List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings

Social CRM: A Growing Segment
Yesterday’s
post on Social CRM vendors not walking-the-talk raised awareness of this nascent space.  However, not everyone was thrilled with the effort, as CTO John Moore gave us an A for effort but a C- for results, and Kim Kobza, the CEO of Neigborhood America (they were an early adopter) left a comment on John’s post suggesting we missed the mark (also, SAP ‘s passionate team strongly represents).  Although we stand by our scoring, both John and Kim are right, our evaluation yesterday was only on a small subset of the industry, but a manageable starting ground, as we continue to unearth the variety of players.

Tracking the Market with an ‘Industry Index’
For a few years ago, I’ve created what I call my posts called the Industry Index (see all) lists to track companies in any particular vertical, it helps me, vendors, and buyers to track the space.  I expect this space to rapidly increase in size as social channels will be bolted onto CRM vendors, and many brand monitoring and community platforms are adding workflow, triage, and tracking capabilities. The purpose of this list is to quickly capture the vendors participating in this space, and to acknowledge those that were not on yesterday’s review, I expect there to be many more vendors who leave a comment, which we can quickly add to this list.

We owe it to the market to try to include as many as possible, although it’s going to be very difficult as this space quickly grows. So first, let’s try to put some scope around this space with a definition.

Social CRM Definition
We prefer Paul Greenberg’s definition of Social CRM, which he summarizes as:

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” (also read his 2009 review of this space on ZDnet)

It’s a broad definition, but the key criteria he lists out are enough for me to go on.

List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings: (34 vendors total)


Traditional CRM Vendors offering Social Integration (11 vendors)

  • ACT!:  This barely fits the scope of social crm, but ACT! allows a single individual to manage multiple types of information, including social, however if this product was extended across an enterprise, it fits the quota.
  • BatchBlue: While not a ‘traditional’ CRM like many of the others listed below, has traditional sales automation features, but also connect with existing social graph data, think social aggregation of contact lists.  After watching the demo, it looks like you have to manually enter feeds of contacts, rather than auto-finding data from social graphs by scraping.
  • Buzzient: Offers a CRM platform that provides social media analytics that can be used for web marketing, customer tracking, or reporting.  They have partnerships with Salesforce, Oracle, and SugarCRM.
  • Microsoft Dynamics:  Offers Accelerators (here and here) that “Allows business professionals to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites, and as a result, provides real-time status updates about their products and services” (thanks Menno, who writes on the topic) They are also partnered with Neighborhood America
  • NetSuite:  Offers social CRM with a partnership with InsideView and has Twitter integration (submitted by Paul Greenberg)
  • Oracle Siebel Social CRM: Promises the ability to provide insights based on the buying behaviors of similar customers, as well as shared content to be used between sales teams.
  • RightNow CRM: Offers several features in their suite such as Support Communities, Innovation Communities, Cloud Monitoring, and Social Experience Design. Rightnow recently acquired Hivelive an enterprise community platform.
  • Salesforce: Offers acces to Social Networking like Facebook and Twitter. Salesforce, like SAP is importing the Twitter “firehose” feed, and has offered social features like Q&A, and social networking like Chatter, and has lightweight LinkedIn integration.
  • SAP CRM: Imports the Twitter firehose feed, and
  • Sugar CRM: Offers “SugarCRM Cloud Connectors connect via Web Services to leading third-party data service providers such as Hoover’s, JigSaw and LinkedIn”
  • We Can Do Biz: Offers traditional CRM features (although their website is a bit difficult to navigate) for SMB, and has a unique Twitter scraping feature that filters down by some level of geography and organizes records in the database.  I had a briefing with them on Feb 2010.  Added Feb 2010.

Community Platforms Offering Social CRM (5)

  • Jive Software: Community Engagement, offers data integration from Radian6, encouraging management of the discussion.
  • Leverage Software:  I recall that Leverage offers built in integration with Salesforce, but I was unable to find it on their site.
  • Lithium Technologies offers the Social CRM Suite offering features such as Community Applications, Reputation Engine, Actionable Analytics, CRM Connectivity, and Social Web Connectivity.
  • Neighborhood America: Has had a partnership with Microsoft Dynamics, read press release, (they were early on in March 2009) and commentary from Paul Greenberg on ZDNet.
  • Concourse:  Offers a variety of integration modules to a variety of apps, including a CRM module that’s prebuilt. (via pjk54)

Brand Monitoring Offering Social CRM (4)

Social Media/Twitter Clients (2)

Social Customer Experience (4)

  • CrowdEngineering:  Helps to match experts to customer problems, by using a recommendation engine and skill resource set engine.
  • Fuze Digital Solutions: Provides a broad and modular multi-channel customer care solution using a community knowledge base as its foundation.
  • Helpstream: Offers tools that allow customers to submit questions to each other, with integration into SalesForce in addition to community driven knowledge centers.  see video.
  • Parature: Offers chat-like features for support reps to interact with customers, then measures sentiment.
  • Get Satisfaction:  Is an off-domain (all the support is done on their site –not yours) community that now offers premium features that offer ability to manage discussions.

Sales 2.0/Social Graph Aggregation (6)

  • Flowtown:  Allows marketers to prioritize targets to contact by a variety of influence scores, and their social graph.  It then offers targeted email marketing based on those two criteria.
  • Gist: Offers a way to track the social behaviors of your customers and prioritize.
  • InsideView: Offers some unique offerings that mine a business social graph to provide alerts as a plugin to traditional CRM systems, Watch this lengthy demo.
  • Roving Group: Offers a product called ‘Roving Contacts’ that aggregates the social graphs and contact information from your address book.
  • SocioToo: Not the typical corporate enterprise company, this Dutch company offers a search page (and no real corporate site –by intent) that mines social graph data in public.
  • Xobni:  This cleverly named (opposite of inbox) Outlook plugin scrapes your social graph and most frequently emailed contacts improving email utility.  This barely falls within the scope of social crm, but if the data was able to export to other systems, it could start to apply.

