Gartner and Forrester lead the analysts’ charge into the social customer

The integration of social media and CRM technology will give businesses an unprecedented ability to build deep relationships with their customers within a few years, according to analyst Gartner - while Forrester says it is imperative for companies to have a sound social media customer engagement strategy.

Businesses will ultimately be able to create a single view of their customers, which includes their comments on Twitter, and how they interact with the company on the web and through mobile devices according to Gartner.

But many businesses are missing out because they view social networking as another sales and support channel, rather than a way of understanding their customers, says Jim Davies the Gartner research director in an interview with Computer Weekly.

"We think that is missing the point," said Jim Davies, chairman of Gartner's CRM summit in March. "Over the past decade CRM has been about management of the customer. With social media, it’s about relationships."
He advises CIOs to incorporate social media into their CRM strategies to help their organisations gain a better understanding of the mood of their customers, their needs, aspirations, what they like and what they don't like.

"Most companies have a master data management strategy. As an action item they should look how to embrace new data channels - the data associated with a customer's mobile presence, web presence and social media. That is a big challenge," said Davies.
By doing so, businesses will be able to differentiate themselves from competitors by offering better customer service - an increasingly important factor for companies selling commodity products.

"There is a lot of effort going into improving customer experience. It's key to get consistency across different channels so their experience does not vary," he says.
"Its about capturing the voice of the customer. It's that ability to listen to the customer and act on what they say. That could be through a survey, a tweet or a conversation with a call centre agent. The key is to bring all these elements together to find out what customers are saying."
Major CRM suppliers, such as Oracle/Seibel, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and Pegasystems are working to develop social media capabilities in their CRM systems.

But small specialist companies are taking the lead. The market leaders are Jive and Lithium, which have a broad set of social technologies.
"Their challenge is to integrate into CRM processes because they are not CRM vendors at heart. The classic CRM vendors will be stronger in the long-term," Davies says.

The technology needed to analyse social media is also at an early stage. Companies like ClickFox, Attensity, and Nice Systems, are looking to become "voice of the customer" hubs.
"There are a lot of companies doing customer surveys, speech analysis, and social media, but they are not yet putting those together to get a single view for the voice of the customer. That is what these hubs are trying to offer," says Davies.
He advises CIOs to develop a social media strategy to work out which services the organisation should offer customers on mobile devices, and what this means from a technology point of view.

"Logically, how do you approach getting a single view of the customer voice? You can either do that by ripping out all your systems and trying to buy a system that does it all. Or by using a virtual system that can bring all the silos together.
"The Nirvana is to have a centralised approach, but that is not yet possible, so you need a hybrid approach."

 "Social media is not an end in and of itself, it is an enabler," said Anthony Bradley, group vice-president at Gartner. "Social media technologies are tools and - like any technology - it is how people use those tools that delivers business results."
According to Gartner social media efforts are failing, because some organisations do not understand how to employ social media to facilitate collective behaviours. The company has listed tips for social media success

1. Enable collective intelligence for operational effectiveness
Organisations looking to improve internal operational effectiveness through enhanced collaboration, especially around product delivery, customer service and creation of a corporate memory, should examine employing blogs and wikis.

2. Employ expertise location for sales effectiveness
Organisations seeking to improve sales effectiveness should assess social networking to enable expertise location behaviours associated with product delivery, product utilisation and customer service.

3. Unearth emergent structures for operational effectiveness
Emergent structures are structures that are unknown or unplanned prior to social interactions but emerge as activity progresses. Once organisations understand the value of social media and experience some initial success, then emergent structures become more appealing and the chances for success are higher.

4  Increase sales through interest cultivation
Gartner has found that organisations that have successfully facilitated interest cultivation have experienced stronger customer loyalty and increased customer engagement, leading to better brand awareness, increased customer feedback and increased sales.

Meanwhile Forrester says social media are rapidly emerging as the next frontiers for customer engagement and interactions.
There are millions of customer interactions taking place everyday on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as a vast number of customer support forums and online communities.

This is projected to grow exponentially over the next five to six years as the number of active users of social media sites and forums continues to grow.
This trend also reflects a fundamental shift from predominantly 'company-customer' interactions to 'customer-customer interactions that influence company-customer relationships'.

It therefore becomes imperative for companies to have a sound social media customer engagement strategy says Forrester.
This Frost & Sullivan Executive Brief, commissioned by Sitel, discusses some of the main challenges contact centre organisations will face as they implement social media customer support across various online channels.
It also presents recommendations on how to effectively overcome these challenges, while building a strong foundation for continuous improvements.