Lets DO This! – SCRM in Practice, Work in Progress

There used to be this expression that started like this, “at the risk of sounding like a broken record….” but it occurs to me that with the advent of mp3 and lossless versions of recorded sound, that’s a totally arcane, almost ridiculous phrase.  “Records” don’t “break” unless you’re talking about breaking a sports record – like Jeter surpassing Lou Gehrig for most Yankees hits last year.  But nonetheless, the idea is what counts not the terminology….which, actually, is the point of this whole post.

What a segue!

Look, I know I’ve said what I’m about so before (at the risk of sounding like a damaged mp3 file…hmmm, doesn’t have the same panache) but I’m going to state it again – whether you agree with me on what I’m going to say and what you do about isn’t up to me – but nonetheless here goes…..

The Established CRM Industry

Ultimately, we probably all can agree on this much. Businesses don’t care what you call Social CRM or CRM or how you define it. They care what they call it and how they define it. Most still call it CRM; some even call it Social CRM already which is why there is now a CRM industry sub-segment called that which Gartner defines as a $1 billion piece of business in 2011.  In other words, CRM is already an industry with a name  – whether you like the name or it suits your personal or corporate agenda or not.  AND Social CRM is a subsegment of the CRM industry that has been validated from multiple sources – whether you like it or not. When you Google “Social CRM” now you get 412,000 results. When you Google “customer relationship management” you get 3,180,000 results. No other name even comes close (trust me, I checked). So to claim that CRM or SCRM is something else or dead or something that no one cares about is ludicrous at best and muddies the waters in addition – making it more confusing for businesses.  Some advice to the naysayers or those who are in the industry trying to rename it or deny it for self-promotional purposes.  I’d leave well enough alone or you stand a chance you might confuse the very businesses you are trying so mightily to impress. They already call it CRM and/or Social CRM.

I love…NOT -reading reports that tell me that CRM “served its purpose but is now not a business concern anymore" or that “no one wants to hear about it anymore.” This so called moribund industry is to be somewhere between $13-$16 billion in 2011 and has forecasted growth through the latest anyone is willing to forecast – around 2015, depending on whose reports you believe. I also see positions like CRM Manager and VP of CRM or recently Social CRM Practice lead, for major companies coming across my desk frequently and as recently as yesterday. Plus check the job boards.  

I saw one claim that Gartner’s Customer 360 Conference was successful because it concerned itself less with CRM and more with social stuff and customer experience.  Well, having helped the planning of that, I know that in fact it was Social CRM that was the addition this year, not just social and not explicitly customer experience  – how could the claimant ignore that Gartner made a big deal of a Social CRM Magic Quadrant - plus some really smart thinking on the part of Juan Fernandez, who runs the events management for the conference. It was emphatically NOT the “move away” from CRM.  Without revealing anything, the post mortem supports my overall claim here. Plus, since I was the chairman of the CRM Evolution 2010 conference that was owned by CRM Magazine – I know that the reason that it had nearly 900 people at that one was because it was a CRM conference that incorporated some great content which included Social CRM – which as you know is an extension of traditional CRM, if you remember.  In fact, probably because I’ve been so immersed in Social CRM activities and working closely with the social vendors,  I was shocked that when I moderated the Enterprise CRM leaders panel with the key players at SAP, Oracle Microsoft and RightNow, the questions were focused on traditional CRM stuff as much or more than anything else. 

So the interest in traditional CRM, far from “going away” or Social CRM far from needing a new name, is probably as robust or more robust than ever. 

What is the friggin’ point in renaming a well established industry that grew even during the recession or trying to reinvent the wheel simply because things have changed. What’s changed is the customer – business has to respond to that. Should we rename Major League Baseball something else whenever there is a significant rule change or HOF candidate players move to another team?  That’s about the equivalent that some of these self-aggrandizing sorts are suggesting.  But, hey do your thing. Change the name.  Be afraid of the “taint” and reposition yourself.  Make your bones. Whatever.

Lets Get Beyond The Endless Discussion – LET’S DO IT!

In those endless discussions about this subject, there are several things that seems to get overlooked or at least underplayed – and its the most important point of all.

