eBook

Paul Greenberg

Social CRM: A Handbook

Part 1: Beginners

The first installment of a comprehensive, four-part guide to creating and fostering a customer-centric organization through knowledge management transformation

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Introduction Coveo is happy to sponsor this comprehensive guide to creating and fostering customer centricity, through better use of the knowledge that is available to each and every organization. Today, CRM IS social, as author and industry legend Paul Greenberg notes; however, not many companies are able to capture and act on the knowledge necessary to make every customer experience, every product, every interaction one that centers on and exceeds your customers needs, interests and desires. Coveo is committed to helping organizations transform their approach to CRM and Knowledge Management by opening the doors to information from any and every system, effectively transforming the knowledge management and the customer experience. While companies struggle with fragmented data across social, mobile, enterprise and cloud systems, Coveo brings it all together, quickly, flexibly and effectively. To help you get started, weve partnered with Paul Greenberg to write this four-part ebook, from Beginner through Uber, to help make your company customer-centric by transforming your approach to knowledge and information.

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Table of Contents

Overview............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Definition and Caveats.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 For the Beginner What are the reasons you might consider using it?..................................................................................................................................................... 7 What are the steps you have to take?.................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Some considerations in decision-making............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 16 Summary........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 17 About Paul Greenberg................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 18 About Coveo................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 19

eBook

Social CRM: A Handbook

Beginners
OVERVIEW Since the beginning of the millennium we have been dealing with a new customer one that is more demanding, has wider choices when it comes to where they do business and how they do business and one that, if they are active on social channels, knows how to leverage the relationships they have on those channels to their advantage. With the explosion of information available online, they also have access to more information about a company it could be yours; it could be a competitor than ever before and more quickly and more digestible. They can create, distribute and consume knowledge in ways we couldnt even dream of a decade ago. This has been fostered, not by a business revolution, but by a communications revolution that not only transformed how, with whom, with what and when we communicate, but also transformed expectations for our interactions with all institutions including businesses, the subject matter of our ebook. What that means for businesses, your business, is that you have to decide how you are going to both change your practices and alter your business models to meet the newly amplified requirements and demands of this new breed of customer the social customer. While not all customers fall into this category, the impact that this greater set of expectations has covers all customers who communicate on all channels. It is becoming increasingly evident that if you dont do something about this, then you are in a state of denial that will impact your companys future and it wont be pretty. Thus, Social CRM, which is the evolution of CRM to the level of its promise from day 1. As you saw from the introduction, we are providing this down and dirty e-handbook, to get you thinking about what you might do, regardless of what level of program and practice you are at when it comes to social CRM. Lets start with Beginners which means lets begin at the beginning.

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Definition and Caveats The best place to start is to identify what it is and the caveats around any one definition of it. If you are to believe what I think it is then the definition reads like this: Dont get too upset with the awkwardness of it. It covers what social CRM requires when it comes to thinking about it. There is one big thing to keep in mind, before we get too far along. Social CRM is not a replacement for CRM - it is an evolutionary extension of it. Philosophy this really is a corporate culture that is genuinely customercentric, which means that what the company does, how the company runs, how the company rewards its staff and its mission and vision are all aligned with the idea of a customer as a partner, not the object of a sale. Business Strategy this is what the company is thinking in terms of getting to the outcomes its looking for when it comes to the interactions and transactions with its customers. What are the plans for the programs that you are implementing when it comes to focusing on customers? Technology platform what are the technology systems that will enable the strategy and programs? That means the communications systems, the systems of record, the systems of engagement and the development platforms. It also includes the delivery systems on premises or in the cloud.

(Social) CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. Its the companys programmatic response to the customers control of the conversation.

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Business rules and workflow, processes what are the repeatable processes (customer-centric) that work for your business. How does each of these processes impact the customer? How are they impacted by the customer? What business rules and workflows are necessary to support these processes, practices and protocols for operating your business in this manner? Who is responsible for what and how are they alerted when something that is worthy of their attention and possibly action occurs?

Mutually beneficial value What a business values and what a customer values are two different things. Businesses value profitability, revenue increases, higher margins, increased stock prices, cost efficiencies, etc. Customers value being valued. How does a business provide what customers value to get the value they want in return?

