Guest Post: Greetings from the Gartner CRM Summit by Dan Ziman

[#1]

Travel for me is always bittersweet venture - I love to get out of the fishbowl from time to time and see what others are doing and talking about, but it's tough to take time away form my customers and the community, (not to mention being away from my family).

That's why I always love to be able to host guest articles from others here at Lithium, who travel to far off events and shows and bring back all the goodies for us here at the home office! So here's our own Dan Ziman, Director of Marketing at Lithium, with what he's brought back for us on the Gartner CRM Summit wrapping up today:

What's hot?   Scottsdale - it's 100 degrees today. What else? Social CRM. It appears to be on everyone's mind and mentioned in nearly every presentation and workshop at this year's Gartner CRM Summit.    

I was thrilled to see all the Lithium customers mentioned throughout keynotes and track sessions that have paved this vision...Starting with Customer Champion award winners iRobot, Barnes & Noble, Research In Motion (RIM), and Motorola.

In conversations with attendees of previous Summits, I learned that three years ago, Gartner told everyone that the social media and social networking storm was approaching and it was time to start looking into what your customers are doing online. Seemed logical, but there were skeptics. Now, when I ask attendees, where is your company relative to addressing customer experience and the social web? Overwhelmingly, the response is "we're working on it."

What else is happening?

1. Go where customers go. The conversation is moving from the service agent-to-customer (the 1:1 channel) to what is our customer saying about us online. The challenge for companies is offering an enhanced service or experience which directly leads to an add-on sale.  It's not that your company has lost control, it's simply that you have to go somewhere else (other than phone or email) to have the conversation. Furthermore, customer to customer interaction, positive or negative, is the way customers live online. The customer network already has power. Are you leveraging that power or putting up a hand (stop sign!)?
2. Strategic resources are needed to engage. Ask not only what technology is required, but also what business and IT functions are required to make this happen? Is this an on-premise solution or can SaaS handle my needs? If I go the SaaS route, how will I deal with integration? If I talk with IT, are they going to try to build it with open source and how can I trust our CIO to understand the business needs? Since you're dealing with your most important asset -your customers-spend time to bring the team together, secure executive sponsors, create a cross-functional social media center of excellence, and, most of all, be flexible. This is an evolutionary  experience running in many directions, thus, your organization needs to develop a structure that can bend and roll with the flow.
3. Not just the external channel, assess your internal processes. If we're answering customer questions or helping to resolve customer service issues that aren't coming into the call center, how will I document and know that the question/issue has been resolved? What KPIs should I put in place to know that we're doing a good job? The successful customer communities are developing a knowledge base far faster than the customer service group. Businesses need to find ways to harness this view to improve documentation and accelerate innovation.
4. Mobile experience. It's interesting to watch everyone walk out of the sessions when the first activity is checking email and sending text messages to friends, colleagues, and family.  Mobile browsers have improved significantly along with all the new mobile apps. However, it's not just a matter of access to an additional channel. Mobile integration requires a new business process and new strategies;  it's moved far, far beyond just a phone number.

So, the big message is: "what was tomorrow is today".  Reality is setting in and investments in the customer service experience will improve customer satisfaction, retention and deliver new revenue opportunities.

Thanks a lot Dan! Now if I could just convince him to bring back souvenirs for my kids, I'd never have to go anywhere at all!

To read more comments about the event, check out Twitter hash tag #gcrm or the Gartner web site - http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=838231

Did you attend? Let us know your thoughts!

Photo by Robert S. Donovan

[#2]

Great questions above and geat meeting you Dan.

In assisting with facilating a workshop held by Scott Nelson I was surprised by one thing...

responding to social media comments have actually reduced support call volume. The evidence is anecdotal, on a company by company basis but if processes are in place to monitor sites, provide responses and reuse the result(s) on a proactive basis, this is completely plausible. The group I facilitated was representative of the public sector, systems integrators, high technology and telco verticals. All of them were astutely aware of of the social media impact and to varying degrees monitored sites in order to pre-empt issues from occurring or simply provide faster customer (or constutuent) service. By example, Public Sector reps report tweets of  road  potholes or roadside issues were responded to. The Telco mentioned quality of service issues or dropped calls in a certain locale were likely to be discussed in a social media site before being reported. Some that come to mind are:

1)How can organizations validate issues on sites so they dont overreact. Which site should be monitored and what resources should be dedicated? 

2) Should contact center resources be modified to monitor social media instead of internal emails or phone calls?

3) IIf so, will response rates in these traditional channels be comprised? 

Organizations must clearly understand the preferences and behavior of their constituents and customers beyond anecdotal evidence before embarking on a Social CRM stratePgy.

[#3]

Hi Fred:  Good to meet you last week. 

You're absolutely correct that successful communities directly lead to call deflection, which has an immediate ROI.  We've also seen in many cases that other support channels like email can be minimized or potentially eliminated if the communities are promoted and managed properly. 

Regarding your specific questions:

1)  We have a few methodologies for monitoring communities.  In addition to trained moderators, we've developed a Community Health Index that provides a summary across 6 key areas:  membership, responsiveness, content, traffic, membership, interaction, and buzz.  Then, Lithium's customer success managers will meet weekly with community managers and moderators to ensure that proper areas are being addressed as well as assessing community objectives.

2)  As noted in the Gartner CRM Summit, you can't usually add a channel, then immediately map it back to an existing process.   In most situations, since call volume is being reduced, you can re-align or re-train individuals to manage the social channels and new processes.  Hence, companies are able to handle larger volumes of channels and support requests without adding staff.

3)  We've never seen a case whereby a traditional channel was sacrificed as a result of having community applications.  Remember, communities tap into a much larger network of support professionals - your customers.  Loyal and knowledgeable experts, which we refer to as superusers, often spend 2-3 hours/day in community applications helping other customers and driving new innovation.  Hence, it's not an internal resourcing issue, it's about harnessing and incentivizing this powerful network of brand advocates.  Best, -Dan