Analytics and Data Mining,Collaboration,Enterprise 2.0,ROI,Social CRM
The discussion around Social CRM is entering a phase whereby we are trying to move away from turning around in circles about semantics, towards a more practical and pragmatic approach that businesses can identify with so as to consider implementing it. I won’t deal with CRM Vendors here, as Social CRM can be seen as an extension to CRM. As a primer on SCRM I suggest you look at Bill Band’s article on Customer Think. The main idea that we all do agree upon is that we need to become customer-centric in order to respond to their changing needs and expectations, and this may have some major ramifications on the way we organise our businesses.
I think the actual paradigm shift is the realisation of the consumers that they now have power derived from choice and the means to share and influence others with a far greater reach through the use of Social Media. We can now interact in far greater numbers, when we choose and share our experiences about how happy or unhappy we are about your business. Happy customers can drive more people to become customers. When we voice our gripes, you had better listen and meet our expectations to make us happy again. We have no obligation to do business with you, there are others out there and we’ll go elsewhere. As a group we have power, but you’d better listen to me as an individual!
Scorpfromhell recently wrote and excellent article [Enterprise 2.0 vs Social CRM – Fight or Tango?] that I suggest you read – good insights!
To summarise, Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 need to walk hand in hand. One of his statements that I would like to elaborate on is that “”efficient employees lead to better customer experience” – I would say that you can react to external threats and opportunities more efficiently in a more timely and apt fashion. We could then say that Enterprise 2.0 is a prerequisite for the ‘better customer experience’, or at least a competitve advantage in customer service. When you go to a Four Season’s Hotel, the service you result is the result of many people interacting to make your stay as pleasant as possible – check-in clerk, hotel manager, room service, pool attendants, restaurant staff and whatnot, and they have all been taught to work together to make this happen for you.
Collaboration,Enterprise 2.0,Social CRM
We are slowly coming to a common definition of Social CRM, but I suggest that we should actually be taking it far further. Social CRM is the link between Social Media, Online Customer Communities and traditional CRM (an extension to CRM, Paul Greenberg et al), and CRM is just a part of what we do within our companies to bring products and services to our customers.
Collaboration,Enterprise 2.0,ROI,Social CRM,Traditional CRM Interaction
I met with Bernard Parisot and Catherine Chapuis of Net7 in Paris today to exchange with them on the subject of Social CRM. Net-7 consists of a number of C-Level Executives who have founded a company to provide expertise to Senior Management in many different sectors. They have often come across the issues involved implementing CRM systems so I highly value their input and experience!
The key point that I took away from this meeting is that not only do you need to put the right Social CRM tools in place to better communicate with your client base, you also need to gear your organisation in order to create a mindset that facilitates this interaction. Not only do internal employees need to come to grips with using the tools, analysing the data that comes out of them, but they also need to understand that they need to reach out and communicate with the other ‘silos’ that exist within their company. Information should flow freely and correlations should bubble up in order to create a synergy that will help to better serve the customer and provide her with what she is looking for.
Having been in Enterprise Software for most of my active career, I am now looking into how companies can use “Social Media” to improve the way they do their business. We have now come to the point where a definition is bubbling up (Paul Greenberg et al) that is useful to build upon.
The communication tools that are now available allow us to not only push our marketing messages out to potential customers (B2C) but also allow these customers to interact with our company, leading to higher satisfaction levels or even to customer-driven innovation (C2B). Furthermore by providing a channel accessible to all customers, everyone that is a (potential) stakeholder of our company’s products or services can communicate, facilitating peer-to-peer communication and support and Brand advocacy (C2C).
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