Michael MaozThe great thing about spending time with clients, inside of their customer support operations, is that it puts me in my place. Over four days I met with companies in the United States from the East Coast to the Mississippi River. They ranged from large mid-sized (US$2 billion) to really, really big: $22 billion). And here are the three things they shared in common: 1) Social CRM is in its infancy, their websites are far from ‘customer-centric,’ and 3) there is still a lot of work to be done just to get their customer service personnel the tools that they need to be successful.
Looking at the three attributes in reverse, one of the companies told me that most of their sales are booked in a customer portal on the website, but fully 40% of business is impacted by the contact center staff. That is a large volume of business. Phone conversations can still be the life and death of a relationship. An alert, engaged, knowledgeable service agent outperforms software every day of the week. Yes, humans are more finicky, less reliable, harder to program, and not as scalable, as their silicon alternative: customer self service, but they are also more flexible, inventive, creative and personable. That is, unless you recruit for the least expensive rep, give them minimal training, no authority, fail to motivate them, and put inadaquate systems at their disposal. My bottom line: customer service agents are your best investment in driving customer experiences that seal loyalty, and they should be more highly valued in the enterprise.
The second point is on creating a customer-centric web strategy. I was situated at a table in a client meeting between the fulfillment team and the customer support team and the marketing team. This was the corporate versoin of being an embeded journalist in Fallujah in 2004. I wondered if the three had ever met, if they’d ever considered what it would be like to work on the same team. Instead, one was talking about self service as a sales order. Another was talking about customer service as the chat, email, and knowledge tools. The marketing person was all about the banners and the notifications and colors. They each had their real estate and directive to optimize ‘their’ piece of the web. My question was: “How do your customers rate the different process capabilities of your website?” Do clients look forward to interacting on the site? Is it engaging? Is it personalized? Do they know how to escalate from self service to assisted support? Do they look forward to their next interaction.
There was a moment of silence on that one.
OK, so, since we have managed to leave gaping holes in our customer interactions, let us jump ahead and build customer engagement, social networks – we’ll get that right! It is like taking a mediocre analyst and making them a manager. Those who can’t, manage! (Where is Borat when you need him?) My thought here is that though I am a big proponent of Social everything (maybe not Social Security [sic]), it needs to be placed in the broader context of the customer experience with the organization as a whole. Much of what you are going to hear when you give customers the tools to engage one another are the exact things that you are not organized to hear today. What will make you any more ready to do something about the insights? Bottom line: if you are not ready to change your approach to supporting the customer, put on your lifejacket before you get too far into a Social CRM project, because chances are you’ll be swept overboard.
Category: CRM Customer Centric Web Innovation and Customer Experience Leadership Social CRM Social Networking Social Software Tags:
9 responses so far ↓
1 Bookmarks for May 26th through May 27th – Social CRM ( SCRM ) Consulting Services | Social CRM World ( SCRM ) May 27, 2010 at 11:06 am
[...] Going overboard with Social CRM. [...]
2 Brad Mays May 27, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Great perspective, Michael. As someone who is currently working with these types of teams to address the voice of the customer, I’ve also seen that the biggest challenge isn’t with technology (at least not fundamentally-for now) but rather the ability for large organizations to integrate the philosophy of social CRM across the departments that must work together to address an individual customer issue online.
But, to your point, it’s difficult to implement a strong social CRM program when a company struggles to get traditional CRM right. Add to that the speed and expectations social platforms bring about, and you’ve got an uphill, but necessary, climb for most.
3 Going overboard with Social CRM. : : crm May 27, 2010 at 1:43 pm
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4 John Burton May 27, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Hi Michael,
Another great post! This piece reinforces what you (and a few others) have been warning about for a while now regarding the dangers of jumping into the Social CRM waters without knowing how to swim. On the one hand, Social CRM can definitely provide some great benefits, but on the other hand it’s certainly not a customer-service cure all. Merely hiring a few people to monitor Twitter isn’t going to solve (or even mask) dysfunctional customer-support processes, fundamentally flawed products or services, or un-empowered customer-service agents.
I’ve also been preaching to people that they should focus on getting the call center and email running smoothly before moving to Web chat and Social Media channels. However, that being said, if organizations are going to insist on rushing ahead into Social CRM, someone has to rush ahead with them to point out dangers and at least try to keep things moving in the right direction. So bring a flashlight and some sandwiches
Best regards,
John
5 Beth Goldman May 27, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Great post. I agree that there are a lot of challenges to get a company to be customer and support-centric and immersed in social CRM. I attended Lithium’s conference on Community Management and Social CRM a couple of weeks ago and it was a great learning experience. Here’s my take: http://blog.insideview.com/2010/05/16/on-lithium/
6 Simon Preece May 28, 2010 at 7:20 am
Hi Michael,
Really enjoyed reading your post here.
Some similar thinking to a post I wrote recently about how organisations need to get other elements of their operations right before diving headlong into SCRM. http://bit.ly/bx8EVk
Simon
7 Kobie Fuller May 28, 2010 at 11:04 am
Michael,
Very good post! I think many organizations are too quick to get excited over the hype of social and all the different ways to engage customers and are not taking enough time to really perfect how all the different touchpoints with the customer are being executed. Platforms that collect full customer information (transactional, customer service history, behavioral) and leverage this data to empower the marketer, salesperson and customer service rep to engage the customer appropriately are key. Salesforce, Loyalty Lab and other platforms help accomplish this. Still, getting a good technology platform to help facilitate proper customer engagement is just one piece of the puzzle. At the end of the day, proper management, direction and leadership of these initiatives is what will truly dictate success.
-KKF
8 Brian Jameson May 28, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Hi Michael,
In a world where Social CRM seems to be garnering all of the buzz and attention, it’s sobering to hear someone in the analyst community talking about plugging holes in the customer-centric strategy before jumping into Social CRM. I agree whole-heartedly that you must have the strategy in place first, and then the tools (and people) to accomplish that. One question I keep asking myself is why not look at Social CRM just like the other customer-centric tactics available, web-self service, knowledge management, BPM capabilities, etc. In your opinion, isn’t the idea of Social CRM to make your business more customer centric? If yes, why not weave that into the suite of tools and tactics companies are already carrying out.. without getting drinking too much of the Social CRM hype-sauce.
Thanks,
Brian Jameson
http://www.riverstar.com
9 Cindy June 5, 2010 at 12:39 am
Excellent post – time to convert this type of information into a maturity model for CRM…