One of my favorite games when I was younger was Hide and Seek. I loved the thrill of finding a great hiding place, but even more than that I loved being the one looking. Excitement came for me from asking the question, “If I were Grant, where would I be hiding?” Knowing Grant was one of my heavier friends, I could pretty much rule out under any of the beds or in tight spaces. Also, knowing his habitual fear of heights, the surrounding trees were out.

That pretty much left the closets in my house, making sure that Grant would be the one seeking in the next round.

Grant’s attributes and past interactions gave me a pretty clear map of his experience with Hide and Seek, which gave me a very clear picture of how he acts within the game situation, making my job exponentially easier.

Your customers are hiding in plain sight, experiencing your brand all the time. Mapping out those experiences will give you a MUCH clearer understanding of where they’ve been and how to guide their experiences in the future.

Hide

The Museum of Science+Industry in Chicago has a great exhibit titled YOU! The Experience. The exhibit focuses around activities and education designed to help people understand the connections between choices, personality, environment, nutrition, etc. in the creation/understanding of a whole human being.

Before walking into the exhibit, every person already has access to all the information (both physically and educationally) that they will see, but the way it’s mapped out creates a true learning experience for all participants and they walk out seeing and understanding their own bodies all the better for having gone through it.

In the same way, the information regarding your customers’ experiences with your company is currently hidden from you and your job when beginning to craft your Social CRM strategy is to seek out and uncover that information.

Seek

As with any good strategy, you always start by asking the right questions. When starting to map out your customers’ experiences, the four questions you need to focus on are:

1. Where Do They Interact With Your Company?
2. What Are The Customers’ Expectations of Those Interactions?
3. What Are The Outcomes of Those Interactions?
4. What Kind of Importance/Weight Do Customers Place on Those Outcomes?

You want to know one of the best ways to find out the answers to the above questions?

Ask you customers.

How do you find those which customers to ask, you say? Well, try thinking a bit differently about your segments and ask customers at high-performing and low-performing stores. Also, keep in mind that you’ll want to pick stores that both “follow the rules” and “break the rules” in all your geographic segments. This will give you the widest possible view of your playing field and won’t allow any of your customer experiences to stay hidden for long.

You’ve all heard the rules for focus group questions, but basically keep your questions focused on the ones above and keep them emotionally neutral and non-leading in all ways.

After you get all your answers, put them all into your chosen experience map and lay back and enjoy the new-found information you’ve discovered. Here’s a good-looking one Starbuck’s did a few years ago.

Experience

Yes, it all comes back to the data. You can truly do a lot with the appropriate data. The reason this exercise is so important during your strategy-planing time is that if you don’t know how your customers are interacting, expecting and experiencing your company, you have no baseline with which to gauge where you need to go.

Or, sticking with the analogy, if you know where your customers past experiences, attributes, patterns and expectations, you’ll know where they’re likely to hide in the next round of the game, making them all the more easy to find next time.

Now, let’s start seeking!

CUSTOMERS! The Experience originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

You can just make out the finish line from where you’re crouching. You see all the other runners you’ll be competing with and you know it all revolves around getting to that finish line first. You see the line ref come out and raise the gun. Sweat beads on your forehead. You’re ready.

The gun fires!

And THAT’S when you realize that you’re 100 yards behind everyone else, your shoes aren’t laced and you’re facing the wrong way.

Starting Strong Is Almost As Important As Finishing First

If you played sports growing up, I’m betting you heard the phrase, “It doesn’t matter how you start, it only matters how you finish.”

I’m not going to come out here and say that doesn’t have a place in business (business, when done correctly, IS a team sport by all regards), but that phrase pertains mainly to one vs one team sports. You won’t hear many runners or track stars or swimmers touting that line.

And there’s a very good reason.

It’s very important how to start when you’re dealing with a situation where it’s you vs a multitude of people AND yourself. Every move counts and if you start wrong, it affects everything else you do.

• Runners constantly practice their crouch and release.
• Swimmers practice their platform explosions on a daily basis.
• Football linemen go over and over their line stance.
• Shot-putters take great care into their footing before they even begin their spin.
• Comedians take great care in choosing their opening joke.
• High jumpers know exactly how they have to begin to make their heights
• And so on.

