Customer Relationship Management

So how and where do you think Social Media and Social CRM are from the same parentage? Cousins, are they? Much as we can be skeptical about this concept, Social Media is here to stay and CRM to benefit from it. The adoption and adaptation of Social media in an organization cannot be based on hype and competitive adoption rates! (This sometimes blurs the vision and the understanding of what these terms mean.) This will yield more heartburns than the soft comfort of your pillow that you may seek. Having a "social framework" to your business neural network is more important than adopting and investing in the various social media channels that are available, just to be Social savvy.

What use is a LinkedIn network with X  no. of people in it where you have not helped anyone or received/derived any benefit from the same?

The 'social framework' in the neural network needs to leverage the social media to help the CRM offering to become Social and thus drive and derive revenues and benefits, from the same.

In the opening sequence of this blog on Twitter-world, if the customer is to use multiple channels to find a resolution, the investment in that social channel is already kaput! What is the time and effort from the customer’s side that is spent in such an exercise? Will this social channel help drive loyalty? My guess is as good as yours.

Social CRM, on the other hand is about how effectively the tools are used to benefit the existing CRM strategy in place. The tools enable and Social CRM needs to help the business by taking in the right amount of conversations (a social media tool can help) to benefit the process. In the Twitterworld example, Azune had the tool but it was not weaved into the business neural network to help drive the strategy.

What Azune could have done is to use the tweet conversation feed (along with prior ones) to analyze and arrive at a customer score (this calls for constant social monitoring) and compare that with the reputation management results that a Social Media tool can provide. Such customer profiling could have helped address the situation and also made use of the tools more effectively. This could have added benefit to the existing CRM in place The Customer experience could have been improved. For all you know the customer might have decided not to proceed further with their service, after that, for the simple reason that the “social-savvy” company is not savoury enough.

Here is a small illustration of what I believe would make sense to adopt and adapt the “Social” in a business. The scale as you see can tip, if either of the tool or the management push is heavy. To balance these, what is needed is “The Social Strategy” which will help businesses in the long run.

What is Social Strategy then? Well, more on that later. But, mere governance policies and social tools introduction only do not make up this Strategy. I thought of a matrix for the Social framework would be relevant in this context to further understand and make it relevant for investment in this space for a business, since we have already touched upon Social Strategy. This also helps us distinguish the tools clearly from the CRM side.


Social Media is technology and Social CRM is strategy – let’s make no mistake Social Media and Social CRM aren't twins.

What do you feel that differentiates Social Media from Social CRM? Have you been toying with the idea or have been questioned on the same many a time? Any comments and POV’s are more than welcome and are much appreciated.