Customer engagement how are you interacting with the customer? What kind of experience is the customer having with you not just in terms of the products and services you offer but the actual ways that they get involved with you. Who controls that?

Collaborative conversation The customer is communicating about your company (possibly) on the social web with their peers. How do you take this naturally interacting social customer and give them the avenues to communicate with you. What does that mean for privacy, governance and compliance? What does that mean for the channels that you have available or need to? What is the content for that collaboration?

Trusted and transparent business environment A product of the era. In order to earn your newly empowered customers trust which you must do you need to be able to give them enough information to make an intelligent decision about how they are going to deal with your company. Thats what actual transparency is not spilling your guts. Making sure that the customers have what they need. For example, Samsung shows the customers that are helping them determine new products, blueprints and roadmaps that in the past would be called taboo intellectual property. But both the company and the customer benefit from the honest exposure of the information.

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Programmatic response The customer isnt just looking for kudos. They are looking for a rewarding experience. That means providing the customers with the products, services, tools and consumable experiences that they need to sculpt their relationship with the company. It could be in the form of a loyalty program; or a service community or a series of contests or the provision of deep subject matter expertise. The answer here is what the program is depends on the needs of the customer and the resources of the company.

Customers control of the conversation This one is simple. It means that the customer is able to impact your brand without your say in the matter via their ability to communicate with their peers in channels that you dont own.

I hope this breaks it down for you sufficiently to begin to understand what Social CRM is. But lets go one more step before we get into the reasons that you might consider it. Social CRM still is focused on the customer facing activities that drive business when it comes to the four great reasons to consider it. It is focused on sales, marketing and customer service. Nothing has changed there. Part of what it provides is what CRM has always provided, the operational systems and transactional systems of record (e.g. customer records) that it was targeted to since its earlier days. These remain a part of what it is. However, now it also involves interactive and real time communication between companies and customers, highly personalized information about individual customers that lead to insights into those customers insights that when done well can be returned in real time though as a beginner I wouldnt be too worried about that yet unless you are enterprise level and holistic in your approach and even then It also provides the support for collaboration between employees and between employees and customers so that more, faster and better decisions can be made and that the customer can be as involved with the company as they choose to be and as much as the company is willing to let them. In other words, what I said earlier, an extension of traditional CRM.

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For the Beginner What are the reasons you might consider using it?

Typically if youre thinking about starting with CRM it should be to solve a particular problem. There are four broad problems that it can help. They are:

How do I retain customers who have a much greater choice when it comes to selecting the products and services I provide? How do I acquire customers when there is all that choice and there is much marketing noise out there that I have to cut through just to get their attention? Plus they trust their friends more than they trust us? How do we address the demands of the customers given that they have dramatically changed under aegis of the contemporary communications revolution in the midst of a dramatically changing economy and social environment? How do we provide value to and get value from customers, given that what a business calls value and what a customer calls value are different?

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While SCRM can handle those problems, they are big and strategic. SCRM is also able to handle the smaller more tactical problems. Some examples but by no means a complete list:

Sales operations deficiencies Rather than work off Excel spreadsheets or have siloed sales efforts by individual sales people, utilizing the operational sales capabilities that CRM technologies can provide such as lead management, account management, opportunity and pipeline management and even sales intelligence when integrated can save time and cost and provide you with better forecasting of your sales almost out of the box. But you have to decide if that is something that you need though its likely you do.

and the queries arent necessarily coming in through the formal, historic channels. So a multichannel strategy (if youre big enough to merit it) has to be considered as does the level of service and the requirements for service and what the customer is looking to get from service. That means not only looking at traditional email and phone, but also text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, and self-service channels as possibilities. Note I said as possibilities, not necessarily requirements.

Customer service problems that are being communicated in multiple places we all know that customers have more than just the traditional options e.g. email, phone to register their complaints about the brand or the company. But couple that with the fact that over 90% of all queries to customer service are just that queries, not complaints. Queries that have to be answered in a very short expected time frame so they dont turn into complaints. That means that the strategies for customer service are no longer confined to the contact center alone because both the complaints

Strong brand activity on social channels that needs to be addressed You might feel that your marketing is insufficient to the level you need and yet you have no real big budget for traditional ad buys. You also know that your customers are talking about you on the social web and prospects are talking about the type of product you produce there too. One option is a lower cost (not no cost) social channel campaign. There are multiple things that can be done to at least get started remember this for beginners with something that has a low cost of entry, and low cost of failure but keep in mind the cost of success even on a social channel campaign can be high.