Sure, it’s important to practice beforehand and know your plan and it’s vitally important to know your goals along the way, but if you aren’t understanding exactly how you need to start, you’ll end up finished before you get the chance to compete.

• Don’t start creating social media profiles before you have a content strategy mapped out and inconstancies accounted for.
• Don’t begin your internal rollout without understanding where your employees stand right now on the idea.
• Don’t set up your analytics until you know who is going to be measuring what, and how.
• Don’t present your plan to your hopeful executive hero without anticipating their questions.
• Don’t buy social listening tools without writing down what you’re listening for.
• Don’t run before you practice your crouch and release.

The thing about social media that makes it great is that it moves fast and throws your company right into the mix with your customers. The scary and terrible thing about social media is that it moves fast and throws your company right into the mix with your customers.

You have to know your abilities and where your starting line truly starts if you want to finish the race; and if you haven’t yet learned how to swim, you’d better not dive right in, even if you know all you have to do it reach the end. Because you’ll still drown.

Have you seen companies jump the gun too early and pay the price? What’s a time you’ve seen your company plan for an initiative correctly on the front end and reap the benefits because of it?

Thoughts?

Where’s Your Social CRM Starting Line? originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

Honey Badger don’t care if you’re confused about building your Social CRM strategy!

There is a lot to take into account when you’re building a Social CRM strategy. Not only do you have to choose the right KPIs, understand the new divides between company and consumer and know what to measure for success, but you actually have to put everything into practice and get the ball rolling.

How in the world are you supposed to rally everyone together, get all the pieces in line and start making calculated gains in your strategy with so much to do and so much in your way?

Just paint a white stripe down your back and sit tight, because you’ve just entered….

Honey Badger’s University for Getting Shit Done

Lesson 1 – Honey Badger Don’t Care

The first thing you need to do is get to the point where the barriers to getting everything done don’t intimidate you. Originally I had written that as “…you don’t care about the barriers…” but that’s not entirely the case. You will care about them to the extent that you acknowledge their existence, but you are no longer threatened by their existence or care that they are there. You’re getting things done with or without them standing in your way.

In the planning stages for your Social CRM strategy, you’ve already researched and evaluated the risks involved, so nothing you can’t handle or haven’t thought of between you and your team will spring out. This isn’t like Resident Evil 2 where you can be scared by unknown monsters at every turn. You’ve planned for this, so step up to the plate and say “I don’t care.”

Just know that something is bound to happen, but know that by knowing - you’re prepared.

We ain’t never scared.

Lesson 2 – Lead the Way

If you’ve ever seen the Honey Badger video, one thing you know (besides the fact that Honey Badger don’t care) is that when the Honey Badger wants something, it goes and gets that something. The example that comes to mind in this case is when the Honey Badger wants some honey and bee larvae. It dives right into the hive, ignoring how many times it gets strung, and takes what it wants. The little stings mean nothing to him as he’s focused on his goal and leading the way to finding his prize.

We’ve talked about the importance of finding an Executive Hero when starting on your journey, but they are there to help open those doors and grab some ears for you. You are responsible for leading the charge towards getting your strategy in play. Be prepared though, people who don’t understand what you’re doing can lash out and deliver some pretty nasty stings, but you’re a graduate of the Honey Badger University of Getting Shit Done (or HBUGSD), so you don’t care about those little stings.

It’s time to take up your flag and with the support of your team and solid strategy, to lead the charge into the hives of naysayers and skeptics.

Lesson 3 – Leave the Scraps

The environmental ecosystem is a strange balancing act. Animals thrive and starve as dictated by the actions of those around them. For the animals that live near the Honey Badger, they can live off the scraps of what he leaves behind. Birds, reptiles and a variety of wild dogs wait for the Honey Badger to do the hard work and come in and gather the scraps of the labor. But guess what?

The Honey Badger don’t care.

All the animals are a part of the same ecosystem and therefore live with each other (except that gross cobra, eww). The Honey Badger doesn’t discriminate or hold grudges, he does the work and allows the rewards to be shared with all.

