Let me tell you a secret. Promise me, please, that this is going to stay just between you and me. Okay, listen carefully…. “Social CRM will never, ever, be built”.
Yes, I am someone who discusses CRM daily. I am always talking about Social CRM, Social Support Communities, CRM, and related best practices… However, if we are waiting for someone to build a Social CRM solution we will be waiting for a long time. Pull up a chair and let’s talk.
Social CRM is not software. Remember, CRM, and therefore Social CRM, is an approach that takes into account people and processes and leverages software to accomplish outcomes. The people and the processes come first. Software, while critical to success, is always secondary.
Vendors that claim they deliver Social CRM are wrong. They are delivering software solutions, generally Social Support Community software, that is a core component of a Social CRM strategy.
Social CRM is a strategy. Building off of my last point. Software cannot build strategy. I know, one day machines will take over e world and I will be proven wrong. 
Until that day comes I am right, it takes people to build a strategy that achieves corporate goals.
Social CRM must work for all users involved. I have noted that usability is a major reason for CRM failure, nothing new, you have heard it before. What one set of users may deem usable may be completely unusable for another set of users. Your Social CRM strategy must make use of tools that end-users (execs, sales, support, etc..) will use, not because they are forced to, because they add value to their lives. While niche software solutions may be able to accomplish this for specific verticals it is not feasible on a large scale across multiple verticals.
Social CRM must support good business processes. Some processes are identical from company to company but many key business processes are not transferable. I have worked in a half dozen companies and each one have had different definitions of their sales pipeline process. As a non-sales person I was shocked by this (and I still am) but each company does it differently. Your software must support the varied stages and workflows for all of your processes. When the software forces you to adjust processes due to it’s limitations, you have already lost.
So, is Social CRM something we should give up on? Absolutely not. Social CRM will revolutionize how businesses operate. It will bring a richer level of engagement between all parties leading to happier customers and more profitable businesses. We must get there by following solid business processes that engage all users and leverage tools where feasible. I know we will get there; we just have to work through the hype first.
John
November 19, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Good post and I agree 100%. Software is a tool. Businesses are living, breathing people with existing processes, customers, vendors, etc. Software is simply a tool that fits as seamlessly as possible into that group of people and processes. It must be as transparent as possible — easy to use. Encompass the broadest range of processes too.
It may be built someday, but not in the immediate future.
Jeff Ogden, President
Find New Customers
http://www.findnewcustomers.net
November 19, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Thanks for stopping in and leaving a comment Jeff, we agree.
John
October 2, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I am not sure how many people in sales really understand the difference between making major sales and making simple sales. The skill set for each is completely different. Very few books have been written on the subject.
However sales professionals need all the knowledge they can get.
Keep up the good work.
Steve
http://www.makingmajorsales.com
September 29, 2009 at 5:54 pm
[...] post was written after reading this post on John Moore’s [...]
September 29, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I really enjoyed your article. It is the same reasoning we used when building a sales and marketing SYSTEM (we avoid the term CRM because of it’s blinders). Thanks John. Would love to get to know you better.
September 29, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Thanks Mona, appreciated the feedback. -John
September 29, 2009 at 8:21 am
CRM vendors are control freaks. CRM marketers are also control freaks. The problem is that the genie is out of the bottle and social media is a part of our communication landscape. Try to apply ‘old’ strategies to ‘new’ media and it will result in tears and tantrums as already is the case. Think in new ways and focus on human behaviours and we might find a way to be allowed in and become a part of this. SCRM is CRM, just not as we know it.
Nick
September 29, 2009 at 7:13 am
Interesting post John.
I’ve long been preaching that any CRM implementation will fail if you don’t understand your strategy and business processes before you implement it. I guess you’re saying the same still stands now — and I don’t know why it wouldn’t.
Equally unsurprisingly, it seems to be the term “Social CRM” that is causing the issues. To my mind Social Support Communities and Social Media Monitoring are great, but they aren’t as basic a need of a Social CRM “system” as an ability to make social media conversations part of what constitutes a customer record. That is, if someone tweets a complaint or enauiry, this should get logged against a customer record along with communication with them over the ‘phone, e-mail or whatever else.
What surprises me is how hard this is to do with most so-called Social CRM systems currently.
By the way, we recently emailed 10,000 of our 12,500 users telling them about our Social CRM launch and you’d be amazed to hear that several came back asking what “CRM” was! We are way ahead of the curve here and for as many as can’t define exactly what Social CRM is, there are many more who don’t have a clue what we’re talking about!
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
September 29, 2009 at 10:02 am
Very well said. I agree that most people do not know what this “CRM” stuff is all about. That’s rough, considering that this is something that has been discussed for a few decades now.
