Recently, I joined a new Google Group called Social CRM Pioneers created by two Altimeter partners Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang. There have been very interesting conversations about social CRM, what it is, what it can do, and the issues to be addressed in the area. Around the same time, these same individuals released an open report on 18 use cases of social CRM, a comprehensive analysis of how social CRM can be used in an enterprise environment (see figure below for the 18 uses). In less than a week, the report has been viewed over 15,000 times, showing the amount of interest in this topic. In this blog, I would like to offer a primer on social CRM (or sCRM for short) and discuss the opportunities and currently unresolved challenges associated with implementing sCRM in practice.

What is Social CRM?

Let’s start with what CRM or Customer Relationship Management is. CRM involves the management and enhancement of customer relationships with the help of a large quantity of data about individual customers and a set of tools to interpret and make use of such data. Putting a “social” hat on CRM, to me, it means to use information and communication/interaction in social media to enrich traditional CRM practices as described above. In other words, social CRM merges social media with traditional CRM, both to create a more 360-degree view of the customers and to interact with customers in a more proactive and engaging fashion.

What are the Benefits/Opportunities Presented by Social CRM?

Social CRM brings a slew of opportunities to enrich traditional CRM practices, as discussed in the 18 use cases report. I discuss only a few here:

1. A more complete view of your customers via what they say in social media. This is important because customers’ conversations with others in a naturalistic social media environment are more likely to reveal their true preference and opinions than self-reported data. Instead of forcing opinions out of consumers, consumers are volunteering all this information to companies who are willing to listen. This can be very helpful when it comes to offering support to customers, discovering new product opportunities, identifying brand advocates, etc.

2. Faster collection of information. Traditional feedback through the distribution channel is simply too slow in today’s environment, where consumers are fickle and their preferences are changing faster than ever. One advantage of social CRM is that it deals with real-time data. As a result, companies can gauge quickly how consumers are reacting to a marketing campaign, what they think of a newly announced product, etc. Using this year’s Oscar as an example, Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock could have predicted their own winning a week early if they had tallied up their online buzz in the social sphere like Nielsen did.

3. Faster support and response time to customers. Let’s face it, the Internet makes us an impatient generation. When we run into problems, we want them solved immediately. This is where social media can help a lot. It’s not uncommon to hear anecdotal evidence of consumers receiving laser-speed response from companies when they complain about problems in social media. My own experience with Delta Airlines is an example. When I twittered one day about some statement confusion, overnight I received an email from them addressing the issue. That is what I call a wonderful/well-managed customer experience.

4. Engaging Customers. Through better and faster understanding of customers and faster response time, social CRM can provide a more engaging experience to customers. As I discussed in another post about ING Direct’s social media practice, the company successfully uses a blog, Facebook fan page, and a Twitter account to engage a large number of frugal savers. As the Top 100 Brand Engagement Report shows, effective engagement with customers is correlated with financial measures, suggesting social media’s potential to affect companies’ bottom line.

What Are the Challenges?

As something still in development, there are plenty of challenges that can prevent effective social CRM implementation. Among them, I see the biggest obstacles as:

Scalability. As the 18 use cases report points out, 1:1 support is simply not doable for most B2C companies. How can a company enhance customer experience through social media but still remain scalable and cost-effective with its operations? This is definitely something that has to be addressed. Of course, there are automated tools to help streamline this process, but technical tools can only go so far. Eventually when it comes to facing individual customers, who do you listen to and talk to? Whose problems do you solve first? These will require smart prioritization and proper organizational structure to allow for agile response and operation.

Churning Data into Information. Data mining is not a simple science. Added to this the large quantity of real-time data available through social media, the challenges associated with mining social data for information becomes even greater. Scientists around the world are still working on efficient algorithms to make this happen, but the techniques are still nowhere near maturity yet. For those interested, a look at this INFORMS OR/MS Today article on social media analytics may offer some clues as to the challenges associated with (and potential solutions to) analyzing/mining one type of social media data — blogs.