You’ll be doing a lot of heavy lifting getting your Social CRM strategy off the ground. A lot of that work might go unappreciated. The issue to keep in mind if that once everything’s in place, the company ecosystem will be all the better for it and all those people that hid in the shadows will now be feasting off the hard work you and your team have done. That’s perfectly okay.

We all know who the real hero is.

Pomp and Badgerstance

Congratulations, you’ve completed the first session at the Honey Badger University for Getting Shit Done. All that’s left is to go forth into the world and apply the knowledge you have learned here. Never forget your classmates or your instructors. It’s not an easy road, but Honey Badgers don’t care, and now…neither do you.

Thoughts?

Social CRM: The Honey Badger Way originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

There once was a woman who collected porcelain eggs. She loved those eggs and every time she was out and saw one for sale that she didn’t already own, she would buy the egg and bring it home for her collection. One year on her birthday, her family joined together and instead of buying her a present, they bundled the money they were going to spend and gave it to her saying, “Go buy as many porcelain eggs as you desire. Happy Birthday.”

The woman was overjoyed because there was a new shop near her house that had an entire section of unique porcelain eggs. She immediately went shopping and grabbed as many eggs as she could carry. Then she  grabbed a few more.

And a few more.

Everywhere she looked there was another egg she needed until they all ended up being carried by her to the register. She was barely able to pay, and refusing any help, she started for her car. She had ALL the eggs she saw and wanted and was ready to put them to good use. But when she was in the parking lot, the weight and cumbersomeness of the eggs outweighed her desire for them and she lost her hold, sending all the eggs to the pavement where they shattered. Ruined.

Choosing strategic KPIs for your Social CRM strategy can sometimes be a lot like that woman and her eggs. There are so many places to focus, how in the world are you supposed to choose? If you choose too few, you won’t have the full story, but if you choose too many, you can’t keep track and everything can easily come crashing down on you.

What to do?

Correctly Choosing Strategic KPIs

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are probably the best way to numerically account for how a tactic, person or program is performing against the greater expectations of your Social CRM strategy. They are exactly what they sound like and are a favorite tool of mine when I work with companies on forming strategies.

To successfully choose appropriate and measurable KPIs you have to make sure that you’ve established clear objectives for all departments and areas of your plan.

There are two types of KPIs to think of when you’re choosing and evaluating: Strategic KPIs and Tactical KPIs

Strategic KPIs are those KPIs that directly impact the overall vision and goals of your Social CRM strategy. For example, a strategic KPI would be one that states 50% of the department employees involved in the Social CRM system will have been trained and culture changes implemented within 6 months.

Tactical KPIs are those that move forward the overall strategy but apply more to specific tactics within the strategy itself as opposed to the overall vision. An example of a tactical KPI would be to say that all online inquiries and complaints will be responded to within 3 hours of being made.

These will come directly from the measurement points you set up within your Social CRM strategy and should be directly related to how you want to move things forward.

Here’s a few examples of what Social CRM KPIs could sound like:

• Revenue managed/brought in through social channels per salesperson or agency
• Customer Lifetime Value
• Response rate percentage of increase for social campaigns
• Complaint response time reduction
• Increased percentage of positive sentiment on social channels
• Ratio of administrative work to customer face time per salesperson
• Increased engagement percentage through chosen social networks
• Etc.

Framing your success will go a long way to actually creating success for your Social CRM strategy. After setting up your department goals and objectives, take the time to sit down and set up your KPIs and measurement processes to make sure that you and your team stay on track to that success through the lifetime of your strategy.

Thoughts?

Choosing Your Strategic KPIs originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

We’ve touched a bit on this blog about why implementing a Social CRM is a good thing. We’ve talked about trends and industry happenings and even explored some of the analytical concerns that surround Social CRMs.

All that’s well and good, but talking about food doesn’t help those that are starving and mapping out how a life preserver works won’t help those drowning at sea. If you’re really serious about understanding the necessary pieces and attitudes for setting up a Social CRM Strategy, then this post will be a welcomed breath to you.

If you’re still on the fence, go back and read some of the older posts to entice you to move forward and then come catch up with the rest of us.

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be a complete blueprint of your company’s Social CRM strategy. This will be a general overview of the components necessary to build one, but your strategy will have to be derived from your company culture and particular experiences. 

