Scope of Social CRM - Demystified Part-2
As promised, I have come back with the second and final part of the scope of Social CRM series. In case, you have missed out on the earlier part, it can be accessed here.
As I said in the first part, the parameters provided were only a subset on which an organization could go for an assessment exercise. But the actual test for any organization is how to go about once the analysis is out. For this, I will put forward different scenarios assuming that only these are the set of parameters, thus strategy could focus on the following options based on the how did they fare on the various parameters.
Assumption that for each parameter the scale kept is 1 to 5 where higher the number, higher are the social implications.
a. External Conversations - If the score is more than the median(2.5), it can be safely assumed that organization is being talked in the external forums. Thus, if organization monitors such conversations, there is a high probability that it would help it to get better insights about themselves. Once decided, the organization should now look at what kind of monitoring/listening capabilities it should implement in order to get the best value add. Again various factors could be used to define the scope. The listening could be as broad as scanning the complete web to identify comments that can be classified into different business functions or it could also be limited to few quality forums, where the conversations are more insightful. Hence, based on the dry run on contents, an organization could use them to fulfill all scenarios or some limited to start with. Whereas, a low score on this could mean that an organization's brand do not have a good recall and maybe it is time to invest and use these channels for marketing activities.
b. Know Your Customers - A high score for this is a good indication that organization could use Social media channels to provide service to existing customers, acquire new customers and identify brand advocates. The exact usage again would depend upon on how organization would want to tweak the generic use cases to suit their business needs. If we look at the past learning from various CRM implementations, a phased approach would be more sensible in this regard. Thus an organization could first decide on using this channel only to provide service to existing customers or to only launch social campaigns. A low score on this could be attributed to the current set of customers not being socially active. If that is the case, an organization might want to look at these channels to let their customers' have a change in consumption habits in terms of differentiating the offerings from the competitors.
c. Official social media channels - A low score on this clearly points out that an organization should do lot of ground work with the help of experts in order to understand how social media could be used for them. Having said that, even high score on this parameter does not make them an expert. But, since they have been already woken up to different channels, it is a high probability that such organizations would appreciate the need of integration of social media channels with traditional CRM.
d. Competitors' social media adoption - A high score on this one should act as a wakeup call for the organization to at least start analyzing the social media channels. It is always good to be cautious but even being blindfolded could lead to repercussions in terms of losing market share to competitors and losing existing customers to name a few. Similarly, a low score on this should act as a motivation factor for the organization to be a first mover for adopting the social CRM.
As one would have realized, the correlation is very much visible for the first two parameters (if the customers are not social, lesser will be the chance to see a good amount of external conversations and vice versa) and the last two parameters (if competitors are not using, there is a high probability even for the organization to not have adopted it in a big way). Hence, the parameters could be termed as different perspectives talking the same language that will help the organization to refine and formulate the overall Social CRM strategy.
To summarize, Organizations need not go after the Social CRM just because it is the latest trend, but this should act as a booster to start including the Social channels in their overall CRM strategy. This two part series only provided an approach using which this latest buzzword could be analyzed and adopted within the gamut of CRM activities. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
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- Nishith Gupta
Nishith is a process and domain consulting expert, focusing on new go-to-market CRM solutions. He has over two years of experience in the IT industry. He has also developed custom-built CRM applications for a leading telecommunications provider, centered on customer retention and campaign management.