CRM Applications and Plugins (2)

  • Appirio: Offers the ability for companies to create applications on Facebook which then marry data back to Salesforce, called Cloud Connectors.
  • SocialCRMTools: Offers integration with Salesforce that imports, monitors, and manages Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. (via John Perez)

Social Networks and Others

  • Twitter: Has made motions they plan to offer premium services to brands, that would offer verified accounts, then management-like features. The specifics are still unknown, as they sort out their business model. They have partnered with Google and Bing.
  • Google has announced real time search integration, and Bing has shown some early integrations.  While far fetched we should not completely rule them out as eventually building a dashboard for brands to manage their namesakes, advertising, and website analytics, or Google alerts.  Historically, they generate money off content created by publishers, so this actually falls in line with ‘organizing the world’s information”.

Tracking Changes:

  • Feb 12,2010: Added WeCanDo.biz after a briefing, and Alterian.

Not on this list? Leave a comment, with justification why you fit in Paul’s definition with a link to your site explaining more, I’ll take a look and add to it, please be patient while I review.  Also, if you want to brief Ray and myself, please read and submit to this briefing form.

Update: Business Partner Ray Wang and I have created a more detailed matrix of this space for our clients.

177 Replies to “List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings”

  1. Great Article!

    Gist is a form of Social CRM as is the Xobni add-on for Outlook. Threadsy also has some CRM characteristics. While I have not looked at it, I understand that ACT! also has an offering.

    Thanks!

    Craig

  2. Great Article!

    Gist is a form of Social CRM as is the Xobni add-on for Outlook. Threadsy also has some CRM characteristics. While I have not looked at it, I understand that ACT! also has an offering.

    Thanks!

    Craig

  3. Hi Jeremiah, Nielsen also has workflow as part of its My Buzzmetrics brand monitoring dashboard.

  4. Hi Jeremiah, Nielsen also has workflow as part of its My Buzzmetrics brand monitoring dashboard.

  5. Thank you for the Social + CRM shout-out to Kim Kobza and the Neighborhood America team (via @JohnFMoore). We appreciate the mention, Jeremiah.

  6. Thank you for the Social + CRM shout-out to Kim Kobza and the Neighborhood America team (via @JohnFMoore). We appreciate the mention, Jeremiah.

  7. Concursive Corp., http://www.concursive.com, is a technology company that has created a branded social media platform that enables different classes of users to create individual communities around their brand or themselves. Businesses, organizations, people, partners can build unique, branded communities within the larger Community. This social application is integrated into our 10 year old, world class CRM, so that all activity within the community is reflected inside the CRM and can be acted upon through email/direct mail marketing campaigns.

  8. Concursive Corp., http://www.concursive.com, is a technology company that has created a branded social media platform that enables different classes of users to create individual communities around their brand or themselves. Businesses, organizations, people, partners can build unique, branded communities within the larger Community. This social application is integrated into our 10 year old, world class CRM, so that all activity within the community is reflected inside the CRM and can be acted upon through email/direct mail marketing campaigns.

  9. Thank you for including us in this list. There is certainly a lot of room to grow in this area and we are doing our best to evolve our tool to help map community value with the conversations happening across multiple touchpoints.

    Currently,we are going beyond monitoring and integrating into CRM systems. We can push conversations into the CRM system for a lead entered (for example), and tie their social profile (i.e. twitter account, blog URL, etc.) to the contact/account in the CRM system. This is just the beginning, but we are excited about what the future will bring.

    Lauren Vargas
    Community Manager at Radian6
    @VargasL

  10. Thank you for including us in this list. There is certainly a lot of room to grow in this area and we are doing our best to evolve our tool to help map community value with the conversations happening across multiple touchpoints.

    Currently,we are going beyond monitoring and integrating into CRM systems. We can push conversations into the CRM system for a lead entered (for example), and tie their social profile (i.e. twitter account, blog URL, etc.) to the contact/account in the CRM system. This is just the beginning, but we are excited about what the future will bring.

    Lauren Vargas
    Community Manager at Radian6
    @VargasL

  11. Thanks Jeremiah this is very helpful. I use Radian6 and am starting to attempt to connect the dots between Email (Xobni), KPIs (Webstrends) and our legacy CRM systems (SAP, Salesforce). This is no small feat across my organization and I'm a team of one trying to sell this so it will not happen overnight but I'm confident in time the org will greatly reap the benefits of this added layer. Especially as I continue to try to change the culture at my company. In the process of leading a working group defining the elements involved in social as they apply to the product launch and life cycle. Part of it is recommending a set of industry best practices and tools to accomplish this if it's something the company has never done before. This list will come in handy!

    Hope all is well!

    Adam

  12. Thanks Jeremiah this is very helpful. I use Radian6 and am starting to attempt to connect the dots between Email (Xobni), KPIs (Webstrends) and our legacy CRM systems (SAP, Salesforce). This is no small feat across my organization and I'm a team of one trying to sell this so it will not happen overnight but I'm confident in time the org will greatly reap the benefits of this added layer. Especially as I continue to try to change the culture at my company. In the process of leading a working group defining the elements involved in social as they apply to the product launch and life cycle. Part of it is recommending a set of industry best practices and tools to accomplish this if it's something the company has never done before. This list will come in handy!

    Hope all is well!

    Adam

  13. To add to this, I've been pitched and seen tours of pretty much every online listening tool. The one thing that seems to be lagging are the workflow management capabilities. So far I have to say Radian6 has had this for at least a year that I know of while other more robust tools (without naming them) are still considering this or working on it.

  14. To add to this, I've been pitched and seen tours of pretty much every online listening tool. The one thing that seems to be lagging are the workflow management capabilities. So far I have to say Radian6 has had this for at least a year that I know of while other more robust tools (without naming them) are still considering this or working on it.

  15. Adam,

    You are definitely on the right track by forming a working group to define the elements you need in any social crm tool. It is essential the tool(s) work with the culture and overall business objectives of the company. Let us know how we can help you integrate and socialize the tool better.

    Lauren Vargas
    Community Manager at Radian6
    @VargasL

  16. Adam,

    You are definitely on the right track by forming a working group to define the elements you need in any social crm tool. It is essential the tool(s) work with the culture and overall business objectives of the company. Let us know how we can help you integrate and socialize the tool better.

