Social Crm | Small Business Marketing & Business Acceleration

5 Meaningful Shifts Shaping Marketing Right Now

Posted on 10. May, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social crm, Social Media

Trends are funny. In some cases they jump up out of nowhere and demand to be noticed. In other cases, in fact in most cases, they bubble up over a long period, kick around in other industries and finally get realized by a larger group as relevant to their current way of life.

Orbiter7 via Flickr

But trends are also terribly misleading because they are often overstated and simplified and tend to focus on a tool rather than the underlying behavior. Think about when Twitter got hot. Everyone talked about the tool, but few realized that it was simply the embodiment of a way to communicate that people were looking for. Understanding that shift allowed some to take advantage of the behavior rather than the tool and this put them miles ahead of the trend.

Today I want to talk about five shifts that I see making an impact right now on both the way we go to market and the way the market comes to us.

1) Little Commitments

Generic information overload is causing a real bottleneck for marketers. We’ve been told over and over again to produce content, but now the competition for content is choking, rather than informing, our prospects.

Our prospects don’t have or won’t take the time to learn all about our great solutions even if it’s in their best interest to do so. Our job now is to offer them little pieces of information that move them ever so slightly in the direction of personalizing their experience with us.

Tools like the pop up survey from Kiss Insights, a guided content path created by using WordPress plugin Survey Funnel, a guided tour using a tool like WalkMe or the ability to present dynamically relevant content through a tool like GetSmartContent will become increasingly important as ways to filter our own content and create more personalized trust building experiences.

2) Video SEO

One of the most dramatic changes in Google’s indexing of local business pertains to video. Right now a local business has a better chance of ranking for highly relevant search terms using YouTube hosted, highly optimized videos than any other approach.

Smart marketers are serializing their most important keyword phrases and frequently asked questions using video and optimizing these videos through specific file names, descriptions, keywords and transcripts.

Using a tool like Traffic Geyser also makes it easier to spread these videos to other video sharing sites in order to garner further traffic and links.

3) Visual Scanning

One needs looks no further than the current hype of Pinterest or the $1Billion dollar sale of photo sharing site Instagram to witness the visual scanning behavior impact. These sites soared in popularity in large part due to information overload and the stimulation caused by visual interest.

It is far easier to look at a thousand pictures than to consume a thousand words.

To me this doesn’t simply mean jump on the Pinterest bandwagon. It signals a behavior that must be adopted rather than a tool. We must start offering visual scanning of our brands by using images in all that we do.

Get in the habit of taking photos of your world and your customer’s world each and every day.

When we post a status update or amplify a recent blog post on Facebook upload an image and describe the image rather than simply using the blog post thumbnail. In addition to added visual impact, Facebook favors images over most other content and will show your post to more followers.

Use a tool like Postagram that allows you to turn Instragram photos into higher quality photo postcards. Imagine the impact of meeting with a client, snapping a photo and sending them a personalized photo thank you card. Or what about sending your client a postcard of the product you’re building just for them?

4) The Digital Persona

Market research folks have long talked about uncovering the rare combination of factors that lead to fully understanding what a market needs, wants, and believes. Much of this information can be gleaned from demographic and psychographic research, but few things have produced more relevant research into the actual demonstrated behavior of a market than the trail of clues our prospects leave every day online.

In many cases researches now have verified proof that what markets say and what they do online are not always the same thing and this important digital aspect must be one that is considered in the make up of our ideal customer profile.

At the very least we must add browser plugins like Rapportive that give us social media data on the people we interact with to our communication toolset.

We must make our CRM systems understand social behavior and score, nurture and move our leads forward using this data.

We must start to create prospect and client personas that include digital behavior clues.

5) ROBO

Few things have had a more dramatic impact on local business than the behavior to research online to buy offline (ROBO) that is practiced by an approaching 90% of all adults as a way to find local products and services.

What this means is that we must expand the way we think about our website far beyond the means to provide information. Our website must become a tool to drive online searchers and visitors offline into our stores, into our presentation and into our Meetups.

Our websites must feature local call to action tools such as downloadable coupons, samples and trials. We must add and use click to call, schedule or chat functionality that allows for instant engagement.

We must think of ways to create our own offline communities and build these communities with online tools such as LinkedIn Groups, MeetUps or even creating our own leads and referral groups using a tool like LocalBase.

Each new and accepted tactic brings with it corresponding changes in behavior and impact that can only be seen by paying close attention to the underlying shifts rather than focusing on the latest hype.

