These days anyone hanging out on twitter or in the blogosphere is is being
bombarded with the word social. OK, the CRM 2.0'ers lost the good fight but
has the word really changed businesses? Or did businesses, all businesses,
change to drive this new term? I have to tell you that I'm out there talking
to customers all the time, and I'm just not sure. Are you?
I certainly understand what is being described when terms like the social
customer are discussed. But this suddenly leads to The Social Business and
that's where my alarm bells start going off. Sure, customers operate
differently today - more so in the retail area I feel, but I don't let
myself get sold, I am an informed buyer because I have access to the
information I need, and the network of people I trust. I'm social. But are
all customers social?
The Varying Degrees of the Social Customer
1. The local Popcorn Shop - I'm from a little town in Northeast Ohio called
Chagrin Falls. It has a waterfall. Directly above the waterfall is an
extremely old building precariously balanced over the falls. Each time I
walk in there, I'm afraid today's the day. But I digress. The popcorn shop
is a cool place to go when your strolling around town, window shopping or
just gazing at the river. It has great ice cream, candy and of course
popcorn. It's popularity is from word of mouth (WOM) that has developed over
years and years of happy experiences. People know about it because people
talk about it. I'm sure there are web references to it. I'm sure there is
the occasional teenage tweet about it these days. It has always benefitted
from the social customer - the traditional way. Yes, they existed way before
Twitter. In fact, they existed before the Internet.
2. The Regional Ice Cream Franchise - My sister used to live in Cincinnati
and one of the only reasons I would visit her is because she lived 2 blocks
from a Graeter's Ice Cream Parlor. Just kidding - kinda. If you've ever had
Graeter's you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the best damn ice
cream on the face of the Earth! Huge chunks of chewy chocolate in every bit.
Large chunks peppermint (they need to make this year round). They just
started selling it through Kroger's here in Atlanta a few weeks ago and my
wife, who is even more obsessed about Graeter's than I am, are in heaven. We
talk to people about it all the time. Oprah has talked about it. It's
another one of those WOM deals, only on a larger scale. Are people tweeting
about it? Yea, probably more than the Popcorn Shop. But, is it enough to
justify a geek squad to monitor it? I don't know, most of the people I know
are very happy with Graeter's. What's the point?
3. The Well Known Brand - When you have a retail product, and everyone knows
who your are, there are certain percentage of the folks who are gonna be
gunning for you - regardless. Do you worry about them? I wouldn't too much
normally, but now they have big megaphones. But are they customers? Well,
you do have to protect the brand regardless, but you also need to find
disengagement in your customers so you can keep them. Maybe social media is
a trigger, maybe it's other data. Bottom line, it depends and it's not
something you would just do because it's cool. Remember when the new Coke
came out? There was no Twitter, yet the company had to take the product off
the market within weeks of it's launch. So, there's always been the impact
of the crowd, but does the business strategy become recentered around social
toosl simply because there are new channels out there? Yea, I said it -
CHANNELS. :)
Sure, as you get bigger, there is going to be more chatter about you in the
new channels that make it easy. You as a business, have to decide whether it
makes sense to make this investment in monitoring technology, and increased
staff, to deal with a tangible problem. Beware of sales people with
solutions looking for a problem!
What About This B2B Business?
Recently I've been involved with a middle market company that contracts with
facilities to provide services used by the tenants. The deal is with the
facility or management company and the bill goes to the tenant. What? Who's
this bill from? Sounds like it's ripe for a tweet. But wait a minute. This
company is not widely known outside the companies it does business with.
They have a modest number of clients, not millions of retail, brand loyal,
or disloyal, customers. Basically, no one is spending time blogging about
them or tweeting about them. No one is posting articles about them to
article directories. Their Universe simply isn't that big.
Do they have social customers?
They are B2B. There customer isn't a person, nor is any single person the
decision-maker. Buying committees don't assign tweet responsibilities when
pricing negotiations breakdown. That just isn't happening, nor would it have
much impact if it were (which is why it's not happening). The answer is that
they kinda have social customers in that the people they deal with browse
the Internet and have much greater control over the buying process in their
personal world. But that doesn't necessarily apply to this particular
business now, does it?
So, is the problem this business faces social?
The answer is no. In fact, they are like many companies out there that are
still struggling with implementing strategies, processes and technology that
allow them to scale instead of being hamstrung by people processes designed
to navigate numerous functional and data silos. So which problem do you fix
first? The answer is simple, the only problem that has presented itself. Is
the problem a lack of customer-centricity? Don't know - I haven't gotten
that far yet. But even if it is, I haven't seen an obvious problem that a
more traditional outside-in CRM approach wouldn't solve. Did I miss
something? Is the problem really social?
Mike Boysen link
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