Imagine you're back in your senior year of college and it's a chilly Friday night in fall. You're at a raging party. There has to be nearly a hundred people in this house! But all the partygoers are standing around, looking sort of confused. There's a keg of beer in the middle of the living room and everyone's looking for cups, but there are none in the house. Someone goes to the grocery store and comes back 15 minutes later. "There's no cups at the grocery store," he says. People begin to rumble in conversation. Slowly, everyone leaves the party, because there's just no way to drink the beer. People wander off to the bars, leaving the house empty.
This situation, my friends, illustrates the key problem with customer social data. There's tons of data. The data's cheap and good (like all beer seems when you're 21, right?). But just as there is no party without cups for the beer, without somewhere to put the customer social data, there will be no results for your brand.
So, where is all of the customer data supposed to go? From everything I've read about CRM, the folks at Siebel (later, Oracle, when they acquired that brand) were probably the first to put forth the "Single Sources of Truth" theory, which answers that question pretty simply.
What it all boils down to is this: every business essentially reconciles their data to one of three different places:
1. Customer Relationship Management software (CRM)
2. Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP)
3. Supply Chain Management software (SCM)
It is easy to remember these three by considering how they coincide with people (CRM), projects (ERP), and things (SCM).
Naysayers might ask, "Well, what would you call Human Capital Management software like Success Factors or ADP?" I'd call that ERP, used for the management of human resources. They might also say, "Well, I work at Chili's, and we can't take all of the people posting on our company's Facebook wall and manually put it in our CRM system. That would take forever." This sentiment may hold some truth, but there are many ways that a brand could do "light" Social CRM and stop short of using a real CRM system. The results, however, won't be nearly as assessable.
There are a lot of Social Media Management systems out there like Buddy Media, Context Optional, and Awareness Networks' Social Marketing Hub. Even the small-business e-mail marketing brands like Constant Contact have gotten into the action with their acquisition of small business social media monitoring companies like NutshellMail. As small-business e-mail marketing brands (Constant Contact, Vertical Response) see the potential of their involvement with managing social customer data, they've invented products in the Social Event Management space, competing with best-of-breed companies like Eventbrite, in attempts to become one-stop shops for social customer information for small companies.
Regardless of what management system you use, this social customer data all has to go somewhere. So, here's how I advocate figuring out where it should go.
SOCIAL CUSTOMER PREWORK
It may sound a little cheesy or a little "Stephen Covey," but you have to take first things first. The following four steps to routing customer data must be taken before you engage in the actual Social CRM strategy.
Note, these steps are not the strategic methodology itself, they are only the prework. (Similar to things you need to do before you put on a tuxedo-shower, shave, a little spritz of cologne, perhaps?)
1. Figure out which systems your brand currently has working around the social customer. These systems are Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Supply Chain Management (SCM).
2. Decide which ones you absolutely need, and which ones you can live without. It's entirely possible that your brand is too small for an ERP system. Maybe you're using some legacy HR software that just can't or won't connect to your Social CRM system. This is the part where you're going to have to make tough choices about the social customer.
3. Decide on the implementation timeline and build the missing systems. This isn't that simple a recommendation, if your brand lacks, say, a SCRM system. This timeline could reach out 12 to 36 months into the future. You may also want to look at marketing or sales automation or lead nurturing systems here, as an extension of the SCRM (stuff like Eloqua or Marketo). It's nice to have the customer data, but you need to make it hum.
4. Simultaneously, begin any and all "listening programs" on the social Web. These programs, running on a Social Media Monitoring System (SMMS) don't necessarily need to be connected to the three single sources of truth, at this time. You can connect them later. If your organization has no experience with social media monitoring, just spend the first 30 days "listening" before you engage. You may be tempted to jump right in if the social customer is saying bad stuff about your brand, but try not to until your team has become good at listening. How do you know you're good? You feel like you're getting a reading of all of the stuff out there, across all channels. And don't think that the integration between the SMMS and Social CRM systems is automated or perfect. Far from it.
Ed. note: This is part of a series of excerpts from The Social Customer, the new guide to social customer acquisition, monetization, and retention by Adam Metz. For the first entry, go here.