Michael MaozThe really big hits in Social CRM are well publicized, though they are the exceptions. Most cases out there aren’t really social and they are not CRM. Kind of like the way the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t holy, wasn’t roman, and wasn’t an empire. A few companies have tied together the plumbing that they have connected (blogs, tagging, content creation, rating, profiles, Wikis). But for 95 percent of organizations the next step has not been taken of connecting the interactions with the customer management systems that hold the intelligence around customer history, preferences, total lifetime value, and suggested next best action.
In fact, most products considered in the “Social CRM” category are nothing more than externally facing social software. Good looking and strong, but no brains. I went to university with a lot of guys like that. But in the end the nerds rule the world. You need the connectivity and the flash, but you also need the business process baked into the systems if you are to progress the customer experience beyond interesting and engaging.
Why are current efforts falling short? The direction is good, and the trend is positive: engage the participation of the customer. But now businesses need to roll up their sleeves and invest in strategies that will be measured in business terms: better traction with a marketing campaign, higher purchase prices, more frequent purchases, fewer returns, lower cost per service interaction – the kind of data that makes shareholders happy.
Social CRM metrics is the next step in the journey, and it will require commitement of time, resources, and money.
How are you getting ready?
Category: CRM Customer Centric Web Innovation and Customer Experience Leadership Social CRM Social Networking Social Software Tags:
3 responses so far ↓
1 Tim Jones March 31, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Hi, Michael:
We at Buzzient are in total agreement. There’s a lot of outbound “noise” around Social CRM; what we’ve found is that the real value add for our customers is in connection social media to data-driven internal systems.
We’re going to be at the Kana Customer Summit Showcase, so we look forward to seeing you there and sharing more with you.
Tim
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