    Lauren Vargas
    Community Manager at Radian6
    @VargasL

  17. Hey Jeremiah,

    Great post – very helpful and you're right, the list will certainly evolve rapidly as brands cotton-on to the importance of this kind of feature set.

    Having just talked with Radian6 today, it's clear that they're planning to build-out their functionality in this area even more, which is good to see. It's also worth noting that other companies in that space such as Toronto-based Sysomos incorporate CRM and team workflow components in their systems.

    Thanks for the link 🙂

    Dave

  18. Hey Jeremiah,

    Great post – very helpful and you're right, the list will certainly evolve rapidly as brands cotton-on to the importance of this kind of feature set.

    Having just talked with Radian6 today, it's clear that they're planning to build-out their functionality in this area even more, which is good to see. It's also worth noting that other companies in that space such as Toronto-based Sysomos incorporate CRM and team workflow components in their systems.

    Thanks for the link 🙂

    Dave

  19. An interesting list but there is something missing. True Social CRM by way of WeCanDo.BIZ's WeCanDoCRM. This is live and is free for large parts of it. I will say I am the COO and as such have a vested interested but we have had some great reviews and our Twitter Sales Leads Tool is causing a huge buzz. I would be happy to discuss it with anyone.

  20. An interesting list but there is something missing. True Social CRM by way of WeCanDo.BIZ's WeCanDoCRM. This is live and is free for large parts of it. I will say I am the COO and as such have a vested interested but we have had some great reviews and our Twitter Sales Leads Tool is causing a huge buzz. I would be happy to discuss it with anyone.

  21. Thanks Menno. I added it, credited you and tweeted you. It's clear you're passionate about the topic, after checking out your blog. Thanks for being a helpful member of the community.

  22. Thanks Menno. I added it, credited you and tweeted you. It's clear you're passionate about the topic, after checking out your blog. Thanks for being a helpful member of the community.

  23. Chris

    You've got my ear. I've spent time on your site, but it's not clearly articulating to me (I'm a bit slow sorry) on what your social CRM features are. Could you give me more details here in the comments and a link to the specific URL?

    Just trying to make sure it's clear for me, and everyone else. Thank you.

  24. Chris

    You've got my ear. I've spent time on your site, but it's not clearly articulating to me (I'm a bit slow sorry) on what your social CRM features are. Could you give me more details here in the comments and a link to the specific URL?

    Just trying to make sure it's clear for me, and everyone else. Thank you.

  25. We just launched our website http://www.baduku.com which was demoed at the TechCrunch Real-Time CrunchUp, and we think this will one day be an essential tool for brand monitoring. Baduku.com is an opinion engine that not only aggregates opinions around a topic but it is capable of consolidating and ranking social consensus. Soon users and brands will be able to measure socially defined opinions about their brands in real-time.

    Additionally, probably the most unique feature that Baduku.com offers is the date ranging feature will makes measuring social public opinion even more granule, allowing brands to gauge how the public feels with in not only the lifetime of the brand but specifically the last few months, month, or week. Why is this important? We believe that public opinions with the last few weeks, especially after some major press is more relevant than public opinion collected over the lifetime of a brand.

    Still the website just launched so it will take time for this level of robust data to accumulate but it will be exciting to see how it grows and whether it becomes a powerful resource for brands.

  26. We just launched our website http://www.baduku.com which was demoed at the TechCrunch Real-Time CrunchUp, and we think this will one day be an essential tool for brand monitoring. Baduku.com is an opinion engine that not only aggregates opinions around a topic but it is capable of consolidating and ranking social consensus. Soon users and brands will be able to measure socially defined opinions about their brands in real-time.

    Additionally, probably the most unique feature that Baduku.com offers is the date ranging feature will makes measuring social public opinion even more granule, allowing brands to gauge how the public feels with in not only the lifetime of the brand but specifically the last few months, month, or week. Why is this important? We believe that public opinions with the last few weeks, especially after some major press is more relevant than public opinion collected over the lifetime of a brand.

    Still the website just launched so it will take time for this level of robust data to accumulate but it will be exciting to see how it grows and whether it becomes a powerful resource for brands.

  27. Wow, I didn't know Act! still existed! One of my clients has been running Act! 4 for years, I wonder what's changed since!

  28. Wow, I didn't know Act! still existed! One of my clients has been running Act! 4 for years, I wonder what's changed since!

  29. There are already third party companies offering verification of twitter, linkedin, myspace and facebook accounts after verifying your identity which is being used by celebrities like Jim carrey as well. Check out this startup from Philadepphia http://www.crederity.com that is offering free verification of twitter accounts.

  30. There are already third party companies offering verification of twitter, linkedin, myspace and facebook accounts after verifying your identity which is being used by celebrities like Jim carrey as well. Check out this startup from Philadepphia http://www.crederity.com that is offering free verification of twitter accounts.

  31. Can you add Buzzient to the list? We're an application that not only provides monitoring, analytics, and sentiment analysis of social media, but also integration with Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and OracleCRM OnDemand.

    We enable enterprises to create support cases, trouble tickets, sales leads, and marketing campaigns based on social media; we integrate seamlessly with the workflows of the named apps. We enable the CRM user to run our social media app native within their CRM system, so social media becomes a part of the CRM workflow and selling process.

    We're deployed in SaaS form, but also software/hardware appliance for those who need on-premise capability for enhanced security and data protection.

    http://www.buzzient.com

  32. Can you add Buzzient to the list? We're an application that not only provides monitoring, analytics, and sentiment analysis of social media, but also integration with Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and OracleCRM OnDemand.

    We enable enterprises to create support cases, trouble tickets, sales leads, and marketing campaigns based on social media; we integrate seamlessly with the workflows of the named apps. We enable the CRM user to run our social media app native within their CRM system, so social media becomes a part of the CRM workflow and selling process.

    We're deployed in SaaS form, but also software/hardware appliance for those who need on-premise capability for enhanced security and data protection.

    http://www.buzzient.com

  33. Hi Jeremiah,

    We've just released a white paper today about our brand new social people search API:

    Finding People on Social Networks
    http://sociotoco.com/blog/2009/12/9/white-paper

    It explains how Sociotoco Search is an interface for social CRM systems to _find_ CRM contacts on 25+ social networks.

