Social CRM (CRM and Social networks mashed together) is now being offered by many different companies each with their own version of what they really consider it to be. While companies like Hearsay and Lithitum are building some terrific pieces of Social CRM, for Social and CRM to truly reach their married potential there needs to be a deeper level of integration between social and existing enterprise CRM systems.

I make the jump directly to the enterprise because while small businesses may be able to nimbly move between CRM systems until they land on the correct SASS solution, enterprise companies have legacy systems with possibly millions of customer records. There is no desire, nor ability to move to a platform built for small business. Thus they are left with silos of information and can not have a full view of their customers. How then can companies begin to integrate social with their current CRM systems?

I believe that the absolute vital first step in integrating social and enterprise CRM, the lynchpin if you will, is contact profile matching. By contact profile matching I mean matching an existing CRM contact profile (for a customer, prospect, partner or employee) with social media profiles on various networks. I say that this is the lynchpin to integrating enterprise

Xobni Social Profile

and Social CRM because once you have matched social profiles and existing CRM profiles everything else that you desire to do (e.g. marketing, monitoring) can be tied back to the existing contact record and thus has value to a 360 degree (single) customer view.

The true value of CRM is that should give you a complete picture of your customer/prospect. That means everything you can know about this person should be in an integrated customer profile. If you are in Finance then you should be able to view their accounts and holdings and you should be able to view a complete history of your interactions with them. Social should be no different. An integrated contact record should be a complete picture of all the online, phone, in person and social media interactions with the person.

As Jeremiah Owyang said in “Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management” – “Customers don’t care what channel or department you work in…Seamless Customer Experience mashes up the social experience with the enterprise. Why is this important? Proliferation of social channels and federated customer data decrease the odds of a consistent customer experience.”

If you talk someone in the call center at 11AM and then a different rep on Twitter at 2PM what are the chances that the Twitter rep knows about your earlier conversation with the phone rep? While both interactions could easily be saved to a CRM contact profile, unless your Twitter handle was tied to your CRM contact profile your interaction with the phone rep is lost to the Twitter agent and vice-versa.

It is for these reasons that I believe that matching existing CRM contact profiles to social media contact profiles is the vital first step in integrating social and enterprise CRM. Who is doing contact matching well that you can learn from? I am a fan of both Xobni and Rapportive who I think have proved they do this well within the email space. Two other companies that were doing this have recently left the public space for different reasons. Gist was recently purchased by RIM and Flowtown sort of got out of the business with little explanation.

What do you think, is CRM and social media contact profiling the lynchpin to true enterprise Social CRM integration? Who else have I missed that is doing contact pfofile matching with some expertise?

Your comments and tweets are always much appreciated.


*** First time reader? If you liked this post (or if you hated it) please drop a comment, tweet it or take a moment and grab the rss feed and follow me on Twitter or friendfeed - Thanks! ***

If you enjoyed this post I recommend: