Another Social Media webinar for you to view. This one is from Customer Think Corp, and is called “Showcase: Social CRM” – tagline “harvesting the power of Social Media and CRM systems.”
After an introduction by Bob Thomson (CEO of CustomerThink), three companies make presentations: Lithium (“the leading Social CRM solutions“), HelpStream (“the first company in the world to deliver a truly social customer service and relationship management system”), and SAP (“the world’s leading provider of business software“). Of the three Lithium made the most valuable contribution to the webinar – the remaining two appear to have not fully appreciated the implication of the new marketing paradigm …
Bob’s introduction to the webinar included reference to a venn diagram showing the intersection of the external Social Media cloud, and the internal Business CRM system. It’s the intersection where the interesting conversations exist – real message of the show.
Social Media is people, fun, ad hoc, external, experiential, voluntary
CRM is process, efficiency, required, … Business
The Lithium’s contribution to the webinar captured my attention: the crucial dependence on Super Users for successful on-line support forums. Essentially, it’s not possible to create a customer network, it must be allowed to grow. These super users will promote you wares on your behalf; it’s not merely a matter of “if you build it, [they] will come.” The excellent example in the webinar is from a Logitech (“… designs personal peripherals to help people enjoy a better experience with the digital world”) support forum – where the super user like KachiWachi appears to spend the majority of each day resolving Logitech’s customers problems for free … and, in doing so, converts many potential leads into sales. But there is a price to pay: these super users must be rewarded – and their reward takes the form of expert ratings – an acknowledgement of the expertise and collaboration with other users of the forum.
This on-line support forum community will even address the risk of competitors seeding the forum with misinformation. Your on-line advocates will quickly pounce on the perpetrators and expose them …