In the last 7 years:

1. Customer priorities have changed as have their demands. Don’t think so?  Wondering about more than anecdotal evidence?  What about this study from Accenture called "Onward and Up - How Marketers Are Refocusing the Front Office for Growth" that appeared yesterday.

   “But they reported that changes in customer expectations are impacting their marketing strategies.  For instance:

   • 72 percent of them said that "most or all" of their customers expect more value for money.
   • 71 percent said customers have higher product quality expectations.
   • 69 percent said customers are increasingly price sensitive.
   • 68 percent said customers have higher customer service expectations.
   • 66 percent said customers expect businesses to have greater respect for their time.”  (Source: Accenture)
2. There are 4.6 billion mobile devices; broadband internet access and tons of digital tools that make communication with strangers who have similar interests a lot easier – meaning the word can be spread a lot easier – and 24X7.  Thus even the threat of a bad customer experience virally spread is frightening.  It doesn’t have to be a threat coming from someone designated an “influencer.”  Lets face it, Dave Carroll was not exactly a famous singer before United Breaks Guitars. His influence the day before that was put up on YouTube?  Take a guess. I don’t think it would have made anyone wince.
3. The social customer – meaning those who are technologically comfortable with socially scaling their conversations in multiple channels – is far more influential than numerous.  So while there might be a few hundred million social customers – they can influence those who aren’t all that inclined to be publicly vociferous.  Those 4.6 billion mobile devices are where the potential explosions emanate from and to.  That and the web of course.

But it goes so much further….

Martin Schneider in his recent CRM Outsiders Blog posting “Moving Into the How from the What of Social CRM” makes an important point:

“Best practices in social CRM have not been as forthcoming. I think the “how do I start?” issue is a major obstacle, followed by “how do I measure?”

Martin and I differ a bit because he calls this a technology trend where I think its a bigger trend than just technology. It indicates a necessary change in business thinking, models and programs – which of course is supported by process transformation and technology systems etc.  But the fundamental point is the same. There is a lot of discussion around Social CRM – whether you want to call it that or not – that’s what its being called – and that discussion is now mainstream.  However, what isn’t mainstream and is far from it is the actual implementation of the strategies and the programs that are defined by the empowerment of the social customer – and the implied empowering of those customers who are not social – but, because the tools are so cheap if not free for making oneself – social, the threat of that has a lot of power unto its own.

Okay with all that said and as I’ve said ten million times at least (maybe more), its now time to just let it go, folks. The “it” is the continuous blather on the definition of Social CRM and the viability of CRM.  I know that me saying it isn’t going to stop those already doing it – they can and will do what they want – but I’m just SO sick of it, I can’t tell you and I’ve pretty much unsubscribed to all the people who are doing this at this point though I still see there stuff because of its mind numbing frequency. 

What I think needs to be done now is to start figuring out how to make these concepts work for businesses. Use whatever definition you want.  Call it technology if that’s the way you roll – or a business strategy - or a program – which is what I’m calling it lately.  Call it a new business model – that too.  Here’s my starting point:

I find social CRM to be the program developed to execute a customer engagement strategy based on the continuous improvement of the customer’s experience with the company. In its most advanced form it is the program for a collaborative value chain at a company that involves the customers in the development and implementation of the company’s business plans to varying degrees – depending on the company.  It will, done right, provides mutual value.

With that, there are a few things that I think we can all do with our respective media outlets, the next several months.

