Social media: Listen, learn, engage, harvest
Technology companies tend to do a better job of listening to social media channels, than they do using those digital channels to engage and service customers, according to a respected expert in business analytics and intelligence.
"I think customer insights comes easier to [technologies companies] than digital channels," said Cristene Gonzalez-Wertz, market strategist from IBM's Institue for Business Value thinktank. "A lot of the device companies, for example, are out there creating all these really fabulous new features for their devices, but marketing them, they're still using Web 1.0."
"We do lose sight of the fact that it's supposed to be a conversation, because when we have something great, as marketers we want to scream it from the mountain tops. Whereas, the new paradigm is we have to enable other people to do so."
Gonzalez-Wertz has authored a white paper on "new models for customer-focused leadership", the result of IBM's CRM Global Leaders study, a global survey of nearly 500 CRM executives. From that study, it identified that less than 40 per cent of firms surveyed had really begun to integrate social media intelligence and digital channels into their CRM strategies.
15 per cent of firms surveyed could be described as what it called Customer Insight Leaders. That is, they were listening to social media and digital sources and integrating those voices into their intelligence repositories. Another 15 per cent were classified as Digital Channel leaders. These companies were making use of new digital channels to service and engage with their customer base. Meanwhile, just eight per cent of companies could be put into both of these categories, making them New Era leaders.
One major factor preventing companies from making effective use of digital channels and information sources, has been a lack of investment in the required tools. According to the report, marketing is the "least well equipped" in this regard. Less than 20 per cent of respondents from the marketing function receive regular analytics.
IBM puts forward a four-step model towards moving to a CRM leadership position.
1. Listen: Sense and extract data from people and things, while reducing it to actionable information, i.e. actively listen to gain customer insights.
2. Learn: Target content delivery to customers in a way that is customer preferred and relevant across all channels and opportunities. This enables the channelling of insight into the organization to create well-crafted customer experiences.
3. Engage: Enable the organisation to engage the customer and the community continuously in sharing and creating value. This entails enabling all media to support the customers and the organization.
4. Harvest: Deliver information that improves the way customer management functions plan and execute their work, including enabling better performance across functions to deliver value.
Overnight, IBM revealed details of its own internal analytics system called Blue Insight. It aims to allow its 200,000 employees to quickly find answers or patterns from nearly one pedabyte of data (a million gigabytes) from more than 100 different information warehouses and data stores.
Gonzalez-Wertz said IBM was a "hard marker" on itself, in terms of its own use of social and digital channels but said "we've come an awfully long way... through our various transformations particularly in sales and marketing".
The benefits of moving to a CRM leadership position, according to Gonzalez-Wertz, was the ability to reduce costs and complexity, provide strategic service to customers, and being better able to respond to changes in markets.
The whitepaper can be downloaded here.
"I think customer insights comes easier to [technologies companies] than digital channels," said Cristene Gonzalez-Wertz, market strategist from IBM's Institue for Business Value thinktank. "A lot of the device companies, for example, are out there creating all these really fabulous new features for their devices, but marketing them, they're still using Web 1.0."
"We do lose sight of the fact that it's supposed to be a conversation, because when we have something great, as marketers we want to scream it from the mountain tops. Whereas, the new paradigm is we have to enable other people to do so."
Gonzalez-Wertz has authored a white paper on "new models for customer-focused leadership", the result of IBM's CRM Global Leaders study, a global survey of nearly 500 CRM executives. From that study, it identified that less than 40 per cent of firms surveyed had really begun to integrate social media intelligence and digital channels into their CRM strategies.
15 per cent of firms surveyed could be described as what it called Customer Insight Leaders. That is, they were listening to social media and digital sources and integrating those voices into their intelligence repositories. Another 15 per cent were classified as Digital Channel leaders. These companies were making use of new digital channels to service and engage with their customer base. Meanwhile, just eight per cent of companies could be put into both of these categories, making them New Era leaders.
One major factor preventing companies from making effective use of digital channels and information sources, has been a lack of investment in the required tools. According to the report, marketing is the "least well equipped" in this regard. Less than 20 per cent of respondents from the marketing function receive regular analytics.
IBM puts forward a four-step model towards moving to a CRM leadership position.
1. Listen: Sense and extract data from people and things, while reducing it to actionable information, i.e. actively listen to gain customer insights.
2. Learn: Target content delivery to customers in a way that is customer preferred and relevant across all channels and opportunities. This enables the channelling of insight into the organization to create well-crafted customer experiences.
3. Engage: Enable the organisation to engage the customer and the community continuously in sharing and creating value. This entails enabling all media to support the customers and the organization.
4. Harvest: Deliver information that improves the way customer management functions plan and execute their work, including enabling better performance across functions to deliver value.
Overnight, IBM revealed details of its own internal analytics system called Blue Insight. It aims to allow its 200,000 employees to quickly find answers or patterns from nearly one pedabyte of data (a million gigabytes) from more than 100 different information warehouses and data stores.
Gonzalez-Wertz said IBM was a "hard marker" on itself, in terms of its own use of social and digital channels but said "we've come an awfully long way... through our various transformations particularly in sales and marketing".
The benefits of moving to a CRM leadership position, according to Gonzalez-Wertz, was the ability to reduce costs and complexity, provide strategic service to customers, and being better able to respond to changes in markets.
The whitepaper can be downloaded here.
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