Step 1: Know Who Owns the Conversation

Here’s a hint, it’s not you.

One of the core principles of Social CRM is that it describes processes and technologies that allow companies to engage consumers in “collaborative conversations” that provide “mutually beneficial value.” We’re way past the days of simply filling customers’ heads with the business facts you want them to know.

Social customers now control their own interactions online with other customers and the company. To quote Paul Greenberg,

“The fundamental idea behind Social CRM strategy is that the customer will engage with the company in a way that provides mutually beneficial value, rather than a strategy for the optimal extraction of value from a customer in exchange for a delightful experience.”

The second part of this step one is once you concede that you as a company don’t own the conversation, you have to put in the work to truly know the people who do. Who are your customers? Are they only paying clients, or do suppliers, business executives, independent agents, contract workers, and sales consultants fit as customers of your communication plans too?

You also have to understand how you perceive each group of customers and how that perception affects your strategy.

This time around, the strategy is way more social. Who’da thunk it?

Step 2: Choose The Right Team

I try not to use the work “stakeholders” too much on this blog because it gives different impressions to a lot of different people, but this step is all about choosing the most effective internal and external-based stakeholders to bring into your Social CRM strategy.

You’ll want to bring in the natural leaders within your company (those that may not hold executive standing, but employees naturally follow), executive advocates (preferably one from each involved department), and some group that represents the interests of the customers (some call this a Customer Advisory Committee in the B2B worlds, but you can call it whatever you want).

With this team in place, figure out a time to meet and get the ball rolling by creating Social CRM specific Mission and Vision Statements. This shouldn’t simply rehash the company’s Mission and Vision Statements, rather use those core elements to create a customer-centric strategy focused around your objective of mutual consumer engagement.

These statements will not only solidify your team within your purpose, but may even bring to light some areas within the corporate statements in regards to corporate culture that need to be addressed moving forward.

Step 3: Touchdowns, Baskets and Finish Lines

The next task for your strategic development team (referred from this point forward as “The Social SCRuM”) is to put your objectives and ROI indicators down on paper.

• What kind of return are you looking for?
• What constitutes success for your Social CRM?
• Are you hoping for a specific win in the form of a 5% increase in market share over 3 years or something more intangible.

Maybe for your company success will look more like hours being freed up across all departments involved in the Social CRM and maybe it will look more like an 8% close-rate increase among your sales team and a 15% increase in customer satisfaction dealing with customer service.

Whatever those objectives, goals and ROI indicators are, write them down.

Step 4: Develop the Business Case

Your strategy’s not going to get very far if you can’t justify its existence. After your team decides where you’re going, develop the why we’re taking this route to justify your decision. The Gartner Group has developed a high level list of things to think about when thinking about business case:

1. Develop an overall Social CRM strategy that supports the business strategy.
2. Select business metrics to back up your Social CRM strategy (see Step 3).
3. Establish a baseline for selected metrics before the project begins and benchmark performance against industry peers.
4. Describe the capabilities of the Social CRM application/strategy.
5. Negotiate targeted improvements using baseline metrics.
6. Convert the targeted improvements into financial returns.
7. Develop the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
8. Calculate ROI.

Step 5: Assess Risk

Risk assessment is one of the most important steps to any plan. It’s imperative to think of how things can go wrong when putting together a plan that will affect a majority of the company. This step should seem as natural as walking, but most companies just assume that past patterns will hold true. This, most often times, is not the case.

This isn’t to say that you need to break it down to the point of “What will we do if a meteor crashes into our distribution warehouse?” It’s impossible to plan for any and all happenings, so don’t even try. Just know going in that something will most likely go wrong at some point and be prepared to deal with it when that time comes.

Build a system that is flexible and cooperative and your Social SCRuM will be able to deal with most things that come your way.

Step 6: Establish Processes

These will be your lifeblood or they will sink your ship (mixed metaphor anyone?). In most CRM strategies, the technology is the predominant factor, leaving little room for wiggling if the technology doesn’t allow a particular action.

Your Social SCRuM needs to sit and assess every company process that involves anyone involved in the Social CRM cycle (Hint: this will be almost all processes). Discard those processes not valuable to the company or the consumers and modify the ones that can be saved to work in unison with the Social CRM strategy you’re putting together based on the processes needed and the performance objectives of your company.

