Service with a smile -- and a Tweet
In my opinion the area that will make the biggest impact in the mainstreaming of Social CRM is customer service. Alex Bard, CEO of customer service solution provider Assistly, says 2011 will bring an impressive increase in the amount of customer service delivered over social networks. "Not only will more companies provide service over social channels, but socially-networked customer service will take its place alongside sales and marketing as a cornerstone of any comprehensive Social CRM strategy."
"In our view, delivering customer service over social networks is a fundamentally different task from marketing and sales activities" Bard says. "As businesses evolve their use of social networks, from simple listening and publishing to more meaningful engagement, they will want tools to optimize around service and support. In our view, social customer care will no longer be an afterthought or an adjunct to Social CRM; it will sit squarely at the core of business strategy alongside other forms of customer interaction."
Social footprints turn into customer intelligence
With people sharing more and more of their lives on social networks today, it's already critical to not just listen, but to understand what's being said in order to act accordingly. "The No. 1 use case we're seeing of late is the triaging, prioritization, automating, and routing of customer tweets, status updates, and other information across the enterprise," says John Bastone, global product marketing manager for customer intelligence for SAS. "As social becomes an integral channel, and as insights on who matters, and who doesn't become quantified, handling this efficiently becomes of paramount importance."
Bastone refers to this as a "Reese's Moment." "Do you recall those commercials, which showed some event where peanut butter and chocolate were combined for the first time?" he says. "'Two great tastes, that taste great together?' That's a good analogy for what's happening behind the scenes in organizations today. Combine social media chatter with website visits and see how social strategies drive traffic. Combine real-time social sentiment with real-time stock price to understand how social media is immediately shaping corporate outlook. Correlation is on the menu for 2011."
But it's important to take a strategic approach to mainstreaming social data. "While it is evident that a business needs to integrate its internal and external data silos in order to fully realize the value of social CRM, it is also important to underscore the need for cross-functional teams and processes that work toward integrating people and processes across departments and functions," says Tom Clear, CEO of unified service desktop provider Jacada. "These organizational changes are currently driven by the need to be successful with social initiatives, rather than an organizational resolve to tear down walls. While this will continue to be the case, we should expect further progress in this direction and widespread adoption of best practices shared by the pioneers."
Still a ways to go
A lot of momentum has built up over the past year with respect to Social CRM, and 2010 was a watershed year in a number of ways. And while 2011 looks to be shaping up as the year companies go beyond focusing on marketing and promotion, we're still at the beginning of understanding the power of integrating social with traditional CRM in all aspects of customer engagement.
Volker Hildebrand, VP of solution management for SAP, expects most organizations to have some sort of social media activities going on next year -- either out of fear, competitive pressure -- or because they really see an opportunity to better reach out to and engage with their target audience. "But many organizations are still pondering, though, what they should do and the spectrum will range from 'Hey, let's create a Facebook page' to more sophisticated and strategic social media initiatives such as building and fostering a vibrant branded online community," he says.
Even if your company is still in the trial and error phase, or focused on reacting to social media, it's time to look at what the combination of social tools and CRM technology can do to create collaborative relationships with customers -- throughout the relationship lifecycle. With vendors providing more tools to make it easier to do so, 2011 will be a significant year in the development of the collaborative relationship, and Social CRM as a corporate strategy.
Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger.His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.
