Customers and Community – Same Same?

I’ve been doing a bit of reading of late about using social media as part of customer relationship management (CRM) strategy. The term ‘social CRM’ is used to describe the integration of social media technologies like blogs, wikis and customer feedback loops, into CRM strategies. However, while CRM looks at a group of customers, it might be more appropriate and valuable to focus on social media marketing in the context of online community relations.

At the risk of sounding to academic for a Sunday, I came across an interesting article by Lawrence Ang (reference at end of post). A couple of points that I thought were interesting:

Ang suggests that ‘social CRM’ may be counterproductive because:

1.       Users of social media are not necessarily customers of an organisation; likewise, not all customers of an organisation use social media. People who use social media share something in common – either in friendship or mutual interest....there is nothing commercial about such relationships

2.       In CRM organisations know their customers intimately. However the same level of intimacy does not exist between organisations and users of social media. This means is it not possible to apply sophisticated strategic, analytical and operations tools of CRM to social media data

3.       In CRM the emphasis in on building a business relationship with one’s customers, as exemplified by the notion of one-to-one relationship marketing

In response Ang proposes a model of A Community of Connected People (CoRM). The four pillars of this model are connectivity, conversations, content creation and collaboration.

Social networking has created an environment where people can form virtual communities based on their interest as well as the brands and products they like. These communities offer an organisation a huge opportunity – readily available access to consumer insight. Through monitoring social media platforms and participating in dialogue in virtual communities, organisations can get a better understanding of what their consumers want, what they think about the brand, how they view the competition and so on.

So, do you think that there is room for social media in CRM? Or do you agree with Ang and feel that there needs to be a totally different approach to building relationships with communities rather than treating most people like consumers?

Ref: Ang, L. (2011) Community relationship management and social media, Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, Vol. 18/1, 31-38