Please Aggravate Me: Is Gamifying Customer Service a Reality

Posted on 28. Mar, 2012 by Lisa Loeffler in Blog, Customer Service, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social crm, Social Media Staffing and Operations

Lisa Loeffler (@LisaMLoeffler) is Research & Analysis Lead at Convince & Convert. She is also founder and principal of Genuine Media, a marketing agency that helps clients build their individual and brand reputation through social media.

We all know waiting on hold for-EV-ver on the phone, or standing in a l–o–n–g line, are a few of life’s most unpleasant, time sucking experiences.

Recently I needed to change a flight with United Airlines.

In the interest of time, I went to their website and logged into my account to make the change.

Unfortunately, I received an error message when I went to change my flight. I was then directed to the United Reservations toll free number to make changes to my itinerary.

So I grabbed my iPhone, dialed United, and heard this recorded message:

Thanks for calling United Airlines. We have been experiencing higher than normal call volumes over the last several days. To avoid the long hold times for a customer agent please consider using our self-service options on United.com or calling back later if you’re not traveling in the next 72 hours. (Listen here)

Oh… the thick irony.

After answering four or five questions, I was placed on hold 22 minutes or so before reaching a live agent.

During my initial hold time I heard music, information about United Airlines, and sometimes-long periods of COMPLETE silence, making me wonder, “Have I been disconnected?”

In all, it took one hour…17 minutes…33 seconds for the CSR to work with another department to see if the flight I needed was available, get an updated ticket price, rebook the flight, and complete the transaction.

While the United Airlines CSR was very pleasant and thankful for my patience, I couldn’t help but think how can people’s time spent waiting on hold be more pleasant and fruitful, both to the customer and to the brand?

Leveraging the “On Hold” Experience

Over the last several years we’ve gamified checking in (Foursquare), eating and drinking (Foodspotting), investing in human beings (Empire Avenue), and many other categories.

What if we took it to another level and gamified customers’ live call interactions with CSRs (customer service reps) to help palliate customers’ on hold experience, as well as allow companies to benefit and receive a cost savings?

We Might Hate the Players, But We Don’t Hate the Game

Social games have become the online version of popular reality TV shows – having an astounding impact on our leisure and down time.

According to a report focusing on online casual and social games from market research firm Newzoo, 126 million Americans, or 87% of the 145 million U.S. gamers ages 10 to 65, play games on social networks or casual game websites.

And in a Gartner Research Report, it’s estimated by 2015 that more than 50% of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes.

So with Americans already willfully engaging in casual gaming, doesn’t it make sense for brands to gamify their customer service call center experiences to leverage an activity customers clearly (and already) enjoy?

Brands could reward customers with coupons, miles or points for their ‘waiting on hold’ time investment.

Something like what TopGuest is doing for hotel guests – rewarding customers when they check in to properties – or how Virgin America’s Elevate program rewards their customers with miles by checking in when they arrive at the airport.

3 Ideas for Gamifying Customer Service

Here are a few ideas and benefits around how the waiting on hold experience could be more fun and rewarding for customers:

1. Rewards for Waiting on Hold

Borrowing from AMEX’s recent “Tweet Your Way To Savings” program, companies could gamify the ‘waiting on hold’ experience based on their customers social media engagement or social kudos they drive (or post) while they’re on hold.

While customers are on hold brands could pipe in key messages through the phone that customers could post to their Twitter account (or other social media accounts) with a matching program hashtag (to get credit).

After you’ve synced up your Twitter account (or other social media accounts) with the program – every time you Tweet (or post) the hashtag – points or miles are added to your account, or promotions and coupons could be emailed directly to a customer’s inbox.
A program could be hyper-customized by allowing customers to pick the reward they want to tweet (or post) with the corresponding hashtag, giving customers exactly what they want.

2. Rewards for Using Self-Service Channels

Want to save your organization precious “human CSR capital?” Drive customers to your website, email, forums and robust, highly searchable FAQ to answer questions in event they may not need immediate help solving or the use of a live person.

Again offer points, discounts, or miles to reward customers for using self-service online channels instead of clogging up live support with simple questions that can easily be answered online.

3. Fantasy Dashboard: The Customer vs. the CSR

This is a pie in the sky idea and I’m doubtful any brand would develop such a model – but who knows, this may be something we see in the future. A gamer can dream!

