Altimeter Group
“For Organizations, Real Time Is Not Fast Enough.”
- Jeremiah Owyang
Where to find us
The Altimeter
Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management
18 Use Cases That Show Business How To Finally Put Customers First
Social and CRM: How Companies Will Manage Their Social Relationships
Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known in the CRM space as an expert. Coupled with my focus on social technologies we did a deep dive on how our worlds are intersecting at Social CRM. In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear that we were looking at the holistic business, across multiple business departments –not silos or roles.
Companies are unable to scale to keep up with the social phenomenon
We know that customers are using these social technologies to share their voices, and companies are having a very difficult time to keep up.
- For companies, real time is not fast enough. Companies need to be able to anticipate what customers are going to say and do, in order to keep up. Although Motrin responded to angry mom’s within 24 hours –it was too slow.
- Companies are unable to scale to meet the needs of social. No matter how many community managers Dell and Comcast Cares hires to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of active customers. They need tools, and they need them now.
- Customers don’t care what department you’re in they just want their problem fixed. Dooce’s support problem with Maytag quickly became a PR nightmare –had the support group known she was an influencer (and what it means), they could have serviced her better.

Above: Framework of the 18 Use Cases of Social CRM
How To Use This Report: A Pragmatic Roadmap
Regardless if you’re in IT or in a business unit, we wrote this to meet the needs of both groups. This architecture lays out all the possibilities (18 use cases) defines the problem and goal for each, and suggests some vendors to watch. It’s also pragmatic, as it lays out a process on how to get started, baseline needs (listening) and what to do next.
Action Items
- Sign up for the webinar series. This is a deep topic, and the report is only the tip of the iceberg. As we’ve done in the past, we’re going to offer a series of free webinars on this topic to explore each of the use cases in gritty details. Sign up for the webinar now, as we can only have 1000 attendees per webinar, as our last webinar had over 1100 registrants.
- Read then spread this report. Like open source, the Altimeter Group believes in open research, we want our ideas to grow, and others to take advantage of it. So if you found the report helpful, please forward the report to internal constituents, partners, vendors, clients, and blog it. Use it in your presentations, business plans, and roadmaps. I’ve embedded it below, and there are download features for your own use.
- Have an internal discussion. Evaluate your current situation at your company, then draw up which business needs need to be tackled first. Use the use cases as a roadmap by mapping out which phase comes first, and which phase comes second.
- Learn more and join the community of pioneers. This is new territory, we don’t have all the answers, so we’ve created a group in which pioneers can learn from each other. It’s free, and the conversation has started already. Jump into the group, and learn together.
The Altimeter Approach
Standing behind our belief in open research, the Altimeter Group wants to be part of the community. Thus, we:
Involve the expert community in the research process
Altimeter is unique as our partners can tightly comingle our topic areas and see how they converge, we highlighted our vision when we joined. We seek to be stewards of community and during our six months of research we talked to way over 40 thought leaders, vendors, and companies that are approaching this space. We blogged ideas, engaged in conversations with the #scrm hash tag, and had working sessions with thought leaders like Paul Greenberg and Esteban Kolsky. We approached research in an open way, and allowed for vendors to review the report and submit back their ideas, some of which we incorporated. This effort was a group effort and included a lot of heavy lifting from Christine Tran, operations who helped to schedule countless meetings, and guidance from Charlene Li, our founder.
Provide a holistic view through deep collaboration
We see that worlds are converging, and we model our research the same way, through really analyzing the mixtures of our different topic areas. For example, what was interesting is that my ‘marketing-speak’ and Ray’s ‘IT Speak’ often resulted in the tower of babel. Although we were talking about the same topic, he had to translate IT and marketing speak both ways. After many puzzled looks, we embracing this, and realized that this isn’t unique to us but a sign of companies converging as a result of mass adoption of easy to share social tools. Thus, we realized this framework that could meet the needs of the various camps would be helpful, companies need to move quickly, as customers have adopted social in rapid fashion.
Use open research to grow ideas
We want ideas to spread, and have made the entire report available at no cost on Slideshare, and put up images on Flickr, we hope you use them, under creative commons licensing of Attribution -Noncommercial - Share Alike Status, we believe in open –not closed research. We’re trying a different business model, we want to involve the community of experts and publish our findings out there for everyone to benefit from, please support us by sharing it as much as possible, while we trial a new way of doing research.