    After all, what is a social CRM system when users don't know how to find their contacts on-line? 🙂

    Regards,
    Jurgen

  34. Hi Jeremiah,

    We've just released a white paper today about our brand new social people search API:

    Finding People on Social Networks
    http://sociotoco.com/blog/2009/12/9/white-paper

    It explains how Sociotoco Search is an interface for social CRM systems to _find_ CRM contacts on 25+ social networks.

    After all, what is a social CRM system when users don't know how to find their contacts on-line? 🙂

    Regards,
    Jurgen

  35. Thanks for the post, Jermiah. The Roving Group, just released RovingContacts http://www.therovinggroup.com/rovingcontacts.aspx, a contact management system that allows users to centralize and synch online address books into one online location. Integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Outlook, Plaxo, and other platforms to automatically pull in contacts and profiles from each, and provide instant access to deeper levels of information for each contact. Also integrates with Bing for location pin-pointing and driving directions. Users can share designated address books with colleagues for efficiency and collaboration in both social and business settings. (This link: http://www.therovinggroup.com/pricing_contacts…. details RovingContact™s functionality in one place.) Thanks for checking us out!

  36. Thanks for the post, Jermiah. The Roving Group, just released RovingContacts http://www.therovinggroup.com/rovingcontacts.aspx, a contact management system that allows users to centralize and synch online address books into one online location. Integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Outlook, Plaxo, and other platforms to automatically pull in contacts and profiles from each, and provide instant access to deeper levels of information for each contact. Also integrates with Bing for location pin-pointing and driving directions. Users can share designated address books with colleagues for efficiency and collaboration in both social and business settings. (This link: http://www.therovinggroup.com/pricing_contacts…. details RovingContact™s functionality in one place.) Thanks for checking us out!

  37. Jeremiah

    OK – when you go to http://www.wecando.biz you will see that you can already sign in using various methods; OpenID, oAuth, Facebook etc or you can still create an account in the traditional manner. We did this because we know people get registration fatigue so we do as much of the work as we can for our members. Once you are in, if there are any details we don't have, we prompt you for those. Once you have done that, the trick is to complete a business profile with the all important keywords – the things your business does. I will come back to why that is so important.

    It is really easy to import/invite and cross populate your contacts with all of the usual social sites and we have a page to help https://www.wecando.biz/my_contacts.php?page=2

    If you look at the tab bar you will see that there are two things which really stand out. 'Social CRM', which we call WeCanDoCRM and 'Twitter Sales Leads' Clicking the Social CRM tab http://wcdb.yourcrm.co.uk/app/ takes you directly into our embedded Social CRM toolset which includes workflow, calendaring, campaign management, bulk email and all of the other features you would expect in a CRM offering together with a Merge feature to ensure consistency between different instances of the same individual our members may have in separate social networks or contact lists. The vast majority of the CRM toolset is free but we do charge a non-contract monthly fee of £20 (about $30) for some of the advanced features like email campaigns, surveys and so forth. You can also subscribe to Kashflow Accounts to enable total cradle to grave sales cycle and billing from within the tool (http://www.kashflow.co.uk/). As I said, there is no minimum contract so if you want a month as a taster that is fine. We do discount on annual membership.

    A great feature we announced just last week is our Twitter Sales Leads Tool http://www.wecando.biz/sales_leads.php which enables you to query the 27m or so daily Tweets out there to find people who are asking for the things you sell – based on your keywords (which you can edit when you choose). Again, we do the hard work for you and only pull back those Tweets asking for things. The neat part about it is that once you find someone looking for what you sell, you can directly create a Sales Lead in WeCanDoCRM from the Tweet as well as following or replying to the the requester.

    The site has all the usual contact management, internal messaging and so on that you would expect from any grown up business network but it would take me pages to describe it all.

    I hope this helps and clarifies.

    Chris

  38. Jeremiah

    OK – when you go to http://www.wecando.biz you will see that you can already sign in using various methods; OpenID, oAuth, Facebook etc or you can still create an account in the traditional manner. We did this because we know people get registration fatigue so we do as much of the work as we can for our members. Once you are in, if there are any details we don't have, we prompt you for those. Once you have done that, the trick is to complete a business profile with the all important keywords – the things your business does. I will come back to why that is so important.

    It is really easy to import/invite and cross populate your contacts with all of the usual social sites and we have a page to help https://www.wecando.biz/my_contacts.php?page=2

    If you look at the tab bar you will see that there are two things which really stand out. 'Social CRM', which we call WeCanDoCRM and 'Twitter Sales Leads' Clicking the Social CRM tab http://wcdb.yourcrm.co.uk/app/ takes you directly into our embedded Social CRM toolset which includes workflow, calendaring, campaign management, bulk email and all of the other features you would expect in a CRM offering together with a Merge feature to ensure consistency between different instances of the same individual our members may have in separate social networks or contact lists. The vast majority of the CRM toolset is free but we do charge a non-contract monthly fee of £20 (about $30) for some of the advanced features like email campaigns, surveys and so forth. You can also subscribe to Kashflow Accounts to enable total cradle to grave sales cycle and billing from within the tool (http://www.kashflow.co.uk/). As I said, there is no minimum contract so if you want a month as a taster that is fine. We do discount on annual membership.

    A great feature we announced just last week is our Twitter Sales Leads Tool http://www.wecando.biz/sales_leads.php which enables you to query the 27m or so daily Tweets out there to find people who are asking for the things you sell – based on your keywords (which you can edit when you choose). Again, we do the hard work for you and only pull back those Tweets asking for things. The neat part about it is that once you find someone looking for what you sell, you can directly create a Sales Lead in WeCanDoCRM from the Tweet as well as following or replying to the the requester.

    The site has all the usual contact management, internal messaging and so on that you would expect from any grown up business network but it would take me pages to describe it all.

    I hope this helps and clarifies.

