I guess, the question should be how much sociable should CRM be?
The social networking aspect is something that we understand as humans but not so clear in engg terms. We empathise, we feel but what all do we mine from the data that is publicly/privately available in these social networks? This is an area that has lots of privacy issues at stake. What is private becomes a 'point of view' question.

Mark Courtney has a nice post which addresses this issue to some extent. I have added it to the trackback for this post.

"... a fertile hunting ground for potential customers" is what Mark says and I agree with him.
The problem is what amount of data should be considered 'safe' to take?
Also will the user feel his privacy is violated?
Imagine you getting a phone call and the caller has almost all your info with him! (which you had posted sometime, somewhere). Won't it feel eerie???!

The nuance is lost here as to how the data is present. If there is info but well presented, then there is a chance of a sale else there is chance of .... ahem, bad things happening.
This cuts both ways hence needs a lot of careful handling.

 The latest version of Oracle’s Siebel CRM suite, Siebel 8.1.1 and CRM Gadgets for Sales, includes a My Contacts Gadget, for example. This is essentially an applet that allows companies using Oracle’s CRM software to mine details that subscribers have posted on social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace.

 The idea, according to Oracle executives, is to use consumer social networks as replacements for email.

I think that is a lot of marketing bs. That will not happen anytime soon and I doubt if it will ever happen. The privacy aspect will eventually be the messages/mail. Even spies use it for God's sake!

 Likewise, Salesforce.com says that its Force.com platform, which features an applet called Faceforce.com that links Salesforce.com’s CRM tool with Facebook – ­ is not about sales lead generation, but having a “deeper customer relationship” based on communities.

This makes sense. All CRM systems will try and start tinkering in this hazy area and try to figure out if they make their sales/marketing life easier! This is a sticky wicket mind you.

The more I look at it, the more I feel the intent is to get the Customer into the Product Development. Earlier too we had tools but no so dynamic, not so in-the-face, not so ease-of-use, conversational. Now it would seem to be a sudden enlightenment which has dawned on all (esp the CRM vendors) to go after this.

OpenID is making the integration a lot more simpler. We are slowly moving towards a dis-organizedly organized world. CRM has to play within this

 Slater believes that the whole ethos of marketing has altered in parallel with the advance of Web 2.0 technology, and organisations need to adapt their sales methods accordingly. “Vendors have to be aware of the conversations that customers have with each other,” he says. “There has been 20 years of indoctrination in marketing that says you control the brand, and you put the message out. But the world has changed.”

Slater hit the nail on the head. He has got it spot-on!

 

Richard Boardman, managing director and founder of independent CRM consultancy Mareeba, believes the benefits of integrating CRM and social networks from the customer perspective are negligible. He suspects the recent Oracle and Salesforce.com moves are just an attempt to generate publicity by jumping on the social networking bandwagon.

“Both companies are talking about a raft of integration with social networking sites, but I don’t really follow what they are trying to achieve,” he says. “Social networking sites are the antithesis of corporations, very difficult to control and built by people themselves to host their own content.”

That is a very interesting view point. What do you have to say about it?



Shankar