Just what is Social CRM anyway?
A little over 6 months ago, I stumbled upon the #scrm adhoc community on twitter composed of an excited bunch of very intelligent individuals who are passionate about customers. So passionate, that on a daily basis new blog posts emerged with varying definitions of Social CRM and all of them couldn’t wait to go leave a comment with their interpretation of what Social CRM was, which lead to more posts with their take on the subject, and so on and so forth. The great thing about this is that it helped move the conversation forward and onto more productive discussions: actual use cases of Social CRM.
Truthfully, as I would read and follow these conversations, I thought I understood. But once, I walked away, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what Social CRM really was and how it was different from traditional CRM and how it was possibly (depending on who you talk to) just an additional channel or something entirely different. I struggled with the debate of whether Enterprise 2.0 was the internal strategy and Social CRM was the external strategy, vs. Enterprise 2.0 being the parent and Social CRM being one of the many children of an Enterprise 2.0 strategy.
Deep breath.
So here we are today and if you ask me to define Social CRM, I’m still unsure because it still feels as though there is still a lot of debate over what the “social” implies. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.
The purpose of this post is not to stir the pot, but I did want to address a recent debate over a simplified Social CRM definition. Being confused about the subject, I can certainly appreciate someone trying to simplify something that up until now still isn’t clear to me. So I can understand why the author tried.
The problem is:
1. It is too premature to generalize or simplify the definition, since even the people that are in the Social CRM business don’t necessarily agree over what the “social” implies (though they are getting much closer!).
2. The definition in question for Social CRM is IMHO more of a definition for Social Media Marketing (SMM). Now, maybe that’s where I’m confused… and it’s probably thanks to the word “social”: Could SMM be a subset strategy in your Social CRM strategy? What do you think? Am I completely off track?
3. The definition in question implies that Social CRM and CRM are fundamentally different. Ok so from a recent post by Wim Rampen in response to said definition, I get that the Social implies a shift where we place the customer at the center of our strategy, and that this makes Social CRM approach different from traditional CRM. BUT… and this is my understanding… Social CRM still includes elements of traditional CRM, otherwise why would you even consider keeping CRM in your new name? It just doesn’t make sense to me. So my understanding: Social CRM is not different from traditional CRM but they have a different approach.
As you can see, I’m in need of clarification and guidance on the subject. So if you can enlighten me, I would really appreciate it. A note of caution: I don’t mean to re-open the subject of definitions. I agree it is time to move forward and apply the concepts or explain how the concepts are to be applied. In any case, I’d be more enlightened by examples than definitions. 
