Social Business - Where do we start?

Where to start

For many organisations we talk to the question of how to use social technologies to benefit their business beyond the use of marketing has finally arrived at the board room table. Many have made taken their first steps in using social tools and started to listen, learn and integrate their marketing. The broader issues of where and who is responsible for the social business plan brings into focus the many different areas of the business impacted by the use of social business tools.

Different people will have different views on where to start. Some may argue that the focus needs to be on an integrating strategy while others may work on a priority basis and use pilot projects to prove the business case. There is of course the complexity of knitting social into the often siloed activities of an organisational structure. So where and how can organisations start to tackle some of these problems?

Looking at the Business of Being Social

There is both the opportunity to internally and externally harness the social capabilities to help organizations solve business problems. But it is context of how culture and technology need to be integrated that we understand the implications on strategy and how important it is to embrace change management.

Initially organisations need to understand their own capabilities and audit there current position:

• understand who in their business is currently using social media in relation to the business e.g. active in Linkedin forums...


• understand employee activities on social media - this is often useful and helpful to determine who could be recruited to help on projects


• benchmark you brands/products and services on social networks


• benchmark your competitors

In much the same way as you would put together your information sets to build a business plan and strategy you need to understand your current position for developing a social business capability.

Set clear goals and measures e.g.

• % increase in coverage of PR per £XX spend


• Sales could be a % Increase in Sales Leads


• Customer Service could be % reduction in response times or % reduction in number of customer service queries

Moving Quickly

We often see that many organisations end up with analysis paralysis. As we talked about in our last blog prioritizing how you intend to use social business is critical.

In today's fast paced world it is about being agile:

• Flexible and responsive resources (internal and through partner network)


• Rapidly assimilating changes in your business environment


• Focusing on information that can quickly be acted upon


• Harnessing influencers for change (internal and external)

The changes in technology and business are not incremental they are a major shift to a new form of technology and operations orientation. It is how the organisation responds to a new internal employee engagement model and also respond to a social customer across multiple channels. As consumer adoption of new technologies and behaviours change, the challenge is for organisations to reconfigure resources and capabilities to meet those changes.

 

Key Take Outs

• Benchmark your business and capabilities


• Research and benchmark your competitors


• Understand your customers/listen to where they are/what is being said/channels


• Research your network and find out who are influencers and potential social champions


• Aim to develop a centre of excellence for social business that is cross divisional/departmental


• Recognize that mistakes are going to be made - that is why we call it learning


• Remember to be adaptive/respond top changes


• Build pilots that can be scaled quickly

Social CRM or Social CEM - What makes a Social Business?

What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?


Paul Greenberg who blogs on CRM at ZDNet and is author of CRM at the Speed of Light (great read) has been instrumental in sharing knowledge on the rapidly changing and evolving world of CRM. CRM is a business strategy designed to optimise profitability, revenue and customer satisfaction. As social channels have developed so too has the complexity of dealing with the associated volumes of conversations around brands and products. Consumers now have power to voice their opinions openly.

Organisations are now rapidly trying to integrate information into their CRM systems (many of which are old legacy systems such as SAP/Siebel). Kate Leggett provides some practical views on this and the need for organisations to take control. So what is the main debate about?

Many people are frustrated with the many current practices of CRM that fail to deliver a good customer experience. Many can relate to long waits on phone lines, multiple interactive voice response lines, lack of consistency with information...and the list goes on. Despite masses of investment in Siebel/SAP and Business Process Mapping organisations seem to have removed not complimented the customer experience. The drive to reduce costs not enhance the customer experience was the main driver behind many CRM initiatives and outsourcing programmes.

The main problem is that CRM platforms measure customer interactions solely upon product purchase history and preferences. These measures are product centric and historical and don't consider or take into account experience or forward looking trends & preferences.

Is CRM as simple as this sometimes (watch the video)?

Enter the Social Customer?

One of the classic cases of bad customer service and the use of social media was the management by United Airlines of Dave Carroll's guitar which was badly handled both in terms of customer service and PR. The power of the social customer to influence and amplify their voice is here. But let's not forget that companies should tread a careful line between service and rewarding those that shout loudest. While traditional is still available, many organizations are often responding to customers faster when the complaint comes in via a social media site.

As a result, are we teaching customers to use social media as their customer service escalation path? Are we instilling bad behaviours of immediacy? Whether we like it or not real time is approaching just as a generation have changed to the timeliness and expectation associated with different communication methods: from letters to faxes to emails (initially by PC and then the move to mobile) and now Twitter. We are moving to closer to real-time.

Paul Greenberg defines social CRM (SCRM) as: "the company's programmatic response to the customer's control of the conversation." Its about the company taking hold of the reins of the conversation, not the other way round.

Brian Solis: SCRM affects the whole organization and is transformational. According to Solis, 'the ability to identify active communities of relevance', tracing influential people and channels, and the dissection of all phases of the process of decision making, all in real-time, are crucial aspects of social media marketing.

Involving these ‘influencers’ and communities, and the linking of CRM to interactive marketing actions are some of the core elements of an integrated, social CRM. As Brian intimates we are moving to an experience economy.

So What is Customer Experience Management (CEM) ?

Customer experience is one of the great challenges for innovation. It is interactions between an organization and a Customer. Of course this involves the customer relationship management, however this is only one element of the service delivery. It is the blend of an organization’s performance, the thoughts and feelings that customers have. As the customer moves from through the touch-points of its association with the organisation - it is the experience.

But where is this heading?

The struggle that organisations face is not purely at the operational level of integrating systems, processes and adopting these tools. The fundamental shift is on how organisations transform their structures, cultures and values to reflect a more customer focused approach to evolve to this new focus on customer experience. This is also a necessity to adapt and be agile in rapidly changing environment. Organisations will need to focus on the perspective of their customers and empower their employees to deliver it well; they need to become a social business. Happy customers become advocates and bring along their friends.

What of the future?



Brands and organisations are having to face a point where the consumer and organisation are converging in the relative role of 'real time' experiences. Supplying goods and services will be associated with facilitating unique consumer experiences on demand and these may be off-line and on-line or augmented These experiences may be facilitated by a brand community or a new experience environment to interact with and co-create value.  Since experiences are not easily replicated or copied these will be the value and uniqueness where brands will battle for consumer attention.