Salesforce.com – behind the times but applauded by the analysts

Tech Target reports today that Salesforce.com is moving customer service into the cloud and allowing integration with communities, discussion groups, forums etc. Whilst the analysts are (yet again) falling victim to the relentless PR machine that is Salesforce.com what this release actually says is two things.

Firstly, they are way behind the times when it comes to innovation in customer service. What SFDC has announced here was actually pioneered by RightNow Technologies and Lithium around 3 years ago. RightNow Service was integrated into the Lithium community platform providing a complete customer experience solution that focuses the overall customer care experience. So why is it news that it’s taken SFDC 3 years to catch up?

Secondly, they still don’t get this whole social media/web 2.0 space. Their approach so far has been to latch themselves onto other people’s ideas and let hubris take over. I particularly liked the comment from SSPA VP Ragsdale – “They’ve done a good job of latching the Salesforce brand with the FaceBook brand”. Many SFDC customers must be truly confused as to what all this means.

Innovation in customer service (or customer experience management as it is rightfully called) is being done elsewhere. Here’s a good example – Greg Gianforte – not spewing out noise or grandstanding, but actually getting out into the field and talking to real customers, listening to real business issues and bringing this back into his organisation.

Ragsdale rightly comments that as many organisations are new to social networking and many of the web 2.0 ideas and need help understanding how to leverage these ideas and technology components – something we’ve been championing at Smart Selling for a while now.