Update: I forgot to mention, this report was entirely funded by the Altimeter Group. Also, we are open about disclosing who are clients are (providing they approve), as a result, we hope you’ll trust as more.
Related links: I’ll roundup interesting links that discuss this report
- Ray Wang, co author has his take
- Dave McClure blogged his take
- Ray cross posted on Enterprise Irregulars
- Marketing Profs Daily Fix
- Brian Solis
- All Things Digital
View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang.
Mark Tisdale Friday, March 5th 2010 at 10:56 am
What is hard to stomach for me with the Dooce / Maytag example is that companies need to assume that all of their calls have that potential social network attached to them and treat EVERY customer with that level of respect. Top notch customer service scales very easily with clear direction from the top thru to appropriate hiring practices and training. I will gladly pay more at Chik-Fil A where their customer svc is top notch. You can keep your PDA pokers at McAverage fast food.
Andrew Mueller Friday, April 9th 2010 at 10:27 am
Yes, influencer or not, every customer deserves the same respect and level of service.
jeremiah Friday, March 5th 2010 at 3:41 pm
Thanks Mark, it's true, every customer is likely to be an influencer, I think we agree.
Demand Satisfaction! » and 193 Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management Friday, March 5th 2010 at 4:36 pm
[...] friends at the Altimeter group have been [...]
What Are the Biggest Social CRM (SCRM) Use Cases and Market Opportunities? | 2020 Social: Because Business is Social Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 3:19 am
[...] Altimeter Group has recently released a white paper in which analysts Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang have identified 18 use cases for Social CRM, based on conversations with almost 100 users, influencers and vendors. [...]
Review Sites Package – Personal Use – BDN | Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 8:06 am
[...] Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of … [...]
Anyone Can Craft | All About Family Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 11:02 am
[...] Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of … [...]
How to Improve Membership in a Crafts Group | All About Family Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 11:03 am
[...] Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of … [...]
@Iconic88 Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 12:32 pm
Thank you for a great post @debs
Do you think one of the major factors missing from the SCRM framework is benevolence and empathy?
If you attach both these frames of thinking and approaches into the framework, one would inherently illustrate a sense of connectedness and genuine empathy to a client(s) problems. It also shows a capacity to truly listen to what the issues are and to be genuinely interested in resolving this even if it means sending a client to a competitor.
From an individual level, you'll find the top sales people connect in this manner. The challenge for the enterprise is how to spread this paradigm of thinking and example of sales excellence throughout the organisation especially as everyone is considered "the organisation" based on what you say here: "Customers don’t care what department you’re in they just want their problem fixed."
What do you think?
All the best.
pligg.com Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 12:40 pm
Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management...
18 Use Cases That Show Business How To Finally Put Customers First...
kga Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 1:05 pm
how can I download the framework table and the report
jeremiah Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 3:42 pm
Yes, click through to the report on the text at the top of the slideshare, it'll take you to the document on slideshare.net
From there you can download the whole thing.
Ray Brown Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 9:14 pm
This is an excellent piece of work. Congratulations to all concerned. I'm excited by your "open research" approach. I do have two concerns: 1. Are we being limited in our thinking by trying to force so much new thinking/activities/technology into the existing silos of marketing, sales, IT - do we not require some structural change to accomodate these massive market shifts ? 2. Where do businesses acquire the new competencies required to capitalise on the Social CRM opportunity ? Knowing what a tight rope walker does, does not give me the skills to walk on the tight rope. I am working on a project to address both these issues. I'm happy to share my thoughts with the appropriate person in your organisation.
jeremiah Sunday, March 7th 2010 at 7:22 am
Ray Brown thanks.
It boils down to cultural shifts. Cultural changes are one of the biggest challenges --it's not about technology change management in the enterprise.
Charlene's upcoming book is going to address a lot of this. Stay tuned, it's focused on 'open leadership'.
Find the Trust Agents in your organization, and Explain them to Everyone Else « Information Maven: Greg Meyer Saturday, March 6th 2010 at 9:55 pm
[...] are getting social, whether they like it … or not. In their report “Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management“, Altimeter Group’s R “Ray” Wang and Jeremiah Owyang detail 18 use cases to [...]
