CRM 2.0 - Why Can't Social Networks Port into CRM Systems?
Customer Relationship Management ("CRM"), one of the least attractive administrative tasks facing any business, needs an overhaul. Most systems have their users manually input and update contact data into data siloes that are currently incompatible with social networking applications like LinkedIn and Facebook which can harbor that same base data and more.
CRM systems have three tracking functions:
- Contact database - name, address, phone, email, etc.
- Contact history and details - dates of contact, discussion topics, contact interests and personalization, priority
- Tasks - next steps, deadlines, timeline, alerts, priority
- Categorization of contacts, projects and tasks by folders, or better, tags.
- Data mining and metrics to monitor and elucidate user efficiency - contact growth rate, best use of time, close rate, benchmarking vis-a-vis other users
- Automated marketing - drip email campaigns,
The problem with CRM systems is the laborious process of inputting contact data. It's simply not automated, and CRM systems aren't updating themselves to automate the input process.
What's the fix? LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media applications have user-generated contact data and personal details - all that's necessary is to port the data into the CRM application. Why stop there? CRM systems should aspire to Friendfeed-like aggregation of online conversations across various applications. That means email, IM, Twitter and Facebook conversations should ideally be referenceable by contact name. It may be nothing more than dragging and dropping URLs containing the data or cut/paste the conversations in a contact timeline.
The functionality of CRM systems for tasking, categorizing, data mining and automated marketing add value to CRM; these systems become much more relevant when inputting base data is a simple upload operation. Otherwise, they risk lying fallow from lazy maintenance.
Since I'm not in the CRM space, I'd be pleased to be referred to a system that does what I'm requesting here.
I couldn't agree more. Real estate contact management software needs to join the web 2.0 world of social networking, tagging, rss. Would someone please invent this software? And please make it integrate with Google calendars, Gmail, run on my Iphone too?
Andy Piper
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Part 1 (3000 characters limit)
As a relational database expert for over 20 years, I've designed and developed many CRM systems. What is very interesting (and sometimes makes me chuckle a bit) is the number of agents who, having gotten deeper into the operation of vendor-hosted database systems, start asking: why aren't these systems 100% interoperable? The core answer is because vendor-hosted database systems, ranging from CRM-types such as TopProducer to social media applications, derive their value and, when applicable, their monthly charges from NOT letting users have open use of the data collected. In other words: it's their system, not yours.
> The real estate professional theoretically should overload a CRM system because, unlike B2B professionals who tend to work with smaller networks, the agent generally casts a wide net of prospects, potentially thousands, in various stages of the transaction process.
I have not encountered an agent or team who's business would overload the systems I've developed as these systems can handle millions of records easily. To refer to Gary Kellers "Millionaire Real Estate Agent", you'll need 1,620 people in your "met" database or 16,000 in your "have not met" database to make a millionaire dollars in real estate. These are really small numbers (database-wise), yet I still don't find many real estate agents who even approach these levels.
> The problem with CRM systems is the laborious process of inputting contact data. It's simply not automated, and CRM systems aren't updating themselves to automate the input process.
Here, I think you might be misunderstanding the differences between pure marketing systems and CRM systems. For instance, you may have many people you'd like to send mail to (the most common "bulk" or "mass" function of marketing systems), but how many people can you actually engage in "relationship management" with at a time - at any given moment? Your ability to quickly reference detailed history information on a person while conducting a phone call or meeting is what CRM is really about.
If you were selling widgets, a good CRM system should automate the inclusion of a customer's purchase for sales history perusal. But selling real estate is different; just ask Glenn Kelman of Redfin.com. There are simply too many vagaries involved in the real estate purchase process to fully automate it.
The answer is to own a database system that interoperates with hosted solutions. An example is something my company is releasing soon: you store data on your clients in a private system you control and, through application programming interfaces provided by companies such as Zillow or Trulia, data from the outside system is displayed, real-time, within your system. In essence, you become your own aggregator as it relates to market data and analytics applying to your client's properties.
(part 2 follows)
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Part 2 (3000 characters limit)
> LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media applications have user-generated contact data and personal details - all that's necessary is to port the data into the CRM application.
This is assuming, of course, that the application owners allow you to export the data. Setting aside most social media applications for a moment, all vendor-hosted real estate applications I've analyzed do not let you export this data. Often you can export the most "base" data (names, addresses, etc.) but NOT export the truly valuable history and relationships data - that's how they keep you as a customer. If you can find a comprehensive export functionality in popular social media applications I'd be surprised. The term "port" (as it relates to data, not programming) generally means exporting then massaging or parsing the data then finally, importing the data into another system. This is a common capability in systems I develop.
