Customer Centric Business Strategies Blog

Nov 26 2012

“Building a Social Media Community” Webinar Highlights

Attendee polling questions show that for most organizations social media communities are a work-in-progress.

By Kathy Barton, Senior VP of Social CRM

On November 13, 2012, Kathy Barton, Senior Vice-President of ISM, presented a Webinar titled “Building a Social Media Community: Who is Just as Important as What”. Highlights follow:

To get started in building a Social Media Community, ISM recommends you:

- Determine the objective
- Define the audience
- Create the governance structure
- Assemble the team
- Decide on the strategy
- Build the plan
- Execute

Tools such as Facebook and Twitter are great for building brand and driving people to specific landing pages. However, if you want use social media to increase customer intimacy and support specific corporate goals, you need a private social community, where you own the data and have some control over content. It is important to keep in mind that people want to have conversations with other people, not corporations. Organizations need to create a community personality, and understand how that relates to their brand. In understanding your audience, ISM recommends knowing the answers to these four questions:

1. What purpose does your social media community serve for community members?
2. Which constituency should we be targeting?
3. What do they care about? (e.g., Interaction, Access, Deals)
4. What are their techno-graphic profiles?

During the Webinar, participants answered four polling questions. As you can see below, two-thirds of participants either had their own community or were planning one:

1. Does your organization currently have its own private community?

Yes, for clients – 21%; Yes, for employees – 26%; In the planning stage – 16%; No – 37%

Despite this, only a third felt that their organization was culturally ready for a more open, engaged relationship with their customers, and very interesting disconnect:

2. Do you think your organization is culturally ready for this type of relationship with your customer?

Yes – 30%; No -30%; Getting there – 40%

Another interesting data point concerns the number of companies that have a social media policy, or guidelines, for the employees, the lowest number yet:

3. Does your organization have a Social Media Policy for employees?

Yes – 27%; No – 47%; Work in progress – 27%

This feedback seems to indicate that although a over 60% of participants have or are planning a private community, far less than that have the governance structure and cultural readiness to properly support these communities.

4. Does your organization monitor or ban social media networking at work?

Yes – 13%; No – 60%; Some restrictions – 27%

This feedback seems to indicate that social media networking monitoring/policies is still in the infancy stage and with the growth of social media networking, organizations will have to develop policies regarding social media networking in the near future.

Our next blog will address social media policies for employees as presented in the webinar.

If any readers would like to comment on the key highlights concerning the webinar, please post your comments on the ISM Blog.

To access an archived recording of ISM’s, click here and scroll down to the “Building a Social Media Community: Who is Just as Important as What” Webinar listing.

Tags: social communities, social crm, Social Media community, social media policiesPosted by - jennifermq @ 11:59 am

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Oct 25 2012

The Future of Customer Relationships Keynote Speech Summary

By Barton Goldenberg, President of ISM

Barton Goldenberg spoke October 23rd on The Future of Customer Relationships: How to Prepare for Success at a well-attended Sales & Marketing 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. A summary follows:

Social Media is all about the ability of individuals to share and connect freely online. ISM defines Social Media as:

• A set of highly interactive technology tools that leverage the fundamental human desire to interact with others.
• A new way for organizations to communicate with and relate to employees, consumers, customers, partners and other stakeholders.

The increasing interplay of Social Media with CRM has created an entirely new marketplace phenomenon, Social CRM, which is forecasted by Gartner to grow to a $1 billion worldwide market by 2013. Social CRM is the intersection between Social Media and CRM. It consists of the ability to: harvest information from Social Media Websites, integrate this information with the customer profile and use the expanded profile to better personalize customer service, marketing messages and sales offers.

At present, a majority of organizations are just gathering information concerning their customers and placing this information in a CRM system. The customer data is usually just fact-based (where this person lives, works, title, etc.).

With Social CRM, an organization can gather information about customers from information placed online by their customers (such as their opinions on a product/service) using Social Media tools. Afterward, relevant customer information can be placed into an organization’s CRM system and added to the appropriate customer profile. Subsequently, the organization can use this information to personalize their customer communications since each customer will only want to see the company communications relevant to them. Understanding what is relevant to an organization’s customers can be a real challenge, but an organization’s staff can use various Social Media analytical tools to determine what is relevant from the customers’ Social Media community profiles and their comments posted on various social communities. Furthermore, with Social Media, an organization’s staff can have an online conversation with their customers/prospects relating to their preferences and their emotional content concerning the organization’s products/services.

