I strongly agree with Paul Greenberg that Social CRM is all about looking for answers to the Social Customer. Social CRM is about turning CRM from the inside out to the outside in. This is easier said than done, and mostly easier written than said..

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how Social CRM is about the relationships of your Customers (of which the relationship with your Company may be a part) and not primarily about the Company – Customer relationship. Today I would like to discuss Communities.

Today is exactly one week after my return from Paul Greenberg’s first Social CRM Strategies for Business Seminar in Washington. I needed some time to let the experience sink in and to straighten out my thoughts. I’ve read all of the wonderful posts written by what I can genuinely now refer to as my peers. I regard them as my peers because I trust them, value their thoughts, experience and ideas and because we together now share a truly great experience, which we will all long remember and reference to. I owe all of them, with Paul Greenberg as Primus Inter Pares, a huge thank you, for their part in this event.

Enough said about that. My main thoughts over the past week have not been on Social CRM but one how to bring this experience from great to awesomeness:

There has been a lot of writing lately on the definition of Social CRM. Although neither of the definitions is fully wrong, in my humble opinion, I think they all share one and the same logic of building, understanding, using and/or leveraging a relationship between the (Social) Customer and the company. I believe we need to completely let go of this company centered relationship logic and put Customers’ relationships at the center of our thinking, when we are designing our answer to the Social Customer’s ownership of the conversation.

Allow me to immediately take that back: Of course one needs to put Customers’ needs at the center of your business strategy. Your Customers value you mostly on the bases of their experiences when using your product or service. That’s because they hired your product or service to do a job for them, that they desire to do. It’s the outcome of the job your Customers want, not the relationship.

I found a new Dutch initiative to measure a Company’s Customer Performance: The Dutch Customer Performance Index (DCPI) (Dutch only) – a new objective and validated index for measurement of Customer performance – . I thought it worthwhile sharing with you.

The Dutch Customer Performance Index is an initiative of the Customer Insights Center of the University of Groningen (Dutch only), intelligence bureau MIcompany and market researcher MetrixLab. The University of Groningen is responsible for the scientific bases of the research. MIcompany determines wich value companies create for themselves from their Customers and MetricLab is repsonsible for data collection and building the benchmark database.

The DCPI conducts their research on a regular basis for 80 of the largest service providers in The Netherlands, which is based on a research base of 4.000 Dutch consumers.

The DCPI measures and compares these 80 companies based on two perspectives of a company’s Customer performance:

In the spirit of my personal discoveries on Twitter, I would also like to share with you my top-posts of 2009, by number of reads that is. I say “in the spirit of” not only because Twitter seems to be an important way to distribute the posts, but also because most of the people I engage with through Twitter have played significant roles in the development of my thinking. Most of the posts in the Top 5 mark a turning point or personal tipping point in thinking and connecting different topics with regard to Customer centric strategy. Most of them are also received some extensive comments and discussions. So, I can say that I am proud of this top 5.

Here they are, counting down:

#5: Co-creation comes in different shades and is used these days in marketing-concepts, innovation, customer services, product development etcetera. I now think that Co-creation is at the center of Social CRM and Social Business, since in essence it is about collaboration. Lot’s of people brought in some very valuable viewpoints in the comments.

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Sharing personal discoveries about Twitter

It was sometime December 2008. I just left my previous and last employer after more than 8 years, because of “a difference of opinion about the direction” of the Business Unit I was leading. This happened in our company quite regularly, but it’s always different when it involves yourself directly.

One of my best friends in real life (@espaapen) did something only true friends think of, when you actually need to take some time for yourself. He invited me for a long weekend in Antwerp (Belgium). He thought I needed that! So we did and had the best of times for 48 hours, eating wonderful food, walking scenic and not so scenic routes in this perfect city, talking and drinking great beers and wines. It was the best way I can imagine to get my mind refreshed after a stressful period. This long weekend got me completely recharged and I owe it to my friend to thank him for that awesome idea.

Over one of our meals my friend started talking about Twitter and how this would be something for me too. I do not remember what he said exactly, but it persuaded me to give it a try.. at least..

Esteban Kolsky wrote a very good post titled The Three Realities of SCRM Right Now. I think he makes some very good observations and projections for 2010. Apart from those I like best the sentiment of the post: being pragmatic and realistic about what the (near) future will bring.

The post also made me think: on one specific trend: (SCRM) Market Consolidation. My thoughts are not about the trend itself. I think Esteban is right here. My thought is about consolidation of (Customer centric) strategies.

Definitions and Debates

We have Customer Experience (Management), (Social) Customer Relationship Management, Managed Customer Relations, Social Relationship Management, Social Business Strategy and many alike. Most of these have the Customer’s interests at the core of their definitions and approaches. There are also numerous debates going on about these definitions, the approaches, what comes first etcetera etcetera…Some, from the outside, may even look like people’s lives depend on having these discussion. I am probably guilty myself there too.

This post is not about introducing new terminology, as its title might suggest. This post is about exploring thoughts and new directions for a marketers approach in an increasingly competitive world. A world in which the Social Customer seems to be calling the shots. A world that is not yet comfortable about sustainable economic recovery and a business world that is interested but somewhat scared to embark upon new ways to interact and build social relationships with their Customers. Value co-creating relationships that is.

Marketers have been among the first people that seek to understand the implications of social media for their businesses. First and utmost they have been exploring ways to use these new media for their traditional marketing activities. Most will have discovered by now that traditional “push & shout” techniques do not work. But there will be new ones entering the social landscape that will fail too.

A call on (up) scaling Social

With Social Business Design, Social Media Marketing and Social CRM being more or less mainstream thoughts right now, most seem to be seeking how we can leverage social technology to uncover cost savings or serve customers more effectively. There is a clear calling throughout all company’s disciplines to adapt to and adopt the new paradigm that we need to focus on having more transparency and more authentic and meaningful conversations with Customers, employees and partners. At the same time we see an increased call for scaling in resources for social.

In technology we trust

Esteban Kolsky, in his 3rd part of The Roadmap to Social CRM states:

Building a SCRM strategy or deploying it is no different from building a CRM strategy and deploying it – except for two tiny, tiny details: the volume of feedback you collect has increased by magnitudes in excess of 100X the original feedback you used to collect via surveys (and it is unstructured), and the emergence of communities (try a different mental picture).

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Quite a while ago I was introduced to the theory of Failure Demand. Failure Demand has been defined by System Thinker John Seddon as “demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for the customer“. It is probably a Customer Services department of a company that can relate to it the most e.g. through Customers with repeat calls, because their problem has not been solved, despite the promise made. I agree with Tripp Babbitt, that failure demand can cause between 25 % en 75 % of Customer services work. In itself this is not strange (it is what you have Customer services for), yet I also think that the majority of failure demand can be prevented. How? I will address this in a second post on this theme, next week.

In this post I would like to focus on the implications of changing the definition of Failure Demand and, by doing so, broadening the scope and application of the principle.