The Social CRM Magic Quadrant

I missed the Social CRM Summit today - twice. Not only did I not physically attend, but I was occupied with work and only found time in my lunch break to quickly scan a few tweets. Now it's after dinner, there are 700 tweets, and I am ready to analyse away

Of course I use @TheTwuniverse for collecting info (my pet project), it allows me to save the results as HTML but also to copy all and paste it so I can do some filtering
First, the big news:

• 698 tweets, just over one a minute
• Total RT's (tweets containing 'RT @'): 210 (30%)
• Total replies: 262 (38%)
• 104 total participants. 10 most active participants: @MarkTamis (143=20%); @grahamhill (60=9%); @prem_k (54=8%); @dahowlett (46=7%); @KRCraft (29=4%); @mkrigsman (23=3%); @ekolsky (21=3%); @glfceo (20=3%); @jesus_hoyos (18=3%); @gautamghosh (18=3%); totalling 432 (62%)

Funny to see the lion in the lamb's den there, but I'm very sure that Dennis' presence there will give the movement a very (much needed) forward impulse. At the moment, he's processing a video with Paul Greenberg and Esteban Kolsky

• First, old tweets go out the door (20 of them)
• Then, the first chatter tweets about power, wifi, etc: 70
• 612 remain, of which160 are ReTweets: 450 left
• At the end, 50 tweets of opinions on opinions, so 400 in total. They were about pretty much everything, had a social business touch rather than an SCRM one, even went on about co-creation, design thinking and whatnot

One tweet of those I'd like to highlight:

RT @prem_k: Social CRM is an extension of #CRM - @pgreenbe #SCRMSummit #scrm < assumes CRM exists, which I really, really doubt.

It is the crux of SCRM. What lead me to write The Social CRM Oxymoron was my view on CRM. Actually, there are a lot of views on CRM. It's like the proverbial blind men and an elephant where a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement

A king comes up with the solution:

"All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned."

What is CRM then? A lot:

• Sales force automation
• Marketing
• Customer service and support
• Analytics
• Integrated/Collaborative
• Small business
• Social media
• Non-profit and membership-based

Let's ignore those last four as it looks like they were added by the Social Touch, and focus on the first four. Like I stated in the oxymoron post, there is a difference between consumers and customers. Customers are those that have paid you, consumers are potential customers - a heck of a difference.
In CRM, you have your customers on record, and the consumers you target aren't.
On one hand, SCRM is talking about customers who want to engage with your brand and hunger for actionable insights (why? is my usual question), on the other it talks about sales and marketing and also use the word customer - where they mean consumer (as in unknown and preferably future customer)

Confusing? Yeah. When SCRM people talk trust, they mean consumers, who haven't established trust yet - but use the word customer. When they say that you should focus on your customer and deliver to their expectations and needs, that's nothing more than solid sense for any business - unless you're in for a quicky.
Weak ties, strong ties? Again, that depends who you're talking about. Consumers will have weak ties with your brand, customers will have strong(-ish or at least -er) ones.
Same thing for a customer strategy: which customer do they mean?

In an effort to chop up the elephant, once again I come up with my Magic Quadrant

Customers and consumers, known and unknown - that's the criterium

To the bottom left: old-fashioned CRM as I know it, Customer Record Maintenance. Known customers you have full details on, a relationship or not, you know all the products and services they're paying you for. You must be in the banking, insurance or other long-life product industry here where products are relatively complex, high-value or both. You might be selling services rather than products.
To the bottom right: unknown customers. They pay you for your product(s) and service(s), yet you don't know them. You must be selling short-life products who are relatively cheap and low-value.
To the top left: known consumers - now that is impossible, or is it? Cross-selling is the word here, where you turn consumers (who you know because they're a customer for another product or service you have) into customers. A bit far-fetched maybe, but I have to fill in the gap here. You must be in the same business as the lower left quadrant.
To the top right: the world, really. Anyone not using your product as far as you know

Plot the forms of CRM onto these:

• SFA. To the right of the quadrant, both in the upper and lower half, and with a foot in the left half where possible
• Marketing. To the upper half of the quadrant, using specific but more likely general data from the lower left, almost entirely targeting consumers  and reserving a personalised and specific approach when targeting the lower half
• Customer service and support. To the lower half of the quadrant, clearly serving your customers and never consumers
• Analytics. Covering the entire quadrant with different methods and goals

Now plot Social onto these:

• Known customers. Like I state in my Social Business Revolution, Social connects unknowns, not knowns. You will not target your known customers through social channels. If you benefit from social here (the other way around), it means your current customer channels and backing are failing. Simple as that
• Unknown customers. Social could help here, you'll just risk that treating everyone as unknown might give some customers mixed feelings who expect to be valued because they handed you cash. If the customers initiate the contact, you'll risk the same. Careful!
• Known consumers. In the example above, you'll target these via your existing channels, never via social. If it's in the reverse direction, Social might actually be very helpful because they like your brand but can't (be bothered to) find an entry for their specific request
• Unknown consumers. Fire away, Social could have large potential here to establish your brand and product(s) or service(s). For reverse direction, the same applies

I hope this helps chop up the elephant, as I'm used to doing with enterprise architectural issues. Eventually, when it's spoonsize, you can eat the elephant piece-by-piece. Not trying to nor thinking that I have achieved this, I hope we can get closer to a better agreement on Social CRM


Now there's only one issue: how do you recognise your customers in the Social Haystack?