    Chris

  39. Jeremiah – Great post and thanks for asking for additional contributions to your list. I guess I can't blame you for not mentioning Assistly (http://www.assistly.com) – since we haven't launched yet… 😉 That said, definitely keep an eye on us as we're going to be doing some interesting things in this space. Here's blurb that TC put out on Monday: http://bit.ly/6w1RyG

    I think that you'll see us fitting into multiple buckets (tradition CRM – with an updated business model, social media and social support); we're hoping to bring the best of the traditional players features sets, layer them on top of today's technologies and ensure that end customers get the value and service they deserve. At the end of the day, we just want to make customers smile… 😉

  40. Jeremiah – Great post and thanks for asking for additional contributions to your list. I guess I can't blame you for not mentioning Assistly (http://www.assistly.com) – since we haven't launched yet… 😉 That said, definitely keep an eye on us as we're going to be doing some interesting things in this space. Here's blurb that TC put out on Monday: http://bit.ly/6w1RyG

    I think that you'll see us fitting into multiple buckets (tradition CRM – with an updated business model, social media and social support); we're hoping to bring the best of the traditional players features sets, layer them on top of today's technologies and ensure that end customers get the value and service they deserve. At the end of the day, we just want to make customers smile… 😉

  41. excellent overview, jeremiah. What's your take on Microsoft looking glass? understand its in beta. Any initial thoughts?

  42. excellent overview, jeremiah. What's your take on Microsoft looking glass? understand its in beta. Any initial thoughts?

  43. I spent a few minutes looking at their site, wasn't sure what the CRM features were that would add it on. I'll be speaking to the team in the near future, and will certainly add based upon my findings.

    Also, I'm on travel right now, but will resume the research as soon as I find time, thanks for patience everyone.

  44. I spent a few minutes looking at their site, wasn't sure what the CRM features were that would add it on. I'll be speaking to the team in the near future, and will certainly add based upon my findings.

    Also, I'm on travel right now, but will resume the research as soon as I find time, thanks for patience everyone.

  45. Dave, thanks for that. Feedback from true power users like you is what's helping us continue to push the envelope, and the CRM space is one we care deeply about. Wiring the enterprise for social is a big part of our focus, so thanks for continuing to make us better at it.

  46. Dave, thanks for that. Feedback from true power users like you is what's helping us continue to push the envelope, and the CRM space is one we care deeply about. Wiring the enterprise for social is a big part of our focus, so thanks for continuing to make us better at it.

  47. Hey Jeremiah – thanks for ideas around stepping up to the social media challenge and for the offer to continue to highlight companies that are trying to do just that. I'd love to get our product BatchBook (http://batchblue.com) listed. We are a social CRM product, we integrate with a number of social media tools, we run a weekly small business Twitter chat (http://sbbuzz.biz), we co-founded a virtual coalition of ~50 integrating SaaS companies (http://thesmallbusinessweb.com) and chimed in with our own thoughts on your article – http://blog.batchblue.com/crm-vendors-not-social/

    And here are a few 3rd party endorsements –
    – Today's article in DestinationCRM http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News
    – Our mention in Brent Leary's “It Takes a Community to Raise a Customer” http://technology.inc.com/managing/articles/200
    – and more http://www.batchblue.com/press.html

    Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks again for the thoughtful article.

  48. Hey Jeremiah – thanks for ideas around stepping up to the social media challenge and for the offer to continue to highlight companies that are trying to do just that. I'd love to get our product BatchBook (http://batchblue.com) listed. We are a social CRM product, we integrate with a number of social media tools, we run a weekly small business Twitter chat (http://sbbuzz.biz), we co-founded a virtual coalition of ~50 integrating SaaS companies (http://thesmallbusinessweb.com) and chimed in with our own thoughts on your article – http://blog.batchblue.com/crm-vendors-not-social/

    And here are a few 3rd party endorsements –
    – Today's article in DestinationCRM http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News
    – Our mention in Brent Leary's “It Takes a Community to Raise a Customer” http://technology.inc.com/managing/articles/200
    – and more http://www.batchblue.com/press.html

    Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks again for the thoughtful article.

  49. Chris

    Thanks! I appreciate the thoughtful comment. I'm giving you my full attention, but I want you to know I'm having a hard time using your site, I find the experience very cluttered and difficult. Perhaps building a linear site, instead of exploding all the options on the site may be a better way to go. Just some helpful advice from someone who's very interested in your offerings.

    Secondly, I tried to login via FB Connect and got an error

    “Object not found! The requested URL was not found on this server. The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform the author of that page about the error.
    If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
    Error 404 access.wecando.biz
    Sat Dec 12 01:34:14 2009
    Apache/2.2.3 (Linux/SUSE)”

    I got the same error with Twitter.

    Can you let me know when things are going well? I'll be happy to take a look then, but for now, I'll have to wait to put you on the list, sorry.

  50. Chris

    Thanks! I appreciate the thoughtful comment. I'm giving you my full attention, but I want you to know I'm having a hard time using your site, I find the experience very cluttered and difficult. Perhaps building a linear site, instead of exploding all the options on the site may be a better way to go. Just some helpful advice from someone who's very interested in your offerings.

    Secondly, I tried to login via FB Connect and got an error

    “Object not found! The requested URL was not found on this server. The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform the author of that page about the error.
    If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
    Error 404 access.wecando.biz
    Sat Dec 12 01:34:14 2009
    Apache/2.2.3 (Linux/SUSE)”

    I got the same error with Twitter.

    Can you let me know when things are going well? I'll be happy to take a look then, but for now, I'll have to wait to put you on the list, sorry.

  51. Thanks Shiva

    I'm not sure identity verification is in scope for this project right now, but thank you for the submission.

    Perhaps, in the future as the social graph aggregation vendors evolve, they may offer some of these features.

    For now, I'll keep off the list, but will consider a new category later. Thank you

  52. Thanks Shiva

    I'm not sure identity verification is in scope for this project right now, but thank you for the submission.

    Perhaps, in the future as the social graph aggregation vendors evolve, they may offer some of these features.

    For now, I'll keep off the list, but will consider a new category later. Thank you

  53. Namanh

    Thanks for the submission. At this time, brand monitoring is a different category. It can get on this list if it has social workflow features. Does Badaku have that in addition to reporting?

