Proactively engage with your customers!

As of today the main benefit of social crm was being able to reduce damages or to react on time to developing crises and mitigate risk factors. But as the tool evolved from a technological point of view new possibilities arose, one of the most significant of them is the ability to proactively engage with trendsetter customers. This new development could be use to cheaply improve the public image of a company and to proactively initiate a dialogue. This could be useful if, for example, the company wanted to test a new iteration of one of its products or if they wanted to test any change in their value proposition. The ability to receive real time feedback provided by some of the most representative customers of the company will significantly shorten the time required by the company to validate the change; moreover the ability to do it in a controlled environment will reduce the likelihood of the spillage of failures.

One of the best options to do it is by tapping into the already existing group of users that are actively engaged on Facebook for example. A convenient tool to do so is Innubu, a company that will help you identify, select and engage your customers within your installed fan base on Facebook. Once selected the right users it will be possible to track in real time their feedback regarding the new product in development by offering a fast and effective Facebook application.

This will enable your company to receive results in real time and you will be able to segment the information in order to tailor your offer to the best target audience.

Tools such as Innubu enables the company to shorten product development times, segment your customers to find the ideal type and get your product to the market in the fastest possible time. The ability to slice even more precisely through your existing user will provide better feedback on business decisions, at the same time the customers will feel more engaged with the company they like. Those users being the most vocal among the supporters will have a magnifying effect on the acceptance of the products within the general population.

It’s easy to continue to do business as usual without adapting to the new tools but not adapting will be the best way to a certain death, in fact if you don’t adapt your competitors will do. An option like the one provided by Innubu is so powerful and so easy to implement that any company should pursue this course of action.

As a side note this idea was developed within IE Venture Lab by fellow students.

The Applications of Social CRM

The Applications of Social CRM

Social CRM is a means to end. Every company is satisfying a customer and the applications of Social CRM only allow company’s to achieve their objective in an informed manner. The primary applications of Social CRM are as follows:

-       Identify actual customer needs and wants and tailor the offerings of a company as per these needs and wants. This tailoring facilitates an increase in both the top line and bottom line figures of the company as well as creates more value for the customers.
-       Social CRM can be used for swift communication of additional offerings made by different company’s, thereby saving time and money from the introduction of such offerings to the actual consumer being aware about them. A corollary to this function is that customer who are not completely satisfied by offerings of company’s can communicate this dissatisfaction to the company, thereby allowing the company to comprehend the situation in a timely manner and take steps to retain its users.
-       A major merit of Social CRM is that company’s can take corrective action about any kind of negative publicity that they have been subjected to and make its users aware of these actions in very little time. This helps create a positive impression about the company in the minds of the users, which will only do the company good in the long run.

-       Allows firms to judge consumer reaction towards a particular event involving the company and helps the company decide the course of action to deal with the event. As an example, when a popular travel operators cruise ship sunk off the coast of Italy, the company identified from the social buzz that the customers were rightly perceiving it to be the captains fault and therefore they did not have to spend time and money protecting the company's name.

-       Feedback is an important process for any organization to comprehend the acceptability of its offerings. Social CRM can also be used to inform customers about future offerings of the company and gather customer response towards the same. This allows savings in time and money for the organization as the feedback generated can allow them to make additions or subtractions to their present and future products and services and offer it to customers in a way that they want it.
-       Every user has a certain influencer who or which convinces the actual consumer to adapt a product or service. Social CRM can identify these influencers and target them to boost the chances of winning increasing number of customers for their products and services.
-       Additionally, Social CRM can very conveniently be used as a substitute to traditional marketing techniques with the benefit of having greater coverage in a smaller period of time.
The primary applications of Social CRM have been explained above to allow users to better comprehend the advantages of this modern tool and use it to their advantage.
Along with offerings advantages from its very use, Social CRM has itself evolved into a well-defined business with multiple players competing to place their Social CRM software’s above that of their competitors. Some of the popular players in the market are Batchbook, Nimble, BlueCamroo, Insightly and GreenRope. All these softwares have one thing in common, they offers a single interface for its users to allow them to connect to their customer on multiple social media channels like facebook, linkedIn, twitter, etc. and also allow its users to detect any kind of buzz being generated about their products and services. This allows its users to use it towards achieving maximum results in a hassle free and organized manner.

Social CRM truly has made ‘doing business today’ more dynamic.