1. Be prepared to identify the case studies good and bad that, while not necessarily providing a holistic view of SCRM are at least starting to show us the way to go – or to not go – when it comes to some of the components of SCRM.  So we might identify a good study on how social channels were used to solve customer issues; or to market some products (e.g. Queensland Tourism’s Great Coral Reef Caretaker program of over a year ago). Or how social and operational processes were integrated into the business interactions with customers; or how ranking and rating systems were used in the public sector (e.g. Barack Obama’s Citizens’ Briefing Book prior to his inauguration)  or how a use case outlined in the Altimeter Group’s 18 Social CRM Use Cases was implemented; or how success in SCRM or some social customer interaction was measured – the metrics, the KPIs.  Or even a successful use of measures for customer value – lifetime and referral.   You get the picture?
2. Follow what Graham Hill said recently – we have to develop an evidence based approach to business – meaning not only show some framework, but be able to defend its validity with the proof of its value backing it up.
3. Find the people who are doing the actual jobs, speak with them, and show how SCRM has impacted their jobs – so for example, a customer service representative who is now being asked to facilitate a community; or the community manager of a customer service community. Not just management.  Learn what they are doing both good and bad to cope with the change in the demands of the customer.  Ultimately, the idea of an SCRM program is to help people who have to interact with customers do their jobs better.  There are ground level events occurring and actual human beings being impacted by this – and because its all kinda new, they are trying things hit and miss.
4. A little longer term, we need to establish some resting place where all of this can be consolidated. I have my druthers.  A neutral environment such as the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management’s CRM Center of Excellence.  That way, the “value” that someone gets for their business for “owning” the location where information is aggregated is negated – and it can become a truly beneficial environment for all – because its neutral – and self-aggrandizing behavior is out of the picture. 

My Immediate Stuff

Starting next week, I’m launching the two podcasts that will move my work in the direction of “doin’ it.”  That means Experience on the Edge (EOTE) and most germane, Work In Progress WIP).  They will be launched under auspices of Social Media Today and at least as far as I know, hosted on the actual Social Media Today site.  I’ll provide  you with the URL and the subscription information as soon as I have it.  The plan is every other episode for each.  The first will be an episode of Experience on the Edge, because its easier to put together, truthfully.  Work In Progress will be about what I outlined in #1 and #3 above – case studies, good and bad and people who are doing the actual work.  This is a jobs based approach to SCRM – because when I’m done, you’ll hear from those who are doing it.  Not the folks like me – we’re all doing too much of the talking at this point. But the folks who deal in the practitioner and vendor side of the actual businesses – those we consult with and those we don’t. So maybe you’ll hear from a supply chain manager who is tasked to develop a customer-centered supply chain. Or a marketing person who is told they need a “social media strategy” at a company that might not have a clue about what it takes to develop it.  But its all  in the spirit of moving the needle from the silliness of overdefinition to the roadmaps that will allow businesses to actually succeed when it comes to engaging their highly demanding customers. Social or otherwise.

So……Let’s DO This!   YEAAAAAAHHHHH! 

That worked.

Comments

[Ian Rossi]

Excellent post, Paul. It certainly is funny how people like to argue about labels.

I find that for the idea encapsulated by the term Customer Relationship Management, Social Media = Customer Relationship. What I mean is, from many a customer's perspective social media represents the relationship. So in reality, social media is intrinsic to CRM. Funny that people say that CRM is going away because of social media. :)

Whatever the case, I guess I've just contributed to the fruitless debate. I just want to see a CRM tool priced for SMEs that has real usable social features built-in and not bolted-on. Hopefully that's what we can create with your plentiful insights (and those from the Altimeter group's fantastic efforts).

Kind regards,

Ian D. Rossi
aimtheory CRM
www.aimtheoryCRM.com

[CRM Consultant]

MwthomasSCRM, I agree.

I would think it somewhat strange to think about engaging with a company as being managed. But most companies will have their own CRM in as much they have their own strategy for engaging with their customers. So in that sense, it is very much the companies perception and definition of CRM that counts for them.

How well their CRM works on the other hand depends on many other things.

[Stafford McKay, Jr - Intelestream]

Paul, you are right. Industry talking heads need to stop talking / squabbling about definitions and they need to start doing. I have a feeling that the customer will be defining the future of Social CRM anyway. It is all going to boil down to what customers realistically find useful and practical. Intelestream is working on finishing up the final development stages of our social CRM platform, intelesocial (for intelecrm). To kick it off, we're launching a forum where we'll invite our customers and fans the opportunity to publicly voice their opinions to our development team, who will make adjustments accordingly. In that sense, we are making the customer part of the development process. The communication occurs through social media. The customer speaks, we listen, the product gets redefined according to their input.