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Marketing needs that require greater planning, interaction and resource management This is where you can think through the technology that you need because you realize that you have to at least manage the costs of your marketing efforts and make sure that you can allocate resources in a way that your CFO and CMO will both be happy. Marketing automation technologies are appropriate (though as always a later step in the process as we will see below) for something like this.

To capture and record customer data into a single record for each customer Honestly, this one is so baseline, that if youre not doing this already, shame on you. This can be social or transactional. Having a system of record for your customer information is invaluable, regardless of the size of your company. Be aware, however, that as much as you try to keep all your customer information within this system of record, it is a complex challenge and in the future, you will find that information must be brought into the CRM system from other systems preferably without complex integrations and migrations, however we will address these issues in the next chapter of this ebook, Intermediate SCRM.

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What are the steps you have to take?

What you always do Decide on why you want it = what outcomes youre looking for; devise a strategy; develop programs; identify the processes that need to institutionalized and repeatable that meet the needs of the strategy and programs; determine which aspects of the strategy and programs you want to start with; ID the technology that you need to enable these plans. Have a good reason for needing it There has been a long history that extends to both CRM and social media which starts from the premise, we need it because, uh, Im not sure. In fact, several years ago, I got a call from a company that had spent millions on CRM software and they were wondering what to do with it now that they had bought it. The most important thing you can do is have a reason for needing it. All the steps after this one are determined by that need. Also, to address one of the major misconceptions about CRM upfront. It is important to understand that the software systems you choose enable what you need, not takes care of it. The software is dumb and does what you tell it to do (if its a good fit and good technology). But have something in mind. That can be related to some of the reasons above.

Example We have customers who are talking about us, and sometimes that means complaining about us on the social web as well as the more traditional communications e.g. email and phone or even in person or snail mail. They consider our response times too slow on the traditional channels and we havent responded to them at all on social channels.

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Know what the outcomes you are looking for are This is not the same as know why you need it. This is the results that you expect when you start to develop those programs. Once you know your problem, what is it that you expect of the solution? To carry the example forward:

Example We need to be able to reach out to our customers to help them resolve whatever problems they have or questions they need answered no matter what channels they are choosing to do this in even though we have only done this historically via email, phone and in person. It has to be done in a timely fashion according to what the customer thinks is timely. But we have to keep down costs if possible, even though the customer is the priority. We need to make sure that we can increase our customer satisfaction.

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Devise a strategy that leads to those outcomes That means that once you know why you need SCRM you begin to devise what are the efforts that you need to make to get to those outcomes over time:
Example

Determine what programs support that strategy This means that once you know what you need to do to reach the outcomes, you need to devise the specific programs that are going to get you to that point. You then need to identify the metrics that will be associated with the success (or failure) of those programs.
Example

In order to accomplish our ends, we need to revamp our customer service though because the costs can be high. We need to do it incrementally. But the areas that we need to enter, even if somewhat gingerly, are social service channels. We also need to improve the overall response time in the channels of the customers choosing to make sure that we quickly answer ordinary queries and handle problems before they get out of hand and to increase our overall customer satisfaction. This will be long term a strategy that will impact all our service channels.

Now that I know how I need to get to my outcome, I think I need to devise a program that both proves the outcome but at this time doesnt cost a ton of money. So what Im going to do is develop a customer service channel for Twitter. I recognize (because I did the research) that Twitter for customer service is both a place to draw the problems to and to onboard the case though it probably wont completely resolve the case many times. That said, I will work on guaranteeing a response time of 2 hours to a Twitter query - either a complaint or a question. Based on the ferocity of the complaint I will allow for an even faster response time of an hour or less when needed. I recognize the consequences of doing this in this channel with a short response time will create the expectations of shorter response times to customers using other channels so I have to plan my multichannel programs accordingly. I am going to need information about the customer who is complaining or querying.