Perhaps a brand could launch a game customers play while they are waiting on hold. Maybe off the idea on the newly popular PS3 game Journey.

The game plot: While you’re on hold you travel through a mysterious desert toward a mountain peak that juts out in the far landscape – it seems hopelessly unreachable (see where I’m going with this?). Along the way you are provided tastefully placed product reveals and promotions and must grapple barriers and tasks that delay you from making it to the top of the mountain. Oh my! Then… all of the sudden… the CSR comes on the other end of the phone and you reach the peak.

Customers’ scores could be positioned against each other (based on time on call) and top scorers could be eligible for additional prizes, promotions, and savings.

The main issue with this idea, however, is that it may drive MORE people to want to play the “I’m on hold trying to reach the mountain” game.

7 Customer Service Gamification Benefits

Like other gamifying benefits, gaming customers’ ‘waiting on hold’ time could provide:

Decreased Complaints - With one in five customers expecting a response within one hour on Twitter or Facebook, gamifying or rewarding a customer service experience will lessen the burden your community manager has to carry and potentially increase positive social media and online reviews.
Increased Loyalty - Gamification of customer service will drive engagement and brand loyalty.
Increased Product Knowledge - As customers play the game they learn more about your brand’s products.
Leads – Introduce customers to new products or promotions based on their previous searches on your website or through programs they’ve enrolled into with your brand.
Word of Mouth (WOM) - Customers who have a pleasant experience while engaging with your brand, even while waiting on hold, may have the propensity to share it with their friends.
Measurement - If you’re tracking what your customers are saying, what they’re sharing, reposting and retweeting, you’ll be able to measure a gamification program as well. If you’re driving users to a custom platform you’ll also be able to measure unique visits, page views per visitor, time on site, depth of visit, participation
Fun – While it’s not easily measured, incorporating the fun factor – especially while customers are on hold – is going to improve their experience, as well as the experience of your CSRs, if the customer has experienced a long hold time.

What ideas do you have that could make waiting on hold more fun and rewarding for the customer experience?

It’s About Response, Not Engagement

Posted on 25. Oct, 2011 by Jeff Molander in Blog, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social crm, Social Media Book, social media books, social media marketing

Guest post by Jeff Molander, Author of the new book, Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You
and adjunct professor, Loyola University Business School. He blogs at http://www.jeffmolander.com/blog/.

We’re all listening, engaging, sharing, posting, updating. But with what business outcome in mind? When we say engagement, might we really mean “prolonged attention?”? And if so, is engaging taking full advantage of the social media opportunity?

I’ve met a handful of successful ‘social sellers’ while researching my book. And they all told me the same thing: The key is to engage in ways that provokes behavior… acts that reveal insights on customers pains or desires. Then, funneling those insights into marketing programs that exploit those insights in ways that produce sales. And that’s what direct response marketing is all about.

David Oglivy himself said, “You direct response people know what kind of advertising works and what doesn’t work. You know it to a dollar. The general advertising people don’t know.”

Over forty years ago Ogilvy predicted a collision between direct response and advertising that is actually happening right now. In February of 2009, two advertising industry giants finally caved and said, “There is no longer a linear model of consumer behavior. The concept of AIDA (awareness, interest, desire, action) is now spaghetti. Direct response no longer exists at the end of the purchase funnel. Thanks to the digitization of everything, brand and response are now intertwined.”

Those two men were Daniel Morel, CEO of Wunderman, and John Gerzema, chief insights officer of Young and Rubicam Group. The heads of these massive global advertising agencies went on to proclaim, “To rebuild brand value, direct response can play a vital role…we have the tools, technology, data, and knowledge to learn, adapt, customize, and respond to stimulate not only sales, but contribute in building loyalty and affinity for the brand.”

Behavior Trumps Engagement

Yes, trust and listening to customers has always been required. But engaging with quality content is not enough. You’ve got to provoke customers to respond in ways that generate inquiries and questions you can help them solve. Understanding buyers’ motivations (and working with them) has always been the secret to success—since man invented the idea of selling.

Could the key to selling things with social media be, at the core, getting back to basics?

70% of Companies Ignore Customer Complaints on Twitter

Posted on 11. Oct, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social crm, social listening, social media monitoring, social media operations, social media research, Social Media Staffing and Operations

Despite increasing numbers of customers using Twitter to publicly complain about brands, the vast majority of companies respond in the exact same way….with the quiet of contempt.

