dna13

Socializing social media with a CRM

Harnessing intelligence gathered through social media and sharing it across the organization is no longer a figment of our imagination. In "Strategy and Social Media: Everything's Social (Now)" CRM magazine Associate Editor Lauren McKay notes that the future of CRM integration with social media is inevitable, if organizations are going to be successful in an era where "peer-to-peer conversations about products and services outweigh marketing efforts."

Companies worried about the state of their reputation are definitely getting smarter. The majority have some sort of media monitoring, or ‘Listening Platform' (a term authored by the Customer Experience Group at Forrester Research) in place to monitor for conversations about their brand.

Unfortunately, the actual management of this data remains one of the top challenges for marketing and PR professionals charged with this responsibility (note however, that reputation management and conversation ‘listening' is no longer just limited to these departments). Monitoring social and traditional media now has relevancy for many departments, including:

• Marketing - Market research, competitor and industry (issue) analysis, crisis management and campaign analysis
• Customer service - Customer insight, feedback and service requests
• Sales - Prospecting
  
• Investor relations - Market sentiment, crisis and issue management
  
• Internal communications - Aligned messaging

So, further to Lauren's point, organizations have the opportunity to turn this intelligence into a significant competitive advantage. This is where the necessity for a socialized CRM application has become quite apparent.

We were recently fortunate to have briefed Suresh Vittal, Forrester analyst and author of "The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms Q1 2009" on dna13's capabilities. One of the biggest challenges we discussed was this need for the management of monitoring data. Companies are desperate for regulation and further understanding of how to more effectively manage and share the tweets, pokes, rates and votes on their brand.

CRM vendors are certainly not new. But what is new is the business application that helps an organization manage its end-to-end workflow for these types of communications. According to Jeff Zabin, analyst with Aberdeen Group, "companies must lay the groundwork with brand monitoring".

The next step is to activate that intelligence across the enterprise with a business application. Think CRM for PR.

Imagine the future?

• Sales teams having real-time insight into conversations their prospects are having about competitive offerings;
• IR singing the same messages as Corp Comms and (gasp) legal teams on an emerging corporate issue - and having the ability to respond within less than 12 hours;
• Marketing having insight into market sentiment across all emerging channels and effectively funneling their message through those best suited to their business.

The future looks bright; and judging from the premise of McKay's article - we're staring straight at the light.