Social CRM

Perspective Olaf Acker Florian Gröne Rami Yazbek Fares Akkad Social CRM How Companies Can Link into the Social Web of Consumers Contact Information Beirut Delhi London São Paulo Ramez Shehadi Suvojoy Sengupta Hugo Trépant Jorge Lionel Partner Partner Partner Principal +961-1-336433 +44-20-7393-3314 +44-20-7393-3230 +55-11-5501-6200 ramez.shehadi@booz.com suvojoy.sengupta@booz.com hugo.trepant@booz.com jorge.lionel@booz.com Raymond Khoury Dubai Rami Mourtada Shanghai Principal Fares Akkad Principal Andrew Cainey +961-1-336433 Senior Associate +44-20-7393-3444 Partner raymond.khoury@booz.com +971-4-390-0260 rami.mourtada@booz.com +86-21-2327-9800 fares.akkad@booz.com andrew.cainey@booz.com Berlin Saibal Chakraborty Dr. Florian Gröne Rami Yazbek Senior Associate Sydney Senior Associate Associate +44-20-7393-3540 Peter Burns +49-30-88705-844 +971-4-390-0260 saibal.chakraborty@booz.com Partner florian.groene@booz.com rami.yazbek@booz.com +61-2-9321-1974 Milan peter.burns@booz.com Canberra Frankfurt Enrico Strada David Batrouney Stefan Stroh Partner Principal Partner +39-02-72-50-93-00 +61-2-6279-1235 +49-69-97167-423 enrico.strada@booz.com david.batrouney@booz.com stefan.stroh@booz.com New York Chicago Olaf Acker Jeffrey Tucker Eduardo Alvarez Partner Partner Partner +49-69-97167-453 +1-212-551-6653 +1-312-578-4774 olaf.acker@booz.com jeffrey.tucker@booz.com eduardo.alvarez@booz.com Mike Cooke Partner +1-312-578-4639 mike.cooke@booz.com Ramez Shehadi and Florian Poetscher also contributed to this Perspective. Booz & Company EXECUTIVE Social networking and other new technologies have given rise to the “social consumer,” who now has the means to share SUMMARY reviews and opinions about virtually every kind of product and service. As a result, the days of the one-to-one relationship between companies and their customers are over. Now companies must contend with the huge and growing social web, where customer experiences and opinions are shared on a massive scale, and corporate reputations can be ruined almost instantaneously. Navigating this new world requires a new way of approaching customer relationship management, commonly called social CRM. In addition to their traditional CRM tools and processes, companies must rethink their product, channel, and customer strategies in order to build an entirely new relationship with their customers through greater transparency. This new relationship will have two goals: to develop the credibility needed in the social web and to use this web to boost sales. This effort will require a major shift in the corporate mind-set toward collaboration and transparency. But if it is done right, the resulting benefits in terms of reputation and a more valuable relationship with customers can be significant. Companies should begin simply by listening to the social web to get a better sense of where they stand in this world, and building a team of employees who are familiar with how this world works. This will serve as a basis on which to build true social CRM capabilities, including the ability to manage the company’s reputation, increase sales, and monitor the results. Booz & Company 1 THE SOCIAL all bloggers post their opinions about products and brands. If companies are to adapt and respond successfully to this new reality, CONSUMER they must develop a new corporate New publishing, collaboration, and mind-set that goes far beyond the social networking platforms let con- traditional one-sided, product-centric, sumers compare, discuss, review, and transactional thinking. Companies comment on products and services must now be much more transpar- with ease. Nearly 600 million people ent in their dealings with consumers, The traditional one-to-one relationship around the world now actively use understanding that by creating an between companies and their custom- Facebook, with the means to broad- ongoing conversation with customers ers is rapidly evolving. Consumers cast their thoughts and opinions far they can build a better, longer-lasting, now have a wide variety of new and wide. As a result, consumers are ultimately more valuable relationship technologies at their disposal, with shifting their trust away from corpo- with them. However, if companies ubiquitous access to massive amounts rate marketers and brands and instead are to generate and manage this more of information, giving them near talking and listening to their fellow complex relationship—and capture the complete transparency into every com- consumers. Their opinions about prod- resulting business value—they must pany’s products, services, and pricing ucts and services are being shaped by encourage their marketing, sales, and data. Almost three-quarters of online the information they get from fellow customer service teams to collaborate adults in the U.S. read blogs, watch consumers offering their experiences, in responding to social consumers, and online videos, listen to podcasts, post thoughts, and feelings over Web 2.0 to develop an entirely new set of capa- to forums, and write reviews. Almost collaboration technologies such as bilities and tools, commonly called a quarter of them create their own blogs, product reviews, and rankings— social CRM, to manage their response content, publishing blogs and upload- especially when their experiences have (see Exhibit 1). ing videos and audios to sites such as been bad. The newly empowered YouTube. And more than a third of “social consumer” is here to stay.