Image via WikipediaThough I have been tinkering with or thinking about Social Media/Networing/CRM/Business for more than three to four years now, I never got a complete hang of why I felt it was the right thing to do. I have been reading &/or talking to a lot of others who feel the same and I have managed to collate a few salient points here. This is a very hurried post. So please excuse me for my 'brevity'. :)
A few trends lead to SCRM:
- Social media is a communication revolution, especially for its users (customers & employees of an organization)
- Digital - meaning next to nill cost of production/distribution & no gatekeepers
- Proactive - articulation & co-creation
- Networks - explicit & implicit
- Visible - UGC is visible to all, including ur location thanks to LBS
- Real-time yet persistent (thanks to falling costs of broadband & memory)
- Ubiquitous - mobiles & internet of things
- Customers transformed from being exogenous to value creation to endogenous to it, from a firm's perspective
- Since Industrial revolution things progressed so:
- Supply-Demand economy or Mass production - top brass decided what to produce & limited by availability of raw materials, human resources & supply chain - customer not considered at all - customer a passive receipient
- Service economy or differentiation - matrix organizations created to enable innovation & thus differentiation - customer needs guessed by secondary means, rarely via direct VOC - customer gets taste of what she can demand for, still passive receipient but post purchase behavior begins to matter - value exchange still happens at single point
- Behavioral economy or Pull platforms - open collaboration, innovation, co-creation, customer centricity raise their head from obscurity, thanks to a more aware customer enbaled by social media - customer demands, dictates & tests (co-creates) products/services & helps other customers - customer is integral to value creation - value exchange happens at multiple points - customer engagement goes beyond transaction into WOM, co-creation & complaining behavior
