Brent Leary Talks Social CRM, the ipad and Retail Experiences with Style

We found Brent Leary at the Social CRM Summit this May in Atlanta and he spent some time with us to talk about his new ipad, if Apple is truly a customer focused company and the state of social crm.

Leary is co-founder of CRM Essentials and has trained thousands of business people on the benefits and best practices of implementing CRM strategies and technologies. Leary has worked with corporate enterprises and government agencies to build programs aimed at educating minority and women owned business on the importance of understanding the positive impact of CRM.

Leary is optimistic about the industry and particularly excited by brands like Apple who generate communities of superusers to carry the brand and aid in the customer value chain. Apple has a powerful following of advocates devoted to servicing the brand. According to Leary Apple reciprocates to the customer by consistently exceeding expectations. Apple sold over one million ipads in the first 28 days. While Apple is at the forefront of the social media and marketing revolution, most companies still grapple with the sheer amount of unstructured data floating around the web.

While some companies like Apple at the forefront of the social crm revolution most companies are still in the laggard category and have not risen to the occasion.

In his blog Leary recently cited a survey that found 40 percent of customers have no expectation of having their problem resolved. That means four out of every ten people call customer service feeling their problem will not be resolved. Those are sobering numbers.

Leary and his cohort have set out to change the industry. With the recent BPT Partners Social CRM Summit training they might very well do that but there’s a long road ahead.