Social Media and CRM

By Jill Dyché

In which Jill in gets a bad grade, but keeps a good client.

My client is a long-time, self-described “data geek” and we get together when I’m in the Bay Area for status updates and some gossip. So here we are sipping our lattes at the headquarters espresso lounge and we’re not talking about data models (yet), open source BI tools, or what new information Marketing needs for its campaigns. “Our CRM is Web two-oh,” he tells me as he bites a biscotti.

photo by filipe ferreira

This is a departure for him, and I’m not sure what to make of it. “Really?” I say, cursing my lack of creativity but at the same time not wanting to prematurely prescribe anything.

“Yeah,” he says as he chews. “We have a corporate LinkedIn profile, our sales reps are friending all our clients on Facebook, and we have a corporate commercial on YouTube. AND,” he adds, inserting a pregnant pause for effect, “I just convinced our CEO to do Twitter!”

“So how are you measuring success?” I ask him. It’s a genuine question, but his expression changes immediately, and I realize I just graded a C minus in my role as Trusted Advisor. My client explains that though they haven’t worked out measurement yet, the fact that they’ve embraced social media is in itself a major cultural leap, as well as a personal career coup for him.

But is it really? Anyone in a bowling league, a reading group, or yes, a corporation, can throw together a MySpace page or cultivate a tribe of tweeple on Twitter. The adoption of online tools doesn’t automatically propel a company forward into the new world of social media any more than partying at Social Hollywood makes you a hipster. The art isn’t in establishing a social media presence as much as it is closing the “talking-listening-acting” gap.

When social media pioneer Scott Monty joined Ford Motor Company last year he set about helping on-line content providers tell “richer stories” about the Ford brand, once engaging a web site owner that Ford’s legal department had considered suing in a positive partnership dialog. The point is that Monty and his team have their ear to the ground when it comes to the Ford brand. They regularly act on the information they access—from online tools and elsewhere—to refine that brand. And yes, a potential Ford Focus buyer can indeed use the website’s RSS feeder to get regular SNPRs (Social Media Press Releases) and other updates about the car pushed to her reader or e-mail account.

My client wants to talk to me about the virtues of Facebook over MySpace and how FriendFeed can help drive more engaged customer conversations. But I owe it to him to tell him that this isn’t the hard part. The hard part is establishing new business processes and job roles in order to use these and other emerging social media tools effectively. It’s establishing on-line personas that are legitimate and empowered to engage in sometimes-difficult conversations. It’s about more than listening to or even  celebrating customers. It’s about formalizing new ways to capture this data, use it to re-segment customers, measure your share-of-voice, and redefine customers’ experience with your products and your brand.

And if you make some friends in the bargain? Well, that’s kewl too. E-mail me your comments—or tweet me @jilldyche if you’re already there.

Comments

[scorpfromhell]

Excellent summation of Social Media in CRM! :)

This is what we have been discussing over the #scrm channel on Twitter too. Paul Greenberg, Graham Hill, Jesus Hoyos, Brent Leary, etc. are active on it too! Eagerly waiting for you to pitch in.

Social Media is just another customer channel that needs integration with traditional CRM and a new bunch of metrics to measure its effective use. Do that & voila! you have Social CRM. :)

That was really the easy part though am yet to see those features in action. Some tools deliver them piece meal, but no vendor has delivered them yet in one single package.

But the change management is surely going to be the toughest task ahead, not just in terms of redefining the functions & creating new roles, but also in terms of making a shift from mere "push"ing messages to having conversations after "listening" to the customers.

Links for further reference:
#scrm - http://search.twitter.com/search?q=scrm
Social Media Metrics - http://scorpfromhell.blogspot.com/2008/10/mind-map-for-social-media-metrics.html
Trust & Reputation in Social CRM - http://scorpfromhell.blogspot.com/2009/02/of-trust-reputation-in-social-crm.html

I am known as @scorpfromhell on twitter :)

[Jennifer]

"The adoption of online tools doesn’t automatically propel a company forward into the new world of social media any more than partying at Social Hollywood makes you a hipster."

Well said!

[mark madsen]

Well thought out post Jill. The shift in marketing and branding focus and processes is key. The measurement will still be fuzzy, but easier to develop if the goals and process are understood.

Your Ford story outlines another good point: engage in good faith, because any other spin isn't going to work in a conversation with customers.

[Blake Cahill]

Jill - Nice post. Yes, in many ways social data is just another channel for interaction; however, it provide many unique elements: like sentiment, passion, potential influence, and viralness. Conversations by consumers and customers expose brands and companies in ways they had been able to manage or in most cases ignore. The promises of CRM and Customer-Centric driven organizations are being propelled because so many of the conversations are open and viewable by many verses one-to-one in walk-up, contact centers, etc. This is what is driving the pace of transformation and adoption of social technologies. The challenge is whether organization up to task of the new "consumer driven" environment. Just like with CRM and other technologies its the people and processes defined and implemented that drive much of the success with organizations not the technology alone.

Blake Cahill
Visible Technologies