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c h a p t e r9 :SOCIAL CRM■Social CRM and Business Design
With the engagement process (covered in Chapter 8, “Engagement on the Social Web”)
more carefully defined as it applies to social interactions (participation, friending, col-
laboration, and similar activities) the logical next step is to put these activities together
to drive business processes. Simply, given a sequence of activities that lead to collabora-
tion—in the process involving customers along with the business (and its employees)—
a big part of the business benefit in adopting social technology is putting customer and
employee collaboration to work.
Social CRM involves observing, measuring, and connecting what is learned via
the Social Web to those places within your business where the underlying experiences
that are talked about are created. As customers begin to connect, they will form and
publish opinions and put forth suggestions with regard to what they like or dislike
about a specific brand, product, or service. With that comes also what they’d like to
see, or what could have been better. Social CRM provides an organized way to take
that information through to the next step, driving process improvement, innovation,
and more.
Customers and constituents have always been willing to offer up ideas for
improvements and suggested new features. The difference—and driving the new chal-
lenge—is that the suggestions are now public. This means that it’s easier for you to pick
up on them, and that whatever happens, others will be watching. Again, note that the
public nature of the conversations is independent of whether or not the organizations
being cited have enabled or approved of the commentary. The conversations are happen-
ing regardless, so if you’re on the fence about social media, consider this as one more
reason to jump in.
The challenge that the higher levels of engagement—like content creation and
collaboration— present from the perspective of a business or organization is in sort-
ing out what to do with this newly accessible information, along with how to do it.
Customers have a basic expectation of your presence on the Social Web—after all,
you’re already on their TV sets and radios, and you’re already in their magazines and
wrapped around the online content they view. As you develop a social media marketing
presence, your customers will also expect you to be active in the related social places
where they are talking about your products or services, the places where they exchange
ideas about your business (and how it might serve them better) with others who share
that same interest.The Elements of Social CRM
The previous chapter covered engagement in the context of social technology and
social interaction. Engagement—in social business terminology versus advertising and
marketing—arises out of collaboration and the active realization of a shared interest.