ROI. This is something on everyone’s mind, isn’t it?  Earlier, I mentioned that brand engagement with consumers is correlated with financial performance. Note the words used — “is correlated with”, not “leads to”. In other words, the causal effect is less straightforward. How to measure return from social CRM efforts likely will depend on the goal of the deployment, and a single engagement measure is not going to be sufficient. Moreover, while Dell Outlet was able to pinpoint $3 million incremental revenue from its Twitter presence, for many companies, it won’t be straightforward to isolate the impact of social CRM from other strategies.

I hope you find this discussion helpful in getting you started on social CRM. If you want to dig deeper, I strongly recommend you to download and read the 18 social CRM use cases report, and join in the conversation at the Social CRM Pioneers Group.

Established about about nine years ago, ING Direct (the US subsidiary of the Netherlands-originated ING Group) has quickly become a popular bank among tech-savvy and savings-oriented customers.  Much of its success can be contributed to the way it engages and empowers consumers, as described in the book The Orange Code coauthored by ING Direct’s founder & CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann and the branding expert Bruce Philip.

Start with the Brand
As a brand, ING Direct stands out with its distinctive orange dot logo, like the way Apple stands out with its half-eaten apple logo. The color came from its parent company ING Group’s logo — an orange lion.  Considered the most “edible” color, the warm tone of orange conveys a sense of energy and caring. The dot further adds the touch of fun and rebellion.  Together, the orange dot is a significant departure from the usual uptight image of suit and a tie associated with most banks.  This is perfect for ING Direct’s target audience of younger and tech-savvy consumers.

Social Media Engagement

ING Direct’s social media portfolio consists of a fairly standard set of tools: Facebook page, Twitter, Flicker, YouTube, and a blog called “We, the Savers“.  While any company can establish a presence on these social networking sites, not everyone is able to build them into interactive channels that truly engage the customer. I am especially impressed with ING Direct’s Facebook page (see the screenshot above).  Here are a few things that I think they are doing particularly well:

1. A clear mission: consumers. Instead of trying to sell their financial products, the page has a clear mission: to serve “We, the Saver”.  As the little blurb in the left side bar puts it concisely: “Proud to be a Saver? You’ve come to the right place. It’s where we inspire our fellow Americans to save their money.” This goal of “inspiring” rather than “selling” brings consumers much closer to the company, uniting the savers into one big family. In today’s economic environment, this likely resonates with a lot of consumers.

2. Content from third-party sources that has nothing directly to do with the bank but very relevant to consumers. For example, a recent post on the page is an article from the website getrichslowly.org on how to use a flowchart to evaluate potential purchases. This is information that savers would really be interested in reading. ING Direct then adds a little personal touch to the content by adding in the comment: “We learned about flow charts in 7th grade English class. This is the first practical use we’ve seen since then:” This again reflects a consumer-centered approach and comes cross to consumers neither as pushy nor condescending as one might expect from a commercial bank.

3. Plenty of opportunities for interaction. Oftentimes ING Direct posts little fun questions to consumers on the page (and via Twitter).  Here are a few questions asked recently: (1) “The library, visiting a pumpkin farm & going to the park are three great free fall activities. What are your favorite fall must dos?” (2) “Our favorite “money” movie quote may be from Swingers- ‘You’re so money and you don’t even know it!’ What’s yours?” (3) “Simple tips from everyday people on how to save money on everyday expenses: Got any others?” (4) “Will your next car be new, or pre-owned?”  These questions are things that consumers can easily relate to and answer, which motivate them to participate in the conversation.  I always see at least a dozen responses and comments on such posts, which also translates into potential better understanding of consumers by the company.

Take Away for Marketing Practitioners

Social media give power to people, and to win in this arena, focusing on the people is a must. Traditional mindset of selling is not going to work in this setting. If your business does not have the courage and culture to adapt to this new collaborative environment, it may be worse to pretend to be a social media participant when nothing you do is “social”. The end results will be skeptical consumers and wasted resources. ING Direct’s social media strategy offers good ideas on how to do this properly. For those who want further guidance, I recommend this Smashing Magazine article: “Social Network Design: Examples and Best Practices“. You may also find this report on the top 100 brands’ customer engagement level and its business impact useful.

