Social CRM & the 3 Idiots

Source: Flickr

Update: I just realised that this is my 400th post in this blog. :)

My friends who do not watch Bollywood movies might not be aware of the recent phenomenon called 3 Idiots in the Indian movie scene. The rest must know the iconoclast Rancho's world view & many would have nodded their heads with the iconodule Chatur's world view.

So what does this movie have anything to do with Social CRM? No, am not talking about the movie as a case study in how they used social media to sell more.

I do not know if the Chetan Bhagat & 3 Idiots fiasco can be termed as a social media campaign, in spite of the fact that both Chetan Bhagat (on who's book Five Point Someone the movie is supposedly based) & Aamir Khan (plays the main protagonist, Rancho) have blogs & are there was a twitter hullabaloo some weeks back.

The reason I bring up 3 Idiots is because of the incessant & unending fight about the definition of the term Social CRM.

Theres a scene in the movie where two freshers (freshmen) are asked by their professor to define a machine. The iconoclaust (Rancho, played by Aamir Khan) defines machine as something that makes our work easier. The professor is not impressed & Chatur, our iconodule (a caricature of the bookish toppers?), prattles this definition:


The scene ends with Rancho getting dispelled from the class, but returning to get back his "instruments that record analyse summarize organize debate and explain information which are illustrative non-illustrative hardbound paperback jacketed non-jacketed with forward, introduction, table of contents, index that are indented for the englightnment, understanding enrichment enhancement and education of the human brain thru sensory root of vision... sometimes touch". His books.

My learning from this scene is that there are academic definitions (mostly encompassing the characteristics) and then there are simplistic definitions (mostly stating the ramifications) that help one grasp the crux of the idea.

And also that definitions differ from person to person.

Everybody perceives everything in a different way. A simple question "Define yourselves" can perplex most people. And then theres no right or wrong answer again. But without getting into the philosophical or the metaphysical, what am trying to drive at is that it doesn't matter how we word the definition, just how effectively we convey the idea.

Paul Greenberg gives both an academic sounding definition of Social CRM as well as a simplistic one.

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment.

It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.”

The definition encompasses a lot of underlying concepts in it. You must read the full post where Paul puts his stake in the ground to grasp some of them or to understand more deeply, read his book - CRM @ The Speed of Light, 4th Ed. Open Disclosure: I haven't read that book yet, but have the great fortune of actually interacting with Paul both in cyberspace as well as realspace. And I have heard from people who have read the book & I trust them, as I trust Paul. And no, I did not get any money from Paul for recommending his books.

If its all still a pain to understand whats Social CRM, then you need to wait a bit more until you get more literature about how to do it or how it works or examples of it. The area is still nascent & am not sure if the market has yet been created.

I would like to conclude this post with a request: Please lets not fight about what to name it or how to word the definition.

If you want, you can get a very comprehensive list of definitions for Social CRM here. Hope we can agree to disagree on the term/definition and move ahead? Lets help people understand how to do it.