Social CRM intends to solve all problems currently addressed by Classic CRM tools, but it also leverage social technologies to better address certain use cases.

 Internal Collaboration

Companies have increasingly segmented work to achieve efficiency. We have been taught that the best way to run a business is to break big tasks into “independent” smaller ones until they can be assigned to functional areas and people and tied to an MBO scheme.

For example: Marketing broadcast messages and capture leads, Sales close deals and capture revenues, Customer Service deal with after-purchase issues.

Two side-effects of excessive segmentation are that the company does not offer a consistent customer experience (which affects its competitiveness) and many opportunities are lost for lack of engagement. If we believe peer recommendation is a major source of leads and purchase influence, then marketing, sales and customer service should be tightly integrated.

Segmentation can work relatively well in some environments, and has worked particularly well in sales, but we have seen many deals lost for lack of it. Social tools lower the cost of collaboration and enable people to work together without losing efficiency, but gaining in effectiveness.

Product Managers and Customer Service representatives know things that can make or break a deal. Look at your organization. Does information flow well between functional areas? When I prepare to call a contact, I would like to have new marketing information from product management, upcoming software updates from engineering, status of customer service calls all on my screen so that I can provide the best possible service to my customer.

Does that happen in a typical organization, even small ones? No.

Social CRM tools bridge the gaps between functional areas. This is not about deploying SharePoint and hoping people will browse static file repositories. It is about bringing the right up-to-date information to the right person when it is needed and in context. That is usually done using a collaborative platform that leverages the use of intelligent information Streams.

Conclusion

The shift from Classic CRM to Social CRM will happen over the next several years. But the time to invest in research and select the right partners for the journey ahead is now.

As mentioned before, Social CRM is the evolution of CRM and no vendor has the perfect solution for everyone.  We believe the use cases above can serve as a good starting point for you to look at what your current CRM tool lacks and what each vendor can offer.

Also refer to:

• Use Case for Social CRM - Sales and Marketing
• Social CRM is the future of CRM