Social CRM: What It Means Today
Published June 30, 2010
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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.
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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