By marrying transactional data from your traditional CRM system with sentimental insights by customers from their participation on social sites, you gain a more complete understanding of your customers, which in turn helps you to improve marketing, sales, and service.

Tags: customer relations, customer relationships, social crm, social mediaPosted by - jennifermq @ 10:26 am

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Oct 17 2012

ISM Adds New Clients for Its Customer-Centric Strategic Services

Digital Customer Driving CRM Upgrades and Social Media Offerings

By Jean Young, Vice President, ISM

Good news travels fast. When the ISM team, led by Barton Goldenberg, realized 10 new clients had signed up in six months, it was a confirmation of ISM’s track record and of its drive to look ahead. “Best-in-class companies of all sizes, both B2Cand B2B, are realizing the importance of moving ahead with next-generation CRM systems, leveraging Social CRM to increase customer intimacy, and fostering collaboration and customer outreach with Social Media Communities”, Goldenberg commented in a press release distributed nationwide via PR Web.

ISM’s new clients are diverse, including Zumba Fitness with 14 million folks in 140,000 weekly classes. Goldenberg sees a major change in the marketplace. Seasoned executives of both B2B and B2C companies are moving aggressively to address the digital customer with offerings ranging from eCommerce to Social Media communities. I agree with Barton, true leaders – no matter how traditional – seek more effective ways to drive revenue, reduce costs and achieve a higher level of customer advocacy, loyalty and satisfaction. Today the driver is social media.

Other new clients include: Ferguson, a major supplier of plumbing and heating/cooling supplies and equipment with 17,500 associates; First Command Financial Services, which serves 285,000 families nationwide with investment, insurance and banking products and services; J.D. Irving, with 15,000 employees in Canada and the U.S., provides products to consumers, the forestry industry and shipbuilding; Mainstream Energy, one of the largest solar manufacturers in the U.S.; Pyrotek, offering technical expertise and global resources for aluminum, glass, steel and other industries from 66 locations worldwide; SailTime, operating in five countries through franchises, provides its members sail and power boat usage; Universal Forest Products, the nation’s leading manufacturer and distributor of wood products; and University Federal Credit Union, serving 140,000 members in Galveston and central Texas.

Tags: ISM New Clients, social crmPosted by - jennifermq @ 10:00 am

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Sep 18 2012

Barton Goldenberg leads a 3-Hour Social CRM Workshop at CRM Evolution 2012

By Barton Goldenberg, President of ISM

While the CRM press has covered Social CRM ad nausea at the 500 foot level, Barton Goldenberg landed the Social CRM plane at this year’s CRM Evolution event. In the first part of this three-part presentation titled The New Ear of CRM, Barton first defined CRM – A business approach that integrates people, process and technology to maximize relationships with all customers. A comprehensive approach that provides seamless collaboration between all customer-facing functions. CRM increasingly leverages the Internet & social media – and then noted that Social CRM builds on top of this definition but new integrates the ‘social customer’ into your overall customer relationship efforts. Barton then went on to provide a Social CRM framework along with two thought-provoking examples of Social CRM in action – one in customer service and the other in demand generation.

In the second part of his presentation titled Leveraging Social Media to Advance CRM Effort, Barton spoke about how to overcome the Top 5 challenges currently facing Social CRM: listening, filtering, public versus private social communities, CRM integration & utilization, and demonstrating Social CRM value.

And finally in the third part of his presentation titled Making Social CRM Happen, Barton presented the key Social CRM risks as well as these five areas required to make Social CRM happen:

• Strategic vision
• Structured approach (data standards & integrity)
• Structured Social CRM approach (data standards & integrity)
• Tight linkage to ongoing CRM effort/customer profiles
• Meaningful change management

- Executive Leadership
- Effective communications
- Continuous training
- Champion program
- Impactful incentives

If you would like more information about Barton’s Social CRM workshop, which he offers as an in-company training session, please contact his assistant, Tracey Hoston, at (301) 656-8448 or thoston@ismguide.com.

