Social CRM: An Introduction (sort of).

This is an edited & redacted version of email an sent to the divisional president of a huge multinational company. I spent quite a bit of time there implementing various projects, and discovered they were just about ten years behind the times in all things online.  Everything except their call center involves one-way communication. That won't work these days, customers want and expect more.

The scary thing is that they are far from the most backward in their industry, and sales-wise are actually doing reasonably well (for now).  I quite like them personally and as a company but they must change their marketing strategies or get swept away by competitors with inferior products and better sales and marketing - especially social CRM and online marketing.

(See the bottom for their response)

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Hi (Div. President Name) - I told you that I’d send you email about what the company could do better regarding all online communication.  I've got a bunch of things to say and I tried to just hit the high points, but there are so many problems with your online strategies that I think I failed at brevity.

Online two-way conversation with the customer is the wave of the future, and is quite different than what you have been doing.  [Company] has not participated in these conversations, to its detriment, and it's now hitting the bottom line.

[Company] has a reputation of having great products but being stodgy and old-fashioned.  You do no direct e-marketing (I think the first email campaign went out a few months ago, or maybe it was delayed again and never made it.)  Over the years the trade show staff has collected many user’s business cards with contact info and done nothing with them, sometimes not even passed them on to the territory reps.  You do nothing direct (online) but do a good job of sending paper-based marketing materials, to certain groups at least, but you don't know what percentage go straight into the trash. 

Many times these days people want to chose their own way of getting information; this is what makes web sites powerful.  But that’s only half the equation; the most popular and “sticky” sites that people return to and recommend are always those that build a community, where people know they can talk to like-minded people and get their questions answered.  As a member of one site I visited (for independent advice on use of a product) said, “we are all a bunch of ignorant nobodies, but between us, we know damn near everything!”  [Company] has never even tried to work in this area, neither in (product area 1) nor (product area 2).  It is the wave of the future, and you are standing on the dock watching the ship sail on the tide.

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What is the most important asset of the company? 

Manufacturing plants?  Product development information?  Employees?  Customers?

No to all the above.  It is the relationship with your customers. 

What do the customers want out of this relationship?  They want good products, and to communicate with the company.

So how do they want the company to communicate to them?  Interactively, quickly, openly, humbly. 

The sales force does some of this, but only on their schedule, and talking about what they want to.  This is talking to the customer, but not really talking with the customer.  It does not meet the customer’s needs or modern expectations.

The Call Center talks with the customer, but the customer needs to call during business hours and wait to talk to someone.  It is necessary, but not sufficient (and very 1980s).  Completely missing is the online two-way communication component.  It’s costing you market share and mind share.  See what your competitors are doing - search for "(brand name) blog" or "(product area) forum" or the like and see what you get.  You won't like what you see; often competitors are kicking your butts with inferior products and better customer service.

It’s easy to ignore online communities.  If you participate fully in any forum (especially one you don’t host or control), people will whine about trivia, lie, insult you, post spam, and all the other bad things that happen online.  You need to be resolute and to accept (and act on) legitimate complaints, and gently correct errors about us or your products, and of course soft sell those products.

At a minimum, you need a position that works with the call center, spending 90% of their time online, preaching the [Company] product gospel (and posting carefully, with the call center’s advice on complaints and products). 

Like your direct-to-consumer marketing it will be hard to measure success, and take a while to show results, so the typical reaction would be to eliminate the job after six months.  This would be the worst possible thing to do, the position needs to be filled with someone the customers can rely on for the long run; it takes time to develop a brand, and in the online arena, [Company] is a new, unproven brand.

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The days of select customers being “key opinion leaders” are history; anyone with an ax to grind and a blog can write a damaging article, and Google will pick it up.  You wouldn’t know if this happened, and could not respond before any potential damage was done.

There is another related issue; at some point [Company] will become “news”, either by a false rumor or via something the company does, and hit top web sites and become daily conversation of thousands of people.  At that point, damage control and replies at internet speed are needed.  Most major consumer product brands have people dedicated to watching Twitter, Facebook, and news sites for product mention, and responding appropriately. [Company] would be wondering what hit them.

It all boils down to telling all your customer service people this:  “Listen to the customer when they talk to us, listen to the customer as they talk about us, respond appropriately”, especially in all sorts of online forums (those we do and don’t control).  Right now [Company’s] main action in this area seem to be sticking your heads into the sand.

Please let me know if this helps - I want [Company] to prosper.  As I told you, I first came there as a consultant in the 1980s, and have been there many times over the years in various roles.  The company has good products and can do better.

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The response I got I'm not at liberty to share with you, but the gist of it was some heartfelt thanks, that my ideas were discussed in the Executive Council meeting the next week, and that changes are forthcoming, soon.  There is hope in the world :-)