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.