Page 61 - Social Media Marketing

The attributes defining the relationship are all based on past transactional data—pur- 39
chases, calls, and other past-tense events. From the customer’s point of view, the events
have happened and are done: there is no ongoing role for the individual as a customer. ■ CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS: CRM GETS SOCIAL

By comparison, Social CRM invites the customer into your business or orga-
nization through the future-oriented process of collaboration. It recognizes what has
happened, just as traditional CRM does, but then takes the added step of inviting the
customer into the processes that govern what is about to happen or may potentially
happen or should never happen again by asking “How can this product or service be
made better?” This kind of forward-looking collaboration involves the entire set of
stakeholders in the business or organization, including its employees, partners, and
suppliers. It is a whole-business, future-oriented process, and it is core to an overall
methodology and strategy that is designed and implemented to delight customers.

Social CRM and Engagement

I highly recommend downloading and studying Paul Greenberg’s whitepaper on Social CRM,
“Social CRM Comes of Age.” You can also follow Paul, a thought leader around Social CRM and its
application, on Twitter (@pgreenbe).

http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/@ocompublic/documents/
webcontent/036062.pdf

Ant’s Eye View’s Kira Wampler, formerly of Intuit, provides great insight into
the new role of the customer: She points out that most organizations know ahead of
time where their next “Dell Hell” (the online forum where consumers vent frustra-
tions with the computer maker) or “United Breaks Guitars” (the video that reportedly
resulted in an estimated 10 percent market cap loss for the airline) is going to come
from, so why not be proactive and fix things ahead of time? An example of a well-
publicized social media nightmare that turned out well, Dell is now a model of what to
do right, and United wound up being merged with Continental partly because its stock
price made it attractive. Kira lays out a set of steps that are worth noting, steps that
clearly place the customer and the conversations they are having at the center of the
Social CRM effort:

• Audit existing “voice of customer” channels: How many are in use, what is
being said, and what is the process for analyzing, responding, addressing, and
closing the loop with a solution?

• Map the customers’ end-to-end experiences: Understand in detail each step that
a customer undertakes when doing specific tasks that relate to your product or
service. Create cross-functional teams to relate what you learn to each point in
your process that impacts the customer experience at that point.