Harvey, Wilfred and the Invisible Social CRM

Attribution: Robin Rombach/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

What we discuss in our boardrooms and train throughout our workforces is very real. We have spreadsheets and documents detailing months of work and years of projections that sit like a giant elephants (or rabbits) within our offices. No one could tell us they aren’t real.

But what does real even mean?

Russian Novelists & Teenagers on Acid

Let’s pull it back from that previous existential quandary for a second to focus on the idea of reality as it appears in pop culture and then get back to company culture.

In 1950, Jimmy Stewart took to the silver screen to give new life to Elwood Dowd, the full-grown adult who befriends an anthropomorphized invisible rabbit. Sixty-one years later, Frodo Baggins….I mean, Elijah Wood, went to a smaller screen to tell the story of Ryan Newman and his relationship with a full-grown man in a dog suit who everyone else sees as a regular dog.

What these two stories have in common should be obvious, but just in case you missed it or haven’t heard of either of them, they are both stories revolving around people who act in certain ways based on the realities they see and beliefs they hold, which often end in disastrously hilarious situations because no one else shares the same reality.

It seems true, as Wilfred says, that existential questions should be left to russian novelists and teenagers on acid, but are you and your customers sharing the same reality and does that make a difference?

Yes.

Said The Man To His Dog

Reality is a tricky thing. In most cases, perception is reality, but what if someone’s perception is wrong. Is it still real? I’m not going to delve too deep in to the metaphysical and existential here, but I want to bring up the topic to get you thinking about how your reality is seen by your customers.

Your CRM (and hopefully, Social CRM) are VERY real to you, but if none of your actions or processes show the reality of that CRM to your customers, is it really real? Both Elwood Dowd and Ryan Newman act in their realities, but most seem them as crazy (actually both end up in jail or a nuthouse at least once during their stories).

What actions are you taking or changes are you showing to prove to your target markets that your Social CRM is a reality as opposed to a figment of your imagination? Has your RFP return process decreased in time? Has your warehouse output increased? Are customer complaints being answered more quickly and satisfaction reports coming in with higher scores?

Or are you just saying nice things in your boardrooms and meetings and talking about how your business is becoming more social?

One is reality and one leads to disastrous outcomes for your business and customers.

Finding the tools is one thing, using those tools to produce real results for your customers is entirely different thing.

If you need help with that second step and creating that reality, contact us and let us know, or simply subscribe to this blog as we’ll be discussing how to shift your internal realities to external ones.

Thoughts?

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