Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Is Just CRM, So Get On With It

As a community of interest we appear to spend far more time trying to explain why social media is different and better than we do trying to figure out how to incorporate it so that it becomes invisible, seamless and effective. Frederic Gilbert blogs at Customers First about how this applies to customers and the management thereof(hat tip Thierry de Baillon:

"Social CRM is about integrating the customer's voice, and the interactions from social media, into your Customer Relationship Management framework. CRM is first about managing relationships to develop business! Nothing more! What do I mean? Social media is another great opportunity to engage customers through a new touch point, to establish a durable relationship, and to offer relevant and "right on time" value proposition to your customers. The company needs to capitalize on this data to propose solutions that are in answer to a customer’s expectations. A golden way is to simply the process and let the customer create the value proposition and have the company as its ally to provide the solution. However, one must not forget that social media has its own ways, rules, and habits that cannot always be transferred in real life.

Do you imagine yourself "poking" a future customer that has added you as a friend on FaceBook? I'm sure my customers would love to be poked and would gladly comment on my pictures. This means that social media should not be considered as a different approach of the relationship! It is simply a tool used to propose alternatives to enhance customer loyalty and to get his feedback in order to improve your services! Our specialists have demonstrated too many biased proofs and it is about time that we leverage Social Media for true business use. Social CRM relies on an organization and tools. As stated above, Social CRM is about selecting the appropriate organization and the tools that serve this organization. The first goal of a CRM is to facilitate and accelerate business by letting the people who are in contact with customers, from any touch point, access relevant and accurate data. This will make the customer feel special because he/she is listened to and he/she doesn't feel annoyed for having to tell his/her story again and again and again. As a customer I should feel special each and every time! CRMs are boring to maintain, often not user-friendly (yes, there are people who are supposed to use them!) and don't provide the agility of the people who are actually in touch with a customer, wherever that happens. Here is a certainty. A company should organize itself by serving a single purpose which is to offer a homogenous and unique customer experience to every customer. Tools should help, not constrain! And, if I were to paraphrase Dr H.Kotadia in a recent post: how many consultants and specialists have truly used the tools they've designed and implemented?

True CRM success, including SCRM, has to be designed from the user’s point of view to serve the customer better in a flawless experience. With good data, good tools, and a customer centric organization, there is no reason to fail and the companies that don't take the steps to integrate social media as an opportunity to increase their customer’s account openings and loyalty are missing massive ROI. My point here is that our specialists stay exclusively focused on the communication channel and only see social media strategy as a stand-alone strategy next to the rest! Yet it needs to be part of the overall strategy and serve as an accelerator, as a facilitator for both the customer and the company.


Social CRM is about men, women, and most of all users of a certain mindset! One must not forget that CRM is primarily designed to help the marketing, sales, & support departments increase company revenues. You must always view CRM from this angle. Social media brings up the question of how to deliver to these people accurate and relevant data to facilitate their jobs. Social media should assist :

A salesperson discover and explore his customer’s network and generate new business leads thanks to the contacts coming from LinkedIn or Twitter, etc. Social Sales and Social Intelligence software are here to support such tasks e.g. InsideView, Iko-System, and others.Front-line personnel in retail stores have data pushed to them on an interactive screen and then have them use it to discuss with the customer on the shopping list he has prepared online and shared with his network. Both customers & employees would benefit from such interactions. CRM offers numerous ways to encourage customers to navigate through a variety of channels & touch points.

People from your communication department understand and profile customers more accurately in order to tailor a message which responds to the customer's values and the job the customer is looking for to be done by adopting the right style, the right content, and on the right touch point.
Support know where the customer gets in touch with the company most frequently and answer his needs & expectations with the appropriate style and message.

As it is defined and agreed, Social CRM is about the customer owning the conversation and driving innovation. We all understand that it is bonded to Social Business where discussion, processes, and internal/external organization are revisited thanks to the opportunities of Social Media and Collaborative Practices. Customer Centricity & Customer Experience Management approaches are way beyond communicating on social channels alone. They rely on social interactions but, this is not an exclusive activity of those people from communication departments or agencies. However, here some of the questions you must ask yourself regarding the opportunity of going into Social CRM initiatives:

How can we grow sales thanks to our network's network on LinkedIn?
How do we set up a real strategy to engage relevant prospects?
How can we use interactions on FaceBook to propose appropriate and on-time messages to our fans?
Can we truly create a value proposition that meets precisely the needs & expectations of our customers? Not our needs only, their needs. And then, how do we commit to such a vision?

Can we set up a homogenous and balanced relationship with each of our customers on each of the possible and available touch points?
We must always focus on aligning ourselves with our customer's “job to be done” in order to achieve our mission properly. Without this commitment, disillusion and failure will be waiting at the end of this path. This is why I ask the question: How many of those specialists have really used a CRM on a daily basis and have done so over a sustained period of time? Do they know how to transfer a lead to a colleague? Can they open a ticket for a customer complaint? Have they ever had to monitor an email campaign and then apply the necessary corrections needed to improve lead generation? Have they ever even typed in a note registering a phone session or a day of door- to- door prospecting?

This is the critical point of Social CRM. There are those who imagine it or write fantasies about it, and then there are those that use it and that live it daily. Bringing these people around the table would be great. People from the inside would now be brought into the loop, understand the potential, and then transform it into their business model. Social CRM is not only Social Media. If a recognized ROI on your Social Media efforts is late in coming or not apparent, don't you think it may be because people who know how to drive business have perhaps been kept out of the initiative by the ones who think solutions & products sell by themselves alone? I won't discriminate against anyone as I believe everyone should be a part of Social CRM and of the relationship with the customer. Bringing the best service and experience to the customer is the ultimate goal which should drive your people! This is a state of mind.

The rest are just tools in need people and that's where the true value lies.