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Take a look at the processes that are needed to support the programs and the operations of the company as you move toward execution
Example Now that Im developing a Twitter social service channel, I need to establish the protocols for the channel. What kind of processes do I need to have to make sure that I can respond ordinarily in two hours or less? What kind of processes to handle exceptional cases must I have to guarantee the one hour or under? What does that mean for workflows? Who are the responsible parties to take care of this at the ordinary level? At the escalated level? How are they reached when we are alerted to a necessary escalation? What are the conditions that cause the escalation? How do we communicate with the customers when the channel must change because Twitter is just where the query is on boarded? Who takes care of that? What kind of workflow and business rules does this call for? What about the triggers for the escalated response? How does the workflow get triggered? How do I access the case management system and the social web etc? to find out what I can about the customer Im dealing with?

This means that since you are starting to evolve the company in a new direction, that you have to look at the processes that govern the company and determine whether or not they are appropriate still as is, need modification, need to be scrapped entirely and maybe replaced; and whether new processes need to be put into place. What has to be taken into account is the impact that the process has on the customer or how it is impacted by the customer.

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When ready, determine which technology systems are going to enable what you are looking to do, and if, perhaps, you already have some of them The SCRM systems need to enable these decisions. That means the functionality needs to support the outcomes you are looking to get and the entire process along the way. When thinking about the technology, be smart on a couple of things in general.

1. If you dont have rock solid in house people who are experts in the technology you choose, dont implement it or for that matter build it in house if avoidable. 2. The technology you choose, whether from your existing system infrastructure or new, should be chosen well and support as much out of the box as possible for the processes that you are supporting.
Example

3. Depending on your size, put out a proposal to multiple vendors so that they can each be involved in bidding. Dont be shy about putting them through their paces. Make sure that multiple stakeholders are involved in the selection process. 4. Remember, this is AFTER youve done all the other things on this list. This is the last specific phase before, of course, implementation of the applications and services youve chosen.

Since I want to make sure that I capture the data around the interactions Im having with the customer concerning their issue on Twitter, even if it goes from Twitter to email or phone, I need to make sure that the systems I choose have flexible data capabilities where I can access or store both structured and unstructured information about the customer. I need to be able to tie this to a case management system that allows me to see the status of my case at the flick of a button or automatically when Im in contact with the customer regardless of channel. I need to be able to get information that helps me resolve the problem from our internal knowledge base (at a different level) and from external sources. I need to decide what metrics prove success. Can it be an increase in the successful resolution of the cases?

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Start the change management needed to shift the culture of the company

This effectively permeates the effort from the beginning. It needs to be designed to get your company to a truly customer centric approach. It involves buy in from senior executives who have to support the changes. It means rewarding the customer friendly behaviors that the company wants to support with some tangible rewards. Keep in mind, one of the keys to the change in the culture is that the people of the company see the value in the change for not just the company, but for them. As human beings we are all self-interested. You are wise to bring in professionals who know how to facilitate change management and culture change. This is one area you dont want to screw up.
Example What kind of culture is necessary to make sure that the customercentric behaviors are reinforced and the individuals at the company, not only buy into the idea, but do the work involved? How do we reward the employees for their participation in this new program? How involved are the employees in the development of the program?

Needless to say, there is much more specific than what Ive outlined here that goes into the varying steps. These are examples of what needs to be done within the context of the series of steps outlined here. But hopefully, they give you a flavor of what you need to be doing if you are just beginning with social CRM.

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Some considerations in decision-making While you are dealing with all this, there are constraints to take into account. For example, as someone just beginning there are several likelihood:

You have a legal department that wants to protect you from liability Work with your legal department from the outset of the project to make sure that you arent violating any laws (compliance and regulation); are working with the boundaries of the companys methods and are tied to that governance; that you have clear public sets of procedures and practices that have passed legal muster when it comes to issues like privacy and disclosure. Then work with the legal department to understand that because rapid response time might be part of the plan, they cant be approving everything that is written in advance of its public disclosure. Therefore, they need to be comfortable with things before they launch. You have legacy technology systems that you have to account for

You dont have total buy in from management nor unlimited budget This means that you probably dont have an unlimited budget so you have to be judicious with the dollars and manpower you are allocated. You will ultimately need a decision maker to champion what you are doing either as executive sponsor or less formally, someone who will go to bat for you in management meetings to get this CRM project underway. The best way to deal with this if there is no organically inclined champion, is to choose your first effort wisely and use the budget dollars you have to show a provable win that has the metrics to back it up.

