Social CRM: New Buzzword? New Craze? Does It Really Exist?

Often, when your community pool closes at the end of summer, you begin to wonder about having your own pool at home. You could use it without any restrictions: have friends over and interact with them, plan pool parties at any time of the day or night.

Now, hold that thought! This was taken from an article by Paul Greenberg

Similar to that is “Social CRM”. It is like having your own web platform; Facebook for your organization, for example. You can build your own social communities and networks where your employees, existing customers, and potential customers collaborate and interact in a very open environment. The advantages of this are:

• Enhance and increase social interaction
• Easy access to your employees and customers
• Innovative way of communication, from the rudimentary, sometime one way interaction
• Companies can monitor what people are saying  or gain opinions about your service or product
• Potential customers can easily reach out to current customers for feedback
• With the availability of this data, companies can analyze and report to establish market trends

All of this sounds good and everything seems hunky and dory, so why are organizations not happy with CRM products in the market today? Why are there catch phrases like “Where is the beef?

The truth is that no company or product offers the entire enchilada. There is a product yet to come that can offer everything such as:

• Social media monitoring that monitors and reports what customers are saying about your services on the social stage like Twitter, blogs, or Facebook. With this tool set, companies could respond and these responses  can also be published.
• Social analytics toolset that can slice and dice into texts, emails, surveys, and posts on blogs to help establish market trends.
• The all powerful web space to create your own Facebook-like platform.

Box up all of the above, and you have Social CRM, the know-all, do all product! In my opinion, the only company that has come close to doing all of the above is Sales force.

Now, before jumping on the fad wagon of the craze called, “Social CRM”,go back to the  drawing board and as a  first step ask yourself…….why and what is the real reason for the need of Social CRM? The answer to this will allow your company to decide if they want a product that specializes/can help you  in monitoring, analytics, or social interactions.

NOW HOLD THAT THOUGHT!

Thank you!

Girish-

Email-prabhuconsult@gmail.com

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