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.