The general consensus is that Social CRM is the future of CRM, yet there exists little consensus on what this means.  It is very easy to jump on a bandwagon such as Social CRM without any thought to a plan and analytical data.  Analysts say that engaging in Social CRM will produce huge dividends nad that companies have to keep up.  While this is true, the persise form that this will take is still the subject of much debate.  Companies who dive into Social CRM without a plan and measurements do so at their own peril, and are likely to fail.

Despite this warning, Social CRM does have an important major role to play in the future of businesses.  The social media revolution has changed the way we look at the world.  People keep in touch over longer distances and in a much more casual way than previously possible.   There are a variety of proposed uses for Social CRM, some involving inputs, others outputs, and others two-way communication.  Let’s take a look at a few possible uses that could be developed over-time.

Brand Management: Conversation sites such as Twitter allow users to post anything that they want on a product or service.  Amazingly, searching on hashtags associated with a specific product or brand can be enlightening for a company.  The challenge is filtering out the noise to get a picture of brand perception, and to react appropriately.  Whether reviewing Twitter, online forums, or other conversation-based sites, it is imperative that companies find and respond to potential brand-damaging content.

Distributed Customer Support: Customers no longer go exclusively to a company’s service department for assistance on their issues.  The off shoring experiments of the past decade have soured many on call centers, and a significant number of the consumer public believes that other consumers hold better and more unfiltered advice than a call center representative.  Support personnel must have the ability to identify, track, and respond to issues that pertain to a company’s products and services, whether they are entered through an online ticket system, entered in a random forum, or tweeted.

Generating Leads: Mining the Internet and Social media sites has potential to offer a wealth of sales leads.  Customers routinely write / post / tweet about their own needs and wants.  Social CRM has the challenge of finding those needs and wants that match a company’s products and services, and reaching out to the potential prospect.  Again, the challenge, as in support, is to appear organically respond to a need and not simply appear to be pitching for a sale.

Social Marketing: Skittles brand candy recently pushed a viral social marketing campaign, replacing their website with a twitter search page and links to various social media pages that reference Skittles.  By pushing its brand and getting consumers to contribute, it increased its web traffic by over 1000%.  Whether this has any lasting effect on sales, it is a daring move and one that has generated a lot of buzz in marketing circles.  The merits of the campaign have been hotly debated, with some praising Skittles’ bold move and others calling it a massive failure.  Duplicating the Skittles campaign though will not fly.  Companies have to come up with unique ways to market using social media, and use consumers to push their brand organically.  Organic viral advertising has the potential to outshine paid commercial advertising because of its organic, viral nature.

This list is by no means exhaustive, or even comprehensive.  Rather, it is a start to thinking about ways to leverage social media within CRM.  Social CRM is here to stay and is the next big step in the evolution of technology and CRM.  While that much is clear, its applications are still being envisioned and need planning, time, and empirical data to determine what will prove beneficial and what will simply be a fleeting trend.  We are in the brainstorming phase of harnessing this new technology.  What are your ideas for using Social CRM?

Related posts:

1. Is Salesforce.com’s approach to Social CRM Correct?
2. Social CRM Must Be Social!
3. The Social Media Weekend That Changed The World
4. Social CRM For Small Businesses
5. Marketing: The Neglected Child of CRM