Putting the customer back in focus

Slowly but surely social media sites are indeed organising the world’s people.

They are creating cyberspace groups or tribes or stakeholder maps of like-minded people.

Just to name a few, LinkedIn, MySpace,Yahoo and Twitter are no longer just networks of connected friends. They are becoming influential overlays of groups of people who can approach the web together.

Through instant messaging, network email, “portable lifestreaming (instant updates from friends)” [see trackback article for source], being able to purchase products and services without even having to leave the social network web arena, social networks are reshaping the landscape of internet, communications, customer behaviour, evaluation and, ultimately, judgement.

What does this mean for CRM? It has a double impact.

1. Organisations need to ensure that they provide the best products and service, that their customers know about this, that there is complete control over all customer dealings, and that a full 360 degree customer information set is available at all times. Organisations need to keep their promises, deliver value and a little bit more. The pressure is on to get the basics right. Why?
2. You know the saying ‘a happy customer tells 2 others, an unhappy customer tells 20 others’? True words spoken. With social networks becoming more sophisticated, they will play an evermore important role in sharing commercial experiences. Tribe, group, network members can share experiences with thousands at a simple push of a button. A Tweet, Linkedin update or Facebook feature could deliver the death-knell to your company (or at least this year’s sales budget) while you were out having lunch.

In addition, there is the getting involved in social networking, a challenge which many companies big and small still find extremely fuzzy and hard to understand. The strategy many companies still adopt is: ‘ignore it and hope it goes away by itself’.

Suddenly, it seems, customer preferences are shaped and evaluated by the social networks they frequent. Organisations can either ignore it, try to influence it or take control of it.

I have seen organisations create their own platform, especially in the B2B (Business to Business) arena, leveraging the powers of social networking to shape desire, opinion, feature successes and manage failures. I have seen organisations joining the network in various identities to influence and shape opinion.

I have seen companies using their network as an inroad to having ‘tame customers’ for product development and user testing. It’s all possible with the right creativity, determination and focus.

Mind you, complete control over a social network will never impossible.

A thought that is both reassuring and a little bit scary.

The larger and more varied social networks become, the more difficult they will be to influence. The only thing that will be possible is a targeted approach, something I call ‘Network Niche Nudging’ (NNN). Subtly influencing a certain target market within a social network. The game will be quite different to traditional marketing as the rules of the Social Network apply. I will write more on NNN in an upcoming blog.

Social networks are indeed organising the world’s people. And the world’s people are all customers in one way or another.

The time is now for us in CRM land to get ready for it.

Start understanding where the development of social networks is headed and design your strategy. 

Start Nudging  your Network Niches.