Social CRM Vendor Landscape

Today, we will take a look at major vendors of the social CRM market. The market is relatively new but has been developed, because of the explosion in the use of social tools by enterprises looking to develop a competitive edge in marketing. Gartner has released the magic quadrant since 2010 to provide the information to identify major players in this market. Here is the latest latest edition of "Magic Quadrant for Social CRM":

To even get into the MQ at all, vendors must:

• Cover at least two of the three main areas of CRM — sales, marketing, customer support
• Must have references from at least five clients who actively using the product in 2011
• Must have shown at least a 20 percent revenue growth in 2011
• Include functionality for marketing, sales or customer service departments — such as tools for social monitoring, managing customer communities, fostering customer interaction and and managing integration with traditional CRM applications. 

What is interesting about the Magic Quadrant is that it is one of the only MQs researched and published this year where the Niche Players vastly outnumber both the Leaders and the Challengers, while only two companies made it into the Visionaries quadrant.

The Leaders include Salesforce, Jive and Lithium, while Oracle — surprisingly enough — only made it into the Challengers Quadrant, along with Bazaarvoice.Whether the low number of Leaders is due to the fact that Social CRM is still an emerging market remains to be seen. But, Gartner notes, one of the key characteristics of the market over the past year has been a burst of acquisition activity as vendors jostle for position.

Just for information, here is a list of basic information of vendors categorized in the MQ into leaders, challengers, and visionaries.

Vendor Name	Founded	Head Quarter	Employees	Social CRM Products
Salesforce.com	1999	USA San Francisco, CA	9,800 (2013)	Marketing Cloud Salesforce Chatter
Jive Software	2001	USA Palo Alto, CA	360 (2011)	Jive SBS (Social Business Software)
Lithium Technologies	2001	USA Emeryville, CA	200	Lithium Social Community Lithium Social Web Lithium Social Intelligence
Oracle	1977	USA Redwood Shores, CA	118,119 (2013)	Oracle Social CRM Applications
Bazaarvoice	2005	USA Austin, TX	410 (2009)	Bazaarvoice Conversations Bazaarvoice Intelligence Bazzarvoice Connections Bazaarvoice Media
Telligent Systems	2004	USA Dallas,TX	>100	Telligent Community Telligent  Enterprise Innovation Cast Telligent Analytics Telligent Evolution
Attensity	2000, merged 2009	USA Palo Alto, CA	<100	Attensity Pipeline Attensity Analyze Attensity Command Center Attensity Respond

In the MQ, the Leaders are those who provide technologies that benefit both the company and the community — and also benefit enterprises by demonstrating ROI. They must also demonstrate support for multiple CRM processes. Let's have a look at more details of those vendors who made it into the Leaders quadrant.


1. Salesforce.com
Strength

Salesforce.com demonstrates a strong vision called "social enterprise". This vision is broader than CRM (but inclusive of it), and covers areas like human capital management as well as internal collaboration across the whole enterprise. In addition, salesforce.com has the broadest number of social CRM use cases, including idea management, brand and reputation monitoring, social campaigns, service listen and respond, social sales collaboration. Although these use cases are not of equal depth, the vendor continues to product development efforts on adding depth and filling gaps. 

Weakness

First, Salesforce.com has made aggressive acquisitions. This means potential risks of a incoherent whole systems. In addition, Salesforce.com needs to add more-advanced forms of social analytics. Other vendors, such as Attensity, NetBase, and Jive, are already offering advanced forms of social analytics. At the moment, salesforce.com relies on partners to fill this gap.

2. Jive Software
Strength
Jive has broadening partnerships. Its partnership programs is more developed than most  competitors, with big consulting and agency names (such as IBM, Capgemini, Cognizant, and PwC). Furthermore, Jive's vision for social is strong and broad. Jive's vision is wider than just CRM and enables it to embrace new major use cases within its existing customers. In 2012, Jive launched Social Intranet, Social Customer Service, and Social Marketing & Sales Enablement, and will build out more-specific solutions over time in those areas.

Weakness

Jive has the need for improved integration with existing CRM, content management systems, and automation systems. In addition, Jive has room for improvement in social analytics. Although it is already leveraging its investments in acquiring Proximal Labs (a data mining  start-up) in areas of social-graph-filtered search results, Jive's more-advanced uses for adaptive intelligence will be a potential differentiator. 

3. Lithium Technology
Strength
Lithium offers ROI models for clients. In the model, Lithium assigns success managers and even moderators to help clients establish goals and extend and measure success factors for positive business outcomes. In addition, Lithium has a wide range of use cases in customer service, marketing and sales. The vendor is especially great in customer service, recently adding customer service workflow, such as prioritization and escalation.

