And best of all, the software is so inexpensive that really nobody can affort not to use it. It’s priced at such a level that you will probably recover the costs for it within less than 24 hours!
If you are interested in this solution, please visit the Sonork website.
