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Are internal-facing applications like Yammer or Chatter considered Social CRM?
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Practical Applications of Social CRM
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3 Answers
In my opinion yes.
Marketers are often focussed on external audiences for their social media programmes and campaigns. We often forget that the the'customer' can often be an internal one.
Technologies, mind sets or strategies that apply to engagw with an external customer where we are trying to create and feed an ongoing dialogue obviously applies to our own colleagues. It might very well be suggested that if we are unable to engage fully with those around us in an organisation, how can we effectively engage with our external customers and suppliers?
The use of internally facing applications is / and should be part of a companies response to the modern (connected and communicative) customer. To respond to external conversations, the company must be collaborative internally. The applications mentioned will enhance internal communications in many ways, as well as doing it in a social/collaborative sort of way. Thus, if we consider Paul G's definition, then they are part of a Social CRM strategy.
That said, Yammer unless it is integrated into an actual CRM application is not technically a Social CRM application. It is internal collaboration and activity stream. This is not to take anything away from Yammer, as it does a whole lot more and suggesting it is part of Social CRM technologically does not do justice to the platform. To be part of Social CRM activities need to generate actions, be part of a process and be more than just passive - even beyond alerting users.
The answer, these platforms are part of Social CRM strategically and technically, but they should not be considered "Social CRM"
Yes, it is part of Social CRM. If you apply a technical / tools based view, its not. But if you consider a Social CRM strategy, its absolutely is. The number of times we see (and help) organizations using tools like Yammer or Chatter to connect customer questions posed to those at the edge (claims, support, etc) with the smart brains inside the organization is growing rapidly. And we out right recommend that they consider such a design to get off the ground.
We over complicate the issue when we insist that external systems must be connected to internal systems to get this right from the get go. Some forward thinking companies are dong this but for most, the operational fall out of this defies org chart physics and scares most people away. Of course its a bonus if the software plays nice but it's really more about connecting people first, then systems. And so if your folks on the front lines have a way of federating customer and prospect questions back into the enterprise so the experts can help, and the customer gets more substantive answers as a result of it, that's Social CRM done well in my book.
Again, this doesn't take away from picking the right software that makes it easy to integrate with Call Center, CRM, knowledge base apps and the like. But we wont be servicing our customers well for the near term if we wait for this perfect future.
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