Weakness

First, Lithium's analytics have room for improvement. For example, its analytics do not suggest prescriptive actions when elements in customer behavior changes. Second, Lithium should continue to strengthen social marketing functions, including integration with  applications such as multichannel campaign management. Furthermore, evidences of use cases in social sales and product review are limited.

This landscape of vendors in the social CRM market is helpful for customers in identifying the vendors that have sufficient financial muscle to survive in this very turbulent market. The market is still developing, and according to Gartner's Social CRM report, the space is likely to see a lot of consolidation through acquisitions.

Pinterest: Social CRM for visual businesses

Visuals have been an undermined variable in social CRM.

Pinterest is the social networking platform that has brought images to life, allowing some companies to use them to market some brands and products.

Several industries and brands promote their products relying on images. These companies have long been using seasonal campaigns, executed from start to end with virtually no live costumer feedback, and of course pushed through regardless. 

Brands would benefit greatly if their campaigns could communicate with their customers as they release their products and adapt to their reactions, giving them a chance to correct errors or enhance assertions.

For example, brands such as Zara, Armani, H&M among others, have always launched their collections based on planning and projections, regardless of the public’s reaction. They have had very little tools and options to react if their products did not satisfy their customers, being forced to see them through regardless. 
Now, these brands may very well launch a first step in their collections and measure their success in detail to improve and modify their products to better fit their customers.

Pinterest serves these brands that use visuals to market their products, allowing them to pre-promote and measure response through their platform and the reactions of their users. In Pinterest users comment, like or dislike what is seen on a live basis, allowing their poster to get instant feedback. 

One example of a business using Pinterest to leverage on the force of visual media is Boticca.

Boticca is an online accessory shop for top designers in London UK. They are using Pinterest to advertise their designs and link them to their web page where the customer can shop online.

Accessories is a very visual business, and Pinterest addicts like to create “virtual” outfits with complements such as shoes, jewelry belts, etc. This is where Boticca realized of the added value they could create on their customers by posting their products on high definition resolution to allow Pinterest users to add their products to their virtual wardrobe and provide feedback of new designs and trends.

Nowadays, Botticca has more than 4000 followers in Pinterets with 99 boards of earrings, necklaces, clutches, scarves, hats, rings and charms just to mention some.

One of the main learning’s from Bottica about Pinterest, based on a research they conducted last year, is that Pinterest users spend more when shopping than Facebook Users ($180 Vs. $85). This might be the result of the visual engagement, or the fact that Pinterest users are already searching for an accessory solution when looking into their boards.

As a conclusion, there is no a single and perfect CRM social media tool that fit all needs. Companies should focus their efforts in finding the social platform that best target their consumers to boost user engagement and ultimately sales.

Perception IS reality

“Perception is reality” – Lee Atwater

In the wake of the Boston marathon bombing and the online story frenzy that followed all companies should ask themselves: if event “X” happens, will the online media scene will report and spread news in an unbiased and sane manner or will we be forced to handle a cascade of mostly false news with no way to respond?

After the Boston marathon bombing quite a few stories began circulating around the web, some of them blatantly false. For example it was claimed that two 8 year old children competed in the marathon and were killed in the explosions, with accompanying pictures of the kids running in full marathon clothing. The small problem with the pictures? They were from a different marathon, and with a 30-second research everyone could have found that out, and yet the pictures were circulated for days and shared thousands of times.

How is all of this related to social CRM?

The same hurricane of false news and reports could affect companies and their products. For example Tesla Motors suffered a bad review in the New York Times that allegedly resulted in cost of 100$ million as mentioned in the linked article, what if the information provided in the article weren’t true? What’s the best way to prevent and react to those kind of issues? What are the tools that a company can use to push it’s own truth and make sure that perception is not going to work against them?

Tesla is leading the way, in fact Elon Musk, the founder of the company addressed the problem trough a blog on the webpage of the company. Using this new tool Tesla showcased how powerful a company reaction can be. Instead of just releasing a statement that would have been overlooked by the customers Tesla used all the tools in the box and, in the blog entry on their website, provided factual data to debunk the lies provided in the article. This wouldn’t have been possible without a correct preparation. The article wasn’t the first time they received a “bad review” in fact the world famous Topgear of BBC (a tv show about cars) aired a clip where they showed the problems related with the usage of an electric powered car. Back then Tesla didn’t expect a biased review and didn’t prepare to debunk eventual misstatements, but that was an hard learned lesson…..understanding the extreme importance to align reality with perception (reality being journalists review) they went to great lengths to equip the car with all the latest tracking and telemetric devices that later enabled to strongly defend themselves.

