I have been focused on other conversations but wanted to take a moment to quickly weigh in on the conversations taking place around Social CRM. Once again, the CRM pundits, experts, and vendors are doing a great job of creating confusion. Half the people are talking about Social CRM as a strategy, half are discussing Social CRM as a technology. Each group is claiming 2010 is the year where you need to jump on board the Social CRM Love Train.
Let me refer to the master, Paul Greenberg, for the accepted definition of Social CRM:
"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."
Yes, Social CRM is a philosophy, a business strategy. It is, as most business strategies are, supported by tools and tactics. It is not, however, a tool itself.
TechCrunch, unfortunately, came out and listed Social CRM as one of the key technologies for 2010. Okay, repeat after me, Social CRM is a strategy, not a tool/technology.
Now, the Social CRM/Business Strategy is an important one and needs to be considered by all companies. While you may or may not agree with the statement that customers control the conversation, they are more heavily invested in the conversation than ever before. In many cases, customers/citizens are influencing that conversation far more than many businesses/governments realize.
I will repeat some simply Business 101 practices that I feel still apply, despite the continued swirling hype:
- Define your goals. How much money do you want to make, how do you want to benefit your citizens?
- Define strategies to meet your goals. Yes, you must be aware of the changing landscape, the changed landscape, and ask yourself how the new social customer/citizen impacts the strategies you want to employ. Social Business Strategies, Social CRM Strategies, are a PART OF, not a REPLACEMENT FOR, your business strategies. Treat your customers with respect, be honest with them, engage.
- Define tactics, which will include the use of tools like Social Support Communities (SSC), Social Media Monitoring (SMM), CRM, etc..
- Define what you need to measure. Keep customer satisfaction in mind, measure how you are doing, modify your approach as needed, execute, measure how you are doing, modify your approach, execute... Repeat until the end of time.
That is it for now. What do you think?
Link to original postFor the last decade I have worked as a senior engineering manager for SAAS applications built upon the Microsoft technology stack. This has allowed me to have an exciting day job focused on delivering real customer value in the form of products, services, and social conversations. When I am not wearing the CTO/CIO hat I continue to engage in co-creation of value with customers, partners, and vendors and I enjoy writing this blog, engaging in conversations in real-life and twitter. If you want to learn more about CRM, Social Business Strategies, or any other topic I am likely to have an opinion on, stop by and leave me a note.