This is guest post by Luke Brynley-Jones, social media expert & organizer of great events on Social media
Social CRM 2013, Brussels – What’s it all about?
On 27th November Our Social Times will be hosting Social CRM 2013 (Brussels) at BIP. CEO of Dialog Solutions Alexandre Vandermeersch will be taking part in a panel discussion ‘What does social CRM mean for marketers?’ But what’s it all about? And why should you be there?
Social CRM is often lost in the noise and fanfare that surrounds social media.This is surprising, since for most businesses, it offers much more tangible and measurable benefits than most social media marketing strategies could ever claim.
So what is it, really?
OK, well, much of the confusion around social CRM exists because it covers a range of strategies, techniques and perspectives that can be applied differently by different departments, and with different outcomes. What is generally agreed, though, is that it’s about maximising the benefits to everyone – the company, it’s staff, partners and customers – of living in a connected society.
In terms of actions, this includes:
• Re-aligning sales, marketing and customer service to a single customer view (also called ‘one agenda’)
• Combining customer data with social media listening data to enhance the customer experience
• Putting a value on the strength of customer relationships
• Enabling customers to support each other using peer-to-peer communities
• Using collaboration to streamline internal communications
• Taking advantage of existing company networks for recruitment
Delivering this kind of radical change isn’t cheap. Unsurprisingly, very few companies have really applied end-to-end social CRM (or ‘social business’), though some – like IBM and Burberry – claim to have come close.
Then, why bother?
The fact is, while most organisations are focused on signing up their next big customer, the primary benefit that the connected society offers businesses is, ironically, right under their noses. McKinsey estimates that between $900 billion and $1.3 trillion in value could be unlocked through the use of social technologies, most of it within the organisation.
But despite this impressive prediction, most large enterprises remain internally secretive, externally dysfunctional and, according to some reports, actively customer averse.
The reason for this is twofold:
• Firstly, the social CRM industry is crowded with technology solutions that offer part solutions to the challenge of social CRM* (none offer an end-to-end solution, as far as I’m aware). Each is different, but each calls itself “social CRM’, so companies are confused.
• The second is a plain fact: there are not enough successful social CRM case studies.
At SCRM13, alongside the European Parliament and Telenet, we’re going to be analysing how large organisations are thinking more about the customer better informed marketing, social customer service and customer experience analysis. We also have a session on how to use LinkedIn for social CRM and a discussion on the challenges of implementing culture change within large organisations.
I hope you can join Our Social Times for this fascinating event.
Special Discount: Dialog blog readers get 20% off with discount code : SCRM20.