A concern I have with including the CRM term in anything is that those that are familiar with CRM mostly dislike it. The high number of failed implementations have left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Let’s move on.
Thanks,
John
September 29, 2009 at 6:45 am
John,
Yes. At present what you claim is correct, that Software cannot build strategy. In past such claims were made on several things as well, but it changed when software did what humans can do. I’m sure in the days to come, with sufficient research and testing, there may be a software which can build strategy based on trends.
Until that, lets keep brainstorming about SCRM.
Asim
September 29, 2009 at 12:24 am
[...] I feel Social CRM will never be built. I won’t waste your time repeating the points made in my post and the comments but definitely check it out if you have not yet read it. While the post and [...]
September 28, 2009 at 8:55 pm
I think naming tools/tech and strategy the same thing is a big mistake. It’s bound to cause confusion as vendors hype the term to sell their tools.
My vote is for “social business” or “social business strategy” to mean the practice of creating and implementing a social business. Which could include Social CRM (external) or Enterprise 2.0 (internal) tools.
Listen to my interview of David Armano of Dachis Group for more on this. http://tinyurl.com/ya7pr6k
Isn’t it time we brought together customers and employees in the social world? Consultants and thought leaders could rally behind “social business” and leave the other terms for vendors.
September 28, 2009 at 11:39 pm
You’re right Bob, tying the tools and the overall process with the same name causes too much confusion… Next post underway.
John
September 29, 2009 at 8:26 am
I don’t like the term social business applied to what has been refered to as social CRM. It implies there is an altruistic dimension to the organisation which might not be the case. Don’t get me wrong, I think business should have a social dimension, a conscience, a responsibility. But that’s not Tweeting, blogging and FBing.
September 29, 2009 at 10:10 am
Good point Nick… This has nothing to do with “the greater good”, it’s all about the bottom line… I’ll have to keep thinking about that as I feel eliminating confusion is critical.
John
September 28, 2009 at 2:28 pm
John,
(Copy of my LinkedIn comment on blog)
Agree strongly with your emphasis on strategy to provide goals and a focus on user centred design to provide process flows and requirements before anything starts on the systems side.
Social CRM (like other types of CRM) is a significant change/enhancement to doing business, so ‘systemising’ existing or not fully thought out requirements will only hamper progress.
Richie
September 27, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Hi John & Prem,
Great thoughts as always. Prem, I especially agree with one comment you made about wrapping your mind around this “cacophony” that we call Social CRM. I would like to add one additional level of complexity, though in so doing, I don’t readily have a solution. One of the challenges that Social CRM will have to face is being adaptive to fluctuations in communication channel itself. Let’s take a common forum, Twitter, for example. Just this weekend, Twitter received another round of funding estimated at $100Mil (http://tinyurl.com/y8tcbr8). Now let’s pretend for a moment that this transaction failed to take place. Any SCRM platform rooted in monitoring Twitter chatter as their primary social channel would be in peril. If Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook were to fail, does this mean that customer communication will cease as well? Of course not. The unique challenge that SCRM faces relative to CRM is that it seeks to pin down a shifting medium. The ideal SCRM solution would need to be based on a strategy as open and flexible as the communication channel itself. Are we there yet? No. Is it possible? I believe so. We just need to keep discussions like these going…
September 27, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Hi John,
Good thoughts as always. I’d actually add one level… Social CRM is not only a strategy, but a company-wide attitude.
Everyone in the company must understand the Social CRM structure to become invested in it. If they do not believe or engage the social community, treating it as a core component of operations, then even the best strategy will just become words on paper.
And as you said, it’s not software, so they don’t have to wait for ultimate CRM tool to do it! All it takes is a desire, a strategy, and buy-in from the whole company.
(I’ll save my thoughts on vendors who position themselves as “Social CRM” today but fall short (or are pitching to the wrong people) for another time…)
Good stuff, have a great week!
September 27, 2009 at 7:52 am
John, many would agree that Social CRM is not *just* software. But it’s not just strategy, either.
Thanks for stating that Social CRM is a strategy. But most of your commentary that follows talks about user adoption (tools) and supporting processes (tools). I’m not disagreeing with your statements, but these same statements have been made about SFA–another tool often confused with CRM-as-strategy.
The problem with Social CRM, just like CRM (1.0 or 2.0, take your pick) is using the same term to refer to both the holistic practice (strategy, people, process, technology) of Social CRM and the technology itself. Everyone says CRM is a strategy, but without any detail what is left in people’s minds is “CRM is a strategy to use software.” I see the same thing happening to Social CRM.
