Social Media and the CRM, the development of the Social CRM

This is the first of a series of posts we will be doing on Social Media and the changes it is introducing in how organizations manage their CRM strategy.

As part of the project Cenit Social Media, sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (CDTI program), we at the Innova Institute have been working with Indra to describe the possible future scenarios for the so called Social CRM.

Social Media are becoming a new point of contact with current or potential customers. It has been argued that actually Social Media knows more about customers and users of a company than the organization itself (Wang & Owyang, 2010). Nevertheless, it is rather complex to integrate this knowledge in the organization’s structure.

The challenge of introducing the customer in the product and service development processes has been studied from different perspectives, including "Open Innovation", "User Involvement", or "Lead users” management (Chesbrough 2003). In general, theses perspectives imply that organizations have to rethink their customer relationship’s value chain and consequently their CRM strategy, producing a shift on the client role in the early stages of the organization’s value chain.

In coming blog entries we will be sharing the insights from the project; meanwhile, we would like to hear about your perspective on Social Media: has your organization adopted a Social CRM strategy? Has Social Media changed how your interact with your customers?

References:

• Wang, R. & Owyang, J., 2010. Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management, Altimeter Group.
• Chesbrough, H. W., 2003. The Era of Open Innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review.