Let me start this post off with a warning that I’m a developer not a sales or marketing person so I will have different views on this subject compared to people actually pushing products to end users/clients.
This aside though I want to talk a little about Social CRM and how I see it. I’ve been reading a lot of articles recently mostly linked from twitter regarding Social CRM and how its the future of CRM. Now don’t get me wrong I’m all for developing CRM products into the future adding new features and aggregation abilities but the concept of a Social CRM just eludes me.
Everyone who’s harping on about Social CRM is saying its the future of customer interaction and that it’ll help you generate more leads by using social networks. I see a small flaw in this that most companies especially the bigger ones in the food chain simply don’t use twitter, facebook, myspace whatever. If they do use it they use it more like Dell does for example to spread the word of their products to the end consumer in a B2C role not a B2B.
Just how many companies out there really use Social Networking tools to keep in touch with their suppliers/clients etc. I’m betting its probably less than 1%.
Now we’re a company that sells B2B and B2C we have our blog (you’re reading it) and we have our twitter feed. Would we use our twitter as a marketing source? Quite possibly to announce new products or updates to existing products, after all its what Dell uses it for and they make a nice sum from it but is there any real benefit to using it as a primary focus for a CRM.
Personally I think not though I guess time will tell. The issue that concerns me most of all at current though is that our clients and the people we’re speaking to are already complaining that the major CRM’s out there have too many features, are slow because of too many features and that they simply don’t use half the stuff in there already. Adding in a social networking aspect to it all is adding yet more layers of fluff to a CRM and taking away from the real purpose of a good CRM system. Thats to automate sales processes and help sales people work faster and more efficiently maximising their new sales and also reselling to existing customers.
The companies I can see benefiting from a Social CRM are companies the sell primarily B2C and sell off the shelf products books/dvd’s/computers etc. At the end of the day could you imagine a company that sells bolts for engineering firms really benefiting from a Social CRM? or could you imagine stock brokers benefiting from it at all?
Personally I can’t see any real benefit to it for now and certainly not for the bulk of companies out there. Perhaps over time though this’ll shift and hooking into social networks for 50%+ of your marketing may be the future.
Is it going to be the future of customer interaction and feed back? again I can’t see any real benefit to it twitter limits you to 140 chars could you really have a conversation with a customer over needs and issues in that much space? It makes more sense to me for companies that want customer interaction and discussions to setup forums where real discussions can take place.
Perhaps I’m just an old stick in the mud but to me the phrase “Social CRM” is just a marketing gimmic used by sales and marketing people to ride the buzz created by the social networks out there. The jury in my head is still out on my final decision I guess time will tell and it could be I’ve got to play catch up and add social features to our CRM but I believe the time for that isn’t yet.
Ramblings by Dave [@] fcsoftware.co.uk