For Social CRM to really become a strategy, we need more in-depth discussions about exactly what a Social CRM strategy looks like, how organizations and people should be managed, and how processes should be designed differently … to bring to pass that “richer level of engagement between all parties leading to happier customers and more profitable businesses.”
You’re right in saying that tools alone won’t make that happen. But just repeating that “CRM is a strategy” won’t make it happen either.
September 27, 2009 at 8:12 am
Bob,
That was a very insightful comment and I can see more clearly now about what we have been lacking. After the enlightenment, in hindsight, our slogan shouting of “social CRM is a strategy” seems to be nothing more than well intentioned but impotent jingoism.
However, the initial thoughts about the aspects that you want us to delve on makes me refer back to the various social business &/or enterprise 2.0 strategies.
How different would the “social CRM” strategies be different from them or CRM strategies?
September 27, 2009 at 9:05 am
Prem, this is an excellent question. Since you’re an expert in social CRM, what’s your answer?
Seriously, we have to move beyond “social CRM is the response to the social customer” — that’s a sound byte, not a strategy. What does this response look like? How does it deliver value to the customer? To the company?
September 27, 2009 at 9:31 am
Bob,
I do not claim to be an expert in Social CRM, just that I am in a unique situation with an interesting intersection of various experiences that gives me some lateral view points to this whole new cacophony we are calling social CRM.
Having said that, I am still grasping with the issue of a strategy, since that is what will define our consulting offerings too. I am able to see the big picture & at the same time the various minutiae, but unable to connect the dots to the big picture.
I will surely share my thoughts once I am able to wrap my thoughts around this whole rigmarole!
Regards,
Prem
September 27, 2009 at 10:56 am
Thanks for weighing in Bob.
I agree with you that just stating CRM is a strategy will not make it happen. On the flip side, stating that Social CRM 2.0 tools are being built is also meaningless, worse yet, it is confusing for businesses who may be left believing that these tools replace sound business approaches. Which will we rename then, the tools or the strategies since, as you stated, the re-use of the name is part of the confusion?
While Social CRM strategies will vary from customer to customer from market to market, there will be high-level strategic approaches, and corresponding tactics, that will be needed, ones that can be used across many customers.
So let’s begin to have a meaningful conversation about strategies and tactics. I’ll start in an upcoming post, will you and others participate?
Thanks,
John
“Social CRM Expert In-Training”
September 27, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Bob,
I remember you admonishing me in my interview with you that CRM is not “just a strategy.” LOL
As someone who’s real world experience relates to banking, moving into CRM for other industries has left a major gap in my knowledge. One of my goals is to eventually be able to show people what CRM (and CRM with “social components”) strategies look like in businesses just like theirs.
The problem is that there are more “CRM” consultants that worry more about which version of SQL Server your on, than there are worrying about how you’re delivering value to your customers.
It’s going to be an interesting journey, if I can just get away from this Social CRM subject
September 26, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Although we don’t think of ourselves as being in the Social CRM business, it plays a critical role in S3 Integrity’s core product: The WuLi Solution.
In a nutshell: we perform an upfront analysis of company-specific consumer behavior and its web ecosystem, which enables us to build a media – rich, online customer interface. (Social CRM is a component, but not the only interactive feature of this tool.) The WuLi interface yields actionable data based on customer knowledge, attitudes and preferences.
We first designed the WuLi Solution as an online self-service strategy for external market applications, to deflect high-cost, agent- assisted customer service transactions and enhance the Customer Experience. But increasingly, we’ve been engaged by clients to apply the WuLi Solution for internal training and organizational development. In those applications, the Social CRM component is applied to communicate and instill best practices, to recognize technical expertise and creativity, and to reinforce cultural values across the enterprise.
So we’re in total agreement with your view that Social CRM is not software. It’s an important part of a more elaborate process.
September 26, 2009 at 1:59 pm
John, am sure you remember my three Musketeers tweet on twitter: “people, process, technology – all for one, one for all & business goal is d’Artagnan”?
Well, we humans at large are in a stage of our civilization when technology too can play a crucial role, prove disruptive by itself and thus be treated at par with people & process if not over & above them.
Nevertheless I agree that, generally speaking, we are not yet at a stage where we will have to be welcoming our robotic or AI overlords.
Until that happens, Social CRM will not be built as a technology solution that I can buy OTC & just throw it into the bowels of an organization.
Of course we are seeing some pretty interesting developments like the recent one in the UK, where they soon will be using computers to rate English essays, and in fact GRE already does that but its still some time away to make a mark on text analytics (in spite of some contrary claims) such that social media monitoring (SMM) tools and customer interaction hubs (CIH) can essentially replace human involvement.
