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The shift from traditional CRM to social media is creating a new paradigm for customer 
interaction, and Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) offers cloud-based solutions to help companies meet this new challenge, Scott Holden, senior director of product marketing at Salesforce.com, told CRM Buyer.
One of the biggest changes companies are wrangling with is the concept of transparency.
"It's more transparent," Holden said. "We're creating a transparent world."
Everything is out in the open now, concurred Fergus Griffin, vice president of product marketing at Salesforce.com.
Customers are no longer on the phone with an agent, Griffin told CRM Buyer. They have moved away from phone and email customer service to Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and social media. The new customer experience is "all public."
This shift to social media requires companies to treat customers differently, and it changes the way companies handle customer interaction, explained Griffin. Companies accustomed to traditional CRM can become overwhelmed.
"The volume of interaction is unprecedented," Griffin said, noting that the old methods and systems are not geared for it.
The Move to Mobile
The use of mobile devices is also having a big impact. As more people acquire mobile devices and smart devices loaded with social apps, they can share bad experiences more quickly, Griffin warned.
Video is also moving to mobile and can have an impact on CRM, Griffin pointed out.
"It's pretty compelling," he said.
Companies can track trends in Twitter and Facebook and can also use Salesforce.com to track social analytics, which are becoming more important, he explained. This allows them to be wiser about interactions and learn more about the customer.
Social CRM deepens customer service by allowing companies to monitor more conversations and to monitor them anywhere. Customer service becomes more like marketing with public interaction, noted Griffin.
The type of channel that is most important to track depends on the type of industry where a company does business, he said. The most appropriate channel may be blogs, Twitter or Facebook.
Tracking by product is very important, and Salesforce.com can track the level of interaction by product, Griffin continued. Multi-product tracking includes tracking across various Twitter handles and routing issues to the proper agent.
Salesforce.com recently acquired Radian6, a social media monitoring company. Radian6's tracking capabilities will enhance Salesforce.com's products, according to Griffin.
Companies need to obtain and track basic social information as well as analyze demographic information, he said, and Radian6 enhances Salesforce.com ability to meet that demand.
Companies are all incorporating ways to obtain customer information, Shep Hyken, creator of The Customer Focus training program, told CRM Buyer.
Social CRM presents them with an opportunity to obtain more information by using products like Salesforce.com to monitor customer interaction with social analytics, he pointed out.
"Everything's going in the right direction," said Hyken.
Turn Problems Into Success
Companies can use social media to put out fires, but they can also be proactive by making social part of the customer service process, Griffin pointed out.
Social CRM can improve customer service by turning problems and issues into success stories, he explained, and allow customer service to become more integrated with the sales and marketing process.
"They're doing a lot of interesting things in social CRM," Brent Leary, cofounder and partner of CRM Essentials, told CRM Buyer. "When they came out with Chatter, they really moved to the forefront."
Chatter offers a Facebook-like feed that can be used internally behind a firewall, Leary said. This allows more collaboration and information sharing within a company. "Chatter makes that happen."
The solutions offered by Salesforce.com bring services beyond marketing to the customer service experience, he said.
Chatter helps bridge the gap between sales and service because marketing people frequently become the first people aware of customer service issues, Holden observed. In addition, it helps give sales representatives a fuller view of the customer. Because marketing people are on the bleeding edge of social media, they are the ones who encounter customers with support issues.
"The first people hitting them up are people complaining," said Holden.
Marketing then becomes customer service, he continued, and that is where Chatter is particularly helpful.
The impact of social CRM is becoming powerful and undeniable, said Griffin. It is being applied internally via technology like Chatter, which can mimic the same social media channels people have become accustomed to using every day.
Marketing and sales people now use Twitter to launch marketing campaigns and generate leads by generating interest in products, noted Holden. Social CRM is particularly valuable to sales people as they prepare for the next call or meeting.
"It just sort of makes sense," he said.