  54. Namanh

    Thanks for the submission. At this time, brand monitoring is a different category. It can get on this list if it has social workflow features. Does Badaku have that in addition to reporting?

  55. Greetings Jeremiah:

    There are many times consumers, partners and staff need to quickly get to succinct, accurate and thorough content they can count on to answer their questions and that a company will stand behind.

    Knowledge bases can serve this important need, but the KB content can only realistically provide sustainable value if the community of people using and supporting the underlying products and services the content supports participate in improving the KB content.

    Fuze is the first and only company to provide the metrics (reputation engine) and processes required to get community members internal and external to an organization to contribute in creating new and refining existing KB content. The commonly used approach of integrating community and KB content can certainly result in new KB content being created, but does nothing to evolve existing KB content. Only Fuze puts the community in the KB.

    Following your other short descriptions, I submit to you the following for inclusion in your list of social customer support solutions.

    Fuze Digital Solutions: Provides a broad and modular multi-channel customer care solution using a community knowledge base as its foundation. community knowledge base should link to http://bit.ly/4CP4ux ¦. I did not know if your form would take HTML

    Our upcoming Fuze Social module, which further builds upon our reputation engine, will raise our social chops to another level, but our community knowledge base clearly is social and taps into the wisdom of the crowd, while preserving the level of editorial controls warranted based on the inherent risk of who is using the KB content and how it is used..

    Jeremiah, thanks again for your consideration of adding Fuze to your list.

    Chuck Van Court
    CEO and Founder, Fuze Digital Solutions
    http://www.fuze.com

  56. Greetings Jeremiah:

    There are many times consumers, partners and staff need to quickly get to succinct, accurate and thorough content they can count on to answer their questions and that a company will stand behind.

    Knowledge bases can serve this important need, but the KB content can only realistically provide sustainable value if the community of people using and supporting the underlying products and services the content supports participate in improving the KB content.

    Fuze is the first and only company to provide the metrics (reputation engine) and processes required to get community members internal and external to an organization to contribute in creating new and refining existing KB content. The commonly used approach of integrating community and KB content can certainly result in new KB content being created, but does nothing to evolve existing KB content. Only Fuze puts the community in the KB.

    Following your other short descriptions, I submit to you the following for inclusion in your list of social customer support solutions.

    Fuze Digital Solutions: Provides a broad and modular multi-channel customer care solution using a community knowledge base as its foundation. community knowledge base should link to http://bit.ly/4CP4ux ¦. I did not know if your form would take HTML

    Our upcoming Fuze Social module, which further builds upon our reputation engine, will raise our social chops to another level, but our community knowledge base clearly is social and taps into the wisdom of the crowd, while preserving the level of editorial controls warranted based on the inherent risk of who is using the KB content and how it is used..

    Jeremiah, thanks again for your consideration of adding Fuze to your list.

    Chuck Van Court
    CEO and Founder, Fuze Digital Solutions
    http://www.fuze.com

  57. So two things to add… What's your view on Enterprise Mashups?. Implementing any of these solutions often causes issues of additional applications on the desktop. With an Enterprise Mashup, you can seamlessly integrate any of these features into your existing desktop strategy, e.g., bringing Twitter or a users feedback/comments inside Siebel, SAP or otherwise – Easily achieved. (Disclosure, I am responsible for bringing Corizon Enterprise Mashups to Market – see more on our Blog here: http://blog.corizon.com/)

    Finally, one other to potentially add to your list… http://www.zendesk.com – similar to get satisfaction.

  58. So two things to add… What's your view on Enterprise Mashups?. Implementing any of these solutions often causes issues of additional applications on the desktop. With an Enterprise Mashup, you can seamlessly integrate any of these features into your existing desktop strategy, e.g., bringing Twitter or a users feedback/comments inside Siebel, SAP or otherwise – Easily achieved. (Disclosure, I am responsible for bringing Corizon Enterprise Mashups to Market – see more on our Blog here: http://blog.corizon.com/)

    Finally, one other to potentially add to your list… http://www.zendesk.com – similar to get satisfaction.

  59. Jeremiah

    Thanks for looking in. I am REALLY concerned you have had problems signing in. We have well over 13000 members using the site on a regular basis and we have had no issues with sign in.Go here for Twitter sign in https://www.wecando.biz/access.php I would be concerned if you still have a problem. Most of our users now sign in via 'non-native' methods such as Twitter or Facebook. Please let me know if it is still a problem for you.

    I will have to confess I am not sure what you mean by having all the options exploding. We do listen to our members' suggestions and they seem to be pretty happy and coming in in droves right now. If you would like a personal walk through, I would be happy to arrange that for you.

    Chris

  60. Jeremiah

    Thanks for looking in. I am REALLY concerned you have had problems signing in. We have well over 13000 members using the site on a regular basis and we have had no issues with sign in.Go here for Twitter sign in https://www.wecando.biz/access.php I would be concerned if you still have a problem. Most of our users now sign in via 'non-native' methods such as Twitter or Facebook. Please let me know if it is still a problem for you.

    I will have to confess I am not sure what you mean by having all the options exploding. We do listen to our members' suggestions and they seem to be pretty happy and coming in in droves right now. If you would like a personal walk through, I would be happy to arrange that for you.

    Chris

  61. Hi, Jeremiah:

    Thanks for adding us.

    We're using registration for lead gen, so at least want to track who is signing in to determine who are potential customers and partners. For users who don't want to register there is a high level walk through of the product:

    http://buzzient.com/index.php/the-product/crm-i

    So, we're both trying to be open and social, but also pay the electricity bills; it's getting cold in Boston now and we can't all huddle near the servers for heat… ;o)

  62. Hi, Jeremiah:

    Thanks for adding us.