Tags: social crm, Social CRM Workshop, social mediaPosted by - jennifermq @ 4:42 pm

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Jul 12 2012

The Beauty of Social Media/Social CRM

by Barton Goldenberg, President, ISM Inc.

Social Media consists of on-line communities that allow people to get information, opinions, solutions and ratings directly from each other rather than from organizations. It’s the new way for organizations to communicate with and relate to employees, consumers, partners and other stakeholders by utilizing a set of highly interactive technology tools that leverage the fundamental human desire to interact with others.

There are two types of Social Media communities: “public” communities like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and “private” communities that an organization sets up and invites customers/prospects to participate in. The ideal way to leverage Social Media and make it a part of your overall growth strategy is to have a presence on one or more public social communities and to entice participants to move over from your public to your private community where you are able to have a much more intimate and meaningful dialog with these customers/prospects.

Here’s the beauty of Social Media/Social CRM: current technology allows you to listen to what your customers/prospects are saying in your public and private communities, filter this social information for meaningful insight, and then integrate this ‘social insight’ into your CRM customer profile. This allows your organization to have a comprehensive view of your customers inclusive of both transactional information as well as sentimental insights regarding what that customer says about your organization. This in turn helps you to sell, market and service your customers more effectively via their preferred channel (social or otherwise). In a nutshell the integration of ‘social insight’ into your CRM profile is the future of customer relationship management.

Many organizations have successfully moved down the Social Media/Social CRM path with meaningful success. I look forward to sharing their stories with you at the Sales 2.0 Conference on July 23 in Boston and explaining how you too can make “social” a productive and critical component of your overall growth strategy.

Tags: social communities, social crm, social mediaPosted by - jennifermq @ 5:09 pm

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Jun 12 2012

“Analyzing the Business Value of Social Media and Social CRM” Webinar Highlights

By John Chan, ISM Software Lab Director

Attendee Polling Questions Show Most Companies Don’t Measure Business Value of Social Media Programs

On June 5, 2012, Barton Goldenberg, president of ISM, presented a Webinar titled “Analyzing the Business Value of Social Media and Social CRM”. Highlights follow:

ISM defines Social Media as: A set of highly interactive technology tools that leverage the fundamental human desire to interact with others. It is a new way for organizations to communicate with and relate to employees, customers/consumers, partners and other stakeholders in a two-way dialogue.

Barton recommends a Social Media strategy based on a “Hub and Spoke” model in which an organization uses social media networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic to the organization’s website. The website is the best tool for driving traffic to a private social media community. The information gathered from the community participants, whether biographical, buying habits or “sentiments”, can then be integrated into the organization’s CRM system for more knowledgeable interaction with customers, sales operations, partners, etc.

Barton provided numerous Social Media ROI case studies ranging from AAA, IBM, Dell, Autodesk to Verizon, all showing that members who were participating in Social Media communities were spending significantly more than non-members on the company’s products/services and simultaneously bringing value to the company from their Social Media participation.

During the Webinar, participants answered three polling questions. Results are:

1. Does your organization currently analyze the business value of Social Media and/or Social CRM?

Yes – 17%; Kind Of – 44%; Not at this time: 39%

2. What type of metrics are you using for your Social Media/Social CRM efforts?

Visibility (# of impressions, click-throughs, etc.) – 36%

Activity (following, friending, etc.) – 45%

Engaging (registering, entering a contest, downloading info) – 36%

Increased revenue and/or cost avoidance – 5%

Not using metrics yet – 32%

3. What are your organization’s top two business challenges in creating a Social Media Community and/or Social CRM initiative?

Don’t know where to start – 32%

Initiative is not yet high enough on our ‘to-do’ list – 37%

Internal [mgmt] skepticism regarding the business value – 47%

Interested, but haven’t yet created our plan of action – 11%

Already created Social Media community or Social CRM initiative – 26%

“It is surprising that so few companies establish the business value of a social media program, which must support your business strategy, or set success metrics; it is difficult to know if your investment is wise if you can’t measure it,” says Goldenberg.

