10 Challenges to Social CRM

Social CRM has become a buzzword. But don’t believe the hype. Social CRM is very early in its evolution from a big idea to a practical tool for marketers.

According to Paul Greenberg, “Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow 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. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.”

Everybody suspects that brands can interact meaningfully one-on-one with consumers through social networks. There is a yet-to-be-found nexus between traditional CRM and social networking that will yield more robust data profiles leading to more meaningful relationships between brands and their followers. Combining an explicit expression of interest (an email opt-in) with the more casual attention (a like) or inferred interest (a social profile), potentially identifies different consumers needing different persuasive approaches or offers.

Ideally, combining social activity with demographic and behavioral data will give marketers a nuanced and segmented view of customers with which to craft more potent messages, offers and cadences. Getting a 360-degree view of customers and understanding who is socially connected or active could yield significant improvements in consumer resonance and cost efficiencies.

Early social CRM advocates embraced customer service as the inflection point for interacting with consumers and collecting useful data. This method of engaging consumers surfaced these ten practical issues that still befuddle us:

1-to-1 Messaging. The leading social networks have limited ways to create direct one-to-one messaging with members. They will deliver messages to discrete groups of users but won’t share interaction or response data. In contrast to email, this limits customer interaction, valuation and targeting. 

R or F? Brands operating CRM and social programs want to know if we are reaching a different audience on social platforms or if we are interacting with people already in our databases. Does social media add reach or frequency? Should we treat customers appearing on both lists differently than solo email or social users?

Content & Cadence. Should brands transmit the same messages in multiple channels or craft messaging that compliments or compounds the story through divergent channels? Some marketers have experimented with news, deals and coupons on Twitter while exposing different facets of the brand and its features on Facebook. Others have synchronized content and timed messaging using email and offline advertising to create an omni-channel roadblock enrolling social media to introduce products, distribute coupons or tout sales. Still others have run social-only promotions or introduced new products exclusively through social networks. There is little publicly available evidence to understand which approach works best.

Data Sharing. Facebook will match an email database with their membership but they won’t share data or disclose the names or details of those who are on both lists. Brands can use social sign-on and scrape profiles but matching names exactly is a challenge and collecting and storing added data of marginal utility is costly and potentially distracting.

Data Structure. Traditional CRM is structured data in relational data fields. Social data is partly structured (based on profiles) and partly unstructured based on social activity. Currently there is no easy way for machines to sort or combine social and other behavior to infer or define important segments or tease out likely prospects or advocates.

Data Analysis. There are unanswered questions about what to count and about what matters in terms of defining a best customer or prospect. Is the number of friends more useful than the number of pictures or videos uploaded? Does frequency of interaction matter and if so, which interactions are more valuable? Does the tone or content of social interactions point to likely critics or advocates?

Connectedness. Are the social networks separate pools or are they related? Does a conversation or theme on Facebook blend into or influence choices pinned on Pinterest or blogs posted on Tumblr? Or are they separate and distinct but related conversations?

Are events like The Ice Bucket Challenge or the Superbowl, which cross channels, unique anomalies or do they represent a new and different model for branded communication? Can we use aggregated data to motivate consumers to carry a conversation from one platform to another or potentially use different platforms to mitigate risk or respond to negative press or developments?

Matching. It’s difficult to match joe.blow@gmail.com with @joeblows or other social media handles. Most people have multiple email accounts and a variety of social handles that might not be consistent across platforms. Finding the highly engaged socially active customer and tracking or recording her interests and activities across social networks is almost impossible as is combing this information with her stated interests, cookies, purchase history or other observed information. Yet this is the big data holy grail; to build robust profiles of best customers who have opted-in and displayed social interest in a brand so they can be romanced wherever they are and wherever they go.

LTV. Traditional CRM marketers calculate consumers’ lifetime value by mapping product lifecycles to demographic, behavioral and purchase information. They focus time and energy on customers with the greatest potential. Should social activity be factored in? Does social activity or advocacy motivate larger or more frequent purchases? Do social advocates influence the purchases of friends and family and if so, how often and how much? There is no consensus on the definition of social influence or on a methodology for scoring social influence; either on its own or in relation to tradition measures of customer value.

Perspective. Many marketers are eager to aggregate data as a way to efficiently go after high value customers. They don’t understand that the real value of the data is to understand customer interests, hear customer concerns, anticipate customer needs and enable customers to drive the conversation with favorite brands. Social CRM is not another push vehicle. It’s an early warning radar and a conversational lazy susan to bind consumers to the brands they like most.

Social CRM is brimming with promise. But we have a long way to go and a lot of complex issues to sort out before it becomes part of our standard marketing toolkit.