The crucial element in social CRM is the social factor which requires a human touch. But make no mistake, its not the human touch that’s crucial, its the “publicly social” aspect that’s key. A phone call or a golf game are both one-to-one, requiring human touch but are not public and thus not the game changers.
What the technology can do is only, to borrow a phrase of one of my colleagues – “operationalize the data/information in social media [& networks]“. What he meant was that businesses need to figure out a way to work on all the noise that gets generated in the social web & separate out the signals in it and qualify them and route them to the proper departments/persons to handle them according to the business rules.
So this is going to be one helluva mishmash of technologies that no one vendor can build it right now. But with proper M&A there might be someone who can tie in various pieces of the puzzle.
And still there will be no SkyNet. I am sure because as a wise sage said on slashdot: having failed to kill him, SkyNet sent a Terminator back in time to make John Connor fail English.
So, no, there will be no one single Social CRM solution availble OTC anytime soon, and if I have it my way, ever. 
September 26, 2009 at 1:30 pm
John,
I agree with your thoughts.
My expectation is that by lifting the conversation to focus on social business design and its implementation we can elevate above tool talk and focus on how to realign business processes, communication channels and rewire enterprise thinking.
Tools such as CRM solutions may fit into the implementation phase, but I suspect that what we are seeing to date with Yammer, SocialText, Bantam etc are but one small step in the right direction.
September 26, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I completely agree with you Randal. We must focus on solid business practices first and foremost. From there businesses will be successful. If they focus on tool limitations first you will fail far more than you succeed.
On the software front we are barely scratching the surface with the first round of tools. Check out Gist, which is a tool I’m playing with in my spare time. It’s an example of how quickly things are moving in terms of unifying your view of social engagement channels.
John
September 26, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I agree with Randal; the concept of social business design drives a holistic perspective on tools, process, and culture, very much to the point of John’s post. As for now, the concept of Social CRM is very dependent on who’s using it, e.g. tech vendors vs. strategy consultants.
September 26, 2009 at 12:11 pm
John, as ever you make some interesting points.
You are right in that SCRM is not software, but danger here is to underplay the importance of software. SCRM is an approach to CRM, an approach that cannot be fully realised without software. Sure, a small business with a 100 customers can monitor almost every mention their brand, but it is not scalable, for larger companies software must take the brunt of the work, the data collecting, the monitoring, the flagging of negative sentiment.
The problem isn’t that software can’t do this; it’s that it hasn’t yet been built. The companies that build CRM software are attempting to add in little bits of social data and SSC packages and bundle it up as SCRM software. It’s not, what we need is new software built from the ground up, SCRM is a new approach to CRM and as such we need a new approach to the software!
Hmm, this would make a good blog post, maybe I’ll sum it up better later today.
September 26, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Some excellent points Mike that we cannot underplay the importance of software. It is absolutely a critical component in Social CRM. However, I still maintain it is not Social CRM by itself and is still of secondary importance.
I am a CTO, so am passionate about the technology and see large pieces of software that can be built and will be overtime. However, don’t let the appeal of cool new software alone make you think you’ve got a great Social CRM business solution. There is far more to it, as I know we all agree.
John
September 26, 2009 at 5:35 am
John,
I do agree with your comments. But in my opinion, its a way (though a bit long) to go. The complexity for the softwares is do be adaptable for different patterns and practices. For a true social CRM, it becomes a more difficult task as the patterns may be granular to the level of networking sites. So, conversion of data into information will be the key, and it will be networking sites who may play a bigger role in that!!
September 26, 2009 at 4:20 am
[...] someone to physique a Social CRM resolution we module be inactivity for a … Continued here: Why Social CRM module never be shapely « Random Thoughts of a Beantown … Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: always-talking, and-related, are-waiting, best-practices, [...]
September 26, 2009 at 1:43 am
[...] Why Social CRM will never be built « Random Thoughts of a Boston-based CTO: John Moore’s Weblog johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/why-social-crm-will-never-be-built – view page – cached Posted on September 26, 2009. Filed under: CRM, CRM Thoughts | Tags: apps, CRM, Social, SSC | — From the page [...]
September 26, 2009 at 1:42 am
John, I completely agree with your comments. Social CRM is not about software at all, software applications are leverage but the Social CRM concepts and strategy is what it’s all about.
Now do I think that that Social CRM will help increase CRM adoption… defiantly, and thats the exciting part.
September 26, 2009 at 1:46 am
Thanks Brandon. You’re right, the good part of the hype is that there is a lot of discussion about CRM, and Social CRM. This discussion will continue to raise awareness and, if we all do our jobs, eventually lead to better implementations.
John