The concept of vendor relationship management isn’t quite new. It’s been around for at least four years as far as I can remember from my earlier work on the subject at the end of 2010. At the outset, I must admit the concept was a little bit lost on me even though I could well imagine that something was brewing in the background. Okay! There CRM systems were somewhat one-way and the vendor – consumer relationship pattern was a little on the top-down side; so what!? One day, a Czech gentleman based in Slovakia gave me a ring and came to my Paris office in order to introduce the concept to me. And it all started to make sense. His angle was a lot more down to earth than what I’d heard on the subject before. Seen through the filter of online dispute resolution (ODR) management, I could well figure out that VRM naturally fits in the overall pattern of this inversion of the traditional relationship with customers, after the past six years of experiments and industrialisation of CRM and customer support on various social platforms (of which I have been an active player in the field). Here is my account of my brief encounter with Zbynēk Loebl, the founder of Youstice (aka “your justice”).

VRM is the new CRM

I think that the introduction of innovations like Youstice may well be a sign that things are moving forward in the right direction… And not only for the end customer I mean, but also for retailers who are concerned that their current level of support isn’t up to scratch and wish to do something about it before their reputation has to suffer from the current state of procrastination and before it’s too late. Here’s a video recording of my brief encounter with the founder of Youstice, Zbynēk Loebl.

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As shown in the above gallery made of screenshots taken from the Youstice.com demo site (which is mimicking an online shop equipped with the youstice plugin), the 3-step process is simple and straightforward (I have taken 12 screen dumps which cover the whole process), even though there may well be a few required adjustments in terms of process, brevity and wording. Anyway, one can easily picture what the solution is bringing in terms of renewal of the vendor-customer relationship