Social CRM Comes of Age (PDF) - Oracle

Social CRM Comes of Age, by Paul Greenberg
Technology Advances Communication
Multiple technologies advanced over the first decade of the millennium and dramatically
impacted how people communicated with each other and how they were able to navigate that
vast storehouse of the so­called “worldwide web.”
By no means underestimate the importance of Google in this transformation. The exponential
growth of Internet search, with Google alone reaching nearly 500 million unique visitors in just
the month of November 2007, was a significant driver of change. How we accessed information
changed forever. The searcher could now get what they looked for in less than a second. This
eliminated the need for what had been expensive search products whose cost rose
commensurately with the functional power of the search ­ often to thousands of dollars for
corporations and typically beyond the reach of the ordinary consumer. Google’s ability to find
something from unstructured data became a powerful tool in the hands of anyone who chose to
use it ­ and at no cost for the product. The paradigm for search was no longer hours and even
days of indexing time behind a corporate firewall and no apparent way to do much with
unstructured data on the web. Anyone had access to incredible amounts of information at
anytime at their fingertips in a format that, while not sexy, was easy to understand.
In conjunction with that we saw significant advances in the use of mobile devices such as the
Blackberry ­ the first truly enterprise­strength mobile device. Mobile devices became more than
cell phones. They handled email, SMS (text messaging) and internet access. This revolutionized
the way that Generation Y in particular communicated. No longer did you have to call someone
via the phone. You could email them or receive one ­ and most importantly send and receive text
messages. For the first time, a person could operate in a day to day way carrying out much of
their communications untied to a desk or a home. They were free to move. Additionally, with
SMS text messaging they could communicate directly without directly speaking with the other
party ­ and it was quick, easy and pretty cool.
But these are just two of the technology tendrils. There are many more germane to the rise of the
social customer such as the growth of web based communities, the explosion of threaded
discussions on forums and the mainstreaming of the blogosphere ­ all of which fit neatly into the
Web 2.0 category. But search and mobility triggered much of the Web 2.0 growth. The societal
changes were equally and perhaps even more important reasons for the evolution of the social
customer that businesses are dealing with today.
Irreversible Social Change
If one had to point to two social factors that are responsible for the way that people now interact
with each other and institutions, they would be:
1. Corporate and financial scandals of 2001­2008
2. The entrance of Gen Y into the workforce.
3