How-to-Guide - Social CRM Best Practices

How-to-Guide - Social CRM Best Practices How-‐To Guide Social CRM Best Practices By David Raab, CEO at Raab Associates November 2013 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Social media are now part of every business and consumer activity, joining telephone, Web, broadcast, and face-to-face interactions as primary communication channels. This means that all marketing, sales, and service organizations should include social media as part of their basic activities. Yet social media are still new enough that many organizations are still struggling to learn how to use them, while others are learning how to use them most effectively. This paper provides an overview of social media applications and emerging best practices for deploying social media at your company. WHAT IS SOCIAL CRM? Social media includes every type of content that is generated by or shared with individual consumers in a public or group setting. This includes social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, where people connect each other directly and have at least some control over what information is shared with the public. It also includes more open forms such as blogs, forums, and user-written reviews, even though many of these are hosted on corporate Web sites. Content sharing sites such as Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest are yet another version. Social media tracking systems now often extend to traditional media, such as the online versions of newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, less because those are truly social than because the technologies to monitor both types of content are so similar. But even though social media are now as common as other communication channels, they play a different role. Specifically, they allow companies to initiate relationships with people who are otherwise © 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

How-‐To Guide inaccessible, because they are not paying attention to conventional mass media and are not responsive to untargeted direct messages such as bulk emails. Social media can also provide an opportunity to deepen those relationships through one-on-one interactions, while at the same time letting observers see how a company treats its customers. Finally, and perhaps most important, social media allow consumers to share their own experiences with a company, providing a more credible source of information than the company itself. These benefits are accompanied by risks. Poorly executed communications can annoy potential customers, driving them away from relationships instead of towards them. Public visibility of formerly private transactions can illustrate problems with products and poor treatment of existing customers. Consumer reviews can be negative as well as positive, and even enthusiastic advocates can provide incorrect information about products or pricing. This combination of threats and opportunities means that no company today can afford a hands-off attitude towards social media management. Prospects and customers will be discussing you in social media at every stage in the marketing, sales and service process, so the only choice you try to shape it, or will ignore it and let it be shaped by others. And that is really no choice at all. SOCIAL CRM FUNCTIONS Every customer-facing department within your organization can make some use of social media. Here is a look at the main functions needed for social customer relationship management: Monitoring: Finding relevant conversations is the first step in working with social media. Monitoring systems listen in social channels for company or product names, product categories, or buyer needs. This listening is usually done through parsing for simple keywords, but may also be further refined through rules that filter out irrelevant posts and classify the relevant ones based on topic, urgency, sentiment, author, and other attributes. Some monitoring systems specialize in a single source, such as Twitter, or single type of activity, such as comments on review sites. Others scan social networks, blogs, Web sites, discussion groups, or traditional media. Coverage may be limited to text, video, images, or sound, or may cover several of those. There are often limits © 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved. How-‐To Guide inaccessible, because they are not paying attention to conventional mass media and are not responsive to untargeted direct messages such as bulk emails. Social media can also provide an opportunity to deepen those relationships through one-on-one interactions, while at the same time letting observers see how a company treats its customers. Finally, and perhaps most important, social media allow consumers to share their own experiences with a company, providing a more credible source of information than the company itself. These benefits are accompanied by risks. Poorly executed communications can annoy potential customers, driving them away from relationships instead of towards them. Public visibility of formerly private transactions can illustrate problems with products and poor treatment of existing customers. Consumer reviews can be negative as well as positive, and even enthusiastic advocates can provide incorrect information about products or pricing. This combination of threats and opportunities means that no company today can afford a hands-off attitude towards social media management. Prospects and customers will be discussing you in social media at every stage in the marketing, sales and service process, so the only choice you try to shape it, or will ignore it and let it be shaped by others. And that is really no choice at all. SOCIAL CRM FUNCTIONS Every customer-facing department within your organization can make some use of social media. Here is a look at the main functions needed for social customer relationship management: Monitoring: Finding relevant conversations is the first step in working with social media. Monitoring systems listen in social channels for company or product names, product categories, or buyer needs. This listening is usually done through parsing for simple keywords, but may also be further refined through rules that filter out irrelevant posts and classify the relevant ones based on topic, urgency, sentiment, author, and other attributes. Some monitoring systems specialize in a single source, such as Twitter, or single type of activity, such as comments on review sites. Others scan social networks, blogs, Web sites, discussion groups, or traditional media. Coverage may be limited to text, video, images, or sound, or may cover several of those. There are often limits © 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

How-‐To Guide based on language or geographic region. Coverage may include previous conversations or be limited to current streams. Systems that go beyond keywords and rules may apply natural language processing to extract concepts, sentiments, intentions, or problems; the natural language systems themselves vary in their techniques, accuracy, and ability to learn from past mistakes. Analytics may be limited to simple mention counts or show results and trends for individual terms and broad topics; break these down by sources, Responding: Some monitoring systems are simply designed to find and tabulate mentions. This is especially true for systems that specialize in monitoring media outlets. But customer service departments also want to respond to at least some items, and marketing and sales often do as well. Response-related functions include presenting messages from different sources in a unified stream; classifying, prioritizing and routing messages based on their nature; issuing alerts for urgent situations; converting messages to cases that can be managed over time; maintaining a library of pre- approved responses; and recommending responses based on rules or language interpretation. Some systems provide auto-response and auto-follow features, although these must be deployed carefully mechanically. To read the rest of this How-to Guide, become a Demand Metric member today! © 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved. How-‐To Guide based on language or geographic region. Coverage may include previous conversations or be limited to current streams. Systems that go beyond keywords and rules may apply natural language processing to extract concepts, sentiments, intentions, or problems; the natural language systems themselves vary in their techniques, accuracy, and ability to learn from past mistakes. Analytics may be limited to simple mention counts or show results and trends for individual terms and broad topics; break these down by sources, Responding: Some monitoring systems are simply designed to find and tabulate mentions. This is especially true for systems that specialize in monitoring media outlets. But customer service departments also want to respond to at least some items, and marketing and sales often do as well. Response-related functions include presenting messages from different sources in a unified stream; classifying, prioritizing and routing messages based on their nature; issuing alerts for urgent situations; converting messages to cases that can be managed over time; maintaining a library of pre- approved responses; and recommending responses based on rules or language interpretation. Some systems provide auto-response and auto-follow features, although these must be deployed carefully mechanically. To read the rest of this How-to Guide, become a Demand Metric member today! © 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

How-to-Guide - Social CRM Best Practices