Social CRM as a business strategy

Abstract

Neil Woodcockis chairman of The Customer Framework and is one of the United Kingdom ' s leading experts in customer management. His background is with Mobil, Unilever, Accenture and McKinsey. He has co-authored several books and many reports and articles on customer management and is on the editorial boards of leading journals. He is a regular speaker at conferences, both at home and overseas. Andrew Greenis a director of The Customer Framework. He began his career in the Airline and Travel industries with roles in sales, marketing, product and yield management, culminating in general management. Moving into consulting, he applied his fi rst-hand knowledge of loyalty programmes and customer management to other industry sectors -including telecoms, retail, manufacturing, fi nancial services, CPG and high luxury. Most recently, on secondment to Christie ' s as their Client Management Programme Director, he led a programme of change across marketing, operations and IT that made a signifi cant impact on the bottom line and left a legacy of cross-functional cooperation and team working. Michael Starkeyis a principal lecturer in Customer Relationship Management at De Montfort University. He is the co-author of four major reports and several journal articles on customer management. He is currently engaged in an 18-month Knowledge Transfer Partnership Programme project, www.ktponline.org.uk / helping, an NGO move from relying almost entirely on government funding to becoming self-fi nancing and customer focused.The Customer Framework ™ is a portfolio of Tools, Replicable Methodologies and Unique Intellectual Property deployed by a network of expert practitioners who support large organisations in delivering their customer management activity effectively and effi ciently.ABSTRACT Marketers are working in challenging times. Never before have we been able to get so close to our customers and engage with them in such a timely and relevant manner. Harnessed with customer relationship management, social media can deliver fi nancial benefi ts to companies no matter what sector. The benefi ts are centred around increasing ' customer insight and engagement ' and are not peripheral but fundamental to driving business performance. Financial benefi ts apply across the customer life cycle, in acquisition, retention, value development and managing cost to serve. In addition, social customer relationship management (SCRM) can deliver insight, which will help drive real customer centric innovation. Finally, the knowledge gained on customer behaviour, attitudes and mood will help drive benefi ts throughout the value chain, impacting on suppliers (for example, forecasting demand) and intermediaries (for example, shaping in-store promotions). However, pioneers in large companies face three hurdles: (a) organisational readiness, (b) over-hype and overexpectation and (c) project management failings. At the end of it all, SCRM is about people and relationships and demands a customer focus as never before. Forget that and you have little chan...

The digital marketing skills gap: Developing a Digital Marketer Model for the communication industries

“…The focus group agreed that measurement was an ongoing challenge. While there are a plethora of measurement and analysis tools available (Woodcock, Green & Starkey, 2011;Fisher, 2009) nevertheless, there was a general sense of a haphazard approach to analysis, measuring and monitoring of digital marketing and social media, with no established sense of best practice, and no real benchmarking procedures applied. As one Business Network Systems Manager commented, they are still trying to decide what is best practice in the field of digital marketing (I14).…”

A New Strategy for Customer Engagement: How Do French Firms Use Social CRM?

“…Woodcock et al (2011) noted that SCRM supports the entire customer management strategy and lifecycle and should thus lead to increased sales (through increased awareness and engagement) and decreased costs. According to the authors, SCRM can generate benefits for a company following a four-step process: engaging prospects and customers, conducting conversion (winning new customers), retaining customers and developing customer value.…”

“…Moreover, social media appears to offer benefits to companies in all sectors. Although these benefits are difficult to translate into financial terms, they largely relate to increases in "customer insight and engagement" (Woodcock, Green, & Starkey, 2011). This notion of improving relationships with customers using social media is known as social customer relationship management (SCRM).…”

“…SCRM concerns people and relationships and requires an organization to adopt a customer-centric approach. Although this concept is rather new (Greenberg, 2009), recent studies have provided evidence of a link between SCRM and knowledge transfer within firms (Pavicic, Alfirevic, & Znidar, 2011) as well as demonstrated the importance of incorporating social media into a firm's overall strategy to improve performance (Woodcock et al, 2011).…”

Is SCRM really a good social media strategy?

“…2 In contrast, the second article, by Woodcock et al , discusses the exact opposite. 3 The aim of this article is to refl ect on these differences and in the process deepen our understanding of what exactly constitutes a good social media strategy. The fact that these two articles appeared in the same issue also encourages comparison.…”