Social CRM: The Intersection of Social Media and CRM

Mar 18, 2015

␡

⎙ Print

< Back Page 7 of 8 Next >

Definitive Guide to Social CRM, The: Maximizing Customer Relationships with Social Media to Gain Market Insights, Customers, and Profits

Learn More Buy

Sample Customer Profile

The customer profile is the core of every successful Social CRM implementation because it provides a holistic picture of a customer. Think of the profile as a daisy, where you put the customer in the center of the daisy and you have petals of information attached to the center. The sample customer profile shown in Figure 1.2 provides sample information petals for a pharmaceutical company’s customer profile, with both traditional information petals (including customer information, activities, products purchased, financials, operational issues, service issues, customer insight, competitive information, marketing campaigns/opportunities, and customer news) and the new Social Media information petal. To ensure appropriate security, all information petals can be can be turned on or off, depending on who is viewing the profile (that is, internal personnel or the customer).

Figure 1.2 SCRM Customer Profile

A customer profile that contains only traditional information holds essentially static information (that is, information that has taken place). By adding Social Media insights to a traditional customer profile gathered from Social Media blogs, community forums, ratings, polls, and so on, the organization now has static as well as positive and negative sentiment information that will provide a more holistic understanding of the customer relationship en route to achieving customer intimacy. The many organizations that have added the Social Media insight petal to their Social CRM customer profile have noted a higher level of sensitivity in the customer buy-cycle and a more effective approach to the organization’s sell-cycle with the customer—both components of a more meaningful two-way dialogue with the customer.

The American Automobile Association: A Successful Social Media/Social CRM Case Study

In the early 1990s, CRM was advertised as a panacea for organizations’ sales and marketing woes. From ISM’s research it is clear there has been a similar over-evangelizing of the Social Media effects on organizations. Yet, there are concrete, successful examples of implementations that ISM has participated in that highlight how Social Media can be used to assist an organization to grow its business and achieve a higher level of customer intimacy that leads to higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

One example of this is in ISM’s work with the American Automobile Association (AAA) to help design and implement six different Social Media communities during 2009 and 2010, several of which still exist today. These communities had the goal of deepening AAA’s customer relationships and ultimately driving additional revenue to the AAA clubs. Several of these social communities were set up to feed information directly into AAA customer—or member—profiles contained within the Social CRM systems. The following are some pragmatic outcomes from two of these communities.

For one AAA club, ISM helped design and implement a Social Media “savings” community, aimed at helping this club’s members who were suffering from the Great Recession. The concept was to engage in a conversation with members about how they can save using AAA’s Show Your Card & Save (SYCS) program and other special deals made available within the community. The target audience for this community was members and prospects of all ages in a multistate geography, particularly people with a strong focus on savings. The community’s goals were to expand the relationship with members, increase the perceived value of an AAA membership, and support increased sales. The Social Media tools initially used included a blog by SMEs, along with a contest to determine who saved the most from AAA’s SYCS card program or had the best savings story. This AAA club also used forums to gather information on both member experiences using their AAA SYCS card and new potential vendors that wished to join the community. ISM carefully measured the impact of this community on customer satisfaction and enhanced revenues. The impact on both fronts proved very meaningful.

For the second AAA club, ISM helped analyze information coming from blogs and forums on its Social Media community and brought these insights directly into its Social CRM application and to the appropriate member profiles. This led to deeper insight into each member based on preferences gathered though the Social Media community and ultimately to enhanced and new product and service offerings.

ISM made a point to set up success metrics from the outset to determine the impact of these Social Media efforts on customer relationships to ensure that these communities delivered measurable value, not hype. This led to a lot of discussion within the six AAA clubs because at that time (and still today) many Social Media industry evangelists felt that making money from Social Media communities was not the right success metric. I vehemently disagreed, and asked, “Didn’t we learn anything from the dot-com bust in the early 2000s?” So, for the AAA Social Media communities, ISM set out to measure new revenues generated from AAA members participating in the Social Media community compared to those who were not participating in the Social Media community. By measuring the sales lift between these two groups, AAA was in a position to cost-justify the expense of designing, implementing, and monitoring its Social Media communities. This type of business approach to Social Media will help ensure the overall success of this newly emerging industry.

Other AAA clubs benefited by directly integrating social insights from their private social communities into their Social CRM system. Some clubs now harvest relevant comments from social community users and add those comments to appropriate customer profiles. The comments can then be retrieved from a customer profile and used to provide deeper insights into the customer’s emotional perspective for certain AAA products and services and/or automobile and travel issues. Ultimately, AAA’s social-community effort has led to a better understanding and a closer relationship between AAA clubs and their members.

< Back Page 7 of 8 Next >

🔖 Save To Your Account

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Privacy Notice

Overview

Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information

To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information

Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security

Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children

This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing

Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information

If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out

Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information

Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents

California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure

Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

As required by law.
With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact

Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020

Email Address