Does the CRM industry have an identity crisis?

Social CRM has got the business world talking. But while much of it is opening new channels to the customer, some of it is opening old wounds. In particular, the emergence of social CRM has once again raised the issue of the opaque nature of the CRM sector. In recent months we’ve not only witnessed the CRM credentials of some firms being called into question, but also seen some established CRM vendors distancing themselves from the sector.

 

Gartner, for instance, put the cat amongst the pigeons recently, when it nominated Jive and Lithium as leaders in its Social CRM Magic Quadrant. CRM’s leading light Paul Greenberg, author of the seminal ‘CRM at the Speed of Light’ admits that he raised his eyebrows at the choice.

 

"I love Lithium and I love Jive but they are not social CRM companies. They have no operational capacity at all, and when push comes to shove, the word ‘CRM’ is in there, and consequently that means sales, marketing, customer service, operational, transactional and customer databases and all that stuff has to be in it because that’s the foundation of CRM. And social CRM is an extension of that."

 

Greenberg adds: "As much as I like Gartner, I don’t agree with their social CRM landscape according to the Magic Quadrant. I’m not even sure what even the underlying continuity is between them either, to call it social CRM. That said, Gartner validated it by doing it, so kudos to them from that standpoint."

 

The CRM guru also believes that some of the fighting over the ‘social CRM’ definition has been for "alpha dog reasons" to "position themselves as the leader", but that this has ultimately only served to "muddy the waters" and cause confusion.

 

Richard Boardman of Mareeba CRM Consulting, sees uncanny similarities to events a decade ago. "I recall it being a pretty big problem," he says. "CRM was the hot topic, and every software application wanted some of the attention, so everything was badged as some variant of CRM no matter how distant the real relationship. The labeling sorted itself out after a while once the market became a little less frothy, but I think we’ve started to head back there again in recent times with the social CRM tag."