There’s been a lot of talk lately about Social CRM,CEM (customer relationship management) and other M’s. I think M, which stands for management, is a bit of a misnomer, because we aren’t really managing our customers as much as we are collaborating with them, peer-to-peer, shoulder-to-shoulder vs. the top-down and inside-out approach of yesteyear. Management decided what the product would be, marketing decided how to market and message, and then the product and its marketing gets put into the customer’s face as-is. This no longer works. But I digress… The point I was making is not that I have an issue with certain terms — after all, it doesn’t matter what you call something as long as you do it — the point I was making was that you shouldn’t focus on the management as much as you should focus on the experience.
To actually give this experience to others, you need to live and breathe it within your organization. You can’t adopt social if you aren’t ready to service the social customers; regardless of whether or not you are using social for awareness or another goal, customers will want your help regardless, so you need to prepare to service them. Crummy service and crummy product are the top killers of customer experience. No matter how pretty your community is, and how awesome your charts and graphs are, if the customer experience is bad, your social media efforts will backfire. A lot of the great experience will come from the product actually helping them do the jobs they need to do (see Wim Rampen’s writing for that). And a lot of it will come from uncomplicated, honest and empathetic customer service. As Ray Wang said at the CRM Evolutions conference in NYC last week during his session, “Social CRM is all about the RIGHT interaction with the RIGHT person at the RIGHT time”. Regardless of whether you do it online, via email, via phone, or in person, the same commitment has to be there, otherwise things will just fall apart. And guess what.. this experience has to be uniformly excellent, no matter if I ask for help online or in person. And what this means is that it has to become part of the organizational fabric, an unquivering raison-d-etre for the entire company. It has to be communicated top-down, down-up, sideways and every other way. Adequate training has to be provided, and employee rewards and reviews have to measure how effectively their job provides an excellent experience (and yes, even jobs that aren’t directly touching the customer, provide a customer experience). Because as we all know, what gets measured, gets done. I’m not talking about lipservice, I’m talking about real-life hard work that goes into instilling excellence into every part of the organization.
Let’s consider an example. Just yesterday, I was in a major department store looking for a watch to replace the watch that quite unceremoniously decided to vacate my wrist and smash on the New York City pavement. I was tired from a 7 a.m. flight and I just wanted someone to help me take some watches out of a case so I could try them on. There was a woman behind the counter doing her own stuff. Hmmm… I am sure she didn’t see me, so let me make sure she did, I said to myself. “Excuse me, can you help me?” I asked her. “I don’t work here, I’m just visiting from another store, but let me get someone for you.” I looked at her bewildered by what she said and partly by lack of sleep. Surely, she hasn’t read many SCRM blogs, because she doesn’t know that the social customer doesn’t really care where you work or don’t work: if you wear the company badge, you better wear your service hat with it. And then the most amazing thing happened. I just walked away. I didn’t tweet or do anything, partly because I now have an old school flip phone as I wait for my iPhone4 to come in to replace the one I lost in New York. I simply walked away, because I will not be buying a watch from there, and this experience is forever deposited into my mental file associated with this store’s brand. I even contemplated returning a designer bag I just bought there and haven’t used yet. Surely, this store hasn’t done an adequate job of explaining to everyone how important customers really are.
Before you ever talk about improving your processes, and adopting tools, you need to commit to an excellent experience first. This is where SCRM and CEM stop being theory and become practice. You need to start with your culture and become what you preach. You need to fix the experience and service, before you just throw yourself into social, because if your customer experience is subpar, social will only put it under a microscope. As Martin Schneider said, “both companies and consumers are finding themselves accepting social as a band-aid to bad service rather than an additional tool to extend the relationship”.
Photo credit Kate Hazard
themaria wrote,
My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
rwang0 wrote,
RT @themaria: My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
mjayliebs wrote,
RT @themaria: My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
dhinchcliffe wrote,
RT @themaria: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm “Social puts your CRM under a microscope” HT @rwang0
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
BChambersASUG wrote,
RT @rwang0: RT @themaria: My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
catevz wrote,
RT @themaria My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
jesus_hoyos wrote,
RT @themaria: My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
attensity wrote,
Post frm @themaria: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW HT 2 @wimrampen @crmoutsiders @rwang0 #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
JanetJoz wrote,
‘Before u ever talk about improving your processes & tools u need to commit to excellent experience first’ RT @themaria http://bit.ly/9Is3fW
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
tibecka wrote,
RT @attensity Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
wimrampen wrote,
RT @JanetJoz: Before u talk abt improving ur processes & tools u need to commit to excellent experience RT @themaria http://bit.ly/9Is3fW
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Reaburn wrote,
RT @wimrampen RT @JanetJoz: B4 u talk abt improving processes & tools u must commit 2 excellent experience RT @themaria http://bit.ly/9Is3fW
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
SocialCRMExpert wrote,
#scrm RT @themaria: My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9I… http://bit.ly/bSojMA
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
TinaHui wrote,
RT @themaria: My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 9th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Choypw wrote,
RT @wimrampen: RT @JanetJoz: Before u talk abt improving ur processes & tools u need to commit to excellent experience RT @themaria http://bit.ly/9Is3fW
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 10th, 2010 at 1:36 am
delacroysystems wrote,
Putting The Experience In Customer Experience | Attensity Blog: Social Media Monitoring, Measurement and SocialCRM… http://bit.ly/bSojMA
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 10th, 2010 at 5:21 am
chinezu wrote,
You can’t adopt social if you aren’t ready to service the social customers http://bit.ly/d2TDXk
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 10th, 2010 at 8:42 am
spirospiliadis wrote,
RT @mjayliebs: RT @themaria: My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 10th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Choypw wrote,
RT @attensity: Post frm @themaria: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW HT 2 @wimrampen @crmoutsiders @rwang0 #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 10th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
mdehaaff wrote,
RT @themaria: My new post on @attensity blog: Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://bit.ly/9Is3fW #scrm #voc #cem
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 10th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
gpach01 wrote,
Interesting post from @themaria Putting The Experience In Customer Experience http://ow.ly/2nSfV #custserv #scrm #pr
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 11th, 2010 at 2:24 am
themaria wrote,
@jacobm agreed. I wrote abt importance of excellent cust. experience. w/o it, social is just a bandaid http://bit.ly/d2TDXk @GrahamHill
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 11th, 2010 at 7:48 am
GrahamHill wrote,
RT @themaria: @jacobm agreed. I wrote abt importance of excellent cust. experience. w/o it, social is just a bandaid http://bit.ly/d2TDXk
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 11th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
wimrampen wrote,
RT @GrahamHill RT @themaria @jacobm agreed. wrote abt importance of cust. experience. w/o it, social is just a bandaid http://bit.ly/d2TDXk
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 11th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
LisaKayHawes wrote,
Advice from @themaria of @Attensity on “Putting The Experience In Customer Experience” http://bit.ly/99TuLi #CRM #SCRM #CEM #VOC
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 13th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
abduladvany wrote,
“Social CRM is all about the RIGHT interaction with the RIGHT person at the RIGHT time” http://bit.ly/cG3M9U #in
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 16th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
meannie wrote,
Couldn’t have said this better: Before “fixing” the experience, you need to COMMIT to an excellent experience. http://anni.es/amc84J #in
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 24th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
ideaarsenal wrote,
Yes, yes, yes RT @meannie: Before “fixing” the experience, you need to COMMIT to an excellent experience. http://anni.es/amc84J #in
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
| Link | August 24th, 2010 at 6:34 pm