Posts Tagged ‘Social media’
Gartner report on corporate social media monitoring raises moral questions
May 31st, 2012
According to a report issued by Gartner this week, corporations are starting to embrace technologies used to monitor employee Internet use, with 60% expected to watch workers’ social media use for security breaches by 2015.
Currently, less than 10% of companies monitor their employees’ use of Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media sites for security breaches, although of course many companies already monitor social media for brand management and marketing purposes.
So why is the monitoring of employee social activity necessary? The report suggests an example of ‘employees posting unauthorised videos of company activities‘ and with some people’s urge to share every aspect of their lives without consideration of the longer term, or knock-on, effect, I can understand how this could be a concern to employers, at least in theory. However, organisations need to tread very carefully.
According to the report’s author Andrew Walls, research vice president at Gartner, “There are other times when accessing the information can generate serious liabilities, such as a manager reviewing an employee’s Facebook profile to determine the employee’s religion or sexual orientation in violation of equal employment opportunity and privacy regulations.”
He went onto confirm: “Enterprise surveillance of employee activities on popular social media sites has led to disciplinary actions against employees that are often supported by the law but violate cultural expectations for free speech and personal privacy in most Western countries.”
This issue is going to be a difficult one for employers to navigate as they try to balance what is legally acceptable, with what is morally acceptable. Furthermore, accessing social-based information in some circumstances can generate serious liabilities, such as a manager reviewing an employee’s Facebook profile to determine their religion or sexual orientation, in violation of equal employment opportunity and privacy regulations.
The practise of asking for Facebook passwords at interview, as reported earlier this year, surely goes too far. I believe that social media, at least to a degree, is self policing as the culprit of any security breach can be tracked and will likely be highlighted as the source by any mentions or simple analytics checks. Therefore, are these pre-emptive measures relevant? Should we be looking at social media any differently to traditional media in this regard? Or is that a case of trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted?
Obviously in some industries security is a huge concern and sharing of valuable/private data would have a very real and negative effect, but in general is this a panic reaction to what ‘could’ happen, rather than a result of issues that actually have occurred? Should we be talking about education and guidelines rather than monitoring and punishment?
Gartner believes monitoring can enhance threat detection and response: security organisations are beginning to see value in the capture and analysis of social media content, not just for internal security surveillance, but also to enable detection of shifting threats that may impinge on the organisation. This might be physical threats to facilities and personnel revealed through postings concerning civil unrest or it may be threats of logical attacks by so-called hacktivists. Early detection of shifting risks, it says, enables the organisation to vary its security posture to match and minimise negative impacts.
Gartner’s advice on monitoring social media is: Employee accounts should be non-intrusively monitored to discover data breaches as soon as possible, but also to prevent corporate equipment or offices from being abused or misused.
But it goes onto warn: While automated, covert monitoring of computer use by staff suspected of serious policy violations can produce hard evidence of inappropriate or illegal behaviours, and guide management response, it might also violate privacy laws.”
It seems the lines between morality and legality will have to be drawn up by individual organisations, and it will be interesting to see the reaction of employees, and potential legal issues that will follow.
Can social media work with IT security?
April 27th, 2012
For the last three days I have been at the InfoSec and Internet World shows. Fear not this won’t be a rambling post about the joys of trade shows or living in the airless atmospheres contained within Earls Court.
This post touches on the world of Information Security and its parallels with trade show partner Internet World. Okay, I admit, on the face of it this is not the world’s most exciting topic, nor is it likely to bring much respect in the world of comms, as my past experience of being in the ‘Tech’ team of various PR agencies has proved. Back then, if you understood technology, you were part of the geeks in the corner that can fix the printer or set up an email account on your phone, but that’s about it.
Well, as we know, the tide has turned and technology in its many forms and guises is intersecting every part of our lives. This has been propelled in the most part by social media (more on that later) and mobile devices – referred to throughout the IT Security world as BYOD (Bring your own device) and anyone at InfoSec is no doubt full of stats from the many BYOD surveys available throughout the show.
At the risk of making sweeping generalisations, which i admit is a fear as there are of course examples of social acceptance and use among security vendors, but my experience over the last few days has shown that too many IT Security pros still look at social media as a risk, and not an opportunity.
On the face of it I understand why. Social media opens many points of risk to the very organisations that security companies are trying to secure. The traditional way of securing this risk is to block and control. I.e. block access to the sites in question and/or control those sites that are deemed worthy of access in the work place.
However, this doesn’t account for human nature and that dramatically over used acronym BYOD. In short, you can tell people that they can’t do something, but if it’s easier to choose the forbidden route, you can guarantee what the outcome will be.
Having spoken to a wide range of people at both shows over the three days, my general perception was those at Internet World weren’t very concerned by security issues, and those at InfoSec were not only concerned about the risks posed by social media and other digital channels, but in some cases were suggesting blocking and ways to circumvent social communications across the board.
Let me be clear that I completely appreciate the ever-growing problem posed by cyber-criminals and the multitude of very real and escalating risks. We not only lose money to these risks on a daily basis, but also risk our IP and physical security , which is perhaps the often overlooked issue that faces our governments and industry on a daily basis. Having seen just a small portion of the realities of these threats I completely understand the reaction of IT Security to social media. However, that doesn’t make it right or workable.
Let’s start out with that age-old argument of banning social media in the work place. In my opinion this is not a relevant response to the equally ridiculous notion that people will spend all day on Facebook instead of working, and it’s not a viable response to prevent people from sharing data on social networks. If it’s possible, it will happen.
Therefore, if you do ban social media, you will force people onto their own devices which will remove even more of that control that many are craving in the first place. So what’s the response? Well it starts with a culture change, which drives a technology change.