Take Away for Marketing Academics

While customer relationship management and relationship marketing have gained strong hold in the academic marketing discipline, I think there has not been enough attention paid to customer engagement, especially through the use of social media.  I suggest a few research questions below that I believe are relevant to both marketing theory and practice.

• How do we properly gauge customer engagement?  Is this a state of mind?  Or is this measured by the number of conversations and/or followers?
• How should models of persuasion in traditional advertising being modified in the context of customer engagement?
• Do consumers undergo different processes to form their attitude and satisfaction judgment when they are engaged with the brand vs. when they are not?
• What metrics should be used to measure the outcome/ROI of customer engagement?
• With these metrics in place, can we show that customer engagement does lead to visible business benefits?

What are your thoughts about customer engagement?  I’d love to hear your stories and questions about customer engagement.

At the INFORMS Marketing Science 2009 Conference, I presented my current research project on the effects of loyalty program expiration policy change.  For those who missed the conference, here’s a summary of what I presented. I have also included the summary of the other two research projects that were presented during the same session.

Shortening Loyalty Program Expiration Period May Not Be Bad

One of the headaches companies running loyalty programs have is the liability associated with unredeemed points in program members’ accounts. One way of reducing such liabilities is to shorten the expiration period associated with program points, as major US airlines did in 2007. However, it is possible for such a policy change to alienate existing customers. To see whether this is the case, my co-author and I analyzed data from a convenience store chain that has switched from a no-expiration policy to a monthly expiration policy. To our surprise, we found that, participation in the program has actually increased significantly since the program change. Overall in-store sales have also increased, while fuel sales remained unchanged. What we plan to do next is to see how individual consumers have adjusted their purchase behavior in reaction to the policy change. We suspect that the addition of an expiration policy imposes what we call an “expiration pressure” on consumers, as consumers are pressured into making more purchases to reach a reward threshold before the points expire. However, different consumers (e.g., those with different patronage levels) will experience the pressure differently. I’ll report more findings when we are further along with the project. For now, you can download the presentation slides. We welcome any feedback or comments you may have.

Two other researchers also presented their projects on loyalty program and customer relationship management in the same session. As these are also relevant to loyalty managers, I am summarizing them below:

Loyalty Program Increases Share of Wallet by 10%

Martin Boehm from IE Business School presented his co-authored research project on the effect of loyalty program membership on consumers’ share of wallet at an European supermarket chain. By looking at a consumer panel’s behavior before and after loyalty program enrollment, they show that the loyalty program increased share of wallet by 10%.  This lift is negatively correlated with a consumer’s original share of wallet before the program enrollment. In other words, those with a high share of wallet exprienced minimal lift, whereas those with a low share of wallet experienced the highest lift. These results echo my earlier research findings showing a similar pattern. However, their research better controls for self-selection bias (i.e., better customers are more likely to enroll in loyalty programs) and therefore provides an even stronger argument for loyalty program impact.

Email and Mail Are More Effective Customer Contact Channels…

At least in the context of auto dealership’s services. Using data from an auto dealership, Andrea Godfrey at University of California at Riverside and her co-authors compared the effectiveness of phone, mail, and email customer contact in increasing sales (in this case, service revenue).  They found that mails and emails were similarly effective in increasing sales, while phone contact was the least effective. The effects of mails and emails were both curvilinear, meaning that the effects of those contacts reach maximum after a few times and then drop after the threshold. Not surprisingly, the exact effectiveness of each contact channel on individual consumers also depends on the consumers’ channel preference.  I hope these findings will help eliminate a few annoying dinner disruptions and result in less waste of papers. But I am not so sure I like the prospect of receiving more emails either. Hmm…

Questions or comments?  If you have any questions regarding any of these research projects that I have summarized here, please feel free to let me know, and I’d be happy to answer your question or forward your question to the right author.