We’re happy to announce that we’ve included a new secure message transport layer in this release. It’s something we’ve been working on for two months. This was a key step before we can go Beta. We’ve also done a fair bit of work improving features needed by the Agent code base to act as a business Agent.
New features in this release:
Remote Agent View – Show relationships for a particular remote Agent.
Landing page redesign – Better front page layout with an explainer video.
Improved signup process – Added a business/organisation route.
Agent type – Agents now learn if other Agents are of type Individual or Organisation.
SMIME transport layer – New secure message transport between Agents.
UI tweaks – The usual list of minor user interface refinements.
Comments and suggestions are most welcome. As always, have fun.
We published our first explainer video today. Making the video was a fun learning experience and an important step in communicating our ideas. You’ll notice it evolved a bit since the earlier script. Hope you like it.
A few random photos of our startup office (geek lair) just after dawn today.
We have views of Lions Head, an office plant (orchid), 802.11n wifi with 3 Airport Express devices to play music on multiple hifi’s, a boardroom table (the hot-desk), a braai area and a bar, access to a beach through a cave and a colony of Dassies living in the rocks.
We still need to get sea kayaks, but we have snorkelling gear… and yes, there is wifi on the beach.
This release includes something which we are very proud of: international deployment. We now offer Agent hosting in the UK as well as the US. This shows TrustFabric’s decentralised design. It’s a step towards a fully distributed network of Agents hosted by anybody, anywhere they like. Pretty soon you can host your Agent in a bunker, under the sea.
New features in this release:
International deployment – Choose the a country to host your Agent in (UK or US).
Image API improvements – More secure profile image management.
Updated new Agent create process – Mostly to allow you to choose your hosting location.
Better backups – Some sysadmin work to improve Agent server backups.
UI tweaks – The usual list of minor user interface refinements.
Comments and suggestions are most welcome. As always, have fun.
If you are an existing TrustFabric user, please invite a few of your friends so we can hear their comments and feedback.
I’ve never had a conversation where somebody did not agree VRM is a good idea, but at some point everybody goes: “Ok, the end game is beautiful, but how do we get there? How do you get business and customers to adopt this?”
It’s the boiling the ocean question. What will drive VRM adoption?
Towards the end of VRM+CRM 2010, Doc mentioned that the move to VRM is inevitable.. we just have to keep pushing and figure out how it happens.. or, something like that.
Soon after that I had a chat with Adriana in London about VRM drivers. We talked about:
Customers
People are frustrated in their interactions with big business. They want efficient shortcuts. They would rather tweet about a problem than phone a call centre. I see a natural evolution from CRM to sCRM to VRM+CRM.
Businesses
Businesses are slowly realising that they need to sell things people want, and people talk to each other. Reputation is important. Customer experience is important. They don’t want frustrated customers publicly complaining about bad experiences. They would rather have a private and personalised channel to deal with a customer in resolving a problem (first).
Media and PR
We need to change some behaviour and we need to educate a large group of people to the idea that an alternative exists.
Regulatory
Governments are only going to get more strict on what businesses can and can’t do with your personal information.
Smart people inside big companies
I suspect “Intrepreneurs” (entrepreneurs inside big companies) will wake up to VRM first and start asking questions like: why do we spend so much money on these big call certres if all our customers hate phoning them. Maybe we need to give more power to our customers.
Who’s going to make the first move?
I think it’s safe to say most of the initiative for VRM will come from starups and/or guerilla projects. Distributed Open Source projects. Nobody wants closed source or centralised VRM. What we really need for VRM to gain momentum is a few Fortune 500 companies to realise the savings they could see by supporting VRM. We only need one (in each industry) to make the first move. Customers will see the value and early adopting businesses will reap the rewards.