First, the culture. Social media cannot be forgotten, ignored or banned, so deal with it as part of the overall strategy, not something to be treated separately. Secondly, relying on people to use specific software or machines to access corporate information is also unrealistic, so security needs to be built into all devices, utilising security by design. Thirdly, if we can’t ban or remove social, we need to educate people about its correct use.
Obviously sharing corporate information on Facebook is not a good idea, just like writing your password on a post-it and sticking it to your monitor is not a good idea. Facebook is not the issue, the lack of understanding about the risks is the issue.
I have no doubt that social media needs to be banned in highly secure locations, but that doesn’t mean it can be banned across the board. People always find a way.
Without wishing to get preachy, the revolution in communications devices and channels is only going to continue gaining momentum, it’s certainly not going to go away and it’s unlikely to slow down. Therefore, ignoring or banning is not the answer for the majority that do not work in highly secure environments.
In my opinion, staging the InfoSec and Internet World shows on the same three days, and within five minutes walk of each other, was a missed opportunity to share information between these two sectors, as each could learn a lot from the other.
Social CRM: Stop thinking about ownership and start thinking about culture change
April 13th, 2012
This post was originally published as a guest post on Monty’s Outlook
Who owns Social CRM? This debate continues to divide opinion, but I believe it is the wrong question. Ownership is not the issue, and only echoes the ‘who owns social media’ tedium, which I have ranted about for longer than I care to remember.
The social media ownership debate has been perpetuated by a range of marketing and communications agencies with the objective of grabbing budget from each other and squabbling over whose social services are ‘better’.
This misses the point. Ownership of what is fundamentally a conversation is irrelevant, and as parts of the same marketing/comms machine it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Social is not and was never a marketing focus alone, it’s so much bigger than that. As David Meerman Scott said: “Nobody cares about your products, people care about their problems. Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them”.
So is the ownership debate around Social CRM the same? Well, in many ways it is. The customer owning Social CRM is a crucial point, we are talking about putting the customer at the centre of the business. However that doesn’t give a company the structure needed to build a Social CRM mechanism, so it’s back to the ‘debate’: What tends to follow is that no one or everyone owns it, and ‘ownership’ is the wrong term.
As Mitch Lieberman says: “Social CRM is about bringing ‘me’ (the social customer) into the ecosystem… It is not about the technology, it is about the people, process and cultural shifts necessary to support and grow a business.”
Let’s take this back to basics. Who or what is the social customer and why is change needed? Put simply, the social customer is dynamic, hyper-connected and can define an organisation’s value, relevance and reputation. It is not about the company’s reputation, it is about the reputation of its customers, they are the ones who will form opinion of that company.
As a result, social customers force organisations of all types to be more customer-centric and have transformed the way in which organisations need to communicate with and, most importantly, listen to their customers.
The key here is taking CRM beyond a marketing or customer services specialism, and building a philosophy that translates across the organisation. Customers can intersect and engage with an organisation at many different points and do not follow traditional channels of communication.
Therefore, A Social CRM strategy must be implemented across the business to succeed. As with any area of social media, or any conversation for that matter, the best place to start is by listening. In terms of CRM, this is essential. Organisations should only engage and add value when they have listened to and understood the problems, challenges and issues that customers are experiencing.
So where does this leave the ownership debate? As I said earlier, thinking of Social CRM as something that can be owned is a dangerous path as it means the organisation is trying to remove the customer from its central business focus, and neatly packaging it off to a single department.
From the conversational point of view the customer owns Social CRM, but from an organisational point of view Social CRM is the result of a cultural shift that needs to take place in an organisation to focus the business around its most important element, its customers.
So, if we really need someone to own Social CRM, it should be owned at management level, as these are the correct individuals to guide and develop the business into cultural change. The Social CRM approach, related strategies, tactics and technologies stem from there.
If you try to implement Social CRM tactics and technologies without this cultural change you will fail.
Girls Around Me – a wake-up call
April 5th, 2012
It’s been a week of controversy around cyber-snooping. First the Government announced draft plans to extend its online surveillance powers, and then Russian app developer i-Free was forced to withdraw its Girls Around Me app following a media outcry.
The app, which was downloaded 70,000 times before being voluntarily withdrawn, is a tool which uses Facebook and Foursquare information to track women nearby. With public profiles and check-in information combined, it allows the user to see women’s names, photos, geographical location and much more besides, all without their consent.
The thumbnail images on the site are predictably of women scantily dressed and the app states: “In the mood for love, or just a one night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control!” So far, so offensive.
There has been a landslide of comment about the app, mostly looking at issues around privacy, data, and how much information we should share online. There has also been a lot of comment about why is this a big deal?  What would a person possessing that information actually do? Would they run to the nearest bar and chat-up a girl using their personal details as a start to the conversation? In reality probably not, but we can’t be sure.
As Sarah Jacobsson Purewal at PCWorld says “it’s hard to see this app as a real threat to privacy or women.” Rather, she says, it’s “a wake-up call to those who publicly overshare.”
This seems to be true, but there are deeper issues here than just those around data, privacy and sharing too much information about yourself. Gender politics and old fashioned sexism are also central to this debate.
This article by Nathan Jurgenson brilliantly sums-up the gender and cultural contexts that have been largely ignored. App developers would do well to read this and think twice before their next data mash-up.
A guide to defining and developing Social CRM
April 4th, 2012
We have developed a guide to defining and developing Social CRM which is summarised below. If you would like a copy of the full guide, please send an email to hello@liberatemedia.com titled: ‘request for SCRM guide‘ and we’ll pass it on.
You may also be interested in the Social Customer session summaries that can be found on our blog. These posts detail the key points from each of the sessions at the Social Customer event, which took place on March 29th in London.
