Suzanne Stokes on Social CRM
by Krystle Lange on 2010/08/11
Suzanne Stokes is the brand new Social Media/Social CRM Brand Manager at MWEB. Her role is to manage MWEB’s Social Interactions within their active Social Media spaces ie: Facebook and Twitter and ensure that all Social CRM tactics are incorporated in their approach to customers. Suzanne has just completed the Quirk Education “Applying Social Media to Business Challenges” course, and with her experience in working in Social Media/Social CRM, we thought it would be interesting to hear her views on the subject.
1. How would you define Social CRM?
Social CRM is an externally focused, interaction engine, guided by principles whereby your audience is no longer passive within the marketing mix but are active participants. The emphasis is on relationships with customers rather than management or control (which is probably the toughest challenge for organisations) and innovation is through crowdsourcing via your online communities. These principles collate into a technology-based, online experience that is a mix of direct marketing, content, community, connectivity and commerce.
In my understanding, Social CRM is not a replacement to traditional CRM but rather an extension that adds value back to your customers. The philosophy is that your customers are involved and collaborate with you and your business in order to improve the overall customer experience.
2. How has Social Media changed your brand?
Since MWEB first entered the online medium and began listening, engaging and collaborating with our customers via social networking platforms, a complete strategic shift has occurred. Various departments within the organisation have developed some depth of understanding and involvement within the Social Media realm. The current organisational interest in Social Media has shown us that customers in general are longing for businesses to become authentic and transparent in their marketing communications. That’s why at MWEB, our goal is to "hear" every piece of feedback and begin incorporating this into our business strategy, continually improving the customer’s experience.
3. Has Social CRM improved the way in which you interact with your customers, how has it done this?
Social CRM has enhanced the relationship aspect of our CRM strategy and has built on improving these relationships with more meaningful interactions from the business itself. One of the most important factors of Social CRM is that it has top level organisational buy-in. As a business using the Social CRM principles, we are incredibly fortunate to have CEOs who are listening and engaging with our customers through Social Media platforms on a daily basis. If the top level of an organisation is hearing feedback straight from their customers, it is far easier to implement these principles of Social CRM across the business, as top management understand the need to integrate the customer voice into the mix. We want our customers to feel heard and we want to re-affirm to them that we care about their experience with our products and services.
4. Which platforms do you find most useful when interacting with your customers? Why?
Facebook has allowed us to build a strong community of over 20 000 members who are very active in giving us feedback or requesting assistance with support-related queries. The platform lends itself to community building principles as an opportunity to listen, empathise, connect and engage on-going in a circular fashion with our members, breaking down the formal communication barriers around traditional customer service. Often at times we find "brand advocates" emerging and resolving queries, answer questions and offering solutions before one of our community managers has the chance and has thus turned our customer service from an in-bound call centre to an out-bound form of customer relations, which can spot problems before they occur. Facebook’s customisable interface allows us to showcase our products and services and engage with our members through multi-media campaigns which incorporate videos, applications and polls.
5. Do you think that there are only a select few businesses that can benefit from a Social CRM strategy or is this a feature that every business should consider having in their support or customer service plan?
Any business that involves some form of CRM or customer support should incorporate a Social CRM plan into their business strategy. With the proliferation of Social Media and a future of generations who have never known a world without the Internet, it is now the era of the social customer. This social customer is being groomed to speak out about their feelings around a product or service and they want to be heard. Any business that is not listening will miss out on the value that can come out of interacting with its consumers.
6. Having done one of our courses in Social Media, do you have any comments on your experience with further learning in this space?
The majority of 25 to 30-something marketers today, did not have a curriculum incorporating an eMarketing or digital element when they were studying. Most have learned what they can through the connected and sharing nature of the Web. However, with the rate of growth and development within the Social Media industry it is almost impossible to keep 100% up to date with this change and complete a full day’s workload unless you are a focused Social Media Manager or have a strong proactive digital agency working alongside you. Although I have both these assets working for me, I have still found it greatly advantageous to further my learning within this space as it allowed me to better transition into my new role as a Social Media/Social CRM strategist as well as understand the digital elements that are utilised in building an interactive Social Media campaign.
7. What do you feel is waiting in the future of Social CRM for brands?
I have no doubt that as more companies begin to flirt with the philosophies and principles of Social CRM, they will see the value of incorporating an integrated system which allows a customer to maintain their own contact information within a business’ CRM software through Social Media channels. The vision of the 360 degree view of customer will also come into being.
8. If you could pass on any lesson that you have learnt from Social CRM what would it be?
In the wise words of Steven Covey, “Listen first; seek to understand then to be understood.”
Social Media affords the perfect opportunity for companies to engage with their customers, present more of a human face to their brand, gather feedback from their audience and build a loyal community.
Social CRM is called social for a reason. It’s based on interactions and conversations, which means focusing your strategy around your customer. Don’t focus too much on being leading innovators or making a big creative impact on the industry as neither of these things matter if no one engages.
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