After lots of planning, preparation and promotion, we finally got Geoff Moore to explore this very issue with Brent Potts of HP, Treb Ryan of OpSource and Steven Woods of Eloqua in our webinar yesterday. With questions from Geoff as well as those submitted from attendees, a lot of ground was covered in the hour we had. I thought I would attempt to highlight some of the more pertinent comments from the panelists for those who could not attend. I invite anyone who couldn’t be present to go back and watch the webinar here or visit the Twitter tag at #SCRMSeries. As I watched the event a second time through, I came away with even more interesting ideas and concepts. Here are my personal highlights, and please add your own insights and reactions in the comments below:

No Matter Who You Are

The panel represented a diverse cross section of companies. HP is using Social CRM to support its consumer companies (B2C) across the globe. As Brent Potts put it, “Our customers were taking us in this direction,” and it was a critical part of the company’s “customer centric” strategy. With over 100 million page views in just 9 months after the initial deployment, HP’s Social CRM solution now supports 5 languages.

OpSource built Social CRM into a new cloud service offering, and has rolled it out initially as part of its private beta. According to CEO Treb Ryan, when they looked at competitors in the cloud computing services market it was obvious they had to have Social CRM to be competitive. In Ryan’s words, “If your business is on the web, then you better have community.”

Eloqua is a leading provider of B2B marketing automation software, one of the fastest growing segments in the enterprise software industry. They view Social CRM as part of a larger initiative to deal with the fact that “buyers are now in control of the process,” which requires companies to change how they communicate and engage customers. This process, according to CTO Steven Woods, starts before the initial sale and continues long afterwards. As Woods said, “The brand promise is no longer about the logo and the about line… It’s about the customer experience with your company.” Eloqua rolled out its Social CRM solution earlier this year to over 250,000 users around the globe.

Big or small, B2C or B2B, product company or service company, it appears Social CRM has a role to play.

Jump In! The Water is Warm

With a panel representing companies with revenues ranging from the low millions to the billions, it was interesting to hear the panelist talk about when to invest in Social CRM.

Though HP has been dabbling in web-based support since the 90s, they jumped in late last year. As Brent Potts said, “Our customers let us know when it was time… They wanted us to bring the conversation together.” HP did not take a step-by-step approach, but launched with the aim to support all their consumers around the world quickly.

OpSource might have decided not to risk a new product launch with implementing Social CRM (for context, the rest of their mature business has yet to deploy Social CRM). As Ryan put it, “To be strong in the cloud, you have to be strong with community.” One of their unexpected but critical learnings was how Social CRM benefited the roll-out of their new service. They got better feedback by hearing what customers were saying in their community and everyone across the company, executives included, could listen in.

Steven Woods offered the following “3 Things to Look For” in Social CRM:

1)    Do your customers share a passion for your product?
2)    Will your internal culture support a shift to Social CRM?
3)    Is their social media usage currently in your customer base?

Culture Shock?

Geoff Moore explored the issue of resistance to change when moving to Social CRM. He might have earned the quote of the day, setting it up with, “It’s like moving the healthcare system from a sickness system to a wellness system.”

Steven Woods from Eloqua used a metaphor of going from a reactive to a proactive approach with customers, which is difficult. To make this culture shift occur, Eloqua wanted Social CRM to be everyone’s job. As Woods put it, “When it’s everyone’s job, it’s easy for it to be no one’s job.” Transparency is the key for Woods. Companies have to be willing to accept that they don’t control their brand anymore. “Transparency is being forced upon us” is his view.

HP took a measured approach by selling Social CRM function by function. They had a lot of FUD to overcome, as Potts put it.

OpSource was mainly concerned about participation. “We needed people to participate,” said Treb Ryan. To their surprise, OpSource found people started using it right away. In fact, the response was so positive, employees asked why they did not offer it to more customers initially. After only a few months, employees are now using Social CRM internally, including executive staff who share comments on what’s happening in the market.

As Ryan put it, “Pent up demand by our customers who are heavy users of social media like Facebook” drove their cultural shift. “Not having Social CRM as part of our new offering would be like having a little green screen… Not having social media for customers today is like not having email.”

More Than Just Customer Service

Many in the audience asked if Social CRM was applicable to more than customer service. An obvious question given the panelist companies all initiated their Social CRM initiatives in that function. Everyone agrees that Social CRM is about much more than customer service and support.

“Customers feel comfortable in a community… With constant interaction they can be nurtured.” For those unfamiliar with marketing automation speak, “nurture” is a process by which you can touch your customers or prospects in hopes on maintaining a relationship that ultimately results in a sales opportunity.

HP uses its customer community for marketing promotions. Like Google AdWords, they look at the activity in the community and make their promotions “contextually relevant” to the conversation. If you are spamming, the community will let you know. Self-regulating spam? Nice idea…

Treb Ryan sees Social CRM as a driver of new business. “More involvement equals more business,” he said simply.

Geoff More summed it up nicely using a traditional user group metaphor, “Birds of a feather meetings have always been very powerful for business.” Happy customers tell others who then buy your product or service.

Are We Succeeding?

Again, the audience asked how the panelists measure their Social CRM initiatives. The answers varied by panelist but might be best summed with the following:

    Is customer satisfaction increasing?
    Is our business, new and expansion, increasing?
    Is our reputation improving?

While hard to measure, there are ways to derive metrics, according to Steven Woods. As Treb Ryan put it, “It all comes down to involvement.” If people use Social CRM, he believes he will see real results.

So… Have we Crossed the Chasm to Social CRM? Still a good question, I think. Watch the recording, do your own analysis and I’d love to know your thoughts.