Summary
In our experience, the defining characteristic of Social CRM (Social Customer Relationship Management) is the range of misconceptions and misunderstandings about the core elements involved. This guide to Social CRM has been developed with this in mind to help every organisation better understand and engage with the social customer.
We have offered a practical guide to the approach and services required, and a helpful Social CRM audit at the end of the document to help you develop your organisation’s Social CRM capability.
What is a Social Customer?
The social customer is dynamic, hyper-connected and can shape business and brand reputation by defining an organisation’s value, relevance and reputation. As a result, social customers have compelled organisations of all types to be more customer-centric and have transformed the way in which organisations need to communicate with and, most importantly, listen to their customers.
Put simply, the social customer now owns the relationship, and every organisation needs need to earn his/her trust.
The social customer is also a driving force in the development of the online economy, which is rapidly growing and currently contributes 8.3 per cent to the UK economy. This is more than the healthcare, construction or education sectors.
UK consumers also buy far more from online retail sources than any other major economy and this is expected to continue expanding by 11% per year for the next four years, reaching a total value of £221bn by 2016. Compare this to growth rates of 5.4% in the U.S. and 6.9% in China.
What is Social CRM?
A compelling definition of the Social CRM challenge was given by Esteban Kolsky, Founder at ThinkJar at Social CRM 2011 in London: “Companies tend to start using social media to talk at their customers, not to listen to them.”
He then defined CRM as a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interactions in a business environment.
This is a good reflection of how many organisations start out on the road to Social CRM, jumping straight into a tactical approach and talking ‘at’ customers but not listening ‘to’ customers. In fact the focus should be on improving real interactions with customers.
In practical terms this means the organisation will need to implement a system and related technologies, built around an overarching ‘business’ strategy. This strategy really needs to be developed with the whole organisation in mind, as well as being understood and executed by the entire organisation, otherwise the social customer will remain elusive.
Additional definition quotes:
Mitch Lieberman: “Social CRM is about bringing “me” (the social customer) into the ecosystem… It is not about the technology, it is about the people, process and cultural shifts necessary to support and grow a business.”
Paul Greenberg: “Social CRM is the company’s response to the customer’s control of the conversation.”
Why does Social CRM matter?
The key here is taking CRM beyond a marketing or customer services specialism, and building a philosophy that translates across the organisation. If Social CRM is purely a function of customer services we are missing the point. In today’s socially connected world, customers can intersect and engage with an organisation at many different points, and do not follow traditional channels of communication. Therefore, A Social CRM strategy must be implemented across the business to succeed.
This has been evidenced on many occasions by customers using their networks to discuss organisations, form opinions and influence others through their experiences. This is the heart of social conversation and the essence of a social business. If an organisation’s Social CRM strategy cannot positively impact this process then it is failing, and to succeed it must be implemented across the board. For example, your sales staff may be excellent relationship managers, but if your service staff are rude and unresponsive, the overall impact will be negative.
Furthermore, we now learn from and engage with our customers more than ever before, but we can also learn from the data that social and online activities offer to us. It is important to manage this data and put it to use, as not all of the data will be relevant. In fact much of it will just be noise, but Social CRM offers us the opportunity to learn about customers, process these learnings and engaging accordingly.
How do you develop your Social CRM strategy?
If we consider that Social CRM is a method of blending social activities with the proven fundamentals of CRM, and we understand that Social CRM is part of the evolution towards the development of a more effective social business, then we are half way there.
However, we also need to focus on customer need. This need is not motivated by being a fan or friend of the organisation, but by deriving value from the customer’s engagement with the organisation.
As David Meerman Scott says: ‘Nobody cares about your products, people care about their problems. Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them’‘.
With that in mind, we need to translate our strategy into deliverables, and according to Esteban Kolsky, there are four key functions of Social CRM:
1. Community management (listening and engaging usefully)
2. Social analytics engine (gathering and processing data)
3. Actionable layer unit (identifying and actioning learnings)
4. System-of-record integration layer (integrating learning into the business)
Warning
Social CRM means engaging person to person. We know that using machines to “talk” with humans in the CRM context does not work. Therefore, remember it’s not about the technology, it’s about the person using it and the conversation. If we lose sight of the fundamentals and hide behind automated monitoring and response it will be the equivalent of a business leaving an answer machine to deal with customers, it won’t learn or react, it will just repeat.
Developing Social CRM
In this section, we detail the Social CRM deliverables and explain the services and focuses that organisations should be considering. There are four essential action elements and we have offered key service areas under each:
1. Listen – to customers and the wider community to understand issues and identify pain points
2. Capture – actionable and relevant data
3. Learn – develop a Social CRM philosophy across the organisation
4. Engage – using knowledge built through phases 1-3, engage in a relevant and useful manner
Let’s look at each area in more detail:
1. Listen
As with any area of social media, or any conversation for that matter, the best place to start is by listening. In terms of customer relationship management, this is essential. Organisations should only engage and add value when they have listened to and understood the problems, challenges and issues that customers are experiencing.
Listen service focuses
Digital / social infrastructure – A Social CRM campaign cannot be effective without a socially-enabled website, relevant social profiles and the ability to engage.
Before you go any further, you need to build your organisation’s Social CRM tools:
• Audit your website – are you open to customer comment/engagement/response?
• Audit your SEO – are your ‘digital touch points’ visible online?
• Audit/build social channels – are you open and available for customer engagement and listening beyond your website?
Social Media monitoring - Social CRM is often confused with Social Media Monitoring. Let’s be clear, although Social Media Monitoring is a crucial element of your Social CRM armoury, and will form a central part of the campaign, it is not enough to use monitoring alone. You must identify the relevant mentions, use the data and build that into your organisational approach. The data is only relevant if it is acted upon.
