Saturday Morning Reads (Late Edition): Is Social CRM Bringing Companies & Customers Together Yet?
“No company will tell you, ‘I don’t want to be customer centric,’ but do you know the difference between taking an inside-out versus an outside-in approach?” - Ranjay Gulati
An organization’s goal for being social with customers is, presumably, to gain a better understand of what customers want and need. Typically used to warehouse customer data, marketing campaigns, and customer service endeavors, CRM systems now must also capture the social interactions of customers and prospects as well. It is those social interactions— in a natural setting—that will provide organizations with untarnished insights.
More importantly, by drawing the customer closer, the organization will find a refreshing ‘outside-in’ view that leads to budget, resource, and time savings when it comes to new product or service development, customer service and marketing communications.
While Inc. magazine declares 2011 to be the year of Social CRM, we need to question whether or not most organizations have the culture to be social let alone allowing their customers to become an integrated part of their business through social CRM.
Is social CRM bringing companies & customers together in harmony today? Not for most organizations. There is a long road ahead for social CRM to becoming the norm. But when properly constructed and utilized, it is a road that will pay huge dividends—for both organizations and customers.
While it may not be recognized today, the insights social CRM provides are the customer and market dynamics nirvana that most organizations (and marketers) seek.
Social Media Examiner: What is Social CRM?
“In [social CRM] the customer is actually the focal point of how an organization operates. Instead of marketing or pushing messages to customers, brands now talk to and collaborate with customers to solve business problems, empower customers to shape their own experiences and build customer relationships, which will hopefully turn into customer advocates.”
Jacob Morgan: How CRM and Social Media Evolved to Social CRM
“The voice of customers across the social landscape is forcing organizations to take steps to deliver on the original promises of CRM. It’s a great opportunity. Organizations now have the capability (and the mandate) to listen, interact, and respond to their customers and prospects. They also have the capability to create, facilitate, and enable customers and other stakeholders to interact with each other. Social has opened up new infinite opportunities for innovation, co-creation, and customer responsiveness.”
Ray Wang (Altimeter Group): Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management
“Customers continue to adopt social technologies at a blinding speed and organizations are unable to keep up. Social technologies continue to proliferate. Because the conversations about organizations increasingly occur outside of the organization’s control in social channels, organizations need to:
- Discover where the conversations are happening in this new social world.
- Identify who’s influential and if they are customers or not.
- Assess friend or foe status and their willingness to engage
- Determine a tiered approach to engagement or re-engagement.
- Tie social channels to business value and objectives
- Bring the social channel back to existing CRM systems.
- Reallocate resources to support Social CRM efforts
This is the basis for the groundswell in Social CRM. But keep in mind, Social CRM does not replace existing CRM efforts – instead it brings more value to existing efforts and should complement the uber CRM strategy.”
Conversion Marketing Forum: Social CRM and customer-centricity: the social media experts’ point of view
“Adapting a customer-centric philosophy is always something that has to take place throughout the company. A lot of companies struggle while trying to do so, for instance because of departments within the company that act like independent silos from one and another. Customer-centric thinking asks for support from the management, uniform data, integration of platforms and processes, but especially cross-divisional cooperation.”
Conversionation: Social CRM: social media and communities in customer relationship management and marketing
“[McGovern and Zhivago] further write that ‘thousands of customer interviews have convinced them that the ‘company’s list’ and the ‘customer’s list’ are always significantly different – including the items on the list, the specific characteristics of the items on the list, and the priority of the items on the list’.”
Gartner: Social CRM Projects and the Curtain of Doubt
“You will face a wall without slicing up Social CRM into addressable bits. But if you do convince yourself that you do not need everything to be momentous, that there can be greatness in a grain of sand, then you will push through that curtain of doubt and create a self-sustaining culture of measuring each tiny milestone.”
