Salesforce.com Buys Radian6: Meet CRM 3.0

CIO — CRM systems have a long heritage of contact management and call center interaction tracking. The big CRM systems captured lots of dry data about contacts, demographics, purchases, and call history. CRM 1.0 provided a mostly parametric profile of the prospect and customer.

In the last few years, CRM systems' databases have become much richer, as they may now hold Web visit and download sequences, email blast histories, and the vertical marketing campaigns from Marketing Automation systems. They may also include chat histories and email exchanges related to customer service cases. They should include both marketing and customer service survey responses. They may even include transcriptions of voicemails. CRM 2.0, which really started to take hold about 3 years ago, added the behavioral profile of the target to the parametric profile that was already in the system. When done correctly, a CRM 2.0 system lets you understand a lot more about your customers and prospects as individuals, and begin to model and predict their behavior.

Of course, the technology and sales promises get ahead of operational reality. Most CRM shops are just now getting the know-how and internal processes to leverage CRM 2.0. Guess what: the CRM vendors have been working on the next generation — social CRM.

Social CRM systems work with prospects as members of groups / tribes / communities of interest, rather than just as individuals. The sales rep gets a new way to understand and reach out to the best prospects. The Marketing folks get an actionable way to identify and work market segments. The customer support people get a new way to harness and manage customer feedback. Welcome to touchy-feely CRM.

Integrating Social Media Is Hard to Do

Several vendors have taken up the mantle of Social CRM, even if you don't think of the vendor as having been in the CRM category. A whole new generation of vendors started up in the social media monitoring and measurement categories, from providers of community infrastructure (think Lithium or Telligent ), to social media monitoring (a couple of dozen companies like SocialRadar, BazaarVoice, BuzzLogic, or Radian6), to reputation management (think Reputation Defender). All these products have been innovating in new ways, but they did not focus on providing traditional CRM features.

CRM 3.0 Heats Up

Salesforce.com has been beating the drums really loud about Chatter, their initial foray into Social CRM. Chatter has several use-cases, but in almost all situations its main users are your employees. Chatter is about collaboration and problem solving (get the sale, solve the case, etc.) Customers and partners can certainly join in the fun, but the conversations in Chatter are about your company and its pursuits. If Chatter is Twitter for the Enterprise, its ecosystem doesn't really include random prospects in the marketplace.

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