After a conversation on CRM versus SCRM with Sameer Patel, Jon Husband And Rawn Shah, Rawn posted a fine piece on "Building Social Collaboration Into CRM With Customers And Within The Organization"
Too occupied with other matters at the time (and since), I promised him to read it later and comment - and this is my comment as it, again, is one of those fine blog posts resulting from a naturally flowing, seemingly casual conversation on Twitter that provokes so many thoughts and words that a comment would take more than just a few words
And because I think that comments should be brief, the length of a few tweets at max so to say, I commented on his post and referred to this one for further reading
CRM is for Record: that means that CRM is an inside-in, or at best an inside-out approach where existing, known customers are put on record and solidified into the CRM database. In my view it is a Customer Record Maintenance system, where all data about an existing customer are kept.
And, to the best of my knowledge, the existence of CRM systems usually "siloes" that same data into one single application, only available to one single department.
That makes it a passive, defensive system that operates from the end of the fish trap
SCRM promises to engage the social customer where ever she is i.e. operating at the very beginning of that same fish trap. But what's the end to that? Like Sameer rightfully puts it,
@MartijnLinssen @jonhusband @Rawn #SCRM is so #DOA if it stays in the front office :)all that SCRM action has to end up in the back-end systems in order to serve company intel.
That makes SCRM an active, offensive system, operating at the very start of the fish trap
Now, how do we make sure that the Social customer record makes all the difference from the good old-fashioned customer record? Can we just keep the old record and refurbish it with some Social metadata?
As long as I live, it's people that are the actors in my social life. It's why I live in a small town, where I know almost everyone, and vice versa.
I chat with the guys and girls at the supermarket, the other dog-owners in town, the parents that pick up their kids from school - we all have a relationship going of some kind, that deepens the more we meet, and their is no written record of any kind (hope so) - it is people!
Towns, cities, metropolis: cf. entrepreneur, SMB, enterprise. From Intimacy by Proximity, it all has changed to Anonymity by Distance.
CRM was just an attempt to restore the broken relationships between customers and providers. And regardless its intent, it didn't reach its goal.
Still, it put the customer on record - and there should be a record, otherwise it'll be one big disagreement about that customer
SCRM, how ever it will fare, will have to end up as a record as well. Whatever happens before that, how will that Social Bit resonate in that Customer Record?
I have a few ideas about that, to follow later - but what do you think?