New research from Maritz and Evolve24 of 1,298 Twitter complainants found that only 29% of those tweet gripes were replied to by the companies in question.

This is a direction of duty, in my estimation. As we discussed in The NOW Revolution, brands must look at these new channels as the “social telephone” and ignoring these 140 character cries for help is a flawed decision for two reasons.

First, responding to Twitter complaints can turn lemons into lemonade. The Maritz study found that 83% of the complainants that received a reply liked or loved the fact that the company responded. This is irrespective of how, when or why the response came. Think about that. Just the fact that the company acknowledged the problem and showed it was listening improved customer psychology 83% of the time.

“What is striking about these findings is the strong degree to which consumers want to be engaged online to have their issues addressed,” says Anthony Sardella, senior vice president and managing director at evolve24. “They are clearly seeking to have a greater voice in the customer service process and see social media as a streamlined means for resolution of their issues.”

Second, the people that are using Twitter to complain are already disproportionately upset. Previous research from ExactTarget called Twitter X-Factors showed that fewer than 1% of customers use Twitter as their first stop in problem resolution. In almost every case, the people complaining on Twitter are doing so because your company already failed to satisfy them in one or more traditional customer service channels.

Let’s see if I have this right. Angry customers just looking for a sympathetic ear, shouting about it in a public forum. That does not seem to me to be an equation that 70% of companies should ignore.

Why The Social Telephone Goes Unanswered

In my consulting work with mid-sized and large brands, I find two primary reasons why companies purposefully ignore complaints and fail to answer the social telephone.

Fear. Companies literally believe (and I hear this exact phrase all the time) that they’d like to get involved but are afraid the conversation will turn negative in social media, and that answering gives greater exposure to complaints. Here’s the deal. If your company sucks, Twitter is the least of your worries. Social media doesn’t create negativity, it puts a magnifying glass to it. Twitter doesn’t make people more upset, it makes them less upset (if you respond) – especially women 35+ who are disproportionately delighted to get a response on Twitter from a brand.

Resources. It’s true that social media doesn’t close at 5pm, and in fact many customers use social media during the night and on weekends, when it may be inconvenient for you to monitor and reply. But your corporate convenience is not the prism through which you should be gazing upon social business. There was a time when grocery stores closed at 10pm, catalog call centers weren’t open on the weekend, and the only companies that had websites were in porn. But the world has changed – not to throw a wrench into your carefully crafted staffing and resource allocation model – but because the needs and desires of your customers have changed.

Customer Satisfaction with Operating Efficiencies

Also recognize that while you may need to expand your “paying attention” windows to meet the new customer expectations social media has wrought, you can also handle customer issues with greater efficiency. Sure, you only have 140 characters to reply, but your customer only has 140 characters to gripe. Do you think Comcast does Twitter customer service solely because they are nice guys and/or want to get newspaper coverage about doing so? They do Twitter customer service because it’s more efficient than telephone or email customer service.

This isn’t that hard. This is not out of reach for 70% of companies. You need to listen, respond, and triage. I know they just look like tiny little heads floating across your computer, but these are real people. They are your customers. They are pissed off. Your silence is deafening.

70% of Companies Ignore Customer Complaints on Twitter

Posted on 11. Oct, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social crm, social listening, social media monitoring, social media operations, social media research, Social Media Staffing and Operations

Despite increasing numbers of customers using Twitter to publicly complain about brands, the vast majority of companies respond in the exact same way….with the quiet of contempt.

New research from Maritz and Evolve24 of 1,298 Twitter complainants found that only 29% of those tweet gripes were replied to by the companies in question.

This is a dereliction of duty, in my estimation. As we discussed in The NOW Revolution, brands must look at these new channels as the “social telephone” and ignoring these 140 character cries for help is a flawed decision for two reasons.

First, responding to Twitter complaints can turn lemons into lemonade. The Maritz study found that 83% of the complainants that received a reply liked or loved the fact that the company responded. This is irrespective of how, when or why the response came. Think about that. Just the fact that the company acknowledged the problem and showed it was listening improved customer psychology 83% of the time.

“What is striking about these findings is the strong degree to which consumers want to be engaged online to have their issues addressed,” says Anthony Sardella, senior vice president and managing director at evolve24. “They are clearly seeking to have a greater voice in the customer service process and see social media as a streamlined means for resolution of their issues.”

