Week 9 - Chapter 7 Social Customer Service and CRM Contents

1. Why and how are customers empowered by social networks?

Real-time response
- Customer service team to address their concerns as quickly as possible.
- Being present on social media will give customers more channels to reach you
immediately.

Brand Engagement
- Customers love feeling involved.
- It is a two-way street.
- To engage customers in conversations to make them feel that they are important to you.

Customer Feedback
- Without social media, companies usually need to spend tons of money on surveys or
focus groups.
- Social media makes it easier, faster and less costly for your call center to gather relevant
feedback from customers through their comments and “likes” and through tools that
provide social media analysis, which can track brand mentions, measure engagement and
other useful information

Customer Loyalty
- Customers these days rely heavily on good reviews and feedback from others before
trying out a brand.
- To make good use of social media not only to develop brand ambassadors who will not
only stay loyal to you but will also invite new leads.

2. Define CRM, e-CRM and social CRM.

Customer relationship management (CRM) - an approach that focuses on acquiring customers
and building long-term and sustainable relationships that add value to the customers as well as
the organizations. According to Greenberg, CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy,
supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed
to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial
value in a trusted and transparent business environment.

Electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) - The IT-supported programs

constitute part of what is known as CRM 1.0 is the electronically delivered set of tools that helps
manage CRM. E-CRM is related to all forms of managing relationships with customers when
using information technologies. It arises from the consolidation of traditional CRM with the e-
business applications, and it covers the broad range of information technologies used to support a
company’s CRM strategy.

Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) - Social CRM is one component of

developing a social business. It is practiced very differently by various organizations. It is also
known as CRM 2.0 , is CRM supported by social media (Web 2.0 tools, social network sites, as
demonstrated in the opening case), which are designed to engage customers in conversations,
sharing, and other interactions in order to provide benefits to all participants and increase trust.

**3. List the major benefits of SCRM to customers and enterprises.

Benefits to customers
➢ Improves customer satisfaction by providing them with opportunities for engagement
using social media platforms
 ➢ Provides for effective and efficient business and customer collaboration
➢ Provides customers with more information about products/services quickly

Benefits to enterprises
➢ Drives quick resolution of customers' problems
➢ Provides better understanding of customer needs and wants
➢ Provides focused, intuitive, and easy-to-use CRM applications
➢ Provides better marketing, better targeting, and improved products/services due to
customers’ creation of content, and WOM
➢ Provides customer input for market research at a quicker rate and at a low cost for
improving products and customer service (eg. comments, feedback)
➢ Increases trust and loyalty
➢ Develops new revenue opportunities and turn new customers into repeat customers

4. Describe the different ways customers and companies interact (per Patricia Seybold
Group).

Customer-facing applications.
➢ These include all the areas where customers interact with the company: social media
channels; call centers, including help desks; sales force automation (insurance); and field
service automation (technique).
 ➢ Such CRM applications automate information flow and support employees in sales or
service while they interact with customers. Web 2.0 tools are used here to facilitate
interactions.

Customer-touching applications.
➢ In this category, customers interact directly with the applications, rather than through a
company representative.
➢ Notable examples are self-service activities, such as using FAQs and involvement in
content creation. Several applications in social networks belong to this category.
➢ Ex: crowdsourcing can be used to create FAQs, Transaction websites and touch screens
at shopping information counters.

Customer-centric intelligence applications.

➢ These are applications that analyze the results of operations and performance and use the
results of this analysis to improve CRM activities and procedures.
➢ Web analytics, sentiment analysis, and social analytics are the prime tools in this case.

Online networking applications.

➢ Online networking refers to methods that provide the opportunity to build personal
relationships with a wide range of people.
➢ Social CRM support includes chat rooms, blogs, wikis, discussion forums, and social
network sites.

5. List the five dimensions of the evolution of CRM to SCRM.

➢ The Landscape
○ The landscape describes the difference between CRM 1.0 and CRM 2.0 in the
structure, focus, relationship with the community, and value creation.
○ In CRM 2.0, the community is larger than in CRM, and it includes
interconnections among the customers that were not present online in the early
days of CRM.
➢ Touch Points
○ Refers to any point of interaction a customer has with a brand or seller. Some
points are company initiated (e.g., advertising or e-mail discussions) and others
are out of the company’s control, such as word-of-mouth. CRM 2.0 adds
additional touch points.
○ All the Web 1.0 tools + Web 2.0 tools
○ Crowdsourcing can add to this list.
➢ Evolution of Business Processes in CRM
○ Traditional CRM was a part of a linear process that started with marketing that led
to sales and then was followed by customer service (if needed). In CRM 2.0, the
process starts with listening to customers’ needs, based on social media
conversations, rather than only on traditional market research through quantitative
surveys or small scale qualitative research. The objective is to generate value for
 both the customer and the company. This difference is illustrated in Picture
below.

