What is your definition of CRM?

Hi Ben,
CRM has evolved over the past few years from its traditional form to what is now being called Social CRM. The traditional form focused on the operational and transactional. While the newer version still has that as an emphasis it adds in customer interactions and communications too. My traditional definition was:

"CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improved human interaction in a business environment." Despite how I stated it, it was focused on customer management.

The contemporary definition which is widely accepted as the industry standard, though a little awkward, is:

“Social CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s programmatic response to the customer’s control of the conversation.”

The key to it is the last sentence. It allows for the fact that there is a social customer, who, because he/she communicates differently and trusts his/her peers more than any other source, that the customer now controls the brand discussions going on. Control here simply means that a. the customer can impact the brand without the brand's permission or knowledge; and b. the customer can do that in channels that the company doesn't own. For a company to successfully implement a whole or piece by piece Social CRM program, they will have to be willing to acknowledge that customer control. That doesn't abdicate their responsibility to run their company's operations, to record the customer's transactions, to decide on customer centric processes or policies or to achieve the ROI that they are expecting as a corporate goal. It doesn't say give everything to the customer. What it does say is that the customer now needs to be engaged to satisfy what is valuable to them when it comes to a company that is more to them than just a simple utilitarian purchase. If you ever loved or hated a company, then you understand what I mean.

To simplify, CRM has evolved from a customer management strategy to a customer engagement strategy. It has also moved from an operational and transactional system that supported a customer focused program and department to a system that encompasses all that and integrates social inputs and social channel outreach so that the voice of the customer is genuinely heard and accounted for and acted on.

Hope that helps.