Social CRM – the buzz and the reality
July 29th, 2011 by Lloyd Gofton
Earlier this week Charlotte McEleny wrote a piece for NMA titled: Social CRM needs to be defined.
Charlotte opened her piece by saying: “Social CRM is an exciting phenomenon for brands, but with a lack of definition, it is becoming a meaningless social media buzz phrase.” This sums up the issue well. Many people are now talking about Social CRM, but the reality is they are probably only offering one element within Social CRM’s remit, or beginning to appreciate the range of elements that must come together, and as a result, it is becoming a bit of a buzz phrase.
The issue of a lack of available case studies that Charlotte mentions is also possibly linked to this problem, as I doubt many of what we would now call Social CRM campaigns started out with that title. Instead, it’s likely that there were separate functions of monitoring, engagement and data management. Although we are now seeing these functions pulled together under the Social CRM umbrella, planned and purpose-built Social CRM campaigns are still few and far between and have little in the way of a track record to report back on.
So, I thought I would have a go at defining Social CRM, and also pull in definitions from other more recognized individuals in the sector.
Put simply, we believe Social CRM is about delivering improved customer service by managing customer relationships and data, and its main focus should be fully on ‘Humanising the conversation’.
Wikipedia defines Social CRM as follows (quoting Paul Greenberg):“A philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.”
Earlier this year I attended an excellent event called Social CRM 2011 developed by Our Social Times, and you can read my thoughts on the event here.
One of the hottest discussion points at the event was that ‘Social CRM must go beyond Social Media Monitoring‘, although this is an important piece of the puzzle. The key is to understand this ‘social data’ and exploit it fully, both internally and externally. Having social profiles and listening is not enough; you must be able to react, engage and offer useful insights that your community can benefit from. This, in turn, builds trust and helps customers focus on what is important to them. Therefore, considering this range of variables, Social CRM cannot be automated.
By investing in a Social CRM strategy, brands can expect to improve customer service, consolidate customer-related information and processes, evolve service offerings and open up invaluable conversations with customers.
We must approach Social CRM by offering a combination of social media monitoring, community management and engagement with a learning element that allows the brand to refine its customer services offering as a result of relevant feedback.
However, the truth is that there is no single correct approach to Social CRM, as each organisation has different focuses, challenges and customers. This is why we believe the Social CRM process must be developed as a strategy in partnership with the brand.
For further information, Mitch Lieberman, who also spoke at Social CRM 2011, has written an analysis on IBM’s Institute for Business Value “From social media to Social CRM” paper, which is an excellent guide.
Tags: CRM, Customer Relationship Management, SCRM, Social CRM
July 29th, 2011 at 9:18 am
Lloyd, an interesting post this as I am reading more and more about social CRM. As the social world develops and the skill levels increase I think this is an interesting area along with social commerce.
July 29th, 2011 at 9:29 am
Hmmm… I’m not sure about those definitions.
Surely CRM is well understood.
Customer Relationship Management is all about getting the right information (marketing messages, sales messages, info, discounts, loyalty, etc) to the right people at the right time – some are customers, some are prospects.
Appending Social means that the contact details are more likely to be the user names used on the networks and the related information will be taken from bios, sentiment and tone.
This for me is the key thing: managing relationships across social networks this way means that you can still target the right messages to the right people at the right time… the only thing you may not have is the connection between the user name and the real name (and the rest of their details).
This is the differentiator when it comes to Social CRM tools – who can match up user names with real names and complete the data in the CRM system? The tool that does this wins my dollar.
Xobni is a good example of a tool trying to do this in a related space.
Good article though – thanks for inspiring me to comment
July 29th, 2011 at 10:08 am
you can read my comment to the Charlotte McEleny’s article
July 29th, 2011 at 10:25 am
Hi Chris, thanks for your input, I agree Social CRM is certainly a growth area. It demands many of the skills already available, but pulls these together in a way that will challenge many organisations and hopefully help in sharing data across business units and evolve services as a result.
July 29th, 2011 at 10:36 am
Hi Tim
Good to hear from you. I think your comment is a good reflection of many of the discussions that took place at the recent Social CRM events I’ve attended.
There are many different definitions of Social CRM, and the tendency is for each organisation to lead with the element that they feel is most important to them – i.e monitoring, engagement or sharing data, among others.
I believe that the benefit of Social CRM is derived from learning across the board and using this to improve comms, R&D, customer services and other areas.
I agree with your point about managing relationships across social networks, and this is a key function, but what should we do with learning from these conversations, how could this influence other departments?
Once we open the wealth of data, sharing it and making the best use of this data is a different set of challenges.
July 29th, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Comms is the magic word isn’t it Lloyd… now where did I leave my knowledge management handbooks…