What are the top challenges of a SCRM system?

short answer:

1) get over the definitions wars, it is what you need it to be (think social media, social customer, social business -- how do they all work together? hard to imagine, then think media, customer, business -- then make it work on social channels).
2) don't think it is simple (it is not, same as CRM was not, or ERP, or anything enterprise)
3) focus on actionable insights, not social novelty (that should be your purpose, leverage the 20x volume of feedback available in social channels to improver your insights -- social x is meaningless as a label)
4) get help, but make sure they know what they are talking about (social snake oil is rampant, ask for credentials in CRM at the very least, in your industry and needs as well)
5) think CRM, but done better... you will get there.

are the benefits worth the challenges? does not matter...your customers are going to the social world, you have to be there -- so, benefit #1: staying in business, the rest -- cherry on top!

Social CRM is not going anywhere, has been going on for hundreds of years, will continue until we are all self-sustaining. As long as there are customers and organizations, we will have CRM, Social CRM, ESP-CRM, etc. don't be blinded by the shiny object, it is just CRM evolving (and for that matter, just business evolving -- right?)

1) The top challenge is to ask the right question - when asking about "a social CRM system" you are immediately jumping to tools
2) From my EA PoV (http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2010/09/social-from-architectural-pov.html), the start is initiated and driven by the Business. Then, the Information needs to be established that is needed for all the Q&A involved in that particular part of Business. When collected, the Information Systems can be built on top of the Infrastructure
3) The Social in SCRM is a) the Infrastructure, but those are just the networks, nothing exciting really. b) The tools but you can just API your way in and out to Twitter et alii. c) The real thing is the movement, and they're just not present in an Enterprise Architecture. The Business is supposed to represent the customer or know best what he or she needs and wants
4) The real challenge, therefore, is to stop seeing the Business as representatives of the Customer. Social is disrupting that entire idea, especially when it comes to enterprises - they move far too slow for anything, let alone today's Brave New World
5) What are the potential benefits? You tell me. Of course listening to customers is great to know what they want, but what if you're an undertaker and only need to service people once in their lifetime? The dynamics are only important if your business is somewhat equally dynamic. If you're a utility company selling water, you couldn't care less
6) BUT SCRM will probably be the first enterprise "app" to hit the Social movement, and of course it will horribly fail to a large extend at first - that's what you get when being an Innovator or Early Adopter. I'm not sure CRM is really fit to take on Social, then again that depends on the art of CRM (being the business driving it). Car sale CRM? Insurance CRM? Banking CRM? Oh boy now it gets complicated, doesn't it?
7) I agree with Esteban: get over the definition wars, one-size-fits-all doesn't exist. There are many shades of People, thus many shades of Social, and many shades of CRM horizontally (SMB, enterprise, bureaucracies) as well as vertically (Insurance CRM, Banking CRM, mortgage CRM, newspaper selling CRM too LOL

The biggest challenge is the disruptiveness of Social - it is Power to the People in short, and a Trojan Horse that will contaminate your employees and invade your organisation. Do you have a business case for that?

Martin,

Nicely said here "The real challenge, therefore, is to stop seeing the Business as representatives of the Customer. Social is disrupting that entire idea, especially when it comes to enterprises - they move far too slow for anything, let alone today's Brave New World"

Cool words...

Another thing to take into account is the need to adapt your business model to a customer-centric or customer-focused one. A way of being in business that will use all available means - not only the shiny new social media ones - to understand the customer jobs-to-be-done and their desired outcomes, extract actionable insights to meet these through customer interaction and collaboration and be organized to act upon these.

Moreover deploying any 'social CRM system' without employee buy-in to the benefits of a customer-centric approach (read: culture that reflects these values) will most likely not encounter the success that you are looking for. If it is not part of the enterprise DNA at the outset, any system implementations should be accompanied by a Change Management Programme (depending on the extent of your ambitions of course). It is an example that is cited too often, but Zappos is the poster-child for this approach.

The top challenge as I see it is being able to weed out the important “nuggets” (important tweets from valued customers, new knowledge to be leveraged in the corporate knowledge base, cries for help, product feedback) and getting the nuggets routed in accordance with an SLA-based process-oriented approach. SCRM needs to filter, route, assign and track these nuggets and provide a round-trip follow-up on that nugget. All of this talk about nuggets is making me hungry, gotta run.

What a great discussion about #sCRM. Thanks for all of the continued analysis. I love to read all of your insightful comments about the evolution of the way we interact with our customers and our team members within our companies organizations. I absolutely agree that a culture shift will be required to get the full benefits of Social CRM. I also believe that #SmallBiz will be more willing and able to make the quick culture shift to take advantage of #Social and shift their culture to adopt and adapt.

As always I come at #sCRM from a simple perspective, the 500 ft. level view (Small Biz) as opposed to the 60,000 ft. view (Enterprise). I think #Social has been with us since the beginning of time and is the way business has been or at least should have been done forever. The example I like to use is the corner store I frequented as a kid. As I walked in, not only did they know my name, but they knew the brand of soda pop and candy bar I liked and had it on the counter for me before I got there.

I think #Social plus #Collaboration interwoven with traditional CRM can go along way in helping all of us attract and retain more customers for life.

I look forward to the evolution of our industry and the benefits that ensue.

Cheers,

Jon

I agree with you Khushbu that simply plugging the Social fire hose into your CRM system does not equate Social CRM. I also concur that proper filtering and analytics will be crucial to being able to differentiate content and focus on relevant items.

Good points.

I agree Jon. Filtering and analytics are key here. Where there will be a real benefit to the business is when you you combine and correlate customer transactional data with their activity and behaviour patterns their actions and your interactions with them in Social Media (community participation, blogs, microblogging, surveys, activity tracing such as website tracking etc.).

This will allow you to define better microsegments and focus on providing high-value and high-potential ones with the right amount of attentiona the right time (rather than the traditional shotgun blast approach).