A Case for Social CRM

Social CRM has gone from vaporware to one of the most buzzed about terms in the enterprise software market. Take a quick look at Google Insights for Search and you will see that the term's popularity has increased exponentially over the past few years.

Paul Greenberg, the recognized thought leader in social CRM, describes it as "the company’s response to the customer’s control of the conversation." Essentially, it takes the vendor-customer relationship from transactive to interactive. A definition is great, but actionable insight is better. How does social CRM actually help your business?

Software Advice, the Authority on Software Selection, decided to select several case studies that illustrate how real companies have implemented social CRM technologies. Each study highlights how social CRM was used to resolve real world issues and improve business operations, taking social CRM from a concept to a solution. You can view the article here and read each case study in depth. However, the following is a very brief overview.

Problem: Chordiant, an enterprise software company, needed to find a better way to coordinate the needs and desires of the individuals involved in the product requirements process.
Solution: They used Jive's Clearspace to power and create Chordiant Mesh, and online community where employees, developers, customers and partners can collaborate about product development. They received positive feedback from users, resulting 15 successful collaborative product releases.

Problem: Linksys, a division of Cisco, needed to reduce support costs while maintaining high levels of customer support.
Solution: The company partnered with Lithium, an early leader in social CRM, to create an online support community. The deployment of the community increased self-service participation, which reduced the need of costly phone support. As a result, Linksys reported savings in the millions.

Problem: Enterasys Networks, a data-networking company, has a global network of employees. They required a social networking tool that would eliminate geographical boundaries, allowing their employees to communicate in real time.
Solution: They decided to deploy Salesforce.com's Chatter application. The company experienced improved service performance, thanks to real time collaboration among service team members. Additionally, the sales team was able to work more closely together and close a record number of deals in the first quarter after implementing Chatter.

Problem: H&R Block, the experts in tax preparation, wanted to find a way to see what their customers were talking about in order to anticipate problems before they arose.
Solution: The company decided to use Radian6's social monitoring technology to achieve this goal. The trend analysis tool allowed the company to drill down into community conversations and see which topics were creating the most buzz. This gave them better insight, enabling H&R Block to be more proactive in their customer service.

Problem: Pepperdine University's business school was looking for a better way to encourage collaboration among students, staff and faculty.
Solution: They partnered with Yammer to create a Twitter-like environment where users could interact and communicate in a real time, transparent environment. They saw an increase in community participation, due to the familiar UI, which has helped to enhance the learning and teaching process.

Despite its successes, social CRM still has a few kinks that need to be worked out, and although products do exist, the industry is still trying to find a way to fully understand and harness the potential of this new technology. Nevertheless, these case studies stand as a testament to the potential of this new market segment. It will be interesting to see its growth and maturation in the coming years.