by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |
We trust those sources most, who are like us. “A company like me”, as Paul Greenberg dubbed it in an article for destinationCRM, is a vision that depicts a trustworthy, almost human, company; maybe this vision is not an achievable one, but it still is a very good one since easily related to and understood. It clearly shows the path to the ultimate goal of each company: To add value to customers by being trustworthy. Adding value to customers increases their loyalty and having more loyal customers directly translates into an improved bottom line since loyal customers have a higher value than irregular customers. They spend more and more often. Loyal customers furthermore often act as ambassadors for “their” companies and brands thus providing a free-of-charge marketing- and sales force which results in a better top line. As a matter of fact and as stated in several blogs before, people – customers – are more connected than ever. They get information they trust on products and services anytime and anywhere via their personal networks and can easily confirm or prove wrong all information that is pushed out by companies. They achieve this via usage of services like Epinions, Tripadvisor, Facebook, Priceme, and so on. Customers use these sites from their home computers and via their smart phones, so that they even take ad-hoc decisions informed. As a result the push approach does not work anymore. Companies are no more in control of the information that is available about them and their brands. Successful companies embrace this. As an example (and sorry to all the not mentioned ones, …) we...
by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |
We recently conducted a small survey on the adoption and priorities of Social CRM in corporations. The results, of course, cannot be treated as absolute, as the sample size is too small. However, they correlate to research done by Jeremiah Owyang and the Altimeter Group. This especially relates to the modest available budgets and somewhat to the way ahead. The Altimeter group research can be found here. Btw: Jeremiah’s blog is a worthwhile reading for anyone who deals with social CRM. Back to my main topic, our survey results. The top findings are that [unordered_list style=”green-dot”] only 12 per cent of our answers indicate that companies are not using social media at all, and are not planning to do so. There is a quarter of the answers saying that social media usage is part of normal business processes. more than fifty per cent of the respondents say that they are using social media for marketing, but not via formal campaigns about 90 per cent of the respondents claim that they are working with a budget for social media that exceeds 10,000 dollar a vast majority of 80 per cent of the respondents think that the importance of social media will increase for their company in the next year. Companies are using a plethora of unintegrated tools to manage their social media efforts a staggering 40 per cent of the respondents see it as unlikely that they connect their CRM system with their social media efforts. [/unordered_list] Now the last one puzzles me, especially following the statement that the usage of social media is important, especially in the marketing. This...
by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |
Some days ago Bob Thompson interviewed Graham Hill about his take on Social CRM. The interview covered a lot of topics, most notably the future of Social CRM about which Graham has a particular view and led Bob to ask the question whether it is necessary to have a CRM system to have Social CRM. On a first glimpse this question sounds simple, but it really isn’t. From a business perspective it only matters that CRM is executed upon, if CRM is a topic. This is totally independent of systems, as are the possible paths into the future of Social CRM that Graham sees, which is a deviation from this post that I likely will look into in a later post. My answer to Bobs question is a clear No – but Yes! Sounds odd, doesn’t it? So let me explain. CRM is a business strategy; so is Social CRM. In an earlier blog titled CRM vs. Social CRM – what is the difference? I discussed differences as I do saw them at that time. My view has slightly evolved since, but this is another side track. Let’s have a look at good definitions of CRM and Social CRM. Wikipedia defines CRM as “a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the...
by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |
Just by looking at the terms Customer Relationship Management and Social Customer Relationship Management one can see that they are sharing the same roots; Social CRM is either a limitation to or an enhancement of (traditional) CRM – or is it something entirely different? Let me take a brief view at what CRM and Social CRM are and are not and then come to a conclusion. CRM – Customer Relationship Management – is a business strategy. If you do a brief research on the web you will find many definitions with their own tweaks. What most of them have in common is that they all say that the strategy is about the customer and about how to engage a customer so that the company applying the strategy [unordered_list style=”green-dot”] gets most knowledge about the customer (groups) and is able to action upon this knowledge to maximize the own results (be it market share, revenue, margin, win, …) [/unordered_list] As such a CRM strategy covers all relevant actions to market the right products to customers, sell the products and potentially provide service afterwards. CRM by no means is a technology, although sometimes this is still peoples’ thinking. A CRM application/system or suite enables and supports the business in pursuing its CRM strategy. The software does this by providing the tools to perform the necessary tasks and by providing the data that is necessary to control processes and to take necessary action. Something that is not explicitly said is that one fundamental underlying premise of pursuing a (traditional) CRM strategy is that the business owns and/or governs the communication with the...
by tz4rgp | Sep 27, 2012 | Blog |
Inspired by a blog post by Dr. Harish Kotadia I started to rethink about what the real key success factors for a social CRM strategy are. Harish used Walmart as an example, based upon their introduction of the “local” Walmart on Facebook. Walmart, being a retailer with more than 3,500 stores is surely a company for which the concept of (physical) proximity is important. From the outset I contradicted him (how dare I 😉 ). My point was, and is, that companies like Amazon, Dell, even Apple, arguably have a social CRM strategy but are not exactly local (there is not even a single Apple Retail Store in NZ …). They all manage without being physically local. Some brick and mortar retailers are even able and willing to bring their store to their customers by various technical means (e.g. Tesco but also others). So, I argue that proximity is more defined by ease of access, availability, interaction, rather than physical distance. This, in turn, means that physical proximity is not necessarily a key concept. This is especially true as being close, physically or otherwise, but irrelevant doesn’t bring a company anywhere, except into bankruptcy. So, relevance seems to be key. What is relevance? Relevance is the ability and willingness of companies to create value together with their customers. This goes beyond the mere transaction – giving money in exchange for a product or a service. Value for the company is not created by a single transaction, nor does the product itself create value for a customer. Value for the company is created by sustainable business. Sustainable business is not...
