Meeting Customers Where They Are: When Social Media Misses the Mark

In which Jill watches Social CRM consultants get naked—and throws them a towel.

Don’t look now, but I’m about to marginalize social media for CRM. For those of you still reading, I’d like to share a recent client experience with social CRM. The V.P. of Customer Service at a Top 20 U.S. insurance company had a vision for using social media tools to help insurance agents, and then call center reps, to interact with their customers.

This client spent entirely too long Examining the Role of Social Media in Customer Relationships. There were off-site meetings with key executives in marketing, customer support, operations, IT, and sales. There were strategy documents. There were alignment and ownership discussions. There were cocktail confabs, private appeals to the CFO, and even a few ad-hoc debates in private Yammer groups.

And yes, there were the social media experts. I sympathized with the two guys who came in to lead a discussion of how social media can be a strategic game-changer. They wore t-shirts and alternately spouted clichés about customer loyalty and the importance of transparency. They had the bad manners to tweet as they presented, but the good sense not to use the client’s name. The tone was “let’s get naked and party—online!” One of the consultants proclaimed, “You can’t do CRM without going social.”

Daring? Yes. True? No. You see, the insurance company had already tried enticing agents to use social media. In turn, the agents tried enticing their customers, many of whom they’d known for years. The fact is that social media, bright and shiny though it may be, is still one of many communications channels. In a survey of agents, most admitted that they were available by phone “during 90 percent of the business day, and often thereafter” but they nevertheless tended to use social media “occasionally or when I’m bored.”

The social media dudes advocated enlisting the CEO who, unsurprisingly, was busy doing things like communicating with Wall Street. (And I’m pretty sure that most of those conversations weren’t done using Twitter.) When he was finally asked to publically advocate instant messaging accounts for all agents and a corporate Facebook page, he e-mailed his direct reports a missive that said something along the lines of the following (although shorter, and a bit more colorful):

Who are we kidding? Our agents are our channel. We’ll give them every tool they want to engage our customers, but we’re not going to force them to use new tools for the sake of it. They know our customers—it’s their choice.

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m all over social media. But when you come right down to it, a company’s effective adoption of social media has everything to do with its knowledge of its customers. As CRM Magazine managing editor Josh Weinberger pointed out in a recent blog post, “that doesn’t mean you’re absolved of the responsibility to maintain the relationship.”

The fact is your customers should dictate the forum via which that relationship is maintained. And who your customers are, their behaviors, their preferences, and their history with you, has everything to do with that. Factors like tenure, demographics, product offerings, branding and other factors tells us that customers of the Auto Club are far less likely to engage the company via social media, and customers of JetBlue—who don’t interact with JetBlue as much as they stay tuned to JetBlue—are more likely to use social media.

And that’s just how the insurer decided to move forward. Our strategy, in essence, was simple:  “In Touch. Inform. Engage. Inquire.” 

We would establish a social media presence and start “pushing” interesting, relevant, and timely communications to an opt-in community of tuned-in customers. We would then gauge who was listening and use that data to refine messages to the customer segments most likely to use social media. Once there was some history and those segments’ habits and preferences were better understood, new segments could be determined where additional social media strategies could be deployed, and see how they were interested in keeping the conversation going.

Call it an experiment. Call it a community prototype. You can even call it “bottom up social media.” But unless you’re meeting customers where they’re at, don’t call it Social CRM.

Photo via MikeBlogs via Flickr

Comments

[Kathy Herrmann]

Jill,

You make excellent points in your article about company's needing to know their customers and their preferred communication channels...and then deciding how and if social media should fit in.

Companies need to remember that social media consists of many channels and they would be better served to participate well in a few of them than provide mediocre participation in many of them. Even if companies do see social media value, the first step needed is determining which channels the company should participate in. The right channels will be impacted by where their customers are hanging out online -- or folks similar profiles to their customers. The development of a social media strategy then follows that determination.

