Using social search and analytics to fix CRM

By Richard Edwards, Principal Analyst | Jul 26, 2010

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According to Trampoline Systems – a company specializing in business social analytics – some corporate customer relationship management (CRM) platforms contain useful information on less than 25% of contacts in a customer database.

Although this figure is somewhat worrying for those tasked with delivering business value from CRM solutions, it probably comes as no surprise to a significant proportion of account managers and sales executives.

Social discovery uncovers the business relationships that matter the most
Accessing the “missing” 75% of actionable information is vital from a competitive and business survival perspective, and so organizations must consider the option of information discovery tools alongside traditional enterprise search solutions.

An increasing percentage of “real customer intelligence” is to be found on the Internet and social forums in particular, and so enterprise search and social analytics solutions must have both reach and range, i.e. the ability to crawl, catalog, index, and analyze unstructured information from a plethora of sources.

The economic downturn has resulted in many organizations restructuring their businesses, and as a result client contact databases are no longer up-to-date. Winning new business through cold calling was never easy, and today’s economic climate has made it a whole lot harder.

According to Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0, “social calling” (or a “warm introduction”, as traditionalists might call it) is 8–10 times more effective than cold calling, and so the business value of social connections is there for all to see.