Inside the Biz with Jill Dyche

CRM and Social Media: The Rules Still Apply

In which Jill reminisces about CRM failures past—and warns that past is prologue.

Last year a large brokerage firm engaged Baseline to review its customer strategy and build a CRM program plan. The firm’s customer service and marketing departments had collaborated on a CRM vision and now needed a tactical roadmap for moving forward. That roadmap would include things like an information strategy, new tool acquisition, and a plan for social media.

I love engagements that meld our experience with CRM delivery, customer data deployment, key technology recommendations, and building roadmaps. When the client signed the statement of work, I felt particularly happy, like I’d come home to discover Viggo Mortensen singing in my shower. Here was a project I could sink my teeth into.

We recognized the warning signs almost immediately. A long and random wish-list of new functions. Disproportionate energy around technology acquisition. Disagreements about outcomes. IT circling the wagons while pushing its enterprise app vendor’s CRM suite. It was just like the old days, only with a lot more talk about Twitter.

It’s almost as if this company—where everyone admitted that, when it came to technology, “we have one of everything”—hadn’t heard of the sins exposed in the heyday of customer-focus. It was as if they’d forgotten all the lessons learned, namely:

• Define your requirements before investing in technology
• Articulate end-state goals—and be sure they’re customer-focused
• Be willing to change business processes and job roles to accommodate new customer-centric practices
• Define customer value tiers—and focus on conversion
• Measure both hard and soft ROI
• Create a feedback mechanism to let the voice of the customer drive improvements

Traditionally blame for many of the classic CRM failures has landed squarely in IT’s lap.  But this time IT was off the hook. The business hadn’t been clear about the desired outcomes of its new customer-focused vision, never mind how it wanted to leverage social media to help deliver it. All the lofty mission statements in the world won’t get customers to return to your store or exalt your service on their Facebook pages.

We went back to executives in marketing and customer service and asked them to answer the following questions:

1. Can we agree on our “desired outcomes” for improving the customer experience?
2. When customers who participate in our social communities share more information about themselves and, how will we use this newfound information? How will we avoid mis-using it?
3. What existing capabilities and technologies can we leverage to deliver this new vision? What investments do we need to make?
4. Can we anticipate the organizational impact of these new changes? Are we willing to support them?

Once we collected their answers, we brought executives together and had them discuss each others’ responses. It was clear that while the business wanted to participate in CRM, they expected IT and line workers to actually execute. We helped them understand that their ongoing involvement—and the need to enlist their peers in the Sales, IT, and e-Business organizations—was necessary for customer acquisition and retention. And to instill customer-centricity into the

Yes, it was more complex than they thought it would be. But ultimately they got a comprehensive roadmap for deploying CRM, including a robust plan for incrementally-delivered social media capabilities. And I must admit that when we delivered the roadmap to executives, I felt newly happy. Like Viggo had just asked for the soap.

Commenting on the Comments on my Social Media Post

In which Jill discusses what to wear. Or what not to wear.

I recently wrote a blog post on social media and CRM, “Meeting Customers Where They Are: When Social Media Misses the Mark.” In the post I described a client meeting in which two cavalier, t-shirt wearing social media consultants spouted aphorisms about social CRM without understanding what the sponsors really needed, and where they were on the CRM continuum.

The post got a lot of hits, and a lot of comments. Thanks to those of you who weighed in on the topic, I think everyone made valid points. But the first paragraph of one of the more recent comments by a reader named “rune” took an interesting turn. Rune wrote:

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 ?

I’d like to state here for the record that I do not in principle object to t-shirts. Au contraire! I say the more men wearing t-shirts in the workplace, the better!  A man in a t-shirt says, “Hey, I’m a casual-but-confident guy, comfortable in my own skin. Wanna beer?” Indeed James Dean in a t-shirt was nothing less than a gift from God. (You never saw a picture of him sporting a logoed golf shirt, did you? I rest my case.)

I particularly appreciate the so-called “Beefy T,” which has been worn by some of the greats, and in its latter years often morphs into useful cleaning implement. Many a dish has been dried, and myriad dirty dog paws have been wiped clean with a Beefy-T. The Beefy-T is smart and versatile. It’s up for anything. The Beefy-T is the George Plimpton of t-shirts.

But I am truly sorry if my blog post offended. My apologies to any t-shirt wearing social media consultants—their unfortunate sartorial judgment notwithstanding. Apologies to Zac Efron, David Beckam, Antonio Zapato Junior, and Marky Mark. Please keep up the good work, guys. And, in the interest of equal time, Pam Anderson and Eva Mendes can definitely rock a t-shirt. Bygones, ladies.

Finally a special apology to the good people at Hanes and Fruit of the Loom (and, to a lesser extent, BVD). You really are providing a public service. Most of the time.

photo by emdot via flickr.