Last week (18-03-2010) Arno and I visited the CRM Innovation Event in
Arnhem. We were asked to do a lab session to show people
our innovative Social CRM API. This neat little service
connects with 30 different social networks to track people’s
updates on these networks.
We created a small demo, specifically targeted to people
interested in social CRM, to show some of the capabilities of
our service:
- LinkedIn; using LinkedIn as a source of information
(location and job title) and keeping track of changes in your
customer’s LinkedIn profile automatically. We updated the location
of our test account and received a trigger from the API in
our own CRM tool notifying us about the update. - Twitter; just to show its possibilities we
created a trigger when our customers reached a specific amount of
followers in case we want to know who our online influencers are.
Obviously you can add workflow to such
events. - Facebook; The API scans Facebook updates from our
customers for specific (customizable) keywords. Once found, an
event is created and a message or process is triggered in
our little CRM application.
These are just a few of the API’s possibilities we created
ourselves (within one day). We are also working on adding
geo-location services support like Gowalla and
FourSquare to our little gem. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could
actually know when a customer walks into one of your shops or
restaurants?
During one of our guerilla style demo’s a respected CRM
specialist and consultant asked us what the value of our
service would be. The question suprised me; especially coming from
a customer-driven business specialist who is into consulting as
well. I like to know the whereabouts of my customers, both
offline and online. Questions like these confirm my
thoughts that new/social/digital media requires a new breed of
specialists who are able to understand this new and constantly
shaping landscape.
If you understand it, we got the technology 🙂 Missed our demo?
Contact us
and we’ll be happy to show you our little tool.
Hi Jurgen,
I thought his question was quite reasonable – how is this adding value in a crowded application space? Or value for customers who are drowning in customer data already?
How do your customers feel about you wanting to know their whereabouts 24/7 online and offline?
Mark Parker
Smart Social Media
http://www.smartsocialmedia.com.au
Hi Mark, thanks for your feedback. I agree that companies should set priorities withing their application space. Nowadays companies are setting up brand monitoring tools to follow what is being said while I believe that they should focus on their customers. These brand monitoring tools do not know who your customers or influencers online are.
I fully agree that companies are drowning in customer data. Just because specific data is available does not mean that you should actually add this to your dashboard. Setting priorities – continuesly, and focus on KPI’s – is important. If you claim to be customer focused setting up some social media KPI’s might be of value.
We don’t want to know our customer’s whereabout 24/7 but we do want to know when we can be of value, anytime anywhere. Automating and setting up specific triggers helps us doing that.