Report from Gartner CRM 360: Businesses and vendors still not grasping the power of Social CRM

I’ve spent Day 1 at the Gartner CRM 360 Summit here in (wonderfully warm) Los Angeles listening to session after session on Social CRM.

It’s all the buzz, right?

“You gotta have social CRM.”

“What’s your social CRM platform?”

“What’s your social CRM strategy?”

I’ve heard these phrases in a myriad of varieties over the past few days, and I’ve been surprised to find out this sad truth:

Most companies still just don't get it. Or, at least, not all of it.

One company thinks Social CRM is social media listening and participation. Responding on Twitter, posting to Facebook, monitoring negative feedback, etc.

Another company thinks it’s app development and deployment. Buying apps, information sharing apps, etc.

Others think it’s driving customers to a Facebook page for promotion and viral marketing. Contests, special offers, referral bonuses, etc.

But not a single person talked about measuring REVENUE as an activity of social CRM.

See, that’s the key distinction between social media marketing, and social CRM.  The CRM piece means you systematically track, analyze, automate, respond and cultivate a real relationship with your customers in the social sphere.

See, when social media marketing first took off, many traditional marketers couldn’t grasp it strategically. Maybe they were too old. Maybe they were too busy. Maybe they were just afraid of it.

But businesses still residually have it in their collective head that social media activities are nebulous and un-trackable.

But the social CRM revolution is taking off because it brings context and measurability to the amorphous world of social media marketing.

And since you’re tracking interactions, you can attach costs, throughput and revenue to those activities.

So it’s all of the above. It’s listening. It’s participating. It’s intervening. It’s app-ing. It’s community building. It’s Facebooking and Tweeting. It’s being an integral part of the fabric of the network.

And it’s measured and it drives revenue.

Eventually people will get it.