We’re Not Done

Well, we are and we aren’t. The above components will get you in the door, but we need to hit a few of these points with more detail, which we will do in the following weeks. Your first task is to put together your team and assess the conversations happening around your company. Where are you needed? What can you learn? Etc.

Have you already started/been through this process? What can you add that might be beneficial to this community?

Thoughts?

So How Do You Build A Social CRM Strategy? originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

Over the past few years, companies have been flocking to social media faster than potheads to a Grateful Dead concert. Most CEOs and executives will say they understand the importance of using social media to connect with their customers. You’ve probably told others that you think social media is important to your brand and company, too.

But are the things you think of as important the same things that your customers think of as important?

When dealing with Social CRM, it’s very important to create collaborative experiences with your communities, but in order to do that correctly you have to have a full understanding of what it is your customers expect from you in the social world.

Expectation Junction

A little while ago IBM did a great study of where customer and company expectations lie. You can download the full reports here, but they are quite long, so I’ll help bring you the gist.

One of the most interesting things they found was the huge divide between what customers want from their online interactions with brands and what brands believe customers want. It looks something like this:

Pretty impressive, if you ask me. The top two things that customers want from their brand interactions online (discounts and purchases) are the two things that brands think are the least important.

So, what do companies do with this information?

The first thing to do is to understand that the current client understandings most companies operate under are quite faulty. It’s not easy to redefine the relationship and understanding of customer actions, but that’s the world we live and work in now. The customer is changing, and although businesses are also changing, most businesses are digging their heels into the dirt in order to not have to change their conversations with customers….and that’s what needs to change the most.

Social CRM can easily be most effective managing the dialogues with customers rather than the customers themselves.

So, the first step in all of this is to bring in the tools that can manage those conversations in a way that gets your company on the same expectations page as your customers. If you do that and nothing else, as the chart shows, you’ll be ahead of 90% of your competition.

Thoughts?

The Great Divide originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

We’ve talked about numbers before here and will definitely be talking about them again before we are done. In order to have a truly functional Social Business and Social CRM, you have to know what’s working and what’s not and be able to learn from that knowledge.

On the other side of that coin, just because you can measure everything, doesn’t mean that you should. I’ve used that phrase here before, but I don’t mind. I also use it on every client call I’ve ever been on when the topic of analytics and metrics come up. You’ve heard of Analysis Paralysis, right?

Most Distracting Metric

Some of you will probably get on my case for what I’m about to say, but let me explain myself before you go all Rambo on my ass.

The most distracting metric in all of Social CRM is traffic.

Now, by traffic, I’m not simply talking about website traffic. I’m also including Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Google Circles and Pinterest followers.

So…

Now That You’re Pissed Off, I’ll Explain

Traffic can be extremely good in some cases. It can also be extremely unnecessary and misleading in about the same number of cases. The reason that I’ve labeled traffic as the most distracting and unnecessary metric to focus on is that traffic is only part of the equation. Only looking at traffic numbers in a campaign would be like saying since ice cream is good, it’s the only thing you want brought to you, even though what’s being brought is pistachio ice cream and you’re allergic to pistachios.

Do you want to be popular, or do you want to be successful in business? It’s true that we all want a lot of visitors to fill our sales funnels, but you want the right kind of visitors. You’ll hear people tout the grandiose number of visitors Pinterest has sent to their site or how awesome StumbleUpon is for traffic numbers, but the truth is that unless those visits are coming from qualified, researched and sought after demographics, it’s not going to be worth much more than a pretty green arrow on Google Analytics.

Website traffic numbers are great to show CEOs and C-Suite executives every now and then (I’ve used them in my reports as explanatory measures for other KPIs), but what’s even better to show CEOs is that the value of each visitor to your website went from being valued at $0.34 per lead from social media to $0.87 in 3 months due to your strategy and sales funnel.

Not All Negative

It’s not all bad news today. Just because I’ve told you that focusing solely on traffic numbers is a misspent adventure doesn’t mean there’s no hope. You can take traffic and break it down so you’re focusing on the right things.

