Everyday I log onto twitter, I read about someone complaining about a problem they are facing with a particular service that they use. In almost realtime, a lot of others who face similar problem simply re-tweet the initial tweet about the complain. What this could result to is a negative publicity of the service, to the extent of a fear of losing a customer. In almost no time, there are the representatives from the company in context, replying to the tweets and assuring of a quick turnaround to the customer’s concerns. If that is not enough there are social channels that people reach out to, these days when they do not get a response.
That’s the new age customer relationship management and goes by the term Social CRMs. A lot of debate goes on the legitimacy of the phrase Social CRM. On one side of the argument, there are the believers who think that this is just another fancy term, riding the Social Wave, and on the other side of the argument you have people who swear by anything social and believe it to be of an immense value add. I for one do think that SCRM is here to stay, and it can only promise to grow with more and more businesses adopting social media technologies.
I deal with design and through this article I wish to seek out the challenges that designers face and should consider when designing for Social CRMs. It may be noted that these are just an indicative list and not a definitive one. With changes happening almost everyday (Facebook introduced the Timeline as I write this), the challenges can only increase.
In the earlier days of the traditional CRMs, the engagement with the customer happened around three domains, ie.
a. Sales, b. Marketing and c. Service and Support.
With the rise of usage of social media platforms being used for things beyond just the customer engagement, promotions and post purchase support, the notion of the Social CRMs goes higher than the above mentioned three domains. Amongst all of this change, the main change is in the role of the customers.
What has also changed is the increase in the data load of the systems. One is not just tracking and keeping a note of customer feedback and questions and relationships, but more data in an efficient and process-centric way.
The ultimate goal of the traditional CRM was to have a customer get back to buy more stuff from the same outlet or retail. The goal of the SRCM also primarily remains the same, though the parameters and the channels have increased.
As Paul Greenberg writes, ‘Social CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.’
Social CRMs is more like a design strategy exercise that is often supported by various tools and technologies and the strategy is based around customer engagement, interactions and experiences. So apart from the traditional goals of marketing and customer query answering and increase in sales, a SCRM is also looked upon as a source for peer-to-peer customer support, idea management, market research, product launches, advertising channels, promotions and brand reputation management.
The customers today are better informed and have a lot more channels to vent out. So the value addition that SCRM must bring about and influence at a larger scale is important. This in my opinion is a design problem and the solution should be done through a proper design and not by force. We are not talking about just going overboard with the social media technologies, as there is always the danger of over-selling.
In this context, I seek to outline some of the challenges that the designer faces .
1. The complexity of dealing with offline and online world at the same time.
More and more people are spending more time online. With the advent of cloud computing and usage of the cloud to manage large systems, the user is connected 24X7. Our lifestyles are being monitored all time and as a result we tend to expect more of the service at all times.
2. Understanding the users.
This has been a designer’s classic problem space, but with every passing year, the users seems to get more sophisticated. There are more social technologies that are being adopted every year than the previous ones. One of the biggest goals of the designer needs to be keep things simple in this complex world too. In the present context, the users (customers) define the processes and also define the hours in which they seek the customer service and engagement.
3. The notion of identity.
In the earlier days of the CRMs, there was more personal relationships with the person that would often have a face to face meeting. In the days of the Social CRMs, often people tend to have a different persona that they present online and in the offline world. So the key is to ensure the seamless integration of both the worlds.
4. Share it to engage in it.
A lot of the things happen realtime and as a result of the identity point, one is often in the risk of sharing too much. For a designer this is challenging as the issues of privacy and trust become important to take care of. Often the user fails to understand the legal implications of being involved in a Social CRM and often it could lead to situations of brand reputation being at stake, to public defamation. It is the duty of the designer to engage the users in a way so as to avoid the situations mentioned.
5. Customers are your channel of advocacy
Decisions on buying and becoming loyal to a brand are highly influenced these days by peers and the discussions that happen across the different channels. It is not about “sell & forget” any more. The relationship with the individual goes beyond that. The design should be flexible to enable the cycle of purchase, enjoyment, advocacy, bonding. This could only lead to a valuable customer for life.
6. Multiple channels
Unlike the earlier days where the CRM relied on one channel, these days the Social CRMs often rely on multiple channels. The customers define the dynamism of each of these channels and as a result keeps the brands on their feet. It is not uncommon to hear of a change in brand loyalty often these days due to not being able to cater on one or more of the channels. In the ideal world, one would expect the same customer experience, no matter what channel one is looking at, be it the social media technologies one or the traditional face to face interactions.
7. Changing platforms and the issue of scalability
With technology penetrating more and more into our lives, reaching out to the right representatives at any point of time, from anywhere is happening and it is not limited to only a particular device. Mobiles, tablets and of course the laptops and hi-tech systems have made life complex. Dealing with issues of web portability and being able to provide the same wow user experience across platforms is the key.
8. Making sense of the chaos
The main challenge for the businesses is to translate the pillars of Social CRM i.e. the fans, likes, shares, re-share into sales. All these pillars of the SCRM leads to a lot of data being generated. Making sense of all of it is important and only then can the SCRM be of value immense value add for them. For the customers, this also holds importance, since their decisions are opinionated on the past experience of the others. The key here is thus to translate it into a data-driven-high-user-experience design, such that it can be beneficial for both the designer and the business. Tools such as information visualizations and analytics can be of immense to the designers too here.
9. Understanding the limitations of Technology.
There has been a lot of debates around whether designers should understand technology or not. In my opinion they must. I am not talking about making them do the code work, but at-least have a good understanding of how technology and the frameworks that they are designing for function.
10. Business process integrations
Whatever said and done, the Social CRMs are primarily aimed at driving sales growth and improving customer service. For the designer to understand this, means that they need to get a better understanding of the way the Business works. This can especially be important for those businesses adopting Social Media technologies for the first time.
The goals for the businesses should be to ensure that Social CRMs can be used in a strategic manner and through countless experiments on the customer side as well as the business side. It is not only important to look into the low hanging fruits and reward the customer as a one off thing, but to look into a SCRM as a means of engaging with the customer for a longer period of time, or perhaps for the entire life. It is only then that can one think of a change that would be more transformational and would result in the way the business adopts the SCRM and as a result gain the trust of the customer.
Businesses need to realize that Social CRM is not merely a channel to push the different discounts and deals to either all or elite group of customers. It’s not only about incentivizing the whole customer engagement models. It’s about providing an experience that goes stays with the customer through the different stages i.e. promotion to engagement to transaction to prophecy to return for engagement.
In conclusion.
One has to remember that what we are talking about it nothing new, but an evolution of the traditional CRMs. In order to be a person who can be good at the whole notion of Social CRMs, you have to have an understanding of philosophy, social dynamics, cultural aspects, the technology platform. In my opinion, a designer is the only person who comes close to having some sort of understanding of the above fields and as a result face the immense challenge. The designer who are trained to think form the human/user/customer perspective are a lot that would be the best suited. Though no one can deny the fact that this is a lot to ask from one person. But hang in there dear designers. You are a valued lot.
