Brief response to customer service vs. social crm

I was reading this post and felt it was important to respond more broadly than I am able to via Twitter. Here is the message I left, I hope others will weigh in as well.

“While I like the article overall I have to disagree that customer service is about today and Social CRM is about tomorrow.  Here’s why:

• Social CRM is a superset of CRM, well defined by Paul Greenberg.  For the rest of this response I’ll simply refer to CRM
• CRM is not just about the long term retention of clients.  It is both strategic in terms of acquisition and retention but tactical in terms of short-term strategies and solutions too.
• Customer service is an activity that is part of the overall CRM offering, not something to be thought of as separate at all.

With that said, however, I agree that companies must embrace social media, and social CRM, now.  I will avoid sending you to my various blog posts, but will sum them up with the following comments:

• Social can be used effectively as an extension to typical support channels as you have indicated.
• Social should be used for relationship building, critical in both up and down economic situations.
• Social can be used for branding.

John Moore
http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore
http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com

“

What do you think?

John

Advertisement