We all agree that social CRM is about responding to the customer’s control of the conversation. And the obvious response is to first listen to what they are saying, but that means the business needs to know where they are saying it!
So, we need to first figure out where our customers are talking, about what & then decide who would be the most apt to not just respond but also engage & eventually be able to influence them as the new “social” relationship grows.
But let this not merely be about social media as yet another channel. Don’t get me wrong, social media/networks as another channel works in the current framework & is the transitional step. However the eventual outcome/goal will/may be far different from what any of us can envision. I hope. For the better.
So to take co-creation as one of the possible frontiers (thats the farthest am able to look BTW, others can help me see further), we could be seeing more & more co-created experiences, not just online but offline as well. More personalized services which have been co-created, not just crowdsourced ideation / community based design / mass collaboration.
Does anybody think that the traditional CRM functions marketing, sales or customer service are poised to achieve any of the above ideals in isolation?
And John, beg to differ, social CRM is not merely about the social media/networks. Social CRM had to be framed because of the customers taking control of the conversation, which was in turn made possible by social media/networks. But its not limited to online world. Its about the change we are yet to see in the kind of relationship b/w the firm & the customer – “social” relationship as opposed to the “transactional” relationship.
In a way that would be going back to the basics. Think a century back. Or come to rural India. I refer to the “Family” doctor/ tailor/milkman/cobbler/jeweller, the corner grocer. The professionals who delivered us individualized services &/or bespoke products. They still exist in your world, but not scalable, thus pricey & rather upmarket. Advances in technology (think other than social web, like in manufacturing, miniaturization, 3d desktop printing, RFID, etc.) will allow creating personalised products on scale.
But these don’t belong to marketing/sales/customer service either!
Look at the Coke example Paul Greenberg wrote on his ZDNet blog. Isn’t it about personalized drinks? 100s of drinks out of one machine? One that can give me my "regular"? Who would have thunk!
So fight all you want about where to start & who gets the most benefit, I will not join the debate. Its pointless. The change needs to happen, where ever it is in the organization.
You need a leader & a sponsor. And a team to support them operationally and a tribe to take the message to the rest of the organization. Sorry Esteban, for driving the change we need a passionate tribe, not a community.
Well done post Prem, as always. While social CRM cannot scale off-line, and is therefore not worth discussing, I'll leave the debate there for now as it is not the key point of your post.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that co-creation is a logical iteration in this evolution, and it is taking place in some areas already, we should not lose sight of the fact that this transition will occur at different rates in different companies and markets. In general I feel that it will follow an iterative path similar to:
- Explore a single social network; Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.. Someone in the company must be willing to explore it as a corporate tool. Some companies skip this step but often it takes a single champion to get the ball rolling.
- Pilot projects, again, looking at social as but a single channel. ROI established and measured. While #s will be fuzzy they will generally be met in companies where there is not too much skepticism. Again, this will be skipped by some companies.
- Taking the leap to new products like those from Lithium, Helpstream, Parature, etc.. These are good first steps on the social CRM front.
- Co-creation at a broad scale is a logical step in this flow. This will be across all channels and will include partners, customers, employees, corporations. Co-creation will be of documentation (already underway in many companies), products (some companies are here already, but minimal)...
- I have thoughts on what's next but will not muddy this conversation with those thoughts.
I am not saying this is ideal but I feel we're 4 or 5 years away from gen Y being in enough positions of power to accelerate this and skip most of the steps above.
John