So, what are the right things to be focusing on? Here’s a few:

• Subscribers – A lot of companies make quite a bit of money from their email lists. Email lists are qualified leads by their very nature, so when you measure traffic, break it down to see how many people are joining your lists month over month.
• Open Rates – This one comes a bit down the line from subscribers, but it’s good to know which headlines and what content resonated with people enough to have them open and interact with your stuff. You can also measure comments and engagement on social media channels within this idea too.
• Conversion Rate – You’ll of course get a conversion rate from your email list numbers, but be sure to use this idea when creating promotions. Use custom landing pages and even A/B tested product sites to see how well people are converting into your sales funnel through all that traffic.
• Revenue – This one is a no-brainer: if your efforts on social media = money, then your efforts should be measured and repeated.

So, there ya go. Hope I didn’t make too many people mad, but honestly, if I did all that will happen is my site traffic will drop for a day or two, and I don’t really care about that.

Thoughts?

The Most Unnecessary Social CRM Metric originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

Today is trash day in my neighborhood. This has also been the week that my wife and I clean out the house/garage for our yearly Technicolored Yard Sale of Awesomeness, which means we have more trash than normal.

What’s really interesting is that you think your house is pretty clean. I mean, we take out the trash every week and try to make sure we’re not living in filth, but every year when we really dive into it, we find loads of crap mucking up the works and taking up space we could use in other ways. Once we get everything out of the way, our house starts to function like we always talk about us wanting it to.

I’m betting a similar case could be made for your business.

Social Business Clean-Up

We’ve been talking for a while now about the benefits and perceptions involved with creating the environment of a Social Business within your brand. It’s true that there are quite a few changes to be made to truly interact with your social customers, but what about all that trash that may still be lying around?

It’s not enough to simply try and fit all your new processes and strategies on top or beside all your old ones. In fact, a lot of times that will do more harm than good.

I’m not saying to toss out all the processes that made your brand successful, but you should be looking at the Social Business transformation process as more of a consolidation than addition.

When you add a whole new set of kitchen tools and appliances you don’t throw out your entire kitchen and appetite, but you do move things around and get rid of the tools you’re no longer using. You probably even buy a few new cookbooks to test everything out too.

You may not be able to sell all those old processes and trash laying around your business you find in the switch at a yard sale, but I can assure you that taking a hard look at what you’re not using and focusing on areas of waste that you haven’t audited in a while will earn you more revenue and increase your productivity as a business, a Social Business.

Thoughts?

Take Out The Social Business Trash originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

Are you all swimming towards the same goal?

We talked a little bit last time about how companies are like machines and need to be tuned up every now and again. This time we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into what that really means and how it will play out within your Social CRM.

This post pulls a lot on imagery from the military (hence the title), schools of fish (hence the picture), and flocks of birds (not shown, but drawn upon). In each scenario, a group of individuals, with individual feelings and goals, all work together to form something of a unified collective, all progressing towards a common goal. It can be beautiful, inspiring and even scary to watch at times.

Companies have worked like this for years. If you’ve ever been at a company long enough, you’ll have seen detailed Org Charts, CRM Stream Charts and Process Flow Graphs. That idea is nothing new.

Although in one area things are changing within the corporate walls of businesses interested in upgrading their standards to those os a Social Business. Social CRM is climbing in the ranks and is now adding a new group of people to those charts and graphs. A new group that needs to be rangled and directed towards the same goals as the company. That group is the Social Customer.

Everything’s Changing By Staying The Same

This is the part of the post where some of you will be arguing with me in your head on one of a few points:

1. “Businesses have always been social, that’s how they’ve stayed in business. This is nothing new.”
2. “The whole idea of being a Social Business is to not try to manipulate customers into doing anything. That’s called marketing, not social media.”
3. “Social media was supposed to free things up for my company, not add more structure and regiment. Joey, you’re stupid.”

I’m not going to defend myself against all those points because that would take too long and I have stuff to do. Instead, let me explain my stance and then we can all move on from there.

I, by no means, think that the advent of social media and deep reporting metrics makes it a viable option to think of customers as manipulative cattle to be steered, corralled and farmed for all they’re worth. Nor, do I think that businesses haven’t been trying to be social for years. Not we just have the tools to make it more a part of the company culture.

