Social CRM and the Zombie Apocalypse

Looking back over my posts here, it surprises me that it took me 56 posts to get to the subject of zombies. “Shocked” would actually be a better term for it. You see, I’m quite the fan of zombie culture. Romero films are guilty pleasures of mine and I could spend all day watching The Walking Dead (or reading the comics). When the stories of bath-salts-related face eatings started happening around the southern states, I was the odd one out of my friends who called ‘zombie outbreak’.

And for those of you who don’t believe my strange obsession, here are two screenshots for how Google finishes my searches for “How” and “Best”:

So yeah, I’m a little weird about it. I say all that to explain my confusion on the lack of zombie-related content on this site.

Let’s change that.

Business Zombies

There’s an outbreak happening all around us and most of us haven’t even noticed. Glass-eyed executives roam the hallways of our companies, and employees wander around from seat to cubicle to meetings with no seeming sense of purpose. Our communications come across as nothing more than reverberated moans and grunts from a corporate body that sounds just like all the other corporate bodies communicating in the social spaces.

We exist in a “Me-Too Economy” that personifies itself in the following conversation:

Company A: “We had a great idea with lots of results that we spent months planning and building a strategy around!”

Companies B-ZZZ: “We like those results. We’re going to do the exact same thing!”

Company A: “We’re not sure that will work. We did a lot of research on our audience to make this plan effective.”

Companies B-ZZZ: “Grrraahhhhhbbbzzzzz. Braaaaaiiiiiiinnnnzzzzzz mmmmoonnneeyyss bblforowkddrrgggggg.”

It’s easy to give in to the things we see others doing and sidestep the living, breathing work it took to get there. Any Social Business employing Social CRM initiatives can’t take the easy way out and merely mimic the living dead companies around them.

Re-Engage The Head

Anyone familiar with zombie culture knows that in order to stop a roamer you have to destroy the head, while avoiding being bitten in the process.

In the case of business zombies you almost have to take an opposite approach. You have to re-engage the head.

Zombie-think starts to infect a company when actions start before thinking starts. By looking for the “easy way in” companies effectively turn off their brains and start regurgitating grunts they’re hearing online.

A good Social CRM platform will include some sort of way for you to not only engage with your clients, but truly get a sense of who they are, and provide you with avenues to explore those personalities to understand what type of communication will truly show life to them.

<sarcasm> Wait, you say you already have basic demographic information about them? How wonderful that you know 33% of your online interactions come from the New England states! </sarcasm>

So what? What does that information mean and how can you use that to your benefit? Are your customers Type A or Type B personalities? Do they feel like they are searching for self-empowerment or just trying to get by? Do they like Family Guy humor or would they prefer something closer to Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood? Do they buy for self-fulfillment or need-fulfillment? Do they see/know a difference?

It’s time that we start living full Social Business lives instead of wandering around like the Walking Dead and grunting at and trying to eat everyone with a pulse for our own sustenance.

What’s your process for avoiding zombie-think within your company? How do you see it manifesting in areas of your or your competitors’ businesses? How are you going to re-engage the head?

Thoughts?

(For your enjoyment, you will find below a mash-up of viral Internet culture in photos: a kitten and a zombie)

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