This document discusses the capabilities needed for social customer relationship management (social CRM). It identifies seven key capabilities from interviews with Greek tourism firms: organizational culture and management, information resource management, information technology infrastructure, customer-centric business strategy, customer-centric processes, communication, and performance measurement. The capabilities focus on engaging customers through social media, analyzing social media data, integrating social and transactional systems, developing customer-oriented strategies, empowering customers and communities, managing multi-stakeholder communication, and measuring both financial and non-financial value from social relationships. However, many Greek tourism firms currently lack these capabilities and have concerns about social media use.

1. Marianna SigalaMarianna Sigala
Professor of TourismProfessor of Tourism
Social CRM
Capabilities and Readiness:
Findings from Greek Tourism Firms

2. Companies are not anymore in
control of customer relationships

3. The ‘always’ connected customer wants
personalised services at any time, any
device, any place

5. The social customer does not consume
alone even if he/she is alone !
Experiences are lived in order to be
shared

7. Online communities create and determine
lifestyles, behaviours, preferences and
customer satisfaction

9. • Social media have changed the way
customers communicate with firms,
communities and other customers
• The social customer own and control
conversations

10. The impact of the fast mobile internet

11. CRM and loyalty programmes in
hospitality are outdated:
They offer “me-too” commoditised
rewards to repeat purchases that treat
customers as interchangeable
commodities and bar-code numbers

12. Four ways in which social media
transform CRM
Conversation: applications expediting a company’s
dialog with and between their customers and
capturing the data from these conversations.
Sharing: social media tools leveraging how users
create, exchange, distribute, and receive digital
content
Groups: tools assisting the building and nurturing of
online user communities focusing on specific topics,
brands, or products
Relationships: tools allowing organizations and
customers to create networks of associations with
various users and organizations utilize this
information retrieved from these networks

13. Social media impacts on CRM
• Customer does not generate value solely
through consumption and purchase
behaviour
• CRM migrates from a customer management
process to a customer engagement approach
aiming to enable and motivate customers to
co-create value within their ecosystem
whereby all the stakeholders are viewed as
value creators
• Social media collect and analyse data about
the social profile of the customer and his/her
network

14. From 1:1 relationship management to
ecosystem management
From a transactional to a conversational
relationship building mindset

15. There is a need to transform the
traditional CRM, that focuses on
managing the customer transactions
during the whole customer life cycle,
to a social CRM or CRM 2.0,
which places emphasis on the
personalisation and management of
customer experiences and
interactions

16. Social CRM defined
‘a holistic and cross-functional approach supported by strategies,
technologies, processes, corporate culture and social
characteristics. It is designed to involve customers and other
connected web-users in interactions on organizations’ managed
Social Media profiles and platforms as a means of providing
mutually beneficial value’
the social features, functions, processes, and characteristics that
need to be exploited for enhancing the interaction with the
customers, their communities, the firms and its partners
"philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology
platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics,
designed to engage the customer in a collaborative
conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a
trusted and transparent business environment"

17. Social CRM:
a co-creation approach
1) considers the customer as a value co-creator,
partner and collaborator;
2) depends on the use of the customer resources
(such as, customer-generated-data and insights) as
important resources for value co-creation;
3) should manage ecosystems in order to enable the
customers to participate and get engaged in mutual
beneficial value co-creation processes with the firm
4) customer value is more than the transactional value
of the customer

18. Social CRM capabilities
A social CRM capability is a firm's competency in generating, integrating, and
responding to information obtained from customer interactions that are
facilitated by social media technologies (Jayachandran et al., 2005)
The social CRM capabilities as a company’s competencies in developing,
incorporating, and responding to information gathered from customer
interactions that are expedited through the use of social media and divided
them into three dimensions: information generation, information
dissemination, and responsiveness (Trainor et al. 2014)
Six dimensions of social technology features: monitoring and capturing; analysis;
exploitation; IS integration; communication; management (Küpper et al. 2014)
BUT
• Social CRM is not a technological solution
• It requires wide organisational changes and change in organisational culture
• It requires customer-centric management systems

19. Social CRM capabilities
(Trainor et al, 2014)
Social CRM capability Components
Culture
• Open minded culture
• Management commitment
• Integration of back-office functions
• Customer centric communication
Information management
• Social media / CRM applications
• Social CRM IT infrastructure
• Social CRM data management
Internal business processes
• Strategy and added value
• Co-operations
• Governance
• Value proposition
Customer oriented processes
• Consistent / seamless customer experience
• Customer engagement
• Trigger-based actions

20. Research aim
• To identify and analyse the social CRMTo identify and analyse the social CRM
capabilitiescapabilities
• To assess the readiness of Greek tourismTo assess the readiness of Greek tourism
enterprises to adopt and use social CRMenterprises to adopt and use social CRM

21. Research methodology
A theory based preliminary list of social CRM
capabilities
In depth interviews, for refining the list with multiple
stakeholders:
12 hotel managers; 10 managers of tourism firms (i.e. 5 travel agents, 3 tour
operators and 2 airline managers); 4 tourism scholars; and 8 IT-suppliers.
Triangulation using various sources and methods
of data collection
(in depth interviews, various documents e.g., job descriptions,
brochures describing the functionality of technology solutions, flyers
and websites of IT-suppliers).