J.R. Atkins Sunday, March 7th 2010 at 7:35 am
Good post. One of my key issues is connecting Social Media to CRM.
Here is another Blog post about yours: http://mutualmind.com/blog
My Perspective. The New Rules of Relationship Management. | davaidavai.com Sunday, March 7th 2010 at 11:56 am
[...] guys try to define the role of SCRM for today’s marketing. And now there is a new report by Altimeter’s notorious Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang – Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship [...]
Social Recruiting what is it? Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 8:53 pm
[...] the Altimeter Group’s release of their 18 Use Cases for Social CRM, I got to thinking again. While I am still not 100% happy with the result I thought I would release [...]
Zach Philip Friday, March 12th 2010 at 2:10 am
for more tips and tools, this is a good read http://bit.ly/aQxde8
5 link #19 – Club dei media sociali Friday, March 12th 2010 at 2:36 am
[...] Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management [...]
Die 5 Aspekte von Social CRM Projekten | Future of Web Strategy Friday, March 12th 2010 at 3:13 am
[...] Altimeter Group hat jüngst ein schönes Paper zum Thema – “Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationoship Management” – veröffentlich und ich finde es ja immer wieder schön wenn Leute es schaffen [...]
Altimeter Report on Social Customer Technologies Highlights InsideView « InsideView Blog – The Sales 2.0 Leader Tuesday, March 16th 2010 at 5:17 am
[...] can see the report in its entirety here; we’d love your comments and thoughts on what you think! Subscribe to The Inside [...]
Hermanngasse Blog » Blog Archive » Social CRM - 18 Nutzungsbeispiele Friday, March 19th 2010 at 3:17 am
[...] vernetzen sich - Unternehmen hinken hinterher“. Das ist eines der Ergebnisse einer kleinen Studie der Altimeter Group. Für Firmen verändern sich die Spielregeln durch das Netz. Schon lange kann man nicht mehr [...]
18 Use Cases of Social Customer Relationship Management — SocialFish Tuesday, March 23rd 2010 at 10:01 am
[...] out a few days ago: The Altimeter Group (Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang’s outfit) Report on The 18 Use Cases of SocialCRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management. Brian Solis has a good summary of this here. One could argue that associations are ultimately in [...]
Three Models for Applying Customer Feedback to Innovation | CloudAve Wednesday, March 24th 2010 at 6:35 am
[...] influencers of company activities and strategies. Two popular ways this is taking form are the social CRM movement, and the emergence of open [...]
A Great Framework for Social Media Strategy « Velocity Made Good Blog Friday, March 26th 2010 at 1:21 pm
[...] Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management « Altime.... [...]
Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management Monday, March 29th 2010 at 10:43 am
[...] Li at 10:02 AM in Report | Permalink | Comments (25) | [...]
Robert Monday, April 5th 2010 at 9:34 am
Learning a great site for social media
Social CRM: Lessons for Retaining Customers with Inbound Marketing :EBOOKS EBOOKS Monday, April 5th 2010 at 9:58 am
[...] activities of customer satisfaction and retention. Brent Leary, an authority in the emerging Social CRM industry recently compiled insight and expertise from 15 customer experience leaders across all [...]
Social CRM: Lessons for Retaining Customers with Inbound Marketing :MAKE MONEY ONLINE Monday, April 5th 2010 at 4:06 pm
[...] activities of customer satisfaction and retention. Brent Leary, an authority in the emerging Social CRM industry recently compiled insight and expertise from 15 customer experience leaders across all [...]
Social CRM: Lessons for Retaining Customers with Inbound Marketing | Grow Your Rent Roll Tuesday, April 6th 2010 at 3:31 am
[...] activities of customer satisfaction and retention. Brent Leary, an authority in the emerging Social CRM industry recently compiled insight and expertise from 15 customer experience leaders across all [...]
Patti Anklam » The Second SM: Customer SM Thursday, April 8th 2010 at 10:33 am
[...] customers’ original ideas and feedback. Just a few weeks ago, I came across Altimeter’s Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management, which is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the many ways that social media have [...]
Jeremiah Owyang’s “Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management” Monday, April 12th 2010 at 9:53 am
[...] Ray Wang, my co-author on this report has his take * I cross posted on the Altimeter Blog, see comments * Dave McClure, VC blogged his take * Ray also cross posted on Enterprise Irregulars * Marketing [...]
