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‘Social CRM’ Should be a Redundant Phrase

by Joe McKendrick

May 18, 2010 at 9:54 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Software, Social Computing, Social Media, Web 2.0

There’s been plenty written about engaging customers through social media, but many such efforts tend to be informal and outside of the box of the mainstay of organizations’ customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Writing in Forbes, Jeremiah Owyang discusses the disconnect between existing CRM systems and the rising tide of social networking engagements. “CRM systems need to be connected to social networks,” he writes. It’s a natural evolution that is evolving, hence the phrase “Social CRM.”

These days, as forward-looking companies build social networks into their core marketing strategies, “Social CRM” has a redundant ring to it. Think of the phrases “round circle” or “free gift” or “digital computer.” Companies with closed-off CRM systems aren’t really doing CRM at all, are they?

But, as Owyang observes, many existing CRM systems are getting in the way:

“Marketers put customer relationship management (CRM) systems on a pedestal as a primary resource to feed leads for sales. They also view it as an important customer service tool. On the same hand, these sales automation tools have also been the bane of marketers as their overly complex projects slow them down through limited, enterprise rollouts.”

Owyang throws an interesting curve into the mix, observing that Salesforce.com, the online cloud provider of CRM applications, is an example of the older, locked-in thinking behind CRM. He observes, however, that “traditional” CRM systems such as Salesforce or Siebel are “starting to integrate data from Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks.” He cites examples of forward-thinking companies, such as Dell and Comcast, that are successfully and formally blending social media data into their CRM efforts.

The issue is speed, he says. Online market conversations and resulting information moves fast, and companies are struggling to keep up. “Marketers have difficulty tracking, organizing, prioritizing and responding to these online discussions. The problem compounds as simply hiring more people to keep up with social marketing, sales and support will not be sufficient, as consumers and their new channels will always outnumber employees.”

The key is to make all your CRM efforts “Social” CRM efforts. Owyang has two bits of advice: “Monitor where your customers are on social networks, this will help you to define which social networks you’ll need to connect with. Secondly, ascertain that your CRM system provider is building the proper connectors to enable these systems to connect this will help with next step of mapping social data with existing CRM records.”

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CsalomonleeMay 18th, 2010 at 11:16 am

Joe – this is a good point about how to bring in all the information from social marketing within the CRM system. Not only is it speed, but also how to get individuals beyond marketing to participate in the process too.

Dennis McDonaldMay 19th, 2010 at 7:11 am

Unfortunately organizational barriers in some companies may delay integration of crm and social, e.g., see this survey: http://www.ddmcd.com/highlights.html