> It may be nothing more than dragging and dropping URLs containing the data or cut/paste the conversations in a contact timeline.
I thought you wanted it automated?
This is a great topic; there is much more I could write should you like to delve further.
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There IS a CRM that is operable with any database and that CAN automate every step of the lead process – Top Producer 8i.
Top Producer 8i allows you to receive leads from any external source as it can interface with any system. After you identify which external sources you want to receive leads from, you can immediately start receiving consumer submissions and inquiries from all of these external sources directly into your 8i. Whatever information is submitted by these leads is automatically populated into 8i; eliminating the laborious and time consuming task of inputting lead information into your database. It’s instant lead generation. Some of the most common sources that you can receive leads from are national sites (such as REALTOR.com), your personal agent website, Contact Me web pages, and even IDX. In addition to these external sources, Top Producer 8i can also receive leads from all products within its Product Suite such as Market Snapshot, Top Producer Websites and IDX. When the consumer submits their information, not only will this lead be populated into your 8i, but you can also set up a lead alert so that you are instantly alerted on your mobility device. To complete this lead process, 8i allows you to set up AUTOMATED drip marketing campaigns which are immediately activated and self-running as soon as the lead is received. It’s never been easier getting leads and it’s never been easier responding to all of your leads.
You also don’t need to manually enter any contacts if you already have an existing database of contacts. You can export all of the data from your current contact management application (and this includes contact information, property information, outstanding tasks, historical items, etc.) and then import them into Top Producer 8i. How is this done? There is a universal exportable file type called a comma separated value (.csv) file. Once you’ve exported all of your current data into a .csv file, 8i has a great tool that breaks up this data into all of the relevant fields and then imports it in a matter of minutes. What this means is that, once you log into 8i, your data is immediately available for you and without needing you to go in to tweak it further. No massaging, no lost time, no manual entry. Furthermore, if there is need to export all of your contacts or just a specific group from your 8i database, you can easily perform this action and as many times as you need to.
8i is one of the most powerful lead aggregators in the market. It also contains a whole range of reports and business analytics that allow you to quickly determine where and what you need to change or focus on in your business. It’s the total package.
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"J. McCready" (whoever he/she is) is misleading readers.
All anyone has to do is call TopProducer and ask them to explain what data you can take with you and what you cannot take with you should you decide to leave the service.
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Thanks for the info, I found your site very helpful
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Pat,
CRM is much more than mere contact management. But then, I guess that's your interest area.
The kind of integration you are looking for b/w a CRM system & the profiles from the social networking sites is indeed offered by Salesforce.com through addons for LinkedIn & Facebook. To get the contact details however into salesforce.com, you would need to have those people as your friends.
For more info you could either visit my blog or join the conversations on twitter with #scrm & #crm tags. We have got many heavy weights out there.
Regards,
Prem
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As a Technical Professional, I could rant about the silliness of Top Producer 8i or any other version. My wife is a Realtor that along with a partner bought TP, I think they are still running 6i. I was wondering if anyone has a program to export the data out of their database. It's the most absurd thing I have witnessed in data storage since DOS based systems.
I want to move them off of Win2000 Pro and TP 6i, but need to figure out how to get their contact database out.
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@ T.R. William
I understand this. Please contact me directly if you'd like.
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What you need to keep in mind is that many CRM systems take the approach of, in effect, keeping your data hostage. They don't allow interoperability, or even full data export because their are afraid that if they do, you will take your data and move to a competitor. So, most systems allow pretty minimal export capability.
However, I think that this attitude has been changing over the past 2-3 years. For example, RealtyJuggler allows 2-way synchronization of contacts, tasks and appointments with Microsoft Outlook. Once in outlook, you can take your data and synchronize with many social sites through their connectors. For example, google, yahoo, Microsoft Online etc.
Additionally, RealtyJuggler allows for contacts to be available using LDAP, which is a standard way to look up e-mail addresses in e-mail programs. So, you have interoperability that way. Calendars can be subscribed to using iCal, which is another standard, which many web applications use - like google and yahoo and others.
All data can also be exported in EXCEL format as well.
Additionally, realtors can make their listings available as RSS feeds, which is yet another web standard. Lastly, Yahoo and google maps are fully integrated into the system so you can map listings and even map routes for multiple showings.
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