Inc Magazine: 2011: The Year Social CRM Goes Mainstream
“The challenge is that most companies have been wired from the ground up to operate in a world of company-controlled communication, and they’re simply not equipped to engage in conversations. But, the rules have changed,” says Greg Gianforte , founder and CEO of customer experience solutions provider RightNow. ”To be truly conversant with social customers, companies are rewiring their operations to be more customer-centered, more relationship oriented, and more transparent. They’re collaborating across departmental silos, working beyond the capabilities of traditional CRM tools, and weaving social into business as usual. “
The good news is that true Social CRM offers companies a seamless and real-time view across the many different channels that customers converse in, new and old alike (e.g.,Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, chat, phone), Gianforte says. “With this view, companies can truly get to know and proactively care for their customers, ultimately fulfilling their brand promises, the social way.”
[Image source: Chess Media Group]
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Beth,
Interesting post, thanks for sharing. I think it is important to point out that the objectives for organizations to be social with customers do not quite match with the objectives that customers decide to be social with organizations. To truly be outside-in, the customer perspective needs to be the more important priority. Until these two objectives are in alignment, then the benefits of Social CRM will not be realized.
Social CRM is a means to an end – the end is customer experience, positive and fulfilling for the customer – hopefully, for the business as well! This was my intention and message I was going for when I created the diagram you have at the top.
Cheers – Mitch
Mitch
Hi Beth!
Thanks for mentioning me and Chess and hope all is well, I hope you’re staying out of trouble
Hi Mitch, I wholeheartedly agree with your statement and sentiment, however, from an integrated marketing perspective, it does not matter if companies or customers are engaging socially. That’s not what “outside-in” or customer-centric business means. The key is to be data-driven and that data can be “social” data even if the two parties are not engaging utilizing social media tools. I think this is where social media purists get hung up in their thinking. CRM and social CRM are about business, not “socializing.” That said, I do believe that the benefits will be realized sooner if there is a social element (on- or offline). For now, I am being pragmatic. I think we are another 5-10 years off from companies truly integrating customers into their businesses. Can you clarify what you mean by creating the diagram? I thought it was created by Jacob Morgan at Chess Media Group. Thanks!
Jacob, hi! You’re quite welcome. The only trouble I get into is provoking people to really think about their marketing efforts.
Hi Beth,
Great post. I look at the evolution as old versus new CRM. The former is how many companies view CRM, is as static contact databases and sales forecasting tools. The new is more dynamic and inter-active – embracing the customer in real-time and building or enhancing the relationship. The middle word – relationship is key.
At Catelas, we build visualization maps using current (real time) communication patterns – ie we show a company ‘who knows who’, ‘how well’ and ‘what do they know’ . It brings together natural relationships and maps for a company – how business really gets done.
Interesting – since it weaves together old and new, unleashing the power of relationships, ratrher than have them sit in static databases.
Rob.
Beth,
The point of clarification you seek, is that the diagram is from a joint white paper with Chess and Comity Technology Advisors (A Guide to Understanding Social CRM; On Slideshare, which you can easily find) the paper and all the contents are shared works, thus officially shared IP, including the diagrams. I take personal pride in the fact that the diagram referenced is from my work, added to the paper. A lesson learned on that one.
With respect to the other part of your response, I was taking your lead “An organization’s goal for being social with customers is, presumably, to gain a better understand of what customers want and need.” I agree that the objective is more pragmatic than that (ie, more than just social), it is actually about what customers need to accomplish, jobs to be done and value co-creation. My key point is that the customer job is more important, that is what I see as outside-in. I spent a lot of time thinking about CRM and the Social parts of CRM – I am actually backing off myself and taking a more traditional view, with some great new tools and technologies to help customers get their jobs done.
Cheers – Mitch
Rob, you hit the nail on the head with “The former is how many companies view CRM, is as static contact databases and sales forecasting tools.” From discussions with marketers, many companies are still in that phase. I’ll need to check out Catelas, thanks for the heads up on your services.
Mitch, looks like I need to do a better job of searching…the white paper didn’t come up on my search! Thanks for the clarification. Again, we are in agreement! As Rob said above, companies traditionally used CRM as a sales contact database. Perhaps we need to shift that mindset first before adding a social element? Personally, I am not one to believe that “traditional marketing is DEAD!” It’s alive and well, especially if the customer is okay with it. That’s outside-in thinking.