Strategies for Smooth Social CRM Implementation, Part 1

The most important strategic imperative for a successful social CRM implementation is an organizational culture and structure that is aligned with Customer 2.0. The social customer has evolved into a more mature, demanding, informed, willing and value-adding business partner who seeks a long-term association with the brand or enterprise. The traditional CRM approaches are no longer acceptable.

Customers' buying behaviors and businesses' engagement models are shifting. Traditional is out, next-gen is in. Today it is the customer who influences and forces the evolution of business models. Cloud-based Internet peer networks drive the buying decisions for large segments of customers. Enterprises will inevitably need to adopt mobility and social media platforms to keep up with the next generation.

Today's consumers already have globally visible footprints in terms of their opinions, feedback, and perceptions of various brands. Collective sentiments developing on social networks and in peer communities are influencing consumer choices and buying behavior. Social media platforms will be the next-generation battleground of brand and customer loyalty.

The importance of Customer 2.0
Is your organization ready to do business with "Customer 2.0"? Social CRM gives you a real-time sense of customer preferences and opinions. Social CRM helps you listen to relevant social media conversations so that you can take proactive steps to create untapped business opportunities.
With Social CRM, you can leverage your customer's trusted peer network to create widespread positive brand perceptions and generate new leads. You can engage customers in conversations through social media networks to provide a more personalized experience. Finally, you can make the consumer your partner in product co-creation for win-win outcomes.
Many conversations on this theme have grabbed the attention of those at the C-level. Across the globe, consumers are hooked on social networking. The way they interact with brands is changing. The way they make buying decisions is changing. Consumers have moved beyond consuming information -- now they share experiences, knowledge and activities on new platforms. Hence, it has become critical for organizations to interact in a way that is more relevant and appealing to them.

How Organizations Are dealing With Customer 2.0

Different industry segments have reached different levels of adoption and maturity of their social media for CRM functions. Business-to-Customer (B2C) businesses seem to be on a steeper trajectory when compared to Business to Business (B2B) firms. Most of the early adopters of social CRM are consumer packaged goods, telecom, high tech, manufacturing and services industries. However, all industries leverage social media for their marketing, sales and service functions at varied levels, based on the customer behavior and sales cycle.
Banks and financial services have been relatively moderate in their adoption rate of social CRM, restricting its usage primarily to listening, analyzing and meeting customer needs apart from customer support. Issues such as data privacy, user authentication and sensitivity of bank information, coupled with regulatory stringency, make social CRM an initiative that needs to be implemented with forethought and strategic vision.
A snapshot of key activities of the leading banks and FIs in the social CRM space:

	Community (Peer networking)	Customer Service	Marketing Campaigns	Customer Education
Wells Fargo	Virtual world	The Wachovia unit uses twitter		Dedicated blog posts for different loan offerings/virtual world/twitter
American Express	dedicated forums	using Twitter
Intuit	communities/forums			Blog posts/communities
Scotia Bank	communities/forums	using Twitter
Fidelity			You Tube videos	Using Twitter
Charles Schwab	communities/forums	Using Twitter

Figure 1 highlights the range of social CRM activities that financial services organizations are currently undertaking. Communities, microblogs and other social media essentially act as another communication channel with the customer, where socially enabled marketing, sales and customer service processes are executed to generate lasting business and customer value. In general, the activities performed in the social media space can be mapped to the traditional CRM pillars.
Marketing: Brand-related references from communities and other content management sites (like YouTube) are converted into specific customer experiences/campaigns. Microblogging sites (Twitter, etc.) are also used for launching campaigns
Sales: Before making a purchase, today's consumers often seek the opinions of like-minded peers and experts on discussion forums and consider product reviews/ratings/tags. Such social conversations can lead to sales.
Service: Microblogging sites replace the traditional phone/IVR channel to make an instant connection with the customer to address an issue even before it becomes a problem.

Social CRM: Strategy or Tool?

The marketplace is abuzz with debate over whether social CRM is primarily a strategic concept or just a tool to be implemented. In fact, it is a balanced amalgamation of business insights realized by astute IT implementation.
It is also a strategy and an art from the perspective that Social CRM

• is still an emerging area where thought leadership, frameworks and models are in a nascent stage;
• requires clear foresight in terms of goal setting and expectations;
• requires judgment and realistic assessment of an organization's readiness to adopt and adapt to the new media;
• requires deep analysis of the nuances and uniqueness of social customer behavior; and
• forces adaptation to cater to the emerging and diverse needs, traits, responses, demands and attitudes of the social customer.