Team - Does your Social CRM response team consist of one marketing / customer services junior? This is not acceptable. Consider your customers and consider the amount of conversation about your organisation. Do you have the team to support this volume of data and conversation?
Training – Remember Social CRM is not a marketing or customer services tactic alone, your organisation needs to understand the key elements of Social CRM and act upon them. This means training and understanding needs to be implemented across the organisation.
2. Capture
Once you have the platform, processes and people in place to listen, you need to feed this infrastructure with actionable and relevant data. This is the fuel that drives the Social CRM engine and the quality of the fuel will relate directly to the effectiveness of the Social CRM process.
The first stage is to capture the data and process it into the relevant focuses for your organisation.
You will quickly realise that much of the data is irrelevant. It is crucial you do not waste time by feeding this information into the business – it will induce “analysis paralysis” as your people query and argue about irrelevant information.
Therefore, in this layer the focus is identifying and actioning the useful data that will tell the organisation something about its customers, identify issues to be remedied or help to build interactions by way of market research or insights.
Capture service focuses:
Data Capture – Social Media monitoring plays a key role here but we need to go deeper. Website analytics and data captured from customer communities will be vital, along with metrics from LinkedIn groups, sector networking tools and industry bodies.
Data Analysis – Data analysis is crucial. Do not overlook this phase as you could either strangle the process with too much data, or starve it of any useful information by only feeding it with the basics. Use experience here, make the most of your data and it will drive you to real success. If you don’t have the in-house skills, utilise experienced consultants or agencies. The value you derive from the data can be extremely powerful for the business as a whole.
3. Learn
This third layer is the key to Social CRM success, taking relationship management beyond a marketing or customer-services specialism and building a philosophy that is embedded throughout the organisation. In our experience, this is a challenging area of focus for those responsible for driving the Social CRM process.
However, by highlighting the importance of Social CRM to the management team at the outset, and explaining why organisation-wide action will be needed, this potential obstacle should be removed and a route cleared towards the goal of better customer understanding and improved service.
Learn service focuses:
Internal communication of findings – clarification and information curation is essential. There must be a process through which each piece of customer contact is automatically routed to the right person, classifying it by type (question, complaint or compliment), content (what it actually said), sentiment, action needed and influence.
This fluid process will reinforce the transformation of your business into a more open and responsive enterprise that engages successfully with online customers.
Workflow tools – these tools will ensure that information created by online customers is accessible to everyone in the organisation and precisely tuned to their specific needs. This creates a context for each social CRM interaction and will enable the social customer to engage with you in a way that is most relevant.
Business-wide social strategy – a social business strategy is the ultimate goal. Without change on an organisation-wide scale, the Social Customer will continue to be a lost opportunity and a fear factor, rather than a real opportunity to build engagement and ultimately drive value.
4. Engage
Social CRM isn’t just about engaging consistently, within a reasonable timeframe and adhering to corporate guidelines. The engagement needs to be relevant and useful, and not always in the form of a simple text-based response. Content can be used to engage without a complaint and to convey a key part of your offering. So don’t just think of engagement as a response. Think of it as an opportunity to build a conversation.
Let’s also be clear that you should not hold back from engaging until you have completed the three previous phases. Of course you need to engage before you have successfully implemented your social business strategy, otherwise it could take some time before you actually respond to your customers. However, the point remains we should not look at engagement as the quick fix or the first action point. It is important to respond to customer issues, but as we have said previously, engagement is so much more than just responding.
Engage Service focuses:
Social media engagement guidelines – These shouldn’t be an onerous book of dictations. The social media guidelines are important to communicate key aspects of the business dos and don’ts but they are not a script. The key here is ‘guideline’. We are not trying to stop our brand from engaging with humans as humans, and do not be tempted to speak in rigid legalese.
Content development – Online content is extremely powerful, from expressive video to simple slideshares and these “social assets” will make your brand more accessible, better understood, more useful. Think of content as your social currency. Build it up but don’t rely on the irrelevant and the slapdash. Quality beats quantity every time.
Not all content is the same and poor content will encourage a negative response so get the right advice from those who have done it before. Use the information from the listening phase, where you will learn exactly what it is that your online customers want, to develop the right content. You can find a recent case study example of a content community here.
Social tool management – Using social tools to monitor, extract useful information and identify points of engagement and conversation with the social customer on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social spaces is a very simple part of the process, but very easy to get wrong. Tone, frequency and subtle understanding of the organisation, underpinned by effective guidelines, will make all the difference.
Invest in experience and training and heed the many case study examples of success and failure. Allocate resource relevant to your social/digital footprint and customer base. Look outside of the business if the skills are not in-house, do not give this job to the intern, because if/when something goes wrong, blaming an intern is not a plausible excuse.
Conclusion
If you’ve reviewed this paper and ticked off the elements you want to take with you for your business or reconfirmed focuses that you have already got in place, I hope the information was useful and best of luck.
However, if you have written off Social CRM because your customers don’t act ‘that way’ – think again. Your customer is no different, you are now dealing with the social customer who doesn’t play by traditional rules and does not accept that your organisation is in charge. The social customer owns the relationship, and you need to earn his/her trust.
Social CRM audit
1. Listen
- Website – are you open to customer listening/engagement?
- SEO – can your digital touch points be found online?
- Social channels – are you available for customer engagement and listening outside of your direct website?
- Social Media monitoring – data is only relevant if it is acted upon.
- Team - Consider your customers and the amount of conversation about your brand. Do you have the team to support this volume of data and conversation?
- Training – Your business needs to understand the key elements of Social CRM and act upon them.
