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Despite the proverbial "the customer is always right," the relationship between the customer and the company has long been organized for the benefit of the latter. But the ability for companies to completely control this relationship has disappeared. Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management , a report from the Altimeter Group released earlier this month, serves to help companies and organizations understand the changing territory. The report offers a thorough framework with which companies can strategize their adoption of social CRM projects. Sponsor Based on research with companies who have pioneered an embrace of social technologies for relationship management, the report lists 18 use cases that serve as entry points for social CRM efforts. These include social customer insights (tracking customers' preferences via social media sites like Facebook), rapid social marketing response (defending the brand in real-time), and crowdsourced R&D (eliciting real-time feedback to enhance innovation). The report rates each use case by its market demand and tech maturity, indiced to help organizations see which might be the most expedient and appropriate entry points for their social CRM endeavors. It also lists vendors to watch, pointing out that there is currently no single tool to help organizations track customer data and customer conversations in a world of rapidly changing social technologies. The report has six recommendations for organizations: Breathe social. Complement existing CRM processes. Measure social CRM projects on business goals rather than solely on engagement. Be prepared for rapid change. Find other social CRM pioneers. The most important, perhaps: Act now. The report cautions companies against falling even further out of step with customers by not engaging with social technologies to expand their CRM processes. Well-researched and with clear definitions, the report could also help companies avoid undertaking social CRM projects merely for the buzz. Discuss
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'Breathe Social': The New Rules of Relationship Management
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Are people are who they really say they are online? Conventional wisdom tells us that social networking sites, blogs and other social media outlets have allowed people to carefully craft online "personas" - essentially idealized versions of who they are in real life. Are you wittier online? More outgoing? More social? Friendlier? For those hiding behind the keyboard and computer screen, personality traits like these are easier to fake. Or are they? According to a recent research study , maybe not. Psychologists found that "faking it" online is tougher than previously imagined. In fact, the results of the study show that people are much more likely to reveal their true personalities online and not the idealized image of who they want to be. Sponsor Idealism? Not on Your Online Profile To conduct the research, the psychologists examined the social networking profiles of 236 U.S. and German students ages 17-22, both on Facebook and MySpace. They also had the same students take multiple personality tests in order to determine both their actual personality and their idealized personality. Prior to this study, if you had to guess, you may have suspected that the online versions of the participants matched up more closely with the idealized personalities, not the real ones. In fact, that assumption is shared by modern-day psychologists - it even made its way into psychology journals where it was dubbed as the " idealized virtual-identity hypothesis." However, the researchers conducting this new study thought that this was a hypothesis that needed testing. "There has been no research on the most fundamental question about OSN (online social networking sites) profiles," notes the report. "Do they convey accurate impressions of profile owners?" As it turns out, yes. The surprising conclusion uproots the previously held assumption that we are our idealized selves online. Instead, we are displaying our real personalities. "There was no evidence of self-idealization," concludes the report. "These results suggest that people are not using their OSN profiles to promote an idealized virtual identity. Instead, OSNs might be an efficient medium for expressing and communicating real personality, which may help explain their popularity." On Facebook, We're All Real People Although the researchers in this study looked at both MySpace and Facebook profiles to come to this conclusion, we suspect that Facebook is home to even more genuine personalities than MySpace. Instead of allowing its users to set up accounts using fake names or internet handles, Facebook only allows the use of your legal name, a policy that has led to some occasional mistakes when oddly-named real people were caught up in a Facebook purge. This up-front requirement that you "be yourself" on Facebook has had a trickle-down effect on how people use the network. Active users typically only connect with friends, family and other real-world acquaintances as opposed to strangers and other pseduo-friends as was done back in the MySpace days of "he whoever collects the most friends wins." In addition, the privacy controls Facebook had in place at its beginning (now completely eviscerated, but that's another story ...), provided its users with a sense of safety, security and comfort - they could be themselves - their real selves, flaws and all - without the world watching. The end result was the web-based equivalent of the user's offline social network where no one is all that different than they are in real life. But What About the Older Social Networkers? The one complaint with have with this latest research study is that it focused only on the youngest demographic of social networking users - those aged 17-22. While this digital generation may have grown up accustomed to openly sharing online, those belonging to the prior generations - especially the baby boomers and older - may be a bit more guarded when it comes to posting to Facebook (and assuming they use it, MySpace). Although the study does reveal some interesting findings about Gen Y/Gen Z and their use of the Internet, more research is necessary to determine if the conclusions span all age groups.
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