Second, the people that are using Twitter to complain are already disproportionately upset. Previous research from ExactTarget called Twitter X-Factors showed that fewer than 1% of customers use Twitter as their first stop in problem resolution. In almost every case, the people complaining on Twitter are doing so because your company already failed to satisfy them in one or more traditional customer service channels.

Let’s see if I have this right. Angry customers just looking for a sympathetic ear, shouting about it in a public forum. That does not seem to me to be an equation that 70% of companies should ignore.

Why The Social Telephone Goes Unanswered

In my consulting work with mid-sized and large brands, I find two primary reasons why companies purposefully ignore complaints and fail to answer the social telephone.

Fear. Companies literally believe (and I hear this exact phrase all the time) that they’d like to get involved but are afraid the conversation will turn negative in social media, and that answering gives greater exposure to complaints. Here’s the deal. If your company sucks, Twitter is the least of your worries. Social media doesn’t create negativity, it puts a magnifying glass to it. Twitter doesn’t make people more upset, it makes them less upset (if you respond) – especially women 35+ who are disproportionately delighted to get a response on Twitter from a brand.

Resources. It’s true that social media doesn’t close at 5pm, and in fact many customers use social media during the night and on weekends, when it may be inconvenient for you to monitor and reply. But your corporate convenience is not the prism through which you should be gazing upon social business. There was a time when grocery stores closed at 10pm, catalog call centers weren’t open on the weekend, and the only companies that had websites were in porn. But the world has changed – not to throw a wrench into your carefully crafted staffing and resource allocation model – but because the needs and desires of your customers have changed.

Customer Satisfaction with Operating Efficiencies

Also recognize that while you may need to expand your “paying attention” windows to meet the new customer expectations social media has wrought, you can also handle customer issues with greater efficiency. Sure, you only have 140 characters to reply, but your customer only has 140 characters to gripe. Do you think Comcast does Twitter customer service solely because they are nice guys and/or want to get newspaper coverage about doing so? They do Twitter customer service because it’s more efficient than telephone or email customer service.

This isn’t that hard. This is not out of reach for 70% of companies. You need to listen, respond, and triage. I know they just look like tiny little heads floating across your computer, but these are real people. They are your customers. They are pissed off. Your silence is deafening.

Why Critics of Klout Are Missing the Big Picture

Posted on 11. Sep, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, database marketing, Klout, Paul Gillin, Peter Shankman, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social crm, social media marketing

Other than signing book deals, the favorite sport of the social media punditry these days seems to be bashing Klout.

The pugilists are plentiful, and appear to be trying to win a merit badge for dismissiveness. The most recent example was from B2B social media thinker Paul Gillin who wrote a post unveiling the flaws in Klout’s ranking scheme. Paul Gillin is a smart, experienced guy (and I like his book) and he raised some valid points about how participatory breadth (having an account on a LOT of social networks) can increase Klout score – perhaps disproportionately.

Gillin is sharp enough to see the underlying challenge of trying to attach a number to something as amorphous as online influence, and point it out to his readers. In fairness, Klout sees that challenge too, and has in my estimation always been very open to discussing it. I’ve seen Klout engage with a large number of bloggers and talking heads openly and honestly (without of course revealing the algorithmic secret sauce).

But most social media types aren’t Paul Gillin. Instead, they object to the very notion and existence of Klout. “How dare a company try to put a number on influence!” they shout. “It’s a bastardization! An impossibility! A farce!”

Offline Influence Doesn’t Have an Algorithm

Their slam on Klout is typically rooted in the fact that Klout doesn’t account for people’s offline influence (or even digital influence that isn’t expressed in social media). As Gillin pointed out, the fact that his own Klout score is markedly higher than Marc Andreessen’s (founder of Netscape) means Klout isn’t the “standard of influence” its tagline professes it to be. As a side note, if Klout just changed their tagline from “the standard of influence” to the more accurate “the standard of audience” it would take the tea kettle off the burner for a lot of people. Side note #2: it’s a bit of a straw man argument too, since Andreessen appears to have tweeted twice, ever.

But the reality is that Klout can only measure data points, and there’s no mathematical formula that says “give extra credit if the dude invented Netscape.” And guess what? You know who else doesn’t use offline factors in their scoring mechanism (because it’s impossible)? Google, which “ranks” Web pages. Facebook, which “ranks” status updates via EdgeRank. And Twitter, which “ranks” tweets to determine trending topics.