Taking a progressive approach to social media is also an excellent idea. There are people to train (employees and customers) about using social media, oftentimes technology to implement, and time needed to grow a social media presence. And in the midst of all of that, the likely need to do some natural course adjustments as companies learn to navigate the social media waters.

[Paul May]

I think the channels issue is dead-on, but it also sounds like the issue was that the consultant didn't take the time to understand the customer's pain. No company has ever described their pain as "social CRM." Instead, they're focused on things like generating more leads, improving conversion, reducing customer service costs, etc. The key is identifying the specific pain that the customer has and applying the right technology to the problem. In this case, it's not surprising that insurance agents don't have a need for social media as a customer service solution...it's not how their customers like to be communicated with (nor how they like to communicate with their customers). I'm guessing the discussion would have been much more fruitful if they'd explored the potential of social media for increasing leads, improving search performance, etc (i.e., focusing on the front of the funnel).

[Kathy Herrmann]

In today's world, companies will gain from extending their online presence. The question then becomes what is the best way to do so? That comes back to Paul's comments about the need for a company's exec's to first decide on their overall corporate strategy. Tactics, including the selection or omission of social media and its supporting technologies, should follow from the strategy and not lead it.

Not every online initiative needs to revolve around social media channels (and I say that as a SM proponent). For some companies, a better online strategy might be to focus on providing a good and informative customer portal where a customer can review his or her specific account information...and omit social media until some later time.

It goes back to defining the company's overall business (and customer) needs first, then letting the solution flow from there. In the situation Jill describes above regarding her insurance client, it sounds like the "social media dudes" came in more to sell their solution(s) than to solve the company's problems.

[Bob Warfield]

Jill, it doesn't sound like you marginalized Social Media at all.

As I read your story, a lot of talking was done, but there was no actual action that took place beyond the talk. Somebody wanted to do something Social, there was neither a grass roots groundswell, nor a top-down decision, so the whole thing floundered despite all the high priced consultants flocking around.

Same thing has happened to CRM since it's beginning, so why would we be surprised if it can happen to Social CRM too?

Social CRM is not a hobby, experiment, or test. It requires culture, customer expectations, and strategy to all align. It also requires a successful user experience which is a function of all that as well as whatever technology you mean to employ. If any of those choices are haphazard, expect problems and lack of adoption.

It is absolutely correct that you have to engage with your customers where they want to engage, but it isn't clear from this story that anyone really considered that either.

Sounds like you could delete all references to "Social" and have a plain old CRM story being told one more time.

Cheers,

BW

[John Moore]

Great post Jill, as always. If you have a moment, take a look at my recent post as many are falling into a trap of confusing Social CRM with Social Support Communities.

http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/has-social-crm-crossed-the-chasm/

Let me know what you think.

John

[Jim Estill]

Valid points. The Buts are: Social Media is growing rapidly so understanding now makes sense. Early adopters and people who understands the media will win in the future.

And social media is a media and a low cost one. People buy because they are influenced by multiple medias. See:

http://bit.ly/1WwyON

[Mike Boysen]

Jill,

I nearly fell over laughing reading this. T-Shirts? Twittering? OMG. I can't wait to have this experience!

[rune]

hey- is wearing a T-shirt hitting a rough spot in some of you.. watch your customers, they all wear them.. are you in any way better then them.. come on. But multitasking while presenting is pherhaps a bit to much eaven for me. But do this kill the content of their presentation ?

Meeting customer where they are means, by all means meeting the customers in their prefered channels is the point.

pherhaps the solution isnt only talking in their prefered channels, but ripping aport our solution and make them availeble to our customers in prefered channels, and in channels online with relevant customer traffic.. best regards

[Jim Ericson]

Jill is not only dead on as she usually is, she cracks me up as well. T-shirts have always been a sore spot for me, but art imitates life and vice versa no matter how you feel about it.

You go, you biz/tech wizard!