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There are a number of potential use cases for Social CRM, but they don't all provide a high value to your organization. One that does, is Innovation.
Social CRM. As a term, it’s freighted with connotations. That second term in particular, CRM. CRM systems have a well-worn set of use cases, strengths and weaknesses. So as a starting point for understanding the possibilities of Social CRM, one has to get past the existing uses of CRM.
The Altimeter Group published a well-read report, 18 Uses of Social CRM. The report covers a variety of ways Social CRM can be applied. Many are classic CRM sales & marketing stuff: social campaign tracking, rapid response to flare-ups on social media, rapid social sales response, presenting a consistent face to the customer, etc. For context, note the following quote from a 2001 article on CRM:
Customer-friendly CRM systems are built around the customer's shopping and buying process, not the company's selling process.
Notice the focus on “shopping and buying process”. Not on the actual “jobs” for which the customer may hire your company. This is CRM as fundamentally about selling, not about understanding customer needs. Much of the Altimeter report reinforces this traditional approach, albeit with a social veneer. Can’t blame them either, CRM is a multi-billion dollar business.
However, two of the uses are specifically innovation-related: Innovations Insights and Crowdsourced R&D. And in combing through the report, there are a number of observations that are innovation oriented. I’ve captured them below:
Each of those snippets has some bearing on the emerging field of open innovation:
Open innovation is the two-way engagement with external parties to source, co-create and develop ideas that benefit the market and the company.
In that context, the quotes above from the Altimeter report on Social CRM very much fit the philosophies of open innovation. It’s about tapping the ideas and knowledge of people at a far greater scale than your own workforce.
Voice-of-the-customer (VOC) programs have been around for a while, and Social CRM as applied to innovation appears to be a new channel for that. Innovation consultancy Strategyn articulates three things a company must know to generate breakthrough innovations from a VOC (pdf):
- What jobs the customer is trying to get done
- The outcomes the customer is trying to achieve when performing these jobs in a variety of contexts
- The problems and constraints that stand in the way of adoption of a new product or service
Admittedly, a tweet about your company fails to go this deep. But it is more information than you had, a new opportunity for engagement and a chance to plum the deeper needs after the initial tweet or Facebook page post. Creating a “home court” environment dedicated to capturing and engaging on these ideas and insights certainly sets up a stronger base for innovation.
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