2. Capture
- Data Capture – Website analytics and data captured from every customer, and relevant community will be vital.
- Data Analysis – Understanding and knowing how to use this data is essential, otherwise you could either strangle the process with too much data, or starve it of any useful information by only feeding it with the basics.
3. Learn
- Internal communication of findings - each message should be automatically routed to the right person, classifying it by type, content, sentiment, action needed and influence.
- Workflow tools – these tools will ensure that all social information created is accessible to everyone in the organisation in the same way.
- Business-wide social strategy – A social business strategy is the ultimate goal.
4. Engage
- Social media guidelines – These shouldn’t be an onerous book of dictations. The key here is ‘guideline’. Five clear points is enough.
- Content development – Think of content as your social currency and remember that quality wins over quantity every time.
- Social tool management - Tone, frequency and unwritten rules are subtleties that can make all the difference.Defining and developing Social CRM Liberate Media
Social Customer Service infographic
March 27th, 2012
Ahead of the Social Customer event, which is taking place this Thursday, March 29th in London. Our Social Times has produced the following Social Customer Service infographic.
Luke Brynley-Jones, director at Our Social Times commented: “In recent months Customer Service has hit the social media spotlight in a flurry of reports and surveys. Fuelled by the increasing focus on engagement marketing, companies are realising that a department once consigned to contact centres in remote corners of the globe might just be one of their most important assets.
“At the same time, consumers are also looking for support via their chosen social media channels. 44% of adults now use the web to share grievances about products and 15% of 15-24 year olds prefer to interact with customer services exclusively via social media.
“In spite of this, 60% of companies don’t respond to customers via social media, even when asked a direct question. The fact that, when asked how companies could improve their customer services, 68% of people said “make contact numbers easier to find”, might explain this. Evidently, the contact centre still has its place.”
We will be attending the Social Customer event on Thursday and live blogging the highlights, so if you’re not able to make it along, please check out our updates.
March 23rd, 2012
This post has been written as a follow up to our ‘Defining Social CRM‘ post, which was developed to overview the basics of what is often a confusing but essential function for any brand that wishes to engage with the social customer.
In this post we want to look beyond defining Social CRM and offer a brief guide to developing Social CRM, identifying relevant focuses to allow you to get to grips with your brand’s requirements. But first, let’s remind ourselves of exactly what Social CRM is:
Mitch Lieberman defined it thus: “Social CRM is about bringing “me” [the social customer] into the ecosystem… It is not about the technology, it is about the people, process and cultural shifts necessary to support and grow a business.”
Or as Paul Greenberg put it: “Social CRM is the company’s response to the customer’s control of the conversation.”
Needless to say there has been a major shift in the way we communicate with our customers and we want to use this post to explore the technologies, people, processes and cultural shifts a little further.
In our last post, we referenced Esteban Kolsky’s four key areas of Social CRM as follows
1. Community management
2. Social analytics engine
3. Actionable layer unit
4. System-of-record integration layer
In this post we will break down each area and look at the relevant services/focuses that brands should be considering. Therefore we’ve re-developed the four key areas into the following action points, and offered key service areas under each:
1. Listen (to our customers and wider community to understand issues and identify pain points)
2. Capture (actionable and relevant data)
3. Learn (develop a Social CRM philosophy across the organisation.)
4. Engage (using knowledge built through phases 1-3, engage in a relevant and useful manner)
Let’s look at each area in more detail:
1. Listen
As with any area of social media, or any conversation for that matter, the best place to start is by listening. In terms of customer relationship management, the importance of listening cannot be over-exaggerated. We should only engage and add value when we have listened to and understood the issues that our customers are experiencing.
Services focuses/audit areas:
Digital / social infrastructure – Trying to run a Social CRM campaign without a socially-enabled website, relevant social profiles and the ability to engage is very difficult.
Before you go any further you need to build your brand’s Social CRM tools:
• Audit your website – are you open to customer listening/engagement?
• Audit your SEO – can your digital touch points be found online?
• Audit/build social channels – are you open and available for customer engagement and listening outside of your direct website?
Social Media monitoring – Social CRM is often confused with Social Media Monitoring. Let’s be clear, although Social Media Monitoring is a crucial element of your Social CRM armoury, and will form a central part of the campaign, it is not enough to use monitoring alone. You must identify the relevant mentions, use the data and build that into your organisational approach. The data is only relevant if it is acted upon.
Team - Does your Social CRM response team consist of one marketing / customer services junior? This is not acceptable. Consider your customers, consider the amount of conversation about your brand, do you have the team to support this volume of data and conversation?
Training – Remember Social CRM is not a marketing or customer services tactic alone, your business needs to understand the key elements of Social CRM and act upon them. This means training and understanding needs to be organisational.
2. Capture
Once you have the platform, processes and people in place to listen, you need to feed this infrastructure with actionable and relevant data. This is the fuel that drives the Social CRM engine and the quality of the fuel will relate directly to the effectiveness of the Social CRM process.
The first stage is to capture the data and process it into the relevant focuses for your business.
Once you have the data you will quickly realise that much of it is irrelevant. It is crucial that time is not wasted feeding this information through the business and bringing on analysis paralysis.
Therefore in this layer the focus is identifying and actioning the useful data that will tell the business something about its customers, identify issues to be remedied or help to build the business by way of market research or insights.
Services focuses/audit areas:
Data Capture - Social Media monitoring will play a key role here, but we need to go deeper. Website analytics and data captured from any customer communities will be vital along with metrics available through LinkedIn groups and associated networking tools/ industry bodies.
