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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

July - 2009 - issue > Technology

CRM from Customer to Community

Shaju Nair
Friday, July 3, 2009
Shaju Nair
Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, the list seems endless. Online social networking - a networking model that has seen viral growth - has been gaining unprecedented prominence in the last few years. And along with it comes the opportunity to leverage a customer’s network to influence behavior.

As we transition from manual to self-service, and to the promise of unified experience from there, the focus widens from just the customer to the community that surrounds the customer.

CRM as it Stands Today
Today’s CRM systems are focused on the initial ‘C’, the customer. All business functions are geared towards improving the customer’s experience with the business.

However, as they stand today, CRM mostly relies on ‘after the fact’ kind of systems, i.e. they focus more on analytics of past or historical data. Be it an airline or a retailer, all analysis is typically done ‘after’ the passenger has flown or the purchase has been made. And typically this is done once a month or at best once a week. And by that time, your opportunity to serve the customer better has already gone. As is evident, very little is done to influence customer behavior during or before a purchase.

Where does Social Networking Figure in this?

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