From a process standpoint, the traditional processes need to be tuned to integrate with social inputs. Whereas the traditional processes may be more detailed or cumbersome, the social media related processes need to be agile. The integration of processes is essential to ensure that social media doesn't become another channel working in a silo.
From a technology standpoint, the enterprise needs to choose the right social media channels that are most relevant to their business and stakeholders. It may also need a new set of tools that can gather the right intelligence from these channels and make the information beneficial to the CRM processes.
Last but not least is the people dimension. Employees, customers and partners are the stakeholders in a social CRM initiative. They will adopt social CRM only if they gain something from it. These gains can different for different stakeholders, for example improved experience, higher productivity, reputation, response time, etc. In the following sections, we will further explore how an organization can manage the risks of failure related to people changes and ensure the best possible experience from its social CRM initiatives.
Challenges in Social CRM Adoption
There are a number of challenges that need to be overcome for a successful social CRM initiative. If not managed properly, these challenges can become a threat for the social CRM program. The key challenges are:
- Cultural shift: Conversation control shifts in favor of the customer. Customers can go viral with their complaints damaging the brand. The mindset of the organization needs to change to “engage” customers rather than “control” their relationships.
- Lack of trust: Customers’ lack of trust in the organization or brand will be apparent via the social media messages. An open and transparent relationship with the customers with a genuine interest to meet the customer needs will need a change to the way a customer relationship is managed.
- Resistance to change: Social CRM requires a change in the way employees or partners go about their daily activities. This change can be in terms of processes managed, responsibilities handled, etc. Unless the benefits of these changes are made clear and the changes percolate through the system, there may be a high level of resistance hampering the delivery of the social CRM initiatives.
- Lack of skills and guidelines: An employee's presence on Facebook doesn't mean that he can become a good social agent. Without the right set of skills and guidelines, employees may put out incorrect communication or divulge confidential information and cause a negative impact on social media.
- Working in silos: Lack of collaboration between different units/partners will lead to isolated social CRM initiatives. Their adoption will be limited and within the boundaries of the unit. This will lead to inconsistent customer messaging and a potentially disconnected experience for the customer.
As these challenges relate to people, there is a strong case for a well-defined change management approach that will gradually bring about the change in the mindset of the various stakeholders.
Change Management Process
A typical change management model for a social CRM initiative can be represented as below. The three key stakeholders – employees, partners and customers – need to be considered during all stages.
Prepare for Change
The “social” way of working requires a change to the culture of the organization. The social customer exercises a much higher level of control. The conversations are visible to a large audience and may consist of criticism more often than appreciated by the organization. In turn, the organization has to listen, learn and act from this vast source of unique conversations in social media. The organization needs to assess the readiness of its key stakeholders for adapting to social changes.
Customers: There are various factors that impact the level of adaption of social media of customers for organizations. These may be geographic (developed versus developing countries), demographic (Gen Y versus Gen X) or industry (retail versus utilities). An organization with significant customer presence in social media has a higher opportunity to improve customer engagement via that channel. Other organizations may need to plan on providing specific incentives to encourage customer adoption of social media. These incentives can be defined in terms of reputation related rewards, loyalty points or direct rewards, such as coupons.
Employees: Employees at different levels within the enterprise need to be aligned with the social CRM initiative. At the senior management level, there needs to be strong sponsorship and commitment toward imbibing “social” in the CRM processes. In more traditional or conservative organizations, there may be a need to bring in change agents who can spread enthusiasm and accelerate employee on-boarding.
For employees who are actually going to participate in the social initiatives, there is a need to empower and train them with the right set of processes and tools that can help the organization benefit. As an example, social media usage policies and guidelines need to be created. Employees would need to be trained to use different social media and may even need special skills related to building virtual gaming or community environments. Reward and recognition practices would also need to be tuned to capture social media metrics such as determining SLAs of customer service issues via Twitter. Identification of these metrics would need to be done during the planning phase.
Partners: Partner organizations in the value chain are in a position to influence the success or failure of a social CRM initiative. It is important to keep the partners involved in the social CRM strategy process and get their inputs on the initiatives being planned. If a car company is planning a social media campaigns for the launch of its new model, all dealers need to be engaged to handle leads from these campaigns. They also should be sending out the same message via their own social CRM initiatives. Integrating the partners from the planning stage itself will ensure that there is no disconnect during implementation.
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