    We're using registration for lead gen, so at least want to track who is signing in to determine who are potential customers and partners. For users who don't want to register there is a high level walk through of the product:

    http://buzzient.com/index.php/the-product/crm-i

    So, we're both trying to be open and social, but also pay the electricity bills; it's getting cold in Boston now and we can't all huddle near the servers for heat… ;o)

  63. Jeremiah – appreciate you mentioning @visible_tech in your post. Always an honor.

    One of the most interesting and challenging issues/opportunities that exists with social content is that it can have relevance to so many different parts of an organization. The question for organizations is how to leverage and interact with this social content. Depending on the structure of an organization or the particular strengths of a various department within that organization..ownership or best practices for management of social content and consumer interaction will hopefully emerge. That being said, dictates the types of vendors or suppliers those departments will turn to support managing and interacting with the social channel. This is why we not only see a host of use cases for leveraging social at organizations by why every platform or vendor that support organizations will attempt to build, integrate or partner to aid organizations with social. This could be helpful or noisy for many organizations that are still just trying to understand this channel.

    @bcahill

  64. Jeremiah – appreciate you mentioning @visible_tech in your post. Always an honor.

    One of the most interesting and challenging issues/opportunities that exists with social content is that it can have relevance to so many different parts of an organization. The question for organizations is how to leverage and interact with this social content. Depending on the structure of an organization or the particular strengths of a various department within that organization..ownership or best practices for management of social content and consumer interaction will hopefully emerge. That being said, dictates the types of vendors or suppliers those departments will turn to support managing and interacting with the social channel. This is why we not only see a host of use cases for leveraging social at organizations by why every platform or vendor that support organizations will attempt to build, integrate or partner to aid organizations with social. This could be helpful or noisy for many organizations that are still just trying to understand this channel.

    @bcahill

  65. I like how you've categorized the players Jeremiah. Because of the ongoing maturation of the industry, it's clear that different segments are developing, new segments are being created, and old segments are being adapted. As we move forward, it's also becoming evident that the word “social” and the phrase “social media” is becoming as generic and as thrown around as the phrase “web 2.0” or, harking back to the early days of the CD player, the word “digital ready”, which was stamped on practically anything to do with audio from headphones and speakers to stereo cabinets. I think the companies that will be successful in the long run are those that truly get social. As for the old stalwarts who think “we better add some social ingredients to our old school product” the jury is still out.

    Scott Oppliger
    President & Founder
    SocialVolt, LLC

  66. I like how you've categorized the players Jeremiah. Because of the ongoing maturation of the industry, it's clear that different segments are developing, new segments are being created, and old segments are being adapted.

    As we move forward, it's also becoming evident that the word “social” and the phrase “social media” is becoming as generic and as thrown around as the phrase “web 2.0” or, harking back to the early days of the CD player, the phrase “digital ready”, which was stamped on practically anything to do with audio from headphones and speakers to stereo cabinets. I think the companies that will be successful in the long run are those that truly get social. As for the old stalwarts who think “we better add some social ingredients to our old school product” the jury is still out.

    Scott Oppliger
    President & Founder
    SocialVolt, LLC
    @oppliger

  67. Jeremiah –

    We are early users of Buzzstream since it was in beta & really think it is the best offering on the market. I've done extensive research again recently before deciding on Buzzstream as it will support a core part of our/our client's business. The combination of monitoring, team workflow & support of cultivating relationships with key Influencers but without stepping on the toes of other core applications is brilliant.

    Highly recommend adding it to the the list!

    Kevin Dykes
    @vibe media,inc.

  68. Jeremiah –

    We are early users of Buzzstream since it was in beta & really think it is the best offering on the market. I've done extensive research again recently before deciding on Buzzstream as it will support a core part of our/our client's business. The combination of monitoring, team workflow & support of cultivating relationships with key Influencers but without stepping on the toes of other core applications is brilliant.

    Highly recommend adding it to the the list!

    Kevin Dykes
    @vibe media,inc.

  69. Please consider Affintive http://www.beaffinitive.com/ for your social CRM list.

    Since 2002 we have been helping companies to democratize their brands through a consumer-centric approach focused on the core values of community and social networking, research, viral and buzz, education, and loyalty and CRM, coupled with our best-of-breed suite of fully managed Web 2.0 social media engagement platforms. We have developed and managed more than 100 innovative WOM marketing programs, engaging hundreds of thousands of passionate consumers and reaching millions more across industry sectors, including consumer products, automotive, mobile and telecom, lifestyle brands, film, TV, music, and video games.

  70. Hi Jeremiah – a great start to try and keep track of the space. Of course you can't mention everybody the the first time around. Sheesh!

    However, the SEO side of my brain can't resist one quibble: the post seems to be kind of random about anchor text in how you link to the players.

    For example, you write about Radian 6 and link the word “Offers” to their site. In another case, your coverage of RightNow CRM, you make the phrase “Offers several feature” the link.

    From an SEO standpoint, it would be better for these companies if you linked to their home page from their brand name, at a minimum.

    Or, if you're feeling generous, you could link to RightNow with the anchor text being, say, “Customer Service Software”. Trust me, their SEO guys will be super-appreciative it..

    cheers,

    George

  71. Hi Jeremiah,

    My company Intelliworks offers a CRM platform designed to enable higher education institutions to more effectively recruit and enroll students. Last year, we introduced our Social Marketing extension which allows colleges and universities to publish content to social networks and manage inquiries submitted through their Facebook Fan Pages directly from the CRM.

    http://www.intelliworks.com/features/social_mar

  72. Hi Jeremiah,

    My company Intelliworks offers a CRM platform designed to enable higher education institutions to more effectively recruit and enroll students. Last year, we introduced our Social Marketing extension which allows colleges and universities to publish content to social networks and manage inquiries submitted through their Facebook Fan Pages directly from the CRM.

    http://www.intelliworks.com/features/social_mar

  73. Sorry I am arriving late to the discussion – and obviously without any prior knowledge or insight which I am about to prove with this question. What's 'social CRM'? The definition above is for CRM, and the products seem to be CRM tools with the ability to track social media (ACT!) or social media tools that monitor online chatter in social media circles.

    If I am understanding all of this correctly (and, again, that's a big 'IF'), it appears that Social CRM is CRM with a social media component…not a new category but an addition to an existing category.

    Am i close?

    Thanks for taking pity on me. 🙂

  74. Jeremiah,

    Check out SocialBlaze – http://www.SocialBlazeApp.com

    We help companies manage their social media presence, marketing campaigns, and market research. We're an all-in-one social media solution for businesses – a social CRM.

