CRM Blog | Social CRM

The Thursday CRM Blog

Artikel getaggt mit Social Networks

Web 2.0 Analysis Tools

Dez 2

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM, Customer Relations, Social CRM | Keine Kommentare

“Buyer beware” is beginning to have a new meaning. A new CRM-Add-In was offered to me today. The tool, when integrated into a CRM-Application, measures the extent to which the person is networked in Facebook, XING, Twitter etc. and gives a score according to the size of the network. The idea is of course, that people with a large network need to be more carefully handled than others.

From the point of view of the customer, this would mean that it is necessary to invest time in maintaining a network in order to get good service. That does not sound too good.

Maybe the saying “we are what we eat” should be changed to “we are what we buy”. Something to think about the next time you buy something on the internet.

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Two views of Social Media in relation to CRM

Aug 12

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM | Keine Kommentare

Sites such as Facebook and Twitter have generated considerable hype and this seems to have given CRM Product Managers an opportunity to produce new ideas, not without reason.

 Not only the number of users, but also the average amount of time spent per user on social networking sites has climbed substantially in the past year. So it is not surprising that Social CRM is being pushed as one of the top ten technologies for 2010! We have however seen a number of hypes which have not had the expected results, so let’s look at the situation more carefully.

What is Social CRM? Certainly nothing new, since Customer Relationships have always been relationships whether based on person to person contacts, on telephone calls or print media. What we do have is a new set of tools, though unfortunately no-one in the CRM Software industry seems to know how they should be used.

There are two ways of looking at the situation, one from the point of view of a sales organization looking for information on prospects or customers and one from the point of view of the prospects and customers. For B2C sales and marketing, the relevance of social media is self evident, here I am more concerned with B2B.

Sales people will be interested in gathering information on the contacts they know or in finding new contacts. A surprising amount of information is out there to be found in facebook, xing, youtube etc., so it is to be hoped that CRM software will soon offer tools which gather information from these sites more or less automatically. Ideally this information will include any posts relevant to the suppliers products or services.

To quote from Siebel (http://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/)

 Sales users are able to get a quick view of activities in their social networks such as recently published content and posting from other members

Prospects and customers will (hopefully) wish to have access to product and other information. Whether or not suppliers provide this information by their web site, in blogs or other social sites is in my opinion not an issue for CRM software. The software should provide however for capturing any access to this information for lead generation.

To quote from Siebel ()

To date, the number of qualified leads coming from social media seems to be low, but this will change as the new media come to be used for more than chat and self-expression.

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CRM unterwegs, Mobile Systeme

Jan 14

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM Software, Social CRM | Keine Kommentare

 Die Studie ”Cross Media Publishing Studie 2009“, die das Fraunhofer Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation zusammen mit der epro solutions GmbH im Juni und Juli dieses Jahres durchgeführt hat enthält einige interessanten Angaben. CRM-relevant ist folgendes: Mobile Systeme (Laptops) werden für Produktpräsentation (73%), für die Vorbereitung des persönlichen Kundenbesuches (67%) und für die Erstellung von Besuchsprotokollen (65%) verwendet. Daneben werden mobile Technologien für die Produktauswahl (57%), die Produktschulung (44%) sowie die Konfiguration komplexer Produkte (31%) eingesetzt.

Das ist nicht überraschend. Interessant ist das komplette Fehlen der Einbeziehung der Social-Networks.

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Social CRM Interaction

Jan 14

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM, CRM Software, Social CRM | Keine Kommentare

Many of the larger CRM Software suppliers (Oracle, SAP, Salesforce for example) are now addressing Social CRM issues. The trend seems to be, to give companies the opportunity of gathering consumer data from social sources. This is one possibility, but it does rather ignore the idea that the word “social” implies interaction, which is what socially active people want.

 At the same time companies are beginning to use social networks, usually as an advertising medium.

Where companies do offer customers and prospects a chance to communicate,  the results are frequently disappointing. Blogs, Twitter and Facebook are full of reports about lack of reaction to complaints, recommendations or opinions.

While it is easy enough to create an interface to social networks, it is much more difficult and arduous to create the new business processes which need to be in place behind the interface. New business processes are required not only because a new quality of interaction has been created by social networks, but also due to the need for fast reactions. Users sending a letter to a company expect to wait a while before receiving a reaction. Internet activists are used to ordering goods which arrive on their doorstep within 24 hours and expect such speed of response in other fields.

Typically, when selecting a CRM solution, companies tend to look at lists of functions rather than looking at the processes which the software supports. The time has come for CRM users not only to wait for solutions from software manufacturers but rather to examine and improve their internal processes.

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Social CRM – Strategie

Nov 16

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM | Keine Kommentare

Social Networks sind inzwischen etabliert und nicht mehr weg zu denken. Strategien für die Einbindung in CRM-Anwendungen fehlen leider weitgehend. Hier ist eine interessante (englischsprachige) Definition zu finden (siehe auch “Blogroll”).

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