Dr. Frankenstein’s Social CRM

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I’ll admit it, I am frustrated as hell by my inability to find what I consider to be a true Social CRM. There are a lot of folks who are touting this ability and some of these applications are not even close to being any kind of CRM to begin with. Can it really be that difficult? Part of me also wonders if the bar, for whatever reason, is being set too high. At least too high for the average user. Sure, there are all sorts of advanced uber applications that you can incorporate, but I just want something clean, simple, and effective. My personal needs would include ….

1. I’m a one-man show so I want simple. Part of the problem with many CRM’s are that they are incredibly bloated already and adding multiple layers of “social” potentially compounds this problem. If you want CRM to work, and if you want your sales people to use it, it has to be simple.
2. It needs to be web based and have a mobile platform. I’m tempted to run Outlook (not because I love Outlook but because of it’s Gist, Xobni, and LinkedIn integration) but can’t get past the fact that it is not SaaS. I had a very bad experience with syncing these types of files once before and am not yet ready to go back and test the waters again.
3. It probably needs to be Gmail or Google Apps based but it must sync two-way.
4. Must include basic contact management functions including follow-up, tasks, contact records, etc.
5. Please give me integrated email! I do not want to go to Gmail and BCC every stinkin’ email I send or do a BCC forward or reply on every stinkin’ email that I receive.
6. Show me my contact’s social media connections AND activity right within their contact record.
7. Help me to identify new opportunities, relationships, and to monitor and protect my brand.

That’s about it and please believe me when I say that I have looked. Extensively. I’ve seen a lot of tools that do a lot of neat things but I have yet to find one that does it all. So, like the good Dr. Frankenstein, I’ve decided to build my own from the various limbs and body parts that I have found scattered around the web …..

The Brain: I’m going to choose Gist because nothing I have seen gathers and organizes social networks, email, web sites, and contact information quite like Gist. And, for the most part, it does it all on it’s own.

The Face: Since this is what I am going to be looking at, I’m picking BatchBook CRM as it has about the simplest and cleanest interface that I have seen to date. It does sync with Gmail but only one-way and I even had trouble with that. If sync is not important to you, BatchBook is something worthy of your attention. I could not get past my difficulties with the sync.

The Eyes, Ears, and Mouth: This is a difficult call and I have going to have to choose two tools. Hootsuite is the ultimate application monitoring all your social networks in real time. Threadsy provides an incredible interface for email and social networks combined on to one platform. It feeds all my email and FaceBook comments and Twitter direct messages and replies all into one inbox and lets me originate communication from all three. Email messages are two-way synced with Gmail. Certainly, Threadsy is my email model. Speaking of sync, Google Sync does a very good job (at least when it is working properly) of syncing between my Gmail messages, contacts, and calendar and my BlackBerry 8900.

Vital Organs: To complete my monster, I will also need to add in some other vital components. I love Rapportive for it’s clean and simple social network integration into Gmail. Xobni does some great things with social network aggregation and organizes your email including threaded conversations and files exchanged like nobody else. Both Xobni and Gist help me to identify relationships much like LinkedIn so that capability needs to be included. If my CRM is to have reporting capabilities, integrate NutShell Mail. For some reason, many of the tools I have evaluated do a wonderful job with Twitter and FaceBook but, for whatever reason, fail to include LinkedIn updates. NutShell does a beautiful job with all three!

So, there you have it. Get out some thread and please sew these parts together. Somebody may already be doing it. I really don’t know who but, be on the lookout for a new application by the name of Nimble. Not yet released but I’m told that I will be one of their first beta testers. Being a pioneer with flying arrows and all that is not my typical cup of tea but, with what I have seen, Nimble may be well worth the perils of getting shot (smile). Hopefully, I’ll soon be announcing .. “It’s Alive! It’s Alive! The Monster lives!”.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Craig M. Jamieson  (296 Posts)

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. NetWorks! Boise Valley is a business to business networking organization for the most serious sales and marketing professionals only.