In my post The Multimedia Social Thread or the Social Media Multithread I talked about how cool it would be if we were able to trace threads across all channels; like SMS, Email, Twitter, Instant Messaging, etc. I believe in one of my posts I referred to this as the Social CRM protocol. Essentially, a way to tie every touch point together into a thread – even blog comments. The ability for each of us to track our relationship with another individual through a thread is an extremely interesting idea to me and one I would like to see implemented.
Which leads my wandering mind to all kinds of crazy thoughts. If they can do this well, and I’m pretty confident that they can, doesn’t all this end user adoption pave the way for Facebook to begin looking at ways to really enter the corporate environment? All they need is a few more pieces to control the protocol, and the ability to do a few more things like schedule future activities and complete them as part of a thread, and all of a sudden you have the beginnings of a not-too-shabby CRM platform. Just think of the sales intelligence and marketing opportunities that could evolve over time!
Now all of those social media consultants who charged people to advise them on Facebook Fan Pages as a Social CRM strategy won’t look so foolish – except they really will
Facebook is only building a single thread per Contact type of infrastructure at the moment, but it was mentioned that thread by topic might or would be coming. But think about this for a minute. Can you tell at which point a relationship changed? In a personal environment it’s a bit easier because it’s more intimate. In a business environment there are more people involved, making it much harder.
The social thread will need to develop well beyond what was unveiled today. But, if Facebook has any deep dark desire to get beyond just activity streams and expand into areas that can have an impact in the enterprise, maybe, just maybe, I’ll have to eat crow and admit they could become a powerful CRM platform in the future. They’ve certainly got the capital to do just about anything they want – whether it’s measured in dollars or registered users. I’m going to have to watch these guys more closely now.
It certainly sounds seductive from a business point of view; rather than using sCRM tools to comb Facebook for data, Facebook becomes the tool. It cuts out the middleman. As you pointed out: the technology is almost there.
However, I don’t know how far Facebook could push this, given some of the uproar concerning privacy issues in the past. We have to remember that while social media offers businesses the opportunity to share social spaces with their customers, people signed up to it under the pretence of it being a social, rather than commercial, space. Businesses have to remain aware that unless invited by the customer, they’re always trespassing to an extent when they engage in social media. As unlikely as it seems, too much of this from Facebook and people could end up leaving in droves.
Let’s not lose sight of the following: sCRM is all about your business becoming more customer-centric. That means tailoring the way you communicate with the customer to their wants – not your business’ needs. All the insight in the world means nothing if you’ve over-stepped your boundaries and lost trust from your customer.