Barton’s key takeaways concerning Social Media communities are:

Yes, you can really make money from a successful Social Media community or from a Social CRM initiative.
Public Social Media communities are valuable to build your brand and to distribute content.
Private Social Media communities and Social CRM are valuable to enhance the business value of your customers & drive advocacy.
Business value must be identified and metrics set from the outset of your Social Media/Social CRM initiative; it cannot be an afterthought.
Because search engines now monitor social media sites, this is a critical link you need to get right.

If any readers would like to comment on Barton’s key takeaways concerning Social Media communities, please feel free to post your comments on the ISM Blog.

To access an archived recording of ISM’s, click here and scroll down to the Analyzing the Business Value of Social Media and Social CRM Webinar listing.

Tags: social communities, social crm, social media, Social Media ROI Case StudiesPosted by - jennifermq @ 10:07 am

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Mar 23 2012

Focus on CRM & Social Media at Gartner 360 Customer Summit Draws Crowds

By Jean Young, Vice President, ISM Inc.

“There was a 50 percent increase in attendance from last year,” bragged one of the busy Gartner staff at the recent Customer 360 Summit in Orlando. She and a hard-working analyst and executive staff had every reason to feel good since the topics — CRM, Social CRM and Social Media Communities — were the draw.

I was there with one of the few non-Gartner speakers, ISM’s founder and president, Barton Goldenberg, who helped lead the CRM industry from a software vendor environment to the customer centric focus of today. “This feels a lot like the late 1980’s and 1990’s when every company knew they couldn’t compete without CRM,” he observed.

Goldenberg, one of the first three inductees in the CRM Hall of Fame, also knows there is a new face at the ball that everyone wants to dance with: “Social”. Social CRM, Social Media Networking, Social Media Communities, Social Media Analytics – the list went on and on, one session after the other.

The workshops and small user groups were the place for the doers to express concerns, ask questions, and admit there is a long way to go before CRM and Social CRM are truly integrated and produce predictable and reliable results.

Goldenberg, who led such a workshop, examined the issues challenging many of the attendees: privacy, ROI, analytics, and the pull of a cross-functional team (e.g., customer service, sales, marketing, legal, and PR). But there are also success stories, and Goldenberg discussed several of ISM’s clients, including Kraft, Marriott, Macmillan and AAA. In a well-attended session co-presented with a Macmillan executive, he gave his formula for success. “Get the mix of People-Process-Technology right and go for it. A toe in the water does not work with Social Media.”

Tags: crm, People Process Technology, social crm, social mediaPosted by - jennifermq @ 10:07 am

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Nov 18 2011

Social CRM Technologies for 2012

2012 will be a turning point in helping to clearly define Social CRM, during which time we will see three technology enhancements:

Leading CRM vendors (e.g., Salesforce.com, Oracle, Pivotal) will offer new technology that more tightly integrates social media community insights from both public (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and private company communities with customer profile functionality held within their CRM application.
Leading Social Media platform vendors (e.g., Mzinga, Jive, Lithium) will provide CRM vendors with enhanced integration points into their platforms. This will allow the CRM vendors to more easily harvest social insights from private communities directly into customer profiles held within the CRM system.
One or more third-party vendors offer ‘filtering” tools that helps organizations make sense of all the free-form data that currently is found on social media communities and that needs to find its way into CRM customer profiles so that this data can be made actionable in sales, marketing and/or customer service efforts.

In 2012, in addition to these enhanced technologies, we will see:

Many more, pragmatic Social CRM examples that help drive home the value-add of Social CRM in its ability to introduce social medial insights into CRM customer profile information.
Additional case study write-ups of organizations that have opted to “try out” social media first within their organizations by using tools like Chatter from Salesforce.com prior to opening up their communities to external audiences.
Clarity regarding what is Social CRM and where it is heading that respond to skepticism noted in several recent research papers (e.g., Gartner’s November 11, 2011 research paper titled “Predicts 2012: Social CRM Remains an Immature Area”).

As noted, 2012 will bring increased clarity and visibility into the world of Social CRM.

Tags: community insights, Socail Media, social crmPosted by - Barton Goldenberg @ 11:05 am

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