When you reach technology selection, make sure that you can account for those systems that you are planning to keep (and those you are planning to discard or replace). Ease of integration, if necessary is something to keep in mind as a criterion for the vendors offering. How well does it integrate and/or how much will it cost to integrate the retained legacy systems (if necessary) with the new SCRM technology? Most companies are reluctant to throw out their past investments, often even when it is past its useful shelf life. You may need to come up with a strategy to access information in even legacy systems. More on this in Chapter 2.

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Summary Im going to be straight with you. Even though this section is based on someone just considering Social CRM for the first time, there are two things I think are obvious. First, it isnt THAT different than CRM when it comes to thinking about the approaches though there are differences that are interwoven throughout this chapter. Second, if need be, there are some things here that can wait until your initial program implementation has reached maturity. But for the most part, this is a bit longer than the others, because the assumption is, that unlike the intermediate stage, the advanced stage or the ber stage, you are starting from scratch. Thus, so did I. But if you treat this as guidelines it can be of some value to you in how you approach your initial foray into Social CRM and thats a good thing. Now, lets move on and see what you can do if you get to past the starting point and are comfortably stable and ready to go to the next phase for some reason. Intermediate coming up.

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About Paul Greenberg In addition to being the author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light, Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC, a consulting firm, focused on CRM and Social CRM strategic services. He is also a founding partner of BPT Partners, a training and consulting venture composed of a number of CRM luminaries. Paul also serves as Executive Vice President of the CRM Association and is currently is the Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management CRM Centre of Excellence. He has been a Board of Advisors member of the Baylor University MBA Program for CRM majors, and the co-chairman of Rutgers Universitys CRM Research Center. Paul has developed strategies and helped define CRM and social CRM products for all the major vendors in CRM and in social media. He has developed broad CRM strategies and programs for a significant number of larger enterprises and worked with them from inception of the idea of a CRM strategy through vendor selection when needed. Considered a thought leader in CRM, Paul has been published in numerous industry and business publications over the years. He was elected to CRM magazines CRM Hall of Fame in 2010 the first nonvendor related thought leader in its history. He is known particularly for his work on using social media, such as blogs, podcasts and wikis and social networks in CRM as tools for customer collaboration. His blog, PGreenblog, has been #1 rated by multiple groups from 200510. He now also writes the CRM blog for high profile technology media property, ZDNET.

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About Coveo Coveo brings to market a highly advanced, Unified Indexing and Insight platform that redefines how people access and share fragmented knowledge around the customer-focused enterprise. Coveo brings together the collective and yet fragmented information from cloudbased, social, and on-premise systems, and injects it into the context of every user, every time. Coveo connects people to contextual content, and through content, to relevant people. This enables more efficient customer service, increased sales, shorter sales cycles, faster innovation for better product development and increased profitability. Coveos advanced, Unified Indexing and Insight platform securely connects with and crawls all systems to create a virtual integration layer, by federating and enriching structured and unstructured information. The Companys lines of business inject existing knowledge into every Customer Service interaction, personalize online customer experiences within high-end websites, and increase overall return on knowledge by making the collective knowledge easily accessible, so that all employees can stop reinventing the wheel. More than 2,000,000 people globally and more than 500 companies use Coveo to achieve their business goals. Among Coveo customers are CA Technologies, LOreal Switzerland, Lockheed Martin, YUM! Brands, GEICO and SunGard. Get a Higher Return on Knowledge with Coveo for Salesforce, Service Cloud Edition Coveo for Salesforce transforms knowledge management and support performance by bringing data related to the agents work from virtually any system into the Salesforce Service Cloud. Coveo for Salesforce understands the agents context and presents information and experts to help them so they can accomplish specific goals. For example, Coveo automatically reads case information in Salesforce and presents relevant knowledge and experts who can help solve the case, improving case intelligence and customer service performance and transforming the customer experience. Learn more and start your free trial today! Or, for more information, visit www.coveo.com, or like us on . follow us on

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