By M. Isi Eromosele

Social is not about becoming friends, linked or following one another. Becoming a social business is about being a viable member of, and a leader within your own ecosystem. A social business is one that understands their ecosystem, leverages people as the platform, and gives as much as it receives.

Any company who is able to harness this new normal paradigm will be able to build and

deliver better products and services and have stronger, more engaging and longer lasting relationships with each member of its ecosystem. Implementing towards this objective requires an internal focus, an external focus and a rock solid method to align the two.

Social CRM (SCRM) is externally focused, via people, process and technology, in response to the social customer. One without the other is not all that useful and both blend into each other as opposed to being mutually exclusive components of social business.

Social CRM is an extension of CRM, not a replacement and among the important benefits is that it adds value back to the users (increased adoption) and your customers. It is the one part of the social business strategy that addresses how companies need to adapt to the social customer and the expectations these customers have with respect to companies they do business with.

With a focus on strategy, customer engagement and relationships, Social CRM moves beyond management of customers, transactions and money.

Social CRM is a customer engagement strategy in support of your defined goals and objectives towards optimizing the customer experience.  Success requires focus on people, process and technology associated with customer touch points and interactions. 

Customers are choosing how they interact with companies and companies’ brands, and this poses a challenge; a challenge of data volume, dynamic channels, and elevated expectations.

The social customer is vested and participatory and has active involvement within the business ecosystem, not just as purchasers, but as advocates and influencers as well.  Individuals are influenced by friends, relatives and peers. For Social CRM to be successful, and by extension the businesses who employ the strategy, they must recognize the power of social networks and the impact to your business.

The careful selection and use of social media channels and technologies must be a part of any Social CRM strategy. It's important to remember that social media is not the only communication channel used.  It’s an important part of SCRM but not the only part.

Companies today are becoming overwhelmed with the vast amounts of data that customers are sharing about them and feel as though they need to respond to every complaint and every customer contact or request. However, the real value comes from being able to change how your company does business and improving the user experience while building advocacy.

Simply responding to as many comments or tweets as possible is inefficient and not scalable. A much better solution is to actually fix the problems the customers are identifying and collaborating with your customers to help give them what they want. This is part of what being a social business is about.

Business Need For Social CRM

How, when and where your business needs to engage with your customers have changed significantly and rapidly due to the broad adoption of the social web. Customers are now

sharing their experiences and feedback on any company and any brand. This means that whether or not your company chooses to be involved, these experiences will still be shared on social networks

In order to succeed in this hyper-connected environment, companies need to adapt their business strategy, apply new technology, expand their marketing and PR efforts, as well as alter and adapt their internal culture. Formalizing a Social CRM strategy will allow a business to locate, educate and engage their current and potential customers where they prefer to communicate. Empowering the Social Customer is a critical objective within any social business strategy.

Social CRM strategies and technology offerings should complement, but not replace traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, the platform businesses have traditionally used to hold and analyze customer data. While many traditional CRM solutions are highly regarded and excellent at automating processes, managing the customer data and provide management reports to track sales, Social CRM focuses on the relevant conversations taking place online and offline.

The key difference between Social CRM and traditional CRM is that Social CRM is based on a strategy for customer engagement, not managing customer data.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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