Social CRM: What It Means Today

Quick Overview

• Defining Social CRM (SCRM)
• Ways to Leverage SCRM and How It Can Help You
• How to Get Started

Best practices in Social CRM are beginning to emerge, but what is it and why should you care? Simply stated, Social CRM is the required evolution of traditional CRM to support engagement with social consumers. There has been an ongoing discussion among CRM and industry thought leaders regarding the definition of Social CRM for over two years now. Just take a quick look at the CRM 2.0 Wiki to get a sense for the dialogue surrounding the concept. And while the focus has tended to be on the need for organizations to join the conversation, what’s clear is the need to evolve current CRM processes and technologies that will enable organizations to leverage the plethora of social media channels to their advantage.

Defining Social CRM (SCRM)
Last year Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light, 4th Edition, finally put a stake in the ground regarding how best to define SCRM because, while there wasn’t one point of view, there was general consensus. From his perspective, enough time was spent giving it a name and defining it, and the focus needed to turn to “start figuring out and documenting the business models, policies, practices, processes, social characteristics, applications, and the methodologies that we need to actually carry it out.”¹

Greenberg suggests, and we support, the following definition:
"Social CRM is 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."

Regardless of how you define it, forward-thinking organizations are actively using social media to engage consumers, fortify relationships, and drive revenue—and even fast followers can’t afford to be left behind. Consider that member communities reach more Internet users (66.8%) than e-mail (65.1%), and you begin to understand the importance of this evolving area.² And a recent Nielsen study found that channel surfing while surfing the Net is increasing as well (up 34.5% from December 2008 to December 2009) due to a great degree to people’s increased use of social networks while watching television.³ Clearly, marketing organizations are recognizing the importance of Social CRM, as eMarketer cites the percentage of the Fortune 500 not using social media has dropped dramatically from 43% to only 9%. 

Ways to Leverage SCRM to Benefit Your Business
Consider the following applications in which your organization can leverage SCRM to drive real business value:

1) Social Customer Insights
Gain insight into the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and offers by harvesting feedback from networks, blogs, and forums, etc. Leverage predictive analytics to mine text, collect, code, and analyze to automate these efforts.

2) Social Brand Monitoring
Uncover key insights into the opinions about your products or services that would otherwise not come to light. Monitor discussions and brand sentiment and, in near real time, defend your brand as necessary with workflows connected to existing CRM databases.

3) Social Campaign Tracking
Promote back-and-forth dialogue, and test or monitor campaigns and ideas to get feedback quickly.

4) Social Customer Advocacy
Build relationships with your most enthusiastic fans and drive advocacy through referrals, testimonials, or ambassador communities.

5) Social Lead Generation
Drive consumer engagement and sales by creating your own community.

6) Social Research & Development
Increase the pace of innovation while taking the pulse of your consumers through the use of gated communities, crowdsourcing, or by simply monitoring other networks. Customers, partners, and vendors can all play a role in your R&D efforts.

So what does this actually mean? Some of our clients and prospective clients have been asking us where to start. 

How to Get Started
A recent Altimeter Report suggests that organizations consider the “5Ms” of Social CRM as foundational processes: Monitoring, Mapping, Management, Middleware, and Measurement. Further, Altimeter Group cites the importance of deploying Social CRM programs that focus on delivering real business value, not buzz or hype. “Given today’s tight budgets, limited resources, and little time, organizations need to focus on bite-sized entry points,” they suggest. After months of study, Altimeter identified 18 CRM Use Cases, but readily admitted that when factoring in market demand and technology maturity, not all use cases are market ready.⁴

So where should you start? No doubt, Social CRM drives new thinking requiring you to fully embrace the new balance in the control of customer relationships. The focus of Social CRM is on collaboration versus control and experiences versus transactions. Of note, Social CRM is an extension of traditional CRM and not a replacement for it. 

That said, not unlike traditional CRM, Social CRM requires you to define your Social CRM objectives, define metrics for success, and then assess how evolved your organization is across key Social CRM enablers:

1) Technology
Are you ready to adopt technologies that integrate social media tools and automate interaction history for relationship building?

2) Customer Interaction
Have you moved beyond customer contact integration, and are you ready to engage in even deeper conversations with your customers?

3) Business Metrics
Are you ready to move beyond Lifetime Value (LTV) and consider Net Promoter Score and Customer Personal Value as well?

4) Customer Orientation
Are you ready to move beyond managing customers across the enterprise to managing customer engagement across the enterprise?

How evolved is your organization in terms of Social CRM? Are you ready to outline your first set of SCRM objectives? SCRM, while in its early stages, has already proven to increase customer engagement, build stronger relationships, and drive increased revenue. Your competitors are entering this space, so don’t get left behind.   

Contact RICG and we’ll develop a Social CRM Transformation Map customized for your organization to help you navigate this new and exciting landscape.

- -

Sources:
¹ PGreenblog, http://the56group.typepad.com/pgreenblog/2009/07/time-to-put-a-stake-in-the-ground-on-social-crm.html
² Nielsen Online research, Global Faces and Networked Places, March 2009
³ “Channel Surfing While Surfing the Net,” the New York Times, April 4, 2010
⁴ Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management, 18 Use Cases That Show Business How to Finally Put Customers First, R. “Ray” Wang and Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group, March 5, 2010