thomas.wieberneit@aheadcrm.co.nz

Social CRM – A Customer Oriented View on the State of Affairs

by | Sep 27, 2012 | Blog |

I have spent the last week talking about CRM and SCRM to three retail companies. They cover different, although overlapping ranges and are of very different organizational maturity states. They are also on different positions on both, the CRM and SCRM scales. What they have in common are a desire to have a 360 degree on their customers and the opinion that it is important to excel on the service side. They also are looking for or running tier one enterprise systems with Oracle/Siebel and SAP. None of the three companies is looking at their main software vendors when it comes to “social software”. The first company, a retailer in startup mode with a wide range, will actively pursue Social Media, for listening but also using it as a sales channel as part of their omni-channel strategy. They want to get the proverbial 360 degree view on the customer, who is “owned” in the marketing department, with PR, not marketing, owning their upcoming Social Media platform, an e-commerce group building the web shop, mobile applications, and sales apps to be embedded into several platforms – yes, there is something else beyond Facebook, if you leave the US. IT organizes and owns the ERP and CRM systems and implementations. Overall they are striving to implement a superior experience when interacting with their brand, which includes a branded community and listening/engagement abilities in the social web. The second one, an electronics retailer, wants to become the “best brand in the industry” and looks into a systems implementation from next year on, after some higher priorities are dealt with. These priorities include...