Yes, it’s a big deal. Yes, we live in a society where social customers are engaging with brands on the web. And, while Social CRM is a buzzword cited day in and day out by industry pundits arguing about its definition, I do believe that it’s needs to be top of mind for organizations who take customer relationship management serious.
But there is bigger challenge that needs to be addressed first.
Once upon a time I used to work for a brand. A few of them actually; and I have learned a few things along the way. Imagine for a second trying to get an IT manager, customer support manager, a sales engineer and a marketing manager all together in one conference room to meet for one hour. Then try to imagine all of them walking out of that meeting, shaking hands, and agreeing on working together on a CRM project. Good luck with that.
Now, I am usually optimistic about situations like this so despite the organizational silos that exist in business today, lack of communication and collaboration, employee anarchy and random chaos, function conflict, ownership challenges, confusion in roles and responsibilities; lack of training, governance and integration – there is still hope. This hope relies on organizational change and the evolution into a social business.
A social business deals with the internal transformation of an organization and addresses key factors such as organizational dynamics, culture, internal communications, governance, training, employee activation and much more. Organizations need to get smarter, acquire new technologies, intelligence, talent and motivation to become more open and transparent. They need to create processes and establish governance models that protect the organization yet empower their employees. I have been fortunate enough to witness firsthand how organizations are evolving from a business that merely engages in social behavior into a social business. There is a huge difference.
Social business is more than just a trend. It truly is a natural evolution that many organizations are going through today; whereby Social CRM is just one element of this progression.
Friends, fans and followers are important. I think we can all agree to that. And brands increase their social equity by listening and engaging in two-way dialogue with their constituency. And transparency is key to these external engagements. There is no argument there.
But a brand cannot have an effective, external conversation with a customer unless they can have effective, internal conversations with each other, first. And that can only happen with the socialization of business.
This of course is just one guy’s opinion.