Data Analysis – Data analysis is crucial. Do not overlook this phase as you could either strangle the process with too much data, or starve is of any useful information by only feeding it with the basics. Use experience here, make the most of your data and it will drive you to real success. If you don’t have the in-house skills utilise experienced consultants or agencies. The value you derive from the data can be extremely powerful for the business as a whole.
3. Learn
The third layer is the key to Social CRM success, which is taking Social CRM beyond a marketing or customer services specialism, and building a philosophy that translates across the organisation. If Social CRM is purely a function of customer services we are missing the point and will ultimately fail to achieve the brand’s CRM potential.
In today’s socially connected world, customers can intersect and engage with an organisation at many different points, and social customers do not follow traditional channels of communication. Therefore, the Social CRM strategy must be implemented across the business to succeed.
Service focuses/audit areas:
Internal communications of findings – There must be a process in place by which each message gets automatically routed to the right person, classifying it by type (question, complaint or compliment), content (what it actually said), sentiment, action needed, and influence. This helps to smooth the process, as you push your business towards a more open and responsive way of thinking about your customers.
Workflow tools – these tools will ensure that information created is accessible to everyone in the organisation in the same way. This creates a context for each interaction and will enable the social customer to engage with you in way that he/she finds most relevant.
Business-wide social strategy – A social business strategy is the ultimate goal. This is the heart of social conversation and the essence of a social business. If an organisation’s Social CRM strategy cannot positively impact this process then it is failing, and to succeed it must be implemented across the board.
We now learn from and engage with our customers more than ever before, but if these learnings are not translated throughout the business, we fail.
4. Engage
Social CRM isn’t just about engaging consistently, within a reasonable timeframe and adhering to corporate guidelines. The engagement needs to be relevant and useful, and not always in the form of a simple text-based response. Content can be used to engage without a complaint and to convey a key part of your offering. So don’t just think of engagement as a response. Think of it as an opportunity to build a conversation.
Let’s also be clear that you should not hold back from engaging until you have completed the three previous phases. Of course you need to engage before you have successfully implemented your social business strategy, otherwise it could take some time before we actually respond to our customers. However, the point remains we should not look at engagement as the quick fix or the first action point. It is important to respond to customer issues, but as we have said above, engagement is so much more than just responding.
Social media guidelines – These shouldn’t be an onerous book of dictations. The social media guidelines are important to communicate key aspects of the business dos and don’ts but they are not a script. The key here is ‘guideline’ we are not trying to stop our brand from engaging with humans as humans. Do not be tempted to speak in rigid legalese.
Content development – Content can be extremely powerful, from expressive video to simple slideshares, your content will make your brand more accessible, better understood and more useful. Think of content as your social currency, build it up, but don’t rely on irrelevant and slapdash content. Take quality over quantity every time. Not all content is the same, poor content will encourage a negative response, so get the right advice from those that have done it before and take the lead from the listening phase where you should understand exactly what it is that your customers want. You can find a recent case study example of a content community here.
Social tool management – this is very simple part of the process, but again it is very easy to mess up. Tone, frequency and unwritten rules are subtleties that can make all the difference. Just because someone in your team understands Facebook, it does not qualify them for the role. Invest in experience and training and heed the many case study examples of success and failure. Allocate resource relevant to your social/digital footprint and customer base. Look outside of the business if the skills are not in-house, do not give this job to the intern, because if/when something goes wrong, blaming an intern will only make the situation worse.
A thought to leave you with
If you’ve reviewed this post and ticked off the elements you want to take with you for your business or reconfirmed elements that you have already got in place, I hope the information was useful and best of luck. However, if you have written off Social CRM because your customers don’t act ‘that way’ think again. Your customer is no different, you are now dealing with the social customer who doesn’t play by traditional rules and does not accept that your brand is in charge. The social customer owns the relationship, and you need to earn his/her trust.
This post was not been designed as the definitive guide to each service area of Social CRM, but offers an introduction to reflect the activity required to build successful Social CRM.
To learn more about Social CRM, or if you would be interested in discussing any of the areas raised in this series of posts please get in touch.
We will also be taking part in the upcoming ‘Social Customer‘ event in London on March 29th, where we will be live blogging, so if you’re unable to attend please keep an eye on our blog for updates on the sessions and learnings.
Case study: Lead generating B2B Content Community – My Meeting Professional
March 14th, 2012
B2B Social Media Campaign
A lead-generating social media and content based programme aimed at business decision makers and influencers delivers leads in excess of £500,000 in first six months. Core community website supported with LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook activity.
My Meeting Professional (MMP)
Overview: The My Meeting Professional customer community was developed by Liberate Media to deliver customer leads for iBAHN (EMEA), focused on its Enterprise Conference Solutions (ECS) division. This was achieved by developing a non-iBAHN branded resource of content focused on the events sector to answer key technology/connectivity challenges that face event organisers. This allowed the campaign to engage with the target audience on a deeper level by educating rather than selling, and enabled iBAHN EMEA to developed relationships that had previously been unachievable.
Results: First six months
• Six leads secured during first six months, providing business opportunities in excess of £500,000
• Established My Meeting Professional as a useful content hub and learning tool for the meetings sector
• Social campaign positioned MMP with meeting/conference influencers and corporate customers
• Offered hard evidence of the strength of a social approach for iBAHN
Client Quote: Carolyn Sait, PR Director, iBAHN EMEA: “The success of the My Meeting Professional campaign (MMP) is evidenced by the excellent leads and income delivered to the business, but also by the case study it provides on how a social approach delivers real benefits to the business as a whole.
“Building relevant content and encouraging useful conversations via MMP has opened opportunities and allowed iBAHN to explore a more direct style of customer engagement.”
Objectives
• Develop My Meeting Professional into a useful content community for the events sector.
• Build awareness and understanding of MMP to open opportunities that are not available to the iBAHN brand alone.
