Social Crm News & Articles

2011 was the year of the Social Business. We saw employees across all types of organizations using both desktop-bound and mobile social tools to interact with the entire business ecosystem. But, while there's no question about organizations increasingly using these tools to collaborate and communicate, were enterprises truly able to capture their full potential? Let's take a look back at a few highlights from the past year.

A well-known CTO, when asked for his predictions for the coming year, responded thusly: “I don’t give predictions. They only serve as written evidence about how dangerous I am in my job.”

I've spent a lot of time lately exploring some of the newer Social CRM solutions being developed and frankly, I'm concerned about some of what I've seen in the attempt to swing the innovations for Social too far from the Management part of SCRM. You're probably wondering why you should care if I have an opinion at all, but if you're planning now for product enhancements & integrations later, then voices like mine are important.

I'm your other customer. An internal one that will also help make or break the success of your SCRM solution. Make me your advocate by developing your products so it is easy for us to make you rich and respected for providing quality solutions. We're the front-line knowledge workers who are going to have to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together to give your customers the complete picture.
(And we'll take the direct hits if those pieces don't fit.)

The fastest way to fail at Social CRM (SCRM) is to focus on the technology. That was a fatal approach for good ol’ fashioned CRM, because despite the fact that software allowed the idea to scale to enterprise levels, the idea at its core revolved around people. SCRM introduces the same confusion, but to an even greater level; it demands more sophisticated technology, so again the temptation is to look at the applications needed to sort the data. But, in reality, it’s even more about the human behaviors customers exhibit, not only in the real world, but also in social media.

In MarketingSherpa’s recent social marketing benchmark survey, 38 percent of marketers responded that they have not yet begun planning a social CRM initiative. So what’s holding them back?

Too often, conversations about customer service and customer service experience either dive too deeply into technology or neglect technology completely. Where then does a discussion regarding channel of communication and points of interaction between company and customer fit? Is mobile a channel strategy or a technology strategy? How can you, should you, encourage channel usage that is mutually beneficial?

When businesses talk about Social CRM, those discussions often devolve to a discussion of technology -- which is completely understandable. There’s no one turn-key Social CRM application out there, so a truly complete Social CRM solution is going to involve several technology components -- CRM, social measurement and monitoring tools, sales enablement applications and the integration needed to make them all work together.

If Moxie Software's integration framework for connecting with various enterprise applications thrilled you last November, then hold onto your hats. Today the company has announced further integration with some very familiar players, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft SharePoint and Skype. 

Remember the good old days when your customer only used a few channels to make a purchase? Collecting customer data back then was relatively easy. Now with the addition of websites and an explosion of social and mobile channels, is it any wonder that you’re scratching your head over how to manage and glean insights from customer data over these multiple silos?

I’m writing a long piece on customer collaboration, one of the key components of Social CRM, which elevates to its proper place the idea of building peer-like relationships with customers. Very naturally, the focus of this piece swings toward the technology being developed for collaboration with customers. But as is often the case with anything involving customers, the technology merely scales and extends a human activity. If you’re not ready to engage in that activity, the technology isn’t going to help you.

Targeting is not an alien concept to marketing professionals. But as businesses get more intimate with social media and CRM applications, does this mean that social media marketing is also increasingly becoming personalized? A recent survey among marketing professionals gives us a few insights into how firms target and personalize their marketing messages.

CRM Evolution is generally a discussion focused on how companies aim to create, retain and manage customers. In a perfect world, at events like CRM Evolution, the timing for vendors and buyers would always be perfect. Vendors would know when to arrive with their product just baked fresh and ready for delivery.

Brent Leary is a DJ. But he’s more well-known as co-founder and partner over at CRM Essentials, and a popular writer and speaker on all aspects of social customer engagement strategy. Leary was a main attraction this year at CRM Evolution, participating in a keynote speech “Delivering on Social CRM’s Promise” and two panel discussions, including “The Convergence of CRM and Marketing Automation for SMBs” and “Merging CRM with Social CRM.” Leary is a crowd favorite at CRM Evolution due to his practical strategy suggestions, case studies and down-to-earth sensibility. He sat down with us to talk CRM, social and -- of course -- music.

Paul Greenberg, Godfather of CRM, partner of BPT Partners, author, and now orchestrator of CRM Idol, and visionary for the CRM industry, was a key voice at CRM Evolution, which took place this week, August 8-10, in NYC. Greenberg chaired the event and worked with CRM Magazine to make the event a memorable one for the industry. Every time you saw Greenberg at the event, if he wasn’t speaking, he was being pulled somewhere by one of the many individuals who are mentored by him. This is someone who gets a lot from giving back to the community around him. Greenberg sat down with CMSWire at CRM Evolution to talk social CRM, giving back, and what he calls “mishagas in the market.”

CRM Evolution appears to focus on the topic of how CRM is evolving. But the conference name could just be “CRM,” at least according to speaker Art Hall, Director, Customer Solutions, at consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal.