Thomas Wieberneit
Member Since: 4th Mar 2011
Thomas helps organisations of different industries and sizes to unlock their potential through digital transformation initiatives using a Think Big - Act Small approach. He is a long standing CRM practitioner. Coming from the technology side, Thomas has the ability to translate business needs into technology solutions that add value.
Being a goals and results oriented executive, entrepreneur and consultant with more than 20 years of leadership experience in the software industry, consulting and in the armed forces Thomas is a recognised thought leader of his domain.
In his successful leadership positions and consulting engagements he has initiated, designed and implemented transformational change and delivered mission critical systems.
He is an expert in distributed software development and the introduction and application of agile development methods in enterprise scale projects. He has led development, Quality Assurance, and consulting organizations with a combination of being hands-on and empowering his teams.
My discussion replies
Ray,
I do not think that the answer is that obvious. A customer lifcycle starts well before the "customer" is actually a customer.
Using the same line of argumentation that you use I could say that "Customer Service" should own Social CRM as service is where loyalty can be amplified, which is very important for keeping customers.
The history of CRM shows that departmentalization doesn't lead to success. CRM (and Social CRM with it) is a holistic business strategy and thus cannot be owned by a functional department because that would cement existing silos.
So, an integral part of the answer to the question "Who owns Social CRM" must be the answer to another question, namely "How can I/company provide most value to my customers?"
Rgds
Thomas
Social CRM is a strategy that covers marketing, sales, service, even extends into product development and other departments of any given company - if not implemented in spots only.
Social CRM can unfold its potential only if silos are broken down.
Having said that and due to the importance of the overall topic Social CRM cannot be owned by a functional department like marketing, sales, service. On the contrary I would argue that Social CRM belongs to the COO or the office of the CEO, in order to avoid departmental agendas taking the lead.
Rgds
Thomas