➢ The Evolution of Technology

○ Traditional e-CRM focused on automating and supporting the internal business
processes that relate to customer service. In CRM 2.0, an attempt is made to
provide this same process support, but it is based on community creation and on
improved interactions among customers and between vendors and customers.
➢ Organizational Mindset
○ In CRM 1.0, there is a dialog between one customer service employee and one
customer, or between a sales support team and one customer. Most interactions
are routine, with limited innovations.
○ In CRM 2.0, interactions occur among all employees (as in the Sony opening
case) and several customers who also interact with each other (as in the iRobot
case). This environment facilitates innovation and increases customer satisfaction.
6. List the capabilities of SCRM that can help salespeople (including Sales Force
Automation (SFA).
SCRM:

Business collaboration at its best (salespeople need the support from all the people in
company)

➢ done by leveraging the collective intelligence of social network members, increasing the
interactions and facilitating innovation
➢ with better collaboration, organizations can empower salespeople with the best in their
business network, which will facilitate the collective intelligence and the productivity of
the involved community.
➢ When the collaboration and communication of a company is good, then the salespeople
can provide better service and interaction with customers.

Focused, intuitive and easy to use applications

➢ Social enterprise applications model sales activities to capture data as sales

representatives conduct their daily tasks, rather than requiring them to enter data
afterwards (admin work).
➢ sales staff can do and focus on other jobs.
➢ Insurance agent- use the software to deal with customers such as sign agreement, make
payment, do proposal (SFA)

Find better qualified leads (people come to website to ask questions), quickly and easily

➢ able to analyze purchasing patterns of existing customers and mining information across
the enterprise and public social networks, tools such as Prospector identify what products
and services sell best.

Find the right message to close the sale

 ➢ harnessing the collective intelligence of the community, sales representatives can obtain a
competitive edge by leveraging sales materials that have been highly rated (by other
salespeople and by customers) in order to close business deals.

Sales Force Automation (SFA):

Allow salespeople to focus on the most important tasks

➢ By freeing up sales team members from administrative tasks, SFA tools allow sales
representatives to spend more time on the activities more likely to result in sales.
➢ For example, calling prospects, setting up meetings, or working on strategies.

Streamline the sales process so the most effective strategy is always used (make the process
easier and faster for salespeople)
➢ SFA can also make the sales process more efficient which can lead to sales.
➢ Salespeople may forget to send follow up calls or emails. However, when set-up
correctly, SFA tools should not have this issue.

Allow salesperson to get insight into the effectiveness of the sales process
➢ The reporting and analysis tools found in most SFA software allow those in charge of
salespeople to see what is working and make adjustments to things that aren’t.
➢ This can lead to an overall far more effective sales strategy.

7. Define social customers and describe their characteristics.

Social customers (Empowered customers) are usually members of social networks. They share
opinions about products, services, and vendors; do social shopping; and understand their rights,
and they know how to use the wisdom and power of the crowds and communities to their benefit.

Characteristics of social customers :

Control the purchasing

➢ They control when, what and where to purchase the products or services

Listen to peers, not the companies

➢ They often listen to peers’ recommendations before purchasing the products

➢ more trustworthy

Help other customers

➢ They share the reviews, recommendations and experience on the social networks
➢ help them to make a better decision before purchasing

Shop, compare and search

➢ They comparison-shopping online and in store simultaneously and will search for more
information from multiple sources when evaluating a product or service.

Members in social networks

➢ They are the members in the social networks such as Twitter, Blog and Facebook that
communicate and interact with other users by sharing opinions, ideas and photos.
8. List some SCRM tools.
● Batchbook ( batchbook.com ) is an inexpensive e-CRM tool for small and medium
enterprises.
● Rapportive ( rapportive.com ) is a free plug-in, but it works only with Gmail. It will show
the details of contacts (such as people’s LinkedIn profile, as well as their Twitter stream,
Skype handle, or Facebook profile) right inside your inbox.
● Desk ( desk.com ; previously Assistly) is a Salesforce customer service application that
helps rapidly growing companies deliver effective and efficient customer service.
● Piksel ( piksel.com ; previously Kit Social Platform) helps companies maximize reach
and return.

*Some companies already have CRM systems, only need to add some new features.
9. Describe autoresponding.
● Automated Response to E-mail
● The growth of e-mail messages has resulted in a flood of customer e-mails. Some
companies receive tens of thousands of e-mails a week, or even in a day. Answering
these e-mails manually would be expensive and time consuming. However, customers
want quick answers, usually within 24 hours (a policy of many organizations). Therefore,
many vendors offer automated e-mail reply systems known as autoresponders , which
provide answers to commonly asked questions.
● Autoresponders, also called infobots and e-mail on demand are text files that are sent
automatically via e-mail, on demand. They can relay standard information for support of
customer service and marketing communication. Many automated responses often do not
provide actual answers, but only acknowledge that a query has been received (e.g., “I am
out of the office and will return on Monday”). Customer queries are classified in a
decision support repository until a live agent responds. Advance auto responders use
FAQs to select proper answers. Even more advanced are systems that use natural
language processors to find more accurately what bothers the customers.