While we’re on the topic of crimes against math, let’s examine Nielsen ratings, which are used to set prices for billions of dollars of television advertising in this country. The research I did for The NOW Revolution found that in 2009 there were 1,147,910 households with a TV in metropolitan Charlotte. Number of Nielsen households among them? 619. That’s not math, that’s folly. Yet we’re not writing blog posts about Nielsen being an abomination.

How about Compete.com or Quantcast.com? We routinely quote website traffic figures from these services, despite the fact that site owners often say discrepancies are very large indeed.

My point, however, is not that Klout gets a free pass because we’ve willingly accepted other scoring mechanisms that have shortcomings. But I do find it interesting that reaction to Klout is so visceral, and that is of course because what it purports to measure is by definition personal. If CSI: Provo (or whatever city is next) gets a better rating than Law & Order: Illegal Left Turn you’ll likely do no more than shrug your shoulders. But realize that your Klout score is unexpectedly high or low, and you instantly go supernova because it’s not measuring Hollywood’s increasingly feeble attempt to entertain us en mass, it’s ostensibly measuring some dimension of YOU.

Do I wish Klout was more accurate and had fewer holes and could somehow magically incorporate all dimensions of our life into an airtight formula? Yes. I also wish everyone had a job, and enough to eat, and that tequila was rightly viewed as the most interesting of all spirits, instead of as a dorm room disaster. But we can’t have everything.

Influence Measures Help Business Create Order From Chaos

If Klout gets more sophisticated and more accurate, terrific. Even if it doesn’t, however, the anti-Klout brigade typically leaves out a major point in their argument, which is that companies desperately want this kind of data point.

The smart money in the next five years in social media is not in the provision of information but rather in the interpretation of it. When every company of consequence has a free and open API, data becomes a commodity. Insights are never commoditized.

Not only do companies want this kind of influence radar, they also need it. Much (too much, actually) was made of the Peter Shankman/Morton’s Steakhouse stunt a few weeks ago. So much so that people (presumably sober) proclaimed that this was the future of marketing. I don’t believe that to be true, but I do accept the premise that at some level many companies will move to a real-time mindset, scanning the interwebs looking for an opportunity to turn a customer into an advocate, or placate an angry shopper, or offer the just-in-time bon mot that turns a prospect into a sale.

How the hell does that work without something like Klout? It simply doesn’t.

Customers aren’t treated equally, and they never have been. Why do you think billions are invested every year in loyalty programs (tiered treatment) and credit scores (tiered treatment)? Why does Bob the house painter not get a steak from Morton’s delivered at the airport? Companies have to deliver the right type and amount of love to the right person at the right time. Especially now, when every customer is a potential reporter. You think Southwest Airlines would have liked a data feed that automatically appended Klout scores to passenger manifests before they kicked Kevin Smith off a flight? Damn right they would.

The problem is when companies use Klout or something similar blindly. Klout – and any algorithm-derived data point – should be used directionally and for trending purposes, not adhered to slavishly. It’s one piece of information that needs to be combined with (ideally) several others to do social CRM well. After all, the most important thing to know isn’t online “influence” but historical relationship between that customer and your company, and their corresponding lifetime value. I fear not that Klout is so inaccurate as to be baseless. I fear that lazy companies use it as a replacement for sound CRM and database marketing initiatives that bolt together multiple data points for better business intelligence. (Admittedly, doing this well isn’t easy today, although companies like janrain are getting there fast, and certainly SalesForce is eyeing it big-time with their Radian6 acquisition).

Whether the score is ultimately powered by Klout, someone else, or a cabal of competing providers isn’t the issue, and is of little importance. What’s important is to recognize that more and more and more and more of our behaviors (with whom we interact, what we read, even what restaurants we like now that Google has bought Zagat) occur online and often with the social media realm. And if companies are going to succeed in a chaotic, real-time environment, they need some mechanism – even a flawed one – to triage promotion and reaction.

So yeah, Klout isn’t perfect. But instead of rehashing the same old “look how screwed up their formula is” argument, let’s focus instead on how advanced metrics will enable companies to deliver highly specific interactions with customers based on perceived influence.

(Disclosure: Klout sent me a bunch of free T-shirts we used as a giveaway for our book launch. I have received two or three Klout perks, including a DVD for a truly awful TV show. I am part of a very, very loose advisory group for Klout, for which I am not compensated in any way. Klout has not seen this post, and they did not know it was being written).