March 12th, 2010
I recently came across a plug-in for Gmail called Rapportive which I think is a great step in the right direction for Social CRM. In the past, when I send or receive emails from people, I have often wished that there was some sort of automatic way for me to find out where that person exists in the social web and to see what conversations that person is involved in. For example, it would be great to see if that person has a Twitter or LinkedIn account that I could access directly from my email. Well, now I can. Here’s an email interaction I had with Jeremiah Owyang and how Rapportive integrates with that email.
Rapportive integrates directly into Gmail and all of the information sits to the side of the email window. From this screenshot, you can see that the email message on the left hand side and all of Jeremiah’s information is on the right. In this example, I can see exactly what company Jeremiah is affiliated with, where he exists online, his geo-location, and I can also add a little note about Jeremiah to help me remember a particular conversation or point of interest. See that little arrow next to “superbowlads?” If I click on it, I get a stream of Jeremiah’s most recent tweets. For those of you that know Jeremiah though, you will recognize that his Twitter account is incorrect as is his current company of employment (he currently works at Alimeter and his Twitter ID is @jowyang) demonstrating that Rapportive is definitely not perfect yet, but it is a step in the right direction.
Rapportive says they allow for custom integrations which I have absolutely no idea how to get to or use. However, in the near future, they will be integrating with several paid services such as Salesforce, SugarCRM, MailChimp, UserVoice, Eventbrite, and Zendesk, just to name a few. I think this should make for a killer tool once it’s completely launched and integrated with some of the other platforms out there. I’m actually very interested to see what this is going to look like.
Imagine if a company such as Amazon, eBay, or Best Buy would be able to automatically collect all of this information every time a customer purchases something from their site (unless they do already which I doubt) or contacts their customer service and support department via email. What if this data (along with the little note I add) integrated directly into a company CRM system and was able to automatically segment customers? I see a lot of potential for what Rapportive is doing.
I encourage all of you to check out Rapportive and give it a shot. Let me know what you think. I personally find the tool extremely useful.
TAGS: gmail integration, rapportive, scrm, Social CRM
March 5th, 2010
Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang from Altimeter Group released their report today on the 18 use cases for Social CRM and provide some ideas and guidelines for how to move forward within the space. They included quite an impressive roster of experts and vendors to help them compile their report. However, keep in mind that what they created is just a starting point. I just finished re-reading the report again and I think what they have put together is a great document but I do have some ideas, thoughts, and notes on what they put together.
Let’s start with this image that depicts the 18 use cases of Social CRM:
Traditional CRM has always been used for three things: sales, marketing, and customer service. Social CRM doesn’t replace those but instead it adds new layers into the mix (as you can see from the image above), mainly collaboration, ideation, and improved customer experience. Actually, I wouldn’t even classify customer experience as a separate SCRM layer because I think the whole point of SCRM as a whole is to improve the customer experience. Collaborating with customers, innovating, and improving your marketing, sales, and support efforts are all geared towards improving the customer experience because that is ultimately what is going to be the key differentiating factor between competitive companies.
I’ll point everyone to the following idea that Esteban Kolsky came up with (Chess Media Group helped redesign it). Again this image shows the overlap between Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM.
Back to the report…
Jeremiah and Ray researched 18 use cases for Social CRM but I’m sure others will emerge quickly (or may already exist).
The report also goes on to discuss the 5 Ms of Social CRM and the baseline processes.
What I would have liked to see is a separation between what can be automated and what needs to be handled by a human. I have a baseline framework for this that I brainstormed with Brent Leary and hopefully I can create an image that depicts what that should look like. The other challenge here is that Jeremiah and Ray recommend that we need all 5 Ms yet each M involves working with a new vendor. According to the baseline process chart, in order to fully take advantage of SCRM a company would need to work with at least five different vendors such as Biz 360, Facebook Profiles, Sugar CRM, Informatica, and IBM Cognos. I don’t think that this is realistic and then there’s the issue of integration and of course budget and resources (yes I know, a completely separate issue).
I definitely commend Jeremiah and Ray for really compiling a fantastic report (there is much more in there for you to read). I think this report is a fantastic starting point for the SCRM framework, and while I’m sure not everyone agrees with what they (or I) have to say about SCRM, it certainly will cause great discussions to surface. If you want to check out the full Social CRM report, you can visit the Slideshare presentation (which I recommend you do) or just read below.
TAGS: altimeter group, jeremiah owyang, ray wang, scrm, Social CRM, social crm use cases
February 26th, 2010
Since I’m speaking at the New Comm Forum (see sidebar) on the topic of Social CRM (SCRM), I thought it would make sense to put together a list of SCRM folks that I have been learning quite a lot from. These aren’t necessarily the most influential or popular SCRM practitioners or analysts, just the one’s [...]
TAGS: brent leary, brian vellmure, esteban kolsky, paul greenberg, Prem Kumar Aparanji, scrm people to follow, Social CRM, who to follow in scrm
February 24th, 2010
I read an interesting article on information age a few days ago which references some new Gartner predictions around Social CRM. According to the article:
“Over 80% of growth in enterprise use of social networking tools will be driven by customer engagement projects, analyst forecasts
Enterprise adoption of social media will occur primarily in the context of [...]
TAGS: enterprise adoption, gartner, Social CRM
February 9th, 2010
Since I’m speaking on the topic of Social CRM at the New Comm Forum in April, I decided to reach out to a few folks to get their ideas and impressions on what’s going on in the space. One of the people I reached out to was Frank Eliason from Comcast to find out how [...]
TAGS: comcast, comcast scrm, comcast social crm, comcast social media, scrm, Social CRM
February 4th, 2010
I’m a big fan of the work that Esteban Kolsky has been doing with Social CRM and he recently stated that he is going to be branching over towards the Enterprise 2.0 space. Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 efforts need to work in conjunction with one another and that’s what this whole post is about. [...]
TAGS: e2.0, Enterprise 2.0, esteban kolsky, experience continuum, scrm, Social CRM
