BarnRaisers

Many expect Social CRM to be a hot phrase in 2011.  It should be because the three most influential factors a person uses to decide whether or not to do business with a company are:

• Personal experience (98%)
• Company’s reputation or brand (92%)
• Recommendations from friends and family (88%)

Source:  Cone Business in Social Media Study, 2008

Since Social media amplifies all three, it makes sense the terms, “Social” and “CRM,” belong together.

I’m a big believer in Social CRM but I think the phrase is still being defined.  One reason is the graphic above.  It’s very good but it is shows Social CRM as a concept that requires visualization to be explained.  Another reason is  two very smart people, when asked, give different answers.

Paul Greenberg, author and leading authority on SCRM, stated that Social CRM is “…designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide a mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It’s the company response to the customer’s owning of the relationship.”

Michael Fauschette says: “Social CRM is the tools and processes that encourage better, more effective customer interaction and leverage the collective intelligence of the broader customer community with the intended result of increasing intimacy between an organization and its prospects and customers. The goal is to make the relationship with the customer more intimate and tied to the company by building a public ecosystem to better understand what they want and how they interact with the various company touchpoints like sales, customer service etc…”

I favor a more matter-of-fact definition: Social CRM = a 1-to-1 sales relationship that occurs through social media and is profitable, sustainable and built on trust.

To substantiate, here are 16 case studies that prove Social CRM.

1. AFTER STEAZ: When an organic tea company started talking on Facebook and Twitter about why teas that are organic matter, consumer listened.  In fact they not only listened, they bought the product and sales doubled.  When downloadable coupons were then offered on these social networks, 250,000 were downloaded and 2,830 tweets were recorded in an hour.
2. BARACK OBAMA: Social media campaign for the President on My.BarackObama.com raised $30,000,000 from over 70,000 personal fund-raising pages, 400,000 blogs, 35,000 groups and 200,000 offline events. Based on approval ratings, it also was probably the time when trust in the President was highest.
3. BEST BUY (Twelp Force) : Best Buy employee communities grew to 2,200 employees within 3 months and responded to over 13,000 customers on social networks answering public questions, concerns, and opinions. The Twitter feed @twelpforce now counts over 29,000 followers and the number of questions averages 100-125 per day and is considered a key value-add by customers and the company
4. CLOROX: Launched online community, CloroxClassrooms.com, with blog and Twitter effort on Labor Day weekend at the beginning of the school year.  Twitter page was among the Top 10 trending topics over Labor Day weekend and blog was recognized by the Marketing to Mom Coalition and mommy bloggers for excellence in terms of delivering trusted, sharable information.
5. COMCAST: Started “Comcast Cares” Twitter customer service center and attracted 2,700 followers.  More important, from a Social CRM standpoint, many who were critics of the company changed to raving fan.  Quality of attention and dialogue now serves as model for the the company.
6. DR. VAKSMAN: Local Dentist with five month old dental practice in San Francisco attracted 320 new clients through social media presence including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
7. FISKARS: 300 year old Finnish company that makes fine cutting tool created online social community of crafting enthusiasts called  “Fiskateers” to built relationships with underutilized channel of small retailers for a 3X increase in company sales.
8. FOILED CUPCAKES: A Chicago company that sells cupcakes has no store front, only a web site.  When the product was readay but the launch of the website was delayed, they relyed on Facebook and Twitter for CRM.  Social media generated 93% of its business through social media leads to surpass revenue target by +600%.  The reason: You can tweet all day long. You can update your Facebook page all day long. But are people listening? They’ll listen if they know you care about them. So my personal mandate is that I reply to every single tweet and make a comment on every single post to our Facebook page,” says owner Mari Luangrath.
9. GENERAL MOTORS: Launched “FastLane,” one of the first blogs personally written by senior executives.  Customer feedback given through a blog saved the company $180,000/year versus traditional focus group research not to mention the enormous good will of company executives responding to consumers, not a focus group moderator
10. GREEN BAY PACKERS: The Green Bay Packers Foundation is a philantrophic organization developed to give back to Green Bay’s Special Olympics, Pop Warner Football, Feed the Children and other community causes.  They do this through the player’s personal stories and the sales of 4,000 Packers signed merchandise items at auctions.  They’ve built a Facebook presence of 221, 843 fans and a Twitter following of 14,682.  More important, in 2009, they generated $248,000,000 in a town of 106,000 for an average sale of $2,340 per citizen.
11. H&R BLOCK: Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business.  H&R used Facebook and Twitter to provide immediate access to a tax professional for Q&A in the “Get It Right” social media campaign.  The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there was no social media “Get It Right” program
12. HARLEY DAVIDSON (HD TALKING): Harley owners created website and social community totally funded by users and user-generated content.  Here, Harley owners trades photos, jokes, where to find hard to find parts, advice on Harley models and ownership plus there are at least 7 mechanics on-call at all times.  HDtalking.com now has 40,000+ members and cost to Harley is negligible.
13. INDIUM: A company that manufactures special alloys isn’t sexy;  neither is convincing 14 of its engineers to start blogs.  But that exactly what the company does.  It increased leads, prospects, conversions and sales by double digits plus it gave customers the opportunity to know the company’s employees personally.
14. JOHNSON & JOHNSON (BABYCENTER.COM): 8 year old online/social media community connected and engaged 8,000,000 new and expectant moms in the U.S. (78% of total) and another 16.5 million in 21 countries.  A major profit center for J&J and, in fact, a major social brand.
15. QUICKEN: Launched social community and blogger outreach to build long-term relationships with future and potential customers and provided free credit reports/scores, home value report and mortgage recommendations. Quizzle.com received over 425,000 visits and 70,000 accounts were created without a dollar spent in traditional advertising.
16. TURBO TAX: TeamTurboTax launched Twitter campaign to respond and answer questions during key tax season and found  customers were 71% more likely to recommend TurboTax because of their interactions with the company through Twitter.

Regardless of how it is defined, do these 16 case studies prove Social CRM to you?