This week the #SCRM community practiced what it preached when Paul Greenberg pulled together a room full of the top thought leaders in SCRM. Many thanks to Paul for being the magnet that pulled us all together and many personal thanks for including me in the event.
Where to start...First, much to my surprise we had almost full attendance despite the snow and travel challenges. I was a local and almost got scared from braving the roads but knew I needed to be there given the number of stellar attendees. And I'm pretty darned sure that's what motivated the other attendees to brave the travel tribulations too.
What I loved about the group was the open discussion, and sometimes debate, within the conference room and in the evenings' various social gatherings. We don't always agree with each other but everyone handles the debates with professional courtesy and a willingness to evolve their thoughts. That's how we all grow.
Here are 7 takeaways that hit the loudest.
The 7 takeaways
- Start with Customer Strategy - Focus on humans
first. Make it the cornerstone of your strategy. Everything else,
including technology, is moot until you do.
Start by mapping your customer experience. Gain an honest understanding of your customer's sense of satisfaction. Go beyond mere surveys by having open dialogs with your customers. Be sure your exec team has their own convos as well. They need to hear the raw responses from customers so the messages will have a full impact.
Fortify your strengths and retool where your Customer Strategy fails. Continue to dialog with customers to see how you're doing. Repeat. - Customer expectations. What's important is your
customers' expectation for their experience with your company. Sure,
you still need to run your business with efficiency and effectiveness
but build your processes around the customer expectations -- not in
spite of them.
Customers have expectations for immediacy. Find ways to meet it. Sometimes that might mean alerting the customer of when you can have a complete answer to a more complex answer but at least give them that. - Co-creation with customers doesn't have to be
grandiose. Sometimes co-creation can be small or iterative - but it
will always be shaped by customer expectations. Thus, you have to
understand those expectations, which means understanding your customers
(and not what you think you understand). See #2.
- Social CRM refers to a collaborative corporate mindset
- which means it extends beyond marketing or customer service. If your
company is going to be truly effective, then you need to collaborate
within the organization and across departments, as well as with your
customers and external partners.
- Social CRM is a team sport. Effective SCRM
impacts culture (people), business processes, and technology. There
are smart employees and consultants but no one person will have all the
answers needed to build a comprehensive strategy. Expect to build a
team compromised of internal folks mixed with external consultants as
needed.
- Social CRM technology is evolving. The
technologies themselves are starting to mature but will need to
continue innovating in lock-step with growing business demand and
expectations.
Stop debating definitions of E20 versus SCRM versus whatever else. At the day's end, tech solutions are all about creating pathways to connect your audiences (customers, partners, employees, and prospects) and foster collaboration. The rest is labels and semantics.
When it comes to technology, think best of breed across solutions that will play well together. Corporate needs will change as will solutions. Whatever you implement needs to be up to the task of evolving too. - The SCRM Accidental Community practices what it preaches. We're all excited about our work - and eager to help each other , our companies, and clients succeed. We're sharing our knowledge within the community and extending it outwards. And we're forming collaborative partnerships with each other. We're open to new members and embrace new thought.
Note, Brian Vellmure has a list of his own 6 takeaways. You can check out his thoughts here.
There's another #SCRMSummit being offered in Atlanta in May so be sure to go if you missed the one in DC.
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