I’ve just finished reading a couple of posts on Social CRM Strategies.  This prompted me to re-read Forrester’s “Topic Overview: Social CRM Goes Mainstream” (January 2010), by William Band, Natalie L. Petouhoff, Ph.D., with Connie Moore, Andrew Magarie … and so to this post.

The free Forrester document focuses on Forrester’s latest research on the rise of social web and the changes this has caused in the way “customers” interact with organisations. The authors relate this change to the hot topics of customer management, business process, and the business value of “Social CRM”.  The document introduces Forrester’s seven steps of Social CRM success – see below).

Many traditional CRM, pre-Social CRM, projects failed (some analysts reported failure rates as high as 60%) because they didn’t resolve the classic issues of cultural change, performance and incentives, integration, or that most basic requirement, that’s essential for any successful CRM implementation, of data quality. These traditional CRM solutions would have brought together sales and customer data from disparate parts of the organisation and provide a view of an individual customer (B2C), or company (B2B), to help sales and marketing. Traditional CRM will continue to be implemented and used to aggregate customer data, provide analysis of that data, and automate work-flows to optimize business processes.  Social CRM merely adds new layers of complexity – mainly collaboration, ideation, and (preferably) to enhance the overall customer experience.

The marketing landscape is changing, and changing at an increasingly rapid pace. We are all actively engaged in social media in our work place, and in our private lives; the odd blog here, the Facebook update there, the book review on Amazon, the family album on Flickr, the occasional tweet.  Social CRM then is your existing CRM plus the ability to leverage the social web. As such it will impact all parts of the organisation.

So there are hard decisions about the level of investment (time and money) your organisation should make in Social Computing technologies like blogs, wikis, on-line forums, customer feedback tools, and social networking sites. The Forrester authors argue that you’ll need to have a clear understanding of the “emerging extended CRM solution ecosystem” – Forrester defines this ecosystem to be “the key technologies that support the business processes for targeting, acquiring, retaining, understanding, and – very importantly – collaborating ‘socially’ with customers”.  But beware, you’ll need to extend your thinking beyond that two-way relationship between an organisation and customer, to also include all those simultaneous interactions that customers have among themselves, your partners, and your competitors.

So what are Forrester’s seven steps of Social CRM success:

1. Start your Social CRM experiments immediately:
   • Start now! Gain some practical experience.  Break your existing mindsets. You can refine a strategy later as insights emerge …
2. Benchmark your “customer” social readiness:
   • Survey your customers to assess their existing Social Media behaviour and attitudes.   Would they add comments to your blog post, add content to on-line forum or wiki, or view your on-line video?  Use this profile in your planning …
3. Define your social customer objectives:
   • Not the technology, but who you’re trying to reach, what you’re trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your them. Forrester advocate using a systematic, four-step method for these next-generation customers – POST: people, objectives (See, for example “Social CRM Objectives” below), strategy, and technology …
4. Assess your Social CRM capabilities:
   • Undertake a self-assessment to understand how your organization compares with Social CRM best practices – know your competition …
5. Understand the Social CRM solution landscape:
   • You’ll have to continue to learn and navigate the emerging Social CRM solutions landscape …
6. Map out your Social CRM capabilities-building plan:
   • Tightly linked with business goals, focused on customer benefits …
7. Define your CRM metrics for success:
   • Discipline is what sets CRM winners from failure.  Social CRM is no different: strategy, a set of tools, and ongoing tracking to meet your long term goals!

… repeat!

So, I suggest you start immediately:

1. identifying who your core users are (see, for example, Forrester’s “The Social Technogaphics Ladder” below) – and where will you find them?
2. decide how you’ll position the content?
3. decide how you’ll engage these core users?
4. and decide what key word, and phrase, you’ll consistently use – for search engine optimisation (SEO)!

The Social Technogaphics Ladder. Source: Forrester Inc.

You’ll need to consider several channels:

1. Static:
   • Your existing web site – you must at least add links to your blog, Facebook account, Twitter page, …
2. Dynamic:
   1. Periodic:
      • Your Blog, or Blogs
      • Social Media Network e.g. Facebook
      • Multimedia e.g. Podcasts, Slideshare, Video (YouTube)
   1. Real-time:
      • Micro-blogging e.g. Twitter, Google Buzz and Google Wave
      • and even Wiki’s, on-line Forums, …

And, you’ll need to decide whether you’ll:

• post the same content to all channels?
• the sequence in which you’ll post
• the frequency
• and, who will take ownership of the channel/s

Social CRM Objectives

The Forrester document comes complete with several pages of links to Forrester resources including Strategic Reading, Best Practice, Trends and Forecasts, …  It also includes links to related research documents:

• “Best Practices: Five Strategies For CustomerService Social Media Excellence”, August 14, 2009
• “The Future Of The Social Web”, April 27, 2009
• “CRM 2.0: Fantasy Or Reality?”, November 13, 2008
• “The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption”, October 20, 2008

So, there’s no excuse now …