22. Seven categories of shared
themes related to social
CRM capabilities were
confirmed across all
informants
Findings

23. Organisational
culture and management
Organisational structure with a strong customer orientation and open
mind attitude
Management support (financial support, open culture for staff use of
social media technologies)
Staff use of social media is not a 'waste of time' or 'entertainment' but an
investment for customer service, learning and engagement
Difficult to measure the business benefits of social CRM
BUT ALSO
suspicion, negative attitude and risk about the social media use and
benefits because of: security and privacy concerns, the authenticity
and reliability of online social media profiles and content

24. Information resource
management
Information resource management
capabilities required for:
• Analysing and interpreting meaningful
customer information
• Enhancing customer learning capabilities;
• Taking appropriate business-related actions.

25. Information resource
management (1)
Capabilities for:
1. Using social media applications for:
• various touch points for seamless experiences; enrich the customer
experiences; design opportunities of value co-creation and customer
engagement in business processes; and provide customer access to
various front-office operations
• managing and monitoring the firms’ social profile and image in social media
• conversation nurturing and facilitation (through blogs, online conferencing/webinars, online
chatting, live interactive broadcasting); content creation and sharing/distribution;
groups/community nurturing and support; networking and relationship building; online image
development and monitoring.
• back-office operations such as, new product development, internal
communication, customer profiling and segmentation, environmental
scanning and market intelligence (IT suppliers and tourism scholars)

26. Information resource
management (2)
Capabilities for:
2. Using social media data about the customers, their
networks/friends and context of experiences:
• data exploitation for marketing purposes and customer complaint and
brand reputation monitoring (tourism firms)
• data exploitation for supporting all business functions and for
supporting reactive and not only proactive actions (scholars and IT
suppliers)
• 3 social media data information capabilities (scholars)
scientific knowledge; interpretive intelligence; and business intelligence

27. Information technology
infrastructure
integration of social media applications with:
• front – office (e.g. reservations, transactions, customer complaint
management and service management systems) and back-office
applications (e.g. customer databases, market segmentation, customer
value measurement modules);
• information resources with various processes in order to break down
departmental silos and enable a seamless customer experience;
• external partners and platforms (e.g. brand communities, bloggers,
social networks e.g. Facebook applications, iTunes) for distributing and
sharing content and building relations and networks;
• customer databases (360 degree view of customer)
Technologically feasible but firms not ready
Firms need appropriate organisational re-structuring – reengineering

28. Customer centric
business strategy
New management philosophy and mind-set
A dynamic social CRM capabilities referring to the firms’ ability to
continuously sense the environment and develop proactive and flexible
strategies that help firms to dynamically adapt and use their resources
for addressing change (Suppliers and scholars)
The firm’s ability not only to develop a visionary customer-oriented strategy
but also the ability to nurture and foster such a strategic vision and
culture to all organisational staff (hotel manager)

29. Customer centric processes
Customer-centric processes that support the active
customer involvement and participation in business
processes.
1. Staff capabilities for:
• co-creation management: identify, provide and support customer activities across all
business operations;
• customer empowerment: ‘educate’ and motivate the customers on how to participate in co-
creation activities;
• community management: develop, nurture, participate and monitor brand communities;
• social media firms’ profiles, image and platforms management.
1. staff empowerment and continuous development;
2. customer engagement management: design and provision of customer
involvement opportunities; e.g. gamification of business processes;
3. user permission management: staff access rights to information, processes
and systems.

30. Communication
Internally and externally
Multi-stakeholder communication
capabilities:
• single customers;
• groups of customers;
• brand communities;
• employees;
• external partners;
• bloggers and other opinion influencers and leaders.
Staff’s capabilities to identify, understand, drive,
influence and manage electronic-word-of-
mouth (eWOM) and C2C conversations

31. Performance measurement
Measurement of:
• The exploitation of social media (business value)
• The engagement of customers in co-creation activities;
• The value of the customer in business processes apart from
transactions such as eWOM;
• The value of brand communities and customer groups for the firm;
• The value of social media content and big data analysis in decision-
making and the firm.
A performance measurement capability that understands, appreciates and
is able to capture/measure the value of many intangible firm’s
assets/resources (e.g. customers, online content, communities) that
may not even be under the possession or even control of the firm

32. Limitations
Sample size and informants’ experience –
knowledge of social CRM
Study context
Dynamic evolution of social CRM

33. THANK YOU !THANK YOU !
Professor Marianna SIGALAProfessor Marianna SIGALA
marianna.sigala@unisa.edu.aumarianna.sigala@unisa.edu.au