Is Social Media the Latest Iteration of CRM?
I had a recent conversation with a colleague who has been in the CRM business for many years and began to think about the relationship between social media and the art and science of CRM. When I first got involved in social media it occurred to me that social media is CRM in its purest form. Going back a few years ago, all you could do was “manage” customers through outbound email, mail or phone contact. It was systematic, but – on balance – you were doing more “talking at” than “talking with” customers.
Social media is less systematic – you can’t just roll out a program and check off completed tasks. However, when done well, you are meeting your customers (and prospects) where they congregate, hearing about what is important to them, and responding. This mirrors real-life relationships and, therefore, increases the quality of the contact. For some, it may seem time-consuming to have these one-on-one conversations, but – in reality – for each person responded to, there are many more that are listening in with the ability to send a link and get even more people involved. The reach is very long.
It seems artificial to separate out the concept of Customer Relationship Management from social media at this point in time. Customers, like all of us, don’t really liked to be managed. Maybe it should be renamed Customer Relationship Engagement?
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Recent Comments (3)
Catherine – This topic is near and dear to many. There is a very active discussion which takes place on Twitter and on blogs with a large core group. Just do a search on #scrm on twitter, or take a look at the blog roll on my blog and you would likely enjoy the conversation.
Mitch
Thoughts on blogs | Participation in the social web wk 10-09-09| Wendy Soucie Social Media Consulting | Wisconsin wrote:
[...] Is social media the latest iteration of CRM (Catherine Sherwood) – [...]
Wendy Soucie wrote:
Catherine,
As a long time user of various contact managers and customer relationship management tools, your comments are thought provoking. I find social media a perfect place to be for someone who has focused on the customer side of business for the past 25 years.
On the selfish side – I love the one on one and many to many conversations I am having. As the convoluted connection path travels from one connection to another and then highlights someone I also know. then someone I would like to know. In the past 2 years as my network has grown, I feel richer because of the depth and reach. Its exciting to connect with someone in AZ with more touch points than the person next door. I won’t even bore you with my thrill at having great connections in Paris and Australia!
What CRM does do is help provide a process to manage those business connections and make the “drip marketing” or the Email marketing a little more feasible. Social media runs the risk of overwhelming all of us with information and management overload. I believe that the next wave of Web 2.0 (or will it be Web 3.0) functionality will be better management systems for our social media relationships and even (can one hope) tools that truly integrate CRM and social media as one symphony together.
Regards,
Wendy Soucie
http://www.xeesm.com/wendysoucie