• Generate leads for iBAHN’s Enterprise Conference Solutions (ECS) division.
• Improve iBAHN’s network in the events sector by closer working with new partners and organisations.
• Share iBAHN content with influencers and the market as a whole.
Delivery
• Developed campaign and refine with client – build site and populate with content.
• Managed ongoing website development from launch onwards.
• Identified, negotiate and secure content partners for MMP.
• Developed MMP social campaigns via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
• Engaged with key industry blogger and influencers to drive engagement.
• Updated content on a daily basis via main website and social channels.
• Developed video content to promote My Meeting Professional.
• Measurement and analytics reporting delivered to refine campaign.
The campaign
My Meeting Professional is the content portal for event and meetings planners, sharing the latest views and news in the events, conferences and meetings sector but most importantly, MMP enables professionals in these areas to learn, share and develop their skills.
The campaign was developed by Liberate Media on behalf of iBAHN, a global broadband technologies provider for the hospitality industry.
Originally developed as a project linked to iBAHN’s EMEA communications campaign, MMP’s primary role was to raise awareness of and deliver leads for iBAHN specialist events division, iBAHN Enterprise Conference Solutions (ECS).
iBAHN ECS provides a fully managed network, as well as hardware and connectivity to facilitate every type of meeting for large corporate clients, including conferences, launches, training, etc.
Launched in mid-2011, The My Meetings Professional community had surpassed all expectations in its first six months by bringing the iBAHN brand closer to the events sector. MMP has also developed business opportunities that continue to deliver and a resource to help the community understand and build knowledge of the growth of hybrid events.
Issues covered on MMP have included the technical complexities of events set-up and management, the technology expertise demanded in planning and producing events, network and internet connectivity needs and the effect of mobile networked devices at events, among many other themes.
Content partners
The content offered via the community was developed by Liberate Media on behalf of iBAHN and has been supplemented by content partners who were invited to take part, including Big Hospitality, Velvet Chainsaw, Symon Dacon, Ready2Spark, Planet Planit and Inspired Live Experience. Each of these content partners provides expert knowledge to build the conversation via MMP and grow audience interest.
Social Media support
Twitter
The Twitter campaign was developed as a separate communications channel, updated daily with three main focuses:
1. Engage with the My Meeting Professional community daily to drive interest and conversation.
2. Allow any developments and announcements to be communicated immediately, including new content, announcements, and comment on industry issues.
3. Drive traffic to the main campaign website.
LinkedIn
The LinkedIn campaign was a crucial tool to drive the profile on the main MMP spokesperson and to provide the link between the content online and discussions with meetings professionals, using these three focuses:
1. Help MMP’s core spokesperson to engage in direct conversation with leads.
2. Develop relationships with key events influencers.
3. Engage with events discussion groups on LinkedIn to build the MMP debate.
Facebook
The Facebook campaign was developed primarily to share content from the MMP campaign and offer further insight into relevant events with these three focuses:
1. Act as a sign post to the main MMP website by sharing key posts.
2. Share updates and images from events attended.
3. Develop conversation with MMP fans and followers.
YouTube
The YouTube campaign was developed to act as a resource for relevant videos posted on the main MMP community website, with three main focuses:
1. Share original video animations developed for the main MMP community website.
2. Share videos from events that MMP and partners attended, or useful videos shared by the community.
3. Act as a signpost to direct traffic and interest to the main website.
Results
The headline result for the MMP campaign is the delivery of leads worth in excess of £500,000, which has been made possible by the engagement that has taken place offline and online, particularly via the various social media campaigns. By listening to MMP’s community and engaging directly, MMP has projected a knowledgeable persona and secured motivated advocates who have in-turn recommend the campaign and helped to build the success to date.
Further analytics available on request:
Visits: An average of 600-700 visits to the main campaign site per month.
Page views: An average of 1800 page views per month.
Time on site: 3.50 – 4.30 minutes per user.
Content: Over 300 blog posts were developed during the first six months of activity. Two animated videos were also developed for MMP.
Twitter account has over 700 followers and over 1000 tweets were posted with regular conversation and engagement on a daily basis.
LinkedIn account has over 2000 direct, sector-specific business connections, with a platform reach in excess of 3,500,000+LinkedIn members. MMP is a member of 25 event-focused groups on LinkedIn and posts regularly to these as relevant opportunities arise.
Client quotes
Mike Clanton, MMP team leader and EMEA manager iBAHN Enterprise Conference Solutions (ECS) says: “We saw the urgent need for an event sector hub that connected professionals and delivered accessible information at the right time.
“The technical requirement for event planners has grown rapidly over the past 18 months. They now need to understand a range of connectivity technologies and work with partners if they do not have that knowledge. To ensure maximum return on investment, event planners have to make network connectivity a central element of all meeting design.
“We’ll be helping to support this requirement, building partnerships that add more relevant and essential information to MMP in 2012, ensuring the community builds its knowledge and finds the best guidance.”
Graeme Powell, MD iBAHN EMEA, comments: “My Meeting Professional has certainly made its mark in 2011 and we are committed to developing it further this year, providing much needed technical and market sector advice for event and meetings professionals.”
Liberate Media contact
For further information, please contact:
Lloyd Gofton
Liberate Media
07919 353484
Lloyd@liberatemedia.com
@LiberateLloyd
March 7th, 2012
Social CRM is a topic that we have covered at length on this blog in the past, looking at definitions, case study examples and feedback from Social CRM events that we attend and speak at.
In our experience, the one defining characteristic of Social CRM is the range of misconceptions and misunderstandings about the core elements involved. Therefore, we have decided to pull together this post to cover off three of the key questions that we come up against when discussing Social CRM, and then build on the focus over the coming weeks.