Just to prove how important is to get the facts right Tesla stock fell from $39.48 the day before the story was published to $37.04 after the story was published, a 6.2% decline that reduced $278 million from Tesla capitalization!

In the new CRM 2.0 era is extremely important for the companies to understand that the ability to understand and fiddle with customer perception is one of their strongest asset but, at the same time, it could be one of their worst nightmare.

For this reason is essential to learn how to prevent, correct and change in to favorable all possible unexpected event by leveraging all the crm tools in their possession.

Social CRM: A bane or a boon?

The concept of Social CRM still poses question marks in relation to its use or misuse. The entire process is considered by some to be as infringement of privacy and as obtrusive. This notion about social CRM can lead to customers not being appreciative of an organization’s efforts to know more about him and often lead to the company losing business. Another notion attached to social CRM is the manipulation that can follow once details about a customers’ likes and dislikes are known. An example of this is provided by the popular family sitcom, Modern family, in its latest episode (link below). In this episode, the star cast is trying to sell a house to 26 year old software engineer and after a scan of his facebook, twitter, tumblr and instagram account, they manage to know a whole lot about their customer. Following this revelation, the Chicago blackhawks poster comes on the walls, a kickboxing gym is installed, Indian food is served, a doggie door is put in place for his dog, his choice of alcoholic beverage is stocked and old school funk music is played. The customer is welcomed into the house and immediately feels an attachment to it given that all his favorite things are merged with the property. Things go very well until the moment the customer becomes suspicious of all the things that the sellers know about him, freaks out and leaves. This anecdote provides us insight into customer reaction after knowing that a seller of product or services knows more about the customer than he ought to and this can actually lead to loss of sale for the seller.


http://videobam.com/UnFjv

This is an example of how data from social media can be misused by companies in order to sell products to their customers. However there is a fine line between the right and the wrong approach to using social media. So rather than trying to manipulate the customers into buying products social media should be used to identify the opportunities when the customer would appreciate being contacted. Such occasions might include instances when a customers expresses his dissatisfaction with a product or a service of a company or when is actively searching for a product. Most of us have asked for advice on facebook about a good restaurant to eat or a place to stay in a city we are about to visit and monitoring for occasions like this is an example of good social CRM.

Process model of social CRM

A company uses data from social CRM  to make responses for managing its relationship with customers and prospects.  Jacob Morgan, social CRM expert at  Chess Media Group, describes a process of a company's use of social CRM. The process is called ARM (Action/ Reaction / Manage) Process.

As shown in the below figure, ARM Process consist of five components. This is a framework to make response to by which all actions from customers is managed, evaluated, and responded to (or not responded to).

  

1.       What was said or done

The first step is to identify and track conversations people make about the company's brand or products. The conversations may come from existing customers, prospects, influencers, advocates, and even partners or vendors. The key to realize this is to find keywords relating to the company's products and brand. The keywords included both positive and negative ones: like, dislike, satisfy, disappointed, buy and cancel. 

2.       Where it was said or done

The second step is to examine where the conversations physically happened. This includes the social channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and review comments in e-commerce sites. This can also include traditional channel of communication, such as face-to-face, phone, fax, and email.  The channel will influence the business on how a company should respond. For example, if a communication happened on Twitter, the response must also be on Twitter. The way a company responds might be influenced by the technology capabilities within that channel.

3.       Intent

The third step is to analyze the intention of the conversation. This is the most difficult step in social CRM. A company needs to specify what the customer wants to be done, based on the action he/she took, and decide whether any actions needs to be taken. This step in social CRM  will never be automated and requires some level of human intelligence.

4.       What I know

The fourth step is to reconcile the customer data collected from both traditional CRM and social CRM.  Through this step, the company gets a more complete view of its customers. From the integrated data, the company can know useful information in the business: what product the customer purchased at latest, where the  customer lives, what social　properties the customer has, how many friends the customer have and how influential they are.

5.       Business Rules  

The last step is to establish business rules. One typical rule is that a certain series of consumer behaviors triggers a set of actions. For example, a customer who bought product A and posted a positive review on the product on Facebook might trigger an email inviting him to be a part of an community of the product. Every company is different and applies different intelligence to this process.

This ARM process cannot be a fully automated system, so each company will need to decide what kinds of human evaluations are needed for each process. After designing each process, the company integrate them into a whole process. (first decentralized, then centralized) In this way, the company might then be able to implement business intelligence utilizing social CRM.