In the past week or so we covered a few interesting topics with easy to understand visuals (we hope). We looked at the difference between CRM and Social CRM (for those that are new here CRM = customer relationship management) and also explored the evolution of CRM to Social CRM. Today I want to talk about a process that Chess Media Group and Mitch Lieberman developed aptly called ARM or; the Action, Reaction, Management, Process. As quoted in the Guide to Understanding Social CRM:
“The ARM process is a straightforward protocol by which all inbound interactions can be judged, analyzed, responses evaluated, chosen, and implemented. This is not about automation yet as each business will need to decide which segments require human evaluation. It breaks down the essential elements into discrete components, and allows a business to evaluate each component first in isolation, then together as part of the whole (first decentralized, then centralized).”
The process might look a bit different for your organization but it should guide you in the right direction in going from “what was said” to an “action.”
Let’s quickly break down the elements.
What was said or done
This comes from the “customer” in the image but in the whitepaper we explain that this doesn’t have to come from the customer it can pretty much come from anyone. This piece should be pretty self explanatory.
Where it was said
We’re talking about the specific channel here, was it on a blog, in person, via email, etc. It’s important to know where “it” was said so that you will know how and where to respond.
Intent
Crucial yet difficult to understand. Essentially this deals with trying to figure out why the person said what they said, this will never be perfect as it deals with emotions.
What I know
This is the data/information piece that asks the organization “what do you know about your customer?” It’s verified factual data that should not be up to interpretation. This also includes social data.
Once you have all these pieces in place or at least have an understanding about them then you can move onto the next piece.
Business rules
The rules essentially govern what the response is going to look like. Every organization will have its own set of business rules that will govern what the next steps should look like.
Action
Finally we are left with “action,” as in, now what? Now that you have all of this information and you have gone through your business rules what do you do (or not do)? This can be broken down into two areas, internal or external (and oftentimes both).
Again, we tried to keep this simple as possible and hopefully it makes sense.
I covered this from a very high level, if you want more in depth information on the ARM process and on Social CRM then please download (and share!) our free whitepaper on Understanding Social CRM.
This really interesting and I read it on your whitepaper too. In bluekiwi when you decide to manage a channel like a twitter account you can follow-up specific tweets and the process we applied here follows part of the ARM concept you describe here:
1/ You quote a tweet and copy it into a specific place to been discussed with your team
2/ You set the intent (we just use 3 for the moment may should add more…)
3/ The origin of the tweet is automatically set
4/ You can comment, tag this imported tweet and the but we shoul add also social background info about the author
5/ You can act on this tweet by reposting it into a specific internal group to alert specific colleagues and extend the conversation or invite the author into one of your private communities
We didn't think about Business Rules you describe and they make a lot of sense in my opinion. We should add them for each channel managed. Great idea!!! Thanks
this is really interesting and gives a different perspective on how you can use different aspects of social media Facebook has the ability to increase productivity if used in the proper manners during the workday. Palo Alto has just written a whiter paper on Facebook http://bit.ly/brno0T and how you can maximize it in the workplace. Learn about the benefits of a proper Facebook policy and what this can do for your business.
Its absolutely great to learn about action, reaction, management, process (ARM) for social costumer relationship management. I know that it would be a great chance to fully develop and improve your business. I think that everyone are excited to learn more about it.