Photo: jurvetson

In his recent article on the Software Advice blog, Houston Neal builds a case against the existence of Social CRM. I think the real issue is that the technology providers haven’t caught up to the somewhat overhyped promise of how companies should manage social relationships with their customers.

From the moment we started Trustworthy, we envisioned a day when our services would integrate seamlessly with a client’s existing CRM software.

The implications were huge. We imagined responding to customers with complete purchase histories, tech support tickets, and demographics in front of us. Armed with all this automated info, we could respond in record time with the perfect answer tailored specifically to each customer. In turn, we’d log our interactions into the system, adding valuable intelligence about communication preferences, product usage and analytics.

The writing was on the wall, too. Software giants like SalesForce.com were already hinting at social media features that seemed ready to deliver everything we’d dreamed.

It’s 2011. Where’s my jetpack? Where’s my flying car?

So far, the best we have is a lot of talk about Social CRM from analysts and pundits but none of the providers are actually connecting the dots. Overall, monitoring tools monitor and enable engagement, while CRM tools offer shallow products integrating Facebook and Twitter tracking.

In a valiant effort to bridge the gap, Radian6 announced integration with Salesforce.com in 2009. From the R6 dashboard, you could add Cases, Contacts and Leads to a record in Salesforce, and store histories of online interactions. But just like the old-media-marketing dinosaurs the Social Age has pushed towards extinction, this conversation is too one-sided to provide much more than better lead generation and targeting. This might improve the company’s experience, but the CRM provider needs to meet them halfway if we’re going to improve the customer’s experience.

Right now, unless your company has development resources to patch together API’s and create your own custom bridge between monitoring, response management, CRM, and analytics (our approach here at Trustworthy), you’ll have to manually manage multiple services because no one provides a turnkey solution.

And while we’ll be the ones jumping up and down like a New Yorker with a Verizon iPhone when someone does finally offer a complete Social CRM suite, the real winners will be the customers who benefit from what will surely be the next level of customer service.

Well, Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management did not disappoint. In fact, we may look back at this as one of the more important manifestos for the future of consumer relations. Hyperbole? Only if ignored by the intended audience: Organizations attempting to brave the new frontier of customer relations management in a social web world.

The report maps out a framework of 18 Use Cases that give brands a comprehensive, laser-focused guide to augmenting current CRM systems with Social CRM. If you’re the CRM Manager burdened with creating a plan for your company’s social strategy, go ahead and take the rest of the year off. Ray and Jeremiah have done all the heavy lifting. All you need to do is adapt for your business, and they’ve even provided a list of vendors to call. Seriously, this is a blueprint of practical, actionable insights that if followed, will immediately give your organization the competitive advantage.

Read it here and then blaze new trails with the Social CRM Pioneers!

Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship ManagementView more documents from Jeremiah Owyang.

And if you’re wondering where we fit in…

Framework of the 18 Use Cases of Social CRM

Real-time Google results for "facebook privacy"

Two big things happened last week that will affect the way companies interact with their customers on the web.

1. Google launched real-time search, streaming tweets along with news above the normal results.
2. Facebook announced new privacy settings soon after striking deals with Google and Bing.

Both are game-changers, but let’s start with Google’s real-time search as I think it will have a greater impact on brands starting NOW. We’ve long-argued that a company’s reputation will live forever in blog posts, news stories and user-reviews on Google. We’ve also argued that for Facebook and Twitter, the walled garden limitations in numbers was offset by the trusted message coming from a friend. Well, Google just tore down that wall and now brand managers must face the fact that a casual search for a product might open a deluge of negative tweets ABOVE the organic results. Jennifer Leggio calls it a “wake-up call for brands” on ZDNet, using Starbucks as an example.

Here at Trustworthy, we see this as a good thing because it forces companies to face the music. More resources will go towards making sure no customer gets to the digital-outburst point. Hopefully this will lead to better products, better customer service, and an intrinsically consumer-focused approach.

The new privacy tools on Facebook have caused more debate here, as we try to put a figure on the ratio of public vs. private profiles. We cannot find the data (yet), but can feel a not-so-subtle push from Facebook to make more content public since that is the value they provide to search engines like Google and Bing. My guess is that the percentage of public profiles is already much higher than we’d expect. The folks working these deals are no dummies and the slice of Facebook’s 350 million on the table must have some scale. Others here think the majority are already private and the thought of their status updates being blasted out in public search will cause more to go private.

Either way, if you’ve ever downplayed the impact of someone with a small network on Twitter or Facebook: This. Changes. Everything.

Photo: tanguero

The idea of building a “community” around your brand – or around anything needs to be re-thunk. Yes, these are your passionate customers and they must be cared for with the utmost of appreciation. But watch the tools people use today to communicate every errant thought, and you’ll quickly see that you need to be watching everything, everywhere. Not just inside the wonderful community you’ve nurtured.

It’s great to have a Community Manager on staff. It is easily a full-time job for one, or even a team, to monitor and engage with the community that has signed up to be counted and heard. You have forums, feeds, review features – and it’s become an imperative to create brand-stations in all the places where your customers naturally congregate: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. But all this effort is rooted in the assumption that your current and potential customers have bothered to find you in these places. If you’re doing only this, you’ve lost your peripheral vision.

The evolution of online and mobile social communication tools in the last few years has created a consumer who can spit out Tourette’s-like bursts of praise and dissatisfaction about your brand almost as effortlessly as flipping open her phone. And as she does so, she knows that her friends will read it and if she hashtags appropriately, so will the world.

Give me one reason why they would be compelled to seek out your Facebook profile.

And that’s just today. Tomorrow’s Internet generation will expect to be always wired, always connected. Will they seek out your community? Or will they expect you to be listening? The new consumer entitlement is constant, 1:1 communication with any brand that wants their business. You need to seize every opportunity whenever and wherever it happens.

tWiitter: Comparing Twitter to Wii

I predict Twitter (or a similar form of microblogging) will be bigger than blogs some day. I feel I might be in the minority here, as I’ve been hearing more and more people say things like “It’s the Second Life of 2008″ or “It’s the latest ‘shiny object’ but will fade away like so many fads.” I disagree and here’s why:

Twitter got through what Seth Godin calls “The Dip” in ’07 and by the end of ’08 it officially went mainstream with the Obama campaign and CNN’s Rick Sanchez making “the Twitter board” an integral part of his show.

But that’s not why it will be bigger than blogs.

Take a look at how Nintendo’s Wii blindsided both Microsoft (XBOX 360) and Sony (PS3). Many people would like to play video games, but complicated gameplay and controls drove all but the die-hard gamers away. Enter Wii. It’s easy. It’s fun. The controls are simple and intuitive. Grandma can play with a 5 year old and have a blast.

Now look at blogs. People gravitate to the idea of having a blog, but blogs require a large investment of time and a commitment to keep it up. Enter Twitter. It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s convenient from browser and mobile device.

If blogs are the democratization of publishing and distributing ideas, news and content, then Twitter is the democratization of blogs.