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.