The Value is still with Customers, but Looking Beyond is OK

I followed up a post written by Brian Solis yesterday, and shame on me, I am doing it again. But, today’s post was not really written by Brian, it was written by Paul Greenberg, not sure that makes it much better. Is this cheating? You know, writing a blog based on a blog, then following up that blog with other one. I happen to know Paul is in Europe for a couple weeks, so, I figured I would put my thoughts here. Brian is asking us to look beyond folks that we have a direct transactional history with, beyond just prospects.

I said yesterday that I believed SRM (Social Relationship Management) felt more like PR 2.0. Brian responded to my post, saying that we were not really talking about different things, but that he does not see SRM as PR 2.0. I am not yet convinced that it is a lot more, BUT I am willing to hold off pushing it too hard until I have a chance to talk with Brian (In real life, phone or some other traditional means like face to face even). I have and will maintain an open mind, willing to bend a bit, if needed. I am looking forward to the conversation

In today’s post Paul bridges the gap between SRM and Social CRM (potay-to v potah-to ) via the work of Dr. V. Kumar, Chairman of Georgia State University’s Marketing Department and the Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Brand and Customer Management (CEBCM), what he calls CRV (Customer Referral Value). The idea is that you should maintain these relationships, as there is value in the referral, and we can measure it.

“CRV is a measure of advocacy and positive business value that an influencer brings. It fundamentally acknowledges the existence of the social customer that Social CRM deals with.”

To really build a well rounded picture of the impact of CRV, the introduction of one more TLA is required. I will be brief, but Paul does a more thorough job here, a post from August 2009. NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a large topic, which has issues all its own, and not something I am going to dive to deeply into today. Dr. Kumar, in his work actually expands/extends NPS to make it more meaningful and useful (ie, one question just is not going to cut it, sorry). Let me explain: NPS asks a customer one simple question “Do you intend to recommend this product or service to someone you know?”, while that question is interesting, the study shows little correlation with the really important question: “Did you actually recommend this product or service to someone you know”. For now, take my word for it, then feel free to read the article referenced.

They are still customers, or are they?

The studies done to date refer to customers, and struggle to put a stake in the ground on the actual value of influencers, who are not customers. That said, as Brian suggests, we need to look beyond the customers, or at least look within more closely.  While Customer Lifetime Value is a more direct measure of what a customer spends and their direct value to the bottom line, we need to look beyond these people and understand better those who are engaged, advocates and otherwise bullish on your products and services.  The extreme case here is that they are not actually a customer,  but there is value to the organization to have a relationship with this person.

Do you know who those people are? If you have an idea, do you actively manage the relationships, or are the relationships managed externally? In a response to his first post Brian makes an interesting (valuable interesting) statement:

“..how do you move something beyond the literal interpretation when the infrastructure (technology, process, and methodologies) works again much of what you’re attempting to implement?”

Do your current processes or technology prevent you from reaching this goal, if it is a goal? If so, what are you going to do about it?