Having said that, Social CRM is a function of business and because of that needs to be understood in such a way. There needs to be a clear flow and set of paths for customers to be in, enriching their experience while at the same time moving the company towards its desired goals.

What does that look like, you ask? Well, Chess Media Group, in collaboration with Mitch Lieberman, developed a chart that I think is a pretty good starting line. Take a look:

To fully understand how your Social CRM will work within your machine, or school, or regiment or flock, you have to understand how it works at all. Let’s take a look at some of the things a Social CRM Flow needs:

• A Vocal Community – You have a community of fans. Now you need them to join the machine and start talking to you. That can either be through online channels (Facebook, email, Twitter, LinedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, etc), or offline channels (phone calls, written letters, focus groups, in-person complaints, surveys, etc). Once they are part of the conversation, you can begin learning from each other.
• Listening Tools – No matter the channel, you need some sort of resource available to receive and transmit that conversation to the CRM. Whether that resource is a phone screener, interviewer, or detailed listening tool that monitors online activity and sentiment, have something in place to gather those conversations and funnel them in.
• SCRM – This is where the CRM comes into play. Social CRMs are able to help correctly funnel all communications, including those from online media, to the right person/department. It will record histories, profiles, interactions, transactions, details, data and more to give a 360 degree view of all communications. The communications that take place from this point forward will be driven by human interaction and a continued learning profile of all communicators involved.
• Protocols – With human interaction driving a lot of communications, it is important to have detailed protocols in place to direct communications that need to be answered in private and which are to be answered in public, which departments are to handle which types of communications, at what points conversations need to be handled in-person or by an executive and what sort of incentives are in place to drive transactions and interactions accordingly.
• Circular Thinking – The last step is to funnel the responses back into the community in the form of testimonials, brand advocates or case studies, keeping everything in a circular pattern and propagating everything off of all the other actions taken.

Yes, it sounds a lot like a CRM, but this time the customer is more an involved member of the funnel creation as opposed to just something being thrown into one already made.

Just like that school of fish or flock of birds, waves and jetstreams will always keep you guessing as to which move to make next, but the more you go with the flow and stick with your social group of dedicated individuals, you’ll retain your form and keep marching towards your goals.

You may even gather up some more supporters along the way, and isn’t that what business is all about?

Thoughts?

From Regiment To Retainment: Social CRM Boot Camp originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.

I made a mistake. Actually, if I’m being honest, I made LOTS of mistakes. I went almost a year without checking the alignment on my car. Essentially, I made a mistake every day I woke up and drove my car without first getting the alignment checked and restored.

Long story short, this tale culminates with my tire going flat while on the way to dinner two nights ago with my wife, only to have the AAA guy show up and point our attention to the fact that the entire inside two inches on the tire was worn away down to the wire frame. The same was happening on all the remaining tires as well. Lead into the next day when we realize that an alignment and 4 new tires is going to cost me over $700 to repair and make my car drivable again.

Crap.

Are You In Alignment?

The metaphor here is pretty obvious. If you aren’t regularly checking your strategic business plan and how it aligns with the technology you use to accomplish those goals, you’re making a mistake.

And just like the mistake I made in not checking my alignment, yours can be quite costly when things start to fall apart from wear and tear.

It’s been said that a business is like a machine, that all the parts have to fit and work together to create a entity that’s moving in unison for a collaborative goal. The truth of that statement is two-fold. Not only does everything within your company (employees, technology, strategy, executives, etc) have to fit and work together, but you also have to keep an eye on how everything aligns from time to time:

• Are you using the best technologies to streamline the effectiveness of your efforts to reach your business goals?
• Are your corporate policies in line with your employee motivations?
• Are your business goals still where they need to be considering the changing marketplace?
• Etc.

I’ve spent the past two days dealing with the fallout of NOT dealing with my alignment issues and my bank account took a hit because of my laziness. Don’t let the same happen to your brand, because the hit you take may be quite a lot bigger and the treads you wear out just may be trying to take you to where you need to be to succeed.

Thoughts?

Are You In Alignment? originally appeared on The Social CRM Insider - Customer Relationship Management in Social Media and is copyright of Jugnoo, Inc.