1. What is Social CRM?:
Perhaps one of the best definitions that I’ve come across on Social CRM was from Esteban Kolsky – Founder at ThinkJar, who spoke at Social CRM 2011, London, which I attended last year. He stated: “Companies tend to start using social media to talk at their customers not to listen to them” he then defined CRM as a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interactions in a business environment.
This is a good reflection of how many organisations start out on the road to Social CRM (jumping straight into a tactical approach and talking ‘at’ customers but not listening ‘to’ customers), in comparison to where they really need to be, which is simply to focus on improving real interactions with customers.
In practical terms this means the organisation will need to implement a system and related technologies, built around an overarching ‘business’ strategy. And by business strategy, I mean a strategy that is developed with the whole business in mind, understood by the business and executed by the business.
2. Why does Social CRM matter?
The key here is taking CRM beyond a marketing or customer services specialism, and building a philosophy that translates across the organisation. If Social CRM is purely a function of customer services we are missing the point. In today’s socially connected world, customers can intersect and engage with an organisation at many different points, and do not follow traditional channels of communication. Therefore, the Social CRM strategy must be implemented across the business to succeed.
This has been evidenced on many occasions by customers discussing organisations with their networks, forming opinions and influencing others through their experiences. This is the heart of social conversation and the essence of a social business. If an organisation’s Social CRM strategy cannot positively impact this process then it is failing, and to succeed it must be implemented across the board. For example, your sales staff maybe excellent relationship managers, but if your service staff are rude and unresponsive, the overall impact will be negative.
Furthermore, we now learn from and engage with our customers more than ever before, but we can also learn from the data that social and online activities offer to us. It is important however to manage this data and put it to use, not all of the data will be useful, in fact much of it will just be noise, but social CRM offers us the opportunity to learn about customers, process these learnings and engaging accordingly.
3. How do you develop your Social CRM strategy?
If we consider that Social CRM is a method of translating social activities into the fundamentals of CRM, and in turn we understand that Social CRM is part of the evolution towards the development of a wider social business then we are half way there. However, we also need to focus on the customer need, which is not to be a fan or friend of the organisation, but to derive value from his/her engagement with the organisation. As David Meerman Scott said: ‘Nobody cares about your products, people care about their problems. Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them’‘.
With that in mind, we need to translate our strategy into deliverables, and according to Kolsky, there are four key functions of Social CRM:
1. Community management (listening and engaging usefully)
2. Social analytics engine (gathering and processing data)
3. Actionable layer unit (identifying and actioning learnings)
4. System-of-record integration layer (Integrating learnings into the business)
It is also important to note that a key part of Social CRM is engaging with humans as humans. Machines talking to humans rarely works, especially in terms of a meaningful conversation. Therefore, remember it’s not about the technology, it’s about the person using it and the conversation. If we lose sight of the fundamentals and hide behind automated monitoring and response it will be the equivalent of a business leaving an answer machine to deal with customers, it won’t learn or react, it will just repeat.
Further reading
You can review our previous Social CRM posts on Social CRM 2011 London here, and Vikki Chowney at eConsultancy also recently did an excellent checklist on social customer service.
If you want to learn more on the subject, and speak to those organisations and agencies involved in Social CRM, I would also recommend The Social Customer event in London on March 29th, run by Our Social Times.
Are we really still talking about PR vs search vs social?
February 17th, 2012
Warning: rant coming…
First of all, this is not meant to be an attack on the recent post, titled ‘PR Agencies: Adapt or Die‘, on the Forrester blog. It made some good points, but it was also the spark that re-ignited my ongoing frustration with the industry that perpetuates this ‘x vs Y approach’, or ‘we’re better at it than you’ nonsense, which in my opinion misses the point entirely.
Yes, the traditional PR agency needs to adapt, and the same has been said for many years. The smart ones already have, and the others, well…they are slowly learning why they should.
In that time the search agency became all powerful, then became a digital agency and is now trying to redefine itself, and it’s a similar tale across the industry.
The reality for PR agencies, social agencies, digital agencies, search agencies and the vast majority of agencies, is that simply offering one element of a much wider remit of brand communications is not enough.
You cannot expect to live by one skill alone any more, and it’s pretty clear that brands are not willing to pay five agencies to do five roles that one should really be able to accomplish. Is it too much to ask that brand communicators should be able to establish emotional connections with customers, without the client needing to worry about where each level of service implementation comes from?
Some may argue that mobile is a specialism and one worth maintaining outside of the brand communications sphere of skills, and although it could be argued that is true for now, it was true of search and social at one time. Therefore, the simple truth is we as consumers absorb media quickly, and expect our services, brands and conversations to be cross-media very quickly, so why shouldn’t we expect the same of our agencies?
Getting back to my point, the issue is not about whether PR lives or dies, in its traditional form it has been struggling for 10 years. Search is losing its slice of the pie as skills go in-house and revenues tumble, and social agencies need to up-skill across the board to remain competitive, or risk being stranded as a specialist. So the issue is not so much who will win, but what will win.
By what, I mean that the agency of the future is not search or social or PR or even advertising. It’s more likely to be earned or paid media, and even earned and paid. This agency, let’s call it simply a brand communications agency (although I realise that has negative connotations traditionally) can do all of the above. This agency will be the winner, and yes that will upset many business models and eat into carefully laid profit plans, but that is the reality I see, and I don’t mean this agency will need to hold all skills in-house.
So yes, PR agencies as a general rule don’t do digital very well, this is not news, but it’s what PR, social, search and digital will become that is much more interesting.
Finally, a note to our regular readers. My apologies if you have seen this same rant in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and now 2012, it seems change takes time.