What Is Social CRM

What is Social CRM?

Social CRM (sCRM) brings together the strategy, processes and technology to engage customers in a dialogue that satisfies the customers increasing requests for access to information and resources while providing suppliers with unprecedented customer feedback, customer engagement and improved customer relationships.

Social CRM goes beyond traditional and largely transaction-based CRM strategies with online communities, social networks and Web 2.0 tools which empower businesses to engage customers and as a result transcend their customer relationships along a continuum from first time buyer to repeat customer to collaborative partner to unsolicited advocate. Social CRM strategies recognize the change in control of the dialogue from the supplier to the customer. However, Social CRM also enables suppliers to employ tools which are user driven, collaborative, interactive and transparent in order find, listen and engage customers at the time, place and method they prefer.

Social CRM Tools for Sales Professionals

Social networks and online destinations offer publicly accessible prospect and customer information. Savvy sales pros are taking advantage of these sources to better prepare for outbound calls and uncover buying signals which influence their sales strategies.

	InsideView searches public, editorial and social media content for business research and intelligence. The cloud or Software as a Service (SaaS) sales intelligence tool is used by Sales teams to help identify and gather information on prospects and customers.
	You know why the button says "Find us on Facebook"? Company fan pages and executive profiles on Facebook deliver useful information for sales pros seeking to educate themselves before making cold calls or calling in blind.
	Like Facebook, savvy sales staff will seek out and follow key executives at their prospects and clients in order to learn what those executives think is important. Oftentimes what they tweet can help with small talk or even reveal buying signals.
	Data.com from Salesforce.com is an online community-vetted contact database. At last look, the semi-social network managed over 24 million mostly B2B contacts. Contacts are sourced, edited and updated by an online community.
	The Salesforce.com Chatter social tool is a real-time collaboration utility that brings together people and data in a secure, private social messaging tool. It was originally described by Salesforce as the "Facebook for the enterprise." Rather than making people search for data, information is pushed to them.

Social CRM Tools for Marketing Professionals

Lead management systems and marketing automation software (sometimes called Revenue Performance Management software) are merging with several types of social media tools and social network destinations in order to grow lists, segment customers, create highly relevant messaging and distribute targeted campaigns.

	Eloqua created the lead management software category, and is today the leader in integrating and merging prospect and customer data from internal and external sources, including social networks and other social media destinations, for a comprehensive prospect view.
	Teradata's Aprimo is a sophisticated marketing software system for monitoring prospect and customer activities and behaviors across online and offline channels and intelligently delivering targeted and relevant messaging at just the right times.
	The IBM Unica marketing automation software application is another impressive tool, and a direct competitor to Aprimo, which acquires data from online and social channels, provides automated campaign management and delivers sophisticated customer analytics.
	Marketo is a small but growing lead management software application that combines anonymous website activities with social media destinations and internal CRM software data to help acquire, score, nurture and transfer sales-ready leads to the salesforce.
	Like Marketo, Pardot is a lead management software system with tight integration to social networks. Pardot is designed for the small and midsize business (SMB) market and offers the most aggressive total cost of ownership (TCO) in the lead management software industry.

Social CRM Tools for Customer Service Professionals

Online open communities, vendor managed forums and social networks are becoming the preferred destinations for buyers seeking objective product reviews and references as well as customers seeking answers to questions—or delivering rants or raves.

	The Jive flagship product is Jive SBS (formerly Clearspace), which brings together collaboration software, community software and social tools. The most recent Jive SBS release added microblogging, enterprise IM (Instant Messaging) and support for OpenSocial.
	The Lithium Social CRM system includes online customer community applications such as blogs, forums, communities, innovation management, live chat, and tribal knowledge bases with the broader social web and traditional CRM business processes.
	This community-based customer service product is described as "people-powered customer service". Online visitors can ask questions, submit ideas or complaints, or give comments. Brands can respond to issues regarding their products or services and their responses are marked as official answers.
	Uservoice offers online and hosted feedback forums to allow customers to create, discuss and vote for ideas—and further allow brands to better understand customer intent and sentiment in order to better serve customers and improve customer relationships.
	Radian6, acquired by Salesforce.com, is a social monitoring platform (sometimes called social listening or web monitoring) used to listen, measure and engage your prospects and customers across social networks and most of the social web.