    We do a number of things with the goal of creating relationships with a company's social media consumers.
    – You can run promotions on your Facebook Page and on Twitter using our app.
    – We're working on a scheduler where you can plan out various stages of your social media campaign and schedule things in advance.
    – We have our own twitter client that lets multiple employees use twitter, assign tweets for followup schedule tweets, and other little things that make it easier to use twitter for business purposes.
    – Facebook client that let's you see and manage your facebook page within our app (e.g. you can schedule faceook page wall posts)
    – You can do brand/keyword monitoring on all the major social media sites (blogs, twitter, flickr, youtube) (with sentiment analysis and change-over-time charts)
    – There's analytics for everything and a dashboard showing you what's the most popular (e.g. what tweet has the most clicks, retweets, what blog post has the most views)
    – Permissions for everything (e.g. your intern can see results/analytics for a promotion but may not be able to edit the promotion details, start date)

    The goal is to make it easier for companies to use social media, plan ahead, and track the ROI with analytics.

    We're in private beta with a public beta coming soon. If you want some more info let me know.

    Happy new year!

    Alex (co-founder at SocialBlaze)

  75. Jeremiah, excellent job. For brand monitoring could you also include:

    – Sysomos
    – Synthesio
    – Filtrbox
    – Alterian Techrigy SM2
    – Crimson Hexagon

    Thank you, John

  76. Hi Jeremiah,

    Partnerpedia is a provider of online partner communities and channel enablement solutions. Its Open Community is a free social network in which partners can use social tools to collaborate and manage sales leads within the community. Private Networks is a more elaborate product, enabling companies to customize their community and providing resources to partners to better B2B relationships. http://www.partnerpedia.com

    Best,
    Marie

  77. Pingback: pligg.com
  78. Pingback: pligg.com
  79. Hi Jeremiah – great list and I enjoy reading your blog. Another interesting category is BI tools offering social integration. I have a white paper on “Collaborative BI” coming out shortly that I'd be happy to share. There's an article on this idea here as well: http://bit.ly/XdP6v

    Also, one more vendor to check out for Community Platform section is OutStart. Their social software platform, Participate, (http://www.outstart.com/sbs_overview.htm) is being used by CVS, DirecTV, Tivo and a few others.

    thanks!
    Allen

  80. Jeremiah,

    In addition to being able to build community throughout a company's web experience, as well as in social systems (like Facebook), we have proven partnerships with CRM providers like Salesforce, Parature (service/support), and Zendesk (trouble ticketing). With our Twitter integration feature and a Facebook integration (to launch on March 1), GetSatisfaction is a strong option in the social CRM category.

  81. Hi all,

    I'm interested to hear from any suppliers who would like to get their message across to 100+ Directors of eCommerce, Heads of Online, Marketing Directors, Directors of Customer Experience & Directors of eBusiness.

    We have a new event being launched on 6-8 September in London called Customer Experience Online. The event is focused on providing the above job functions from global finance, telco and retail industries (predominantly) the opportunity to discuss strategies, solutions and best practice for improving the customer experience and delivering competitive differentation through social media, eCommerce strategies and the user experience.

    If you'd like to know more about the event and the range of bespoke sponsorship packages available, please feel free to contact me on +44(0) 207 368 9890/ abigail.stern@iqpc.co.uk.

    Early confirmed speakers include:
    ¢ Bruce Daisley, Head of YouTube and Google Display UK
    ¢ Benjamin Braun, Head of Online Services, British Gas
    ¢ Andrea Wieber, Head of International Web 2.0 Project Management, Deutsche Telekom
    ¢ Guy Stephens, Knowledge Manager & Head of Social Media Programme, Carphone Warehouse (are you ok for me to list you as this for now?)
    ¢ Professor Moira Clark, Director, Henley Centre for Customer Management, Henley Business School

  82. At work, I use something much more productive called “LinkPoint Vue”. It™s similar to some of the options above, but it shows more details about the sender from our CRM system and allows me to create and open records. That™s the big win for me if the email requires an action, I can initiate it from right there. For example, I can drag the email signature into Vue and it would create a new contact with the fields filled in with the details of the signature. Just as easily, I can open an opportunity related to the sender so that I can convert it or I can push the email into the CRM for others to see. Very smart!

  83. Outstanding Customer Service is an evolutionary process that can take months or even years to develop. Improving customer satisfaction has to start with the culture from executive management down through the organization. It must be entrenched within the company so that every decision be focused on what the client needs, wants or demands.

    From the product line to the receptionist, your customer face should always carry a consistent message of service and quality. If these messages are not conveyed at every level of the organization, your customer will eventually find your competitor and go elsewhere.

    Gravity Garden
    http://gravitygarden.com/build-customer-loyalty

  84. Jeremiah, As the tool keep morphing new ones emerge. I am using Xeesm Pro for managing social relationships for business development, internal collaboration, relationship development. With the introduction of their new Social CRM “Edge” in beta, I think you will see a new management and mapping tool that will be heavily used. This tool will be within the reach and implementation for small to mid sized businesses unlike some of the other tools in your list. I have given up my traditional CRM to solely focus on this Social CRM and will be testing Edge in the Beta. One to watch at least.

    Wendy Soucie
    xeesm.com/wendysoucie

  85. Hi Jeremiah.

    “At Intelestream, we've just launched intelesocial as part of our intelecrm 3.0 roll-out. Not only does it feature Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin integrations but also tools such as ping.fm updating, Social Mention monitoring tools, not to mention, collaborative offerings in the shape of Friendfeed and ShareThis. intelesocial tears down barriers by marrying these external social integrations with enterprise 2.0 collaborative tools, to make customer interaction even easier.

    Please take a look at our website for more details: http://www.intelestream.net/en/prod-intelecrm/social-crm.html

    Thanks,
    Matt

  86. Pingback: SEOsearch
  87. Pingback: Olympus Review
  88. I like the definitions you’ve put together for social CRM and this is a pretty thorough list. I don’t think we can call ours a comprehensive social CRM yet but it is getting there! We’re looking for ways to integrate social features more deeply across an entire business suite and not just CRM.

  89. Pingback: Hypertext

Comments are closed.