* 11:12 PM, AdamPlaysYT, a youtube personality, tweets that he needs toilet paper. He known enough to add @virgintrains to the tweet
* 11:14 PM "MW" asks, which coach. Adam answers.
* 11:15 PM a guy in a full black suit brings a toilet roll
Think about all the things that were needed here--
- Adam knew the Virgin Trains twitter ID, @virgintrains
- Virgin had staff monitoring that twitter ID
- That Virgin staff had access to the right resources to ascertain which carriage the loo was located in
- That Virgin staff had the capability to contact staff on that train
- The staff on the train could find someone able to locate a roll of paper and deliver it
The action is all on Virgin's side, so this is really CX (customer experience) and not VRM.
I say CX and not CRM. With a CRM system Virgin Trains would not be "managing" their customer's relationship with their poo. They would know Adam's name and the tickets he bought. This CRM would give them a certain amount of data, insightful reports, etc, but not an ability to answer in real time. Instead, the incident would be analyzed two months after. They would be able to see what happened, and why the brand didn't deliver on the experience (in this case, did not provide an equipped loo, did not answer a tweet), but you couldn't fix it because it happened two months ago.
CX is the rubric for enterprise integrated systems that puts the data into the context of the customer interaction. It gets information to the enterprise, along with access to the required people, at the right time and with the right context, so that action can be taken in real time. I assume Virgin Trains has CX, or some home grown version of it, in order to transition into steps 3 and 4.
(by the way, thanks to Nitin for anything I got right about cx/ce/crm; and blame me for for any errors)
CX is not VRM. How would VRM be different?
- Adam knows he is on a train. His mobile, via his VRooMy data store, knows all the details: current time, route, brand, etc. He only logs in his own "train" store: no toilet roll. The message is forwarded to Virgin, but *without* Virgin seeing that it is Adam calling (using clever crypto).
- Virgin has staff monitoring their tweets, they respond.
- Adam's VRoomY system sends him Virgin's question.
- Adam answers.
- That Virgin staff had the capability to contact staff on that train
- The staff on the train could find someone able to locate a roll of paper and deliver it
- Adam logs a happy sign into his VRooMy. This adds to the reputation of Virgin Trains for Adam himself--the system will prefer booking Virgin in the future--as well
The VRM difference is mostly in the start and end, (1) and (7):
VRM for (1) means that the enterprise does not immediate access to all of the individual's history, contacts, messages, etc, since such data mining gives the enterprise an unfair advantage in future transactions that can be harnessed against the individual in differential pricing.
VRM for (7) means that ordinary people have the ability to accumulate knowledge about their interactions with enterprises over time, in actionable ways: they can remember past exceptional events like this one, pricing trends, and more.
@virgintrains should be proud of their handling here. What a difference a poo makes.
- L