Why is it still so hard to keep your contacts and relationships organized? From rolodexes to filofaxes to Personal Information Managers (PIM’s) to social media to mobile organizers, nothing has evolved over the decades to make this task easier. In fact, it seems like it has gotten harder.
We seem to be gaining more contacts faster as our networks expand and the pace of change in our lives quickens. The nature of those relationships is becoming more complex beyond the family, friends and coworkers buckets. The technologies and services we are using are wide ranging with contacts and calendars in mobile phones, multiple email boxes, numerous social networks, online apps and spreadsheets.
I call this Personal CRM, the management of contact and calendar information. You may know CRM as Customer Relationship Management, a series of business practices and technologies to manage customers. Rather than managing customers, I view Personal CRM as a way to better manage the sea of relationships and everyday interactions to better organize your life and gain more control over your time. The end result is more focus on things that matter most, your goals and ambitions, instead of administrative distractions.
That is a tall order. Fred Wilson touched this very topic in his desire for a Family CRM. Similar concept, but focused more on managing the Christmas and birthday card lists. Most of the suggestions on his blog were typical of feature focus and techie overkill, totally missing the mark. Despite this, I still hold out hope.
For Personal CRM to work, there are five challenges that must be addressed:
Mobile first – Everyone has a mobile phone. It does not even matter whether it is a dumb phone or a smart phone, as long as it can send and receive information. Mobile has become an extension of our lives. It has our most important contacts, captures our interactions whether calls, texts, IM’s or emails, and is with us 24 hours a day.
Dead simple – Most technologies are so complex that people give up using it before even beginning. User experience and design has become king in the consumer space as more and more web services push the limits of technology to produce websites that are both beautiful and easy to use. No manual is required in the new age of technology.
Minimal data entry – This ties into the last point, but focused more on the entry of information. It needs to be as easy as writing a text or Tweet. If there is information it can capture from other sources behind the scenes, better still. The key is that the user does not have to drastically alter behavior to achieve enhanced productivity.
Interactive – Stale data is the death knell of CRM. The problem is that the data first enters clean and current. Over time, data quality degrades and the system becomes used less and less until it is completely worthless. Being interactive allows that system to monitor changes to data proactively and continuously to keep the data fresh.
Integrated – Having contacts and interactions is useful, but people want to do real things with this information. Sending cards and invitations, organizing groups, sharing information and other activities is what ushered in the era social media. In the same way, many different services would connect seamlessly allowing people to do useful things.
I have seen some promising attempts at this idea of Personal CRM. Rapportive, Gist, Etacts and Meshin are all trying to innovate in this area of Personal CRM and each has brought some interesting features to light. They each touch upon the first three challenges, but it will take some time to develop the last two challenges. There is still a lot of room in this space though and I would be greatly interested in hearing about other innovative solutions in this space, so if you see or hear of something, let me know!