[MwthomasSCRM]

"Businesses don’t care what you call Social CRM or CRM or how you define it. They care what they call it and how they define it."

To me this captures the overall sentiment, not only do businesses not care what it is labeled, the social customer/audience could care less about the label. The care more about successful engagements with a channel of choice.

I too agree that the conversations need to come down from the 30k feet level down to a "show me the money!" day in the life of effective collaboration and successful outcome.

Customers today and certainly the customers of tomorrow (youth, I have 3 teenagers) do not call it anything, they EXPECT it! Anywhere, Any channel or device all the time.

[GrahamHill]

Hi Paul

A great post that challenges us all to move beyond talking about SocCRM, to experimenting with it.

I agree with you wholeheartedly when you say that CRM is not dead. Far from it. I see no sign of a reduction in interest in CRM despite the recent advances in potential alternative ‘logics’ to spend limited post-recessinary budgets, such as CExM and SocCRM. If anything, the recent upturn in market sentiment has already started to find its way into increased CRM spending.

CRM provides a robust backbone of customer of management capabilities upon which other logics can sit. Whether the logic is CExM, with its emphasis on knitting together all the separate CRM touchpoints into a coherent, end-to-end experience, or SocCRM, with its emphasis on engaging customers in the co-creation of value throughout the experience. We will have to see how VRM fits into this larger picture.

I would like to take you up on a couple of points:

1. Is today’s customer really all that different?

It is no surprise that customers needs, wants and expectations are continuously increasing. This has always been the case. At least for as long as I can remember. But that doesn’t make the customer fundamentally different.

Most of the many customers of client organisations I talk to as part of my consulting work want pretty much the same things they wanted before; they want stuff that does what it says on the tin, they want it at a fair price and they want help when things go a bit awry.

What has changed are the tools they hire to help them do these things. Whereas yesterday they relied upon traditional media and friends & family, today they increasingly rely upon social media and, let’s just say, people they ‘follow’. But as Christakis & Fowler’s research suggests, customers are still much more likely to be influenced by the first three degrees of separation of real friends, than by the hundreds of ephemeral people they follow.

Perhaps surprisingly I don’t meet that many ‘real’ customers who are particularly interested in becoming engaged with companies, in having a conversation with companies or even in providing all that much feedback. They just want stuff that works. And they have pretty low expectations of most companies service too.

Why this big gap between what we read and what I see talking to real customers. Perhaps we make the mistake of thinking that real customers are like us; people who make a living from being at the edge of developments in customer management. When in fact most customers are just trying to get on with their lives and pick the best tools that can help them do that.

2. Is the networked customers really all that influential?

We have all used the United Breaks Guitars as a clarion cry to heed the voice of disgruntled networked customers. Indeed, it has been a staple of my own conference presentations for the last couple of years. It is a great story of how not to handle an irritated customer, it is a great video and everybody likes faceless corporate bullies to get their come-uppance. The London Times ran a story that the Guitar Affair had cost United over USD 100 million in lost value. Yet when Laurence Buchanan checked longer-term share price movements for United he didn’t find any effect whatsoever.

Some SocMed disasters really do move the corporate value needle. Sprint’s absolutely insane firing of 1,000 customers for being not profitable enough is a case in point. Not only did Sprint’s calculations omit that it was its own grossly inefficient processes that caused customers to be unprofitable, but it also picked on US servicemen serving their country in the Middle East. It was only fit and proper that Sprint’s CMO and the CEO were booted out shortly afterwards. Not just for this, but for the fact that Sprint’s Net Adds were far below expectations in a rapidly expanding mobile telecoms market.

Why this big gap between what we read and what is happening to corporate value. Perhaps we really want to believe that SocMed or SocCRM are different. Perhaps we have started to believe our own hype. Hence my recent comments (which you picked up) about needing to show the value of SocCRM in moving the corporate value needle. And preferably in moving the customer value needle as well.

Where I do agree with you is in your prognisis for Mobile SocCRM. There are actually now over 5 Billion mobile devices in the world; a whole order of magnitude bigger than the number of Facebook users. But paradoxically, the majority of phones out there are not high-end smartphones like the iPhone4 (itself pretty low-end when it comes to telecoms technology) but earlier generations.