Social CRM Strategic Imperatives

The most important strategic imperative for a successful social CRM implementation is an organizational culture and structure that is aligned with Customer 2.0. The social customer has evolved into a more mature, demanding, informed, willing and value-adding business partner who seeks a long-term association with the brand or enterprise.
The traditional CRM approaches of enterprise-driven marketing efforts, aggressive sales pitches, or less-than-satisfactory customer support are no longer acceptable. In fact, it has been shown time and again that such approaches can often publicly backfire in the new social world.
Mckinsey's 7-S framework can be leveraged to prepare an organization for the social CRM bandwagon:

McKinsey's 7-S framework and Social CRM Strategic Imperatives
Skills	Marketing : Sentiment Analysis, Customer-driven Brand Building, Elicit Customer Insights from social conversations, Sales: Relationship oriented selling , Network-led prospecting, Word of Mouth referrals and Predictive Analytics for Cross/Up-sell Customer Support: Pro-actively addressing customer complaints, minimizing product issues, deftly handling irate customer, prioritizing service request resolution based on potential impact
Strategy	Deep-dive research on organization's Social Customer behavior, Competitor analysis on Social Media , SWOT Analysis and Business Need to leverage social Media Cross-leverage Social Media / CRM initiatives with Offline efforts Establish strong business case with ROI model Implement social CRM projects in pilot mode, reap benefits and broaden reach and scale
Structure	Streamline: Re-align the front-office to be more agile with clear focus on prompt response to customer Boundary-less: Flatten walls between business functions to enable faster discussions and decisions
Systems	Multi-channel Consolidation Predictive Analytics Social listening , Social Analytics and Social Intelligence
Style	Collaborate, Co-create and Communicate with Partners , Suppliers, Employees and Customers
Staff	Genuinely customer centric empowered by sophisticated tools providing deep social customer insight and a 360 view of customer touch points across channels (social media, phone, web or offline)
Shared Values	Customer centricity Pro-active issue resolution Community ownership as against siloed approach toward corporate brand building Transparency and Fairness in all transactions across customer touch points

Is “Social” the Glue that Can Fix B2C CRM?

I am sure there are a lot of vendors, practitioners and users that will disagree with me – but I am not a fan of the state of B2C CRM. To explain, I think that there is a HUGE difference between effectively managing the well documented B2B sales relationships in a CRM system versus the usually anonymous, high volume transaction levels in the B2C world.
I was reminded of my feelings on B2C CRM when I read this E-Commerce Time article that noted how hotel chains are lagging in CRM adoption. I’ll get back to this in a bit.
The reason I feel so seemingly negative about B2C CRM is because up until a few years ago – it was nearly impossible to make use of the consumer data passing through B2C operations. The amount of register data, phone calls around product issues, warranty data, program registration etc. alone was too great for older systems.
And all of this isn’t even anonymous data. I started my analytic career in retail journalism, and would often cover customer loyalty programs. When I actually was able to get people to talk off the record about what kind of customer insight analysis was being performed on all the data these chains were generating – the response was usually something like “Oh, that sounds like a great idea!” There was simply too much data – enough to bottleneck any system 15 years ago.
Now, lets compound that issue with data from web traffic, email campaigns, social media, blogs etc. – and it is enough to make anyone’s head spin.
So, I am not down on B2B CRM in theory – just feel it was hard to do well in practice. And this is a completely different issue than having to give me account data 15 times to Citi when I call them.
But, is there an answer?  I think there is…maybe.
Social media does a lot of cool things. But one thing it does is allow B2C providers to finally have the ability to herd cats, as it were. A lot of B2B folks are still looking at Facebook communities with a slanted eye – and I understand that. These B2B guys already know who they’re dealing with – they only care about more leads.
Now, B2C companies have the issue of finding their user communities, and in them ferreting out advocates and other valuable customers. By finding out a) what sites your target market naturally attracts towards and b) how to create destinations they love, you have made two major strides in doing what B2C CRM could not do well a decade ago.
What social media and networks allow us to do in the B2C world is create a fluid, yet valuable database (akin to the neatly structured relational databases powering B2B CRM) of our customers. Their likes and dislikes are valuable to B2C CRM – just as past purchase history and SLAs are to B2B.
A nice example of even hotel chains “getting it” in terms of social building out their CRM initiative  Gaylord resorts (see, i told you I’d bring this all full circle). I recall CRM magazine editor Lauren McKay having tweeted about wanting cornbread while at a conference at the resort. The resort was following the hashtags and made sure to make its mark on Lauren…a great example of making the most of social to engage, and create advocates out there in your consumer base.
And again, the great thing is that if you’re in the B2C world, chances are your customers are already “out there” in the social realm, just waiting to be invited into an engagement with your brand…