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Social CRM Comes of Age, by Paul Greenberg have privileged and personalized treatment. That could take the form of greater discounts, loyalty program points, some other form of recognition; even access to management isn’t out of the question. They expect honesty also and while that may seem easy it isn’t easy for most companies and they know it. As we roil through 2009, corporate senior management doesn’t even think they know their customer or that they deserve their customer’s loyalty. Strativity, a customer experience consulting firm run by industry luminary Lior Arussy, does an annual survey on how senior management thinks about its customers. The findings are so frequently shocking that they are no longer shocking. The 2008 study found the traditional bit of lip service to CRM strategy with 80% of the surveyed executives saying that customer strategy is more important to their success than ever before. But what is not surprising, given the year over year results is the following from 2008: • 43.9% believe that their companies deserve their customers' loyalty. • 42.6% responded that their companies' products and services are NOT worth the price they charge. • 43.7% said their companies will take any customer that is willing to pay This outlook implies something rather disturbing, though not shocking something that reinforces the distrust of CEOs and marketing departments, outlined earlier. A huge percentage of senior executives doesn’t believe in their own efforts enough to think that they deserve a commitment from their customers and are desperate enough to say and do anything to get a paying customer. Harsh words, but the survey supports the contention. Add this to the already existing customer distrust and you can see the obstacles here. This is why creating a transparent and authentic or, if you’d rather, open and honest, interactive relationship between a company and a customer is not an easy thing to do. Given the above, how can you? Ah. This is where Social CRM shines. We’ve discussed the strategy now for the tools. The Social Tools To fully engage customers and to increase the chances of success with those either business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C) customers, both the customers and the employees feel that the tools are integral to the effort. Oddly, where customers do trust the company is if they use social tools. Two studies that came out in mid and late 2008 confirm this seemingly peculiar notion. Cone released a study on “Business in Social Media” that found that 34% of Americans think that companies should have a social media presence. Even more telling, 56% of the total respondents 11
Social CRM Comes of Age, by Paul Greenberg felt a stronger connection to the company and its brand when they could use social media tools to interact with that company and 57% of them felt “better served.” Contrast that to the Strativity study mentioned a short bit ago. If executives truly mean that customer strategy is more important than ever before and a huge amount of those executives think that they aren’t doing much for customer’s commitment then, given what the customers are saying, it would seem to be a no brainer to provide those tools to deepen the commitment and serve them better. Social CRM Tools Benefit the Enterprise But because there is so much more than just brand commitment and even customer loyalty that a business has to consider, the combination of traditional CRM and integrated social tools is where the real benefits begin to show themselves. Figure 1 shows the types of tools that we’re talking about for social CRM and the infrastructure and technology platform that it needs to sit on. It combines the operational strengths of traditional CRM tools with the power to reach out and capture external customer interaction and directly connect with customers. But Social CRM tools add an additional strength. If you focus on the middle pillar you’ll note that the traditional sales force automation, marketing automation and customer service tools (viewable on the left pillar) are replaced by social sales, social marketing, and customer service 2.0 tools. Replaced might not be the right word here enhanced is perhaps better. The midpillar tools are geared toward optimizing the successes for varying enterprise departments. 12
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