The killer app at the moment is not Facebook on the iPhone, or even the apps infrastructure, but good old SMS. Maybe that will change as smartphones increase their penetration rate. But for the time being although it is sexy and cool to develop corporate iPhone apps, the real opportunity is probably still in making the corporate SMS interface easier to use. Just go look at what dirt poor Africans are doing if you want to see the future of Mobile Money.

All in all a great post. It was a real pleasure to read it. And a privilege to comment on it.

Graham Hill
Customer-driven Innovator
@grahamhill

[Rwang0]

Paul,

Great post. We keep working on real cases and don't care what it's called. We do know that this is beyond a trend and clients have started to experiment. Adoption is a key area so we suggest a 5 stage process to getting buy-in http://blog.softwareinsider.org/2010/07/05/tuesdays-tip-applying-the-five-stages-of-scrm-adoption/. So, stop talking, start doing!

BTW, congrats on the hall of fame award! You inspire, engage, and mentor a lot of us and it's definitely noted! Thanks!

Ray

[RayBrown99]

Great post Paul and well done for moving the discussion into the doing space. Good luck with your efforts at University of Toronto. I'd take issue with you over the "ownership" of a place where best practice can be showcased. We're trying to do that at ClienteerHub & Clienteer.TV where we've already interviewed Ben Watson who's leading the customer experience work at Adobe. At the other end of the spectrum we're following Andrew Bragg who is the Clienteer at Paris Group in Melbourne. We believe the answer to getting the doing stuff right in future will be social learning. As we move from the Innovators (2.5%) through early adopters (13.5%) the early majority (37%) will use the web to learn from one another. Too many experts, consultants and "thought leaders" have been focussed on their own agenda rather than supporting the poor guys at the coal face. I'm hoping we can support your work in Toronto and all the other good implementation initiatives that are happening around the world. The real value for everyone, software vendors, consultants, authors and speakers will be in the development of an identified and acknowledged "doing" community that will buy and implement successfully whilst continuing to learn in a fast changing world.

[Satyakri]

Good point, Paul. As an interested observer, I am bemused by the amount of analyis-paralysis that seem to be going on in this space, especially around the naming.

As these debates continue endlessly, most companies are still struggling to come to terms with the changed world of the empowered customer. The time is right for the do-ers to step up to the plate and start providing true value to them.

Thanks for the timely call to action

Satya

[Glenn]

Heck yeah!!!!

My organization does not call it social CRM. And we're all fine with that. We're focused on 3 things. First, maintaining our successes. Second, innovating within good 'ol regular CRM by providing add'l resources to our staff in account management, data quality/capture, training and more. Third, trying to figure out how social media can help us increase loyalty. And, we're moving into customer experience.

I've already mentioned this on a prior comment on Esteban's blog, but yes, I need more case studies and more examples of what works and what doesn't. As far as my organization is concerned, we've journeyed many miles past that stake in the ground. We just want to know how we can exceed our business goals quicker and cheaper. And we want to know now!:-)

[David Myron]

Nice post, Paul. By the way, I commented on the post that you are referring to, which claims that Gartner's CRM conference nearly doubled in attendance because it dropped "CRM" from the name of the event. Of course, this is ridiculous. I stated that we did not rename our CRM Evolution conference this year and our registration nearly doubled as well.

[Mikeboysen]

I remember the first time I tried to spell segway. Damn, did it again!

Great post. I with you Paul. Let's do it!

[Kitson]

"We’re all doing too much of the talking at this point."

Amen.

Thanks for this. It's #317 on my Master List of Still-Unwritten Blogposts: "Exiting the Social CRM Echo Chamber."

Can't wait to listen in on the podcasts.
j.
http://twitter.com/kitson

P.S. - Since you may not have posted this link up on this site yourself, allow me to do it on your behalf:
The 2010 CRM Market Awards — Hall of Fame: Paul Greenberg - destinationCRM.com http://sn.im/0810hof