Keynote at Microsoft Social Media 201 Conference | Eric Weaver Saturday, April 17th 2010 at 5:02 pm
[...] that connection and are discussing what this looks like. The folks at Altimeter Group have been talking about Social CRM and @StoweBoyd has written a number of articles on “social business” and [...]
Altimeter and Web Analytics Demystified Release Social Marketing Analytics Report « A Passion for Research Thursday, April 22nd 2010 at 4:37 pm
[...] This report cuts through that confusion and delivers some great insights. Thankfully Altimeter has an open research policy where they freely share their research with anyone interested in downloading and reading it. Their first report distributed under the open research policy is also excellent, and is titled Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management. [...]
I couldn’t sleep last night – why? | Attensity Blog Wednesday, April 28th 2010 at 7:36 am
[...] Attensity into a dominant position in the expanding Social Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM) market, by significantly enhancing Attensity’s ability to deliver the industry’s first [...]
Beth Goldman Friday, April 30th 2010 at 1:07 pm
This is a great start. If you want to take sales 2.0 to the next level to know when to sell, who to sell to, and what to say, you should check out SalesView by InsideView. You can check out the top 5 reasons you'll love the new SalesView here: http://blog.insideview.com/2010/04/29/5reasonstolovethenewsalesview/
Measuring Social Success – Overview from SMC Boston Panel Wednesday, May 5th 2010 at 5:34 am
[...] HubSpot and Salesforce.com to connect leads and opportunities from social media (an example of Social CRM). Holly shared her management dashboard, which focuses on share of visitors that come from social [...]
Santosh Shukla Friday, May 7th 2010 at 11:23 am
Social Media and CRMs should go hand in hand to serve the Customer 2.0 better.
While I say this, it is more important to know that most of the sales and marketing teams are spending their valuable time getting the sense out of social media.
Are you also spending too much time in social media? If yes, read the tips to efficiently and effectively get the best out of social media.
http://blog.insideview.com/2010/05/02/investing-too-much-time-on-social-media-how-to-boost-your-roi
Gaurav Jha Thursday, May 13th 2010 at 5:20 am
As the social media explodes with new and updated information, it's become all the more important to stay on top of what your prospects and customers are talking about. The big question here is how you can leverage all this information. I talk about some tips and tricks in my post http://blog.insideview.com/2010/04/27/connecting-the-dots-how-sales-2-0-can-help-you-connect-with-prospects/
Gaurav Jha Thursday, May 13th 2010 at 5:20 am
As the social media explodes with new and updated information, it's become all the more important to stay on top of what your prospects and customers are talking about. The big question here is how you can leverage all this information. I talk about some tips and tricks in my post
http://blog.insideview.com/2010/04/27/connecting-the-dots-how-sales-2-0-can-help-you-connect-with-prospects/
Gaurav Jha Thursday, May 13th 2010 at 7:50 am
As the social media explodes with new and updated information, it's become all the more important to stay on top of what your prospects and customers are talking about. The big question here is how you can leverage all this information. I talk about some tips and tricks in my post
Internet Evolution - Executive Clan Editor's Blog - Enterprise Needs to Embrace Social CRM Friday, May 14th 2010 at 9:14 am
[...] graphic below shows 18 different points where Owyang suggests companies focus their efforts in engaging and integrating their social [...]
Social CRM – Data & Humans :: Greg de Lima Sunday, May 30th 2010 at 11:11 pm
[...] entity sensible enough to tip a customer in or out of what you offer. Jeremiah Owyang mentioned at Altimeter Group that, For companies, real time is not fast enough. Companies need to be able to anticipate what [...]
H. Singh Monday, May 31st 2010 at 6:23 pm
This blog post will be of interest to you: "Contesting the Death of Tradition CRM: Social CRM is a Process and not a Technology" - http://creativestride.com/blog/2010/06/01/contesting-the-death-of-tradition-crm-social-crm-is-a-process-and-not-a-technology/
Relationship problems Thursday, June 3rd 2010 at 3:09 am
Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known in the CRM space as an expert. Coupled with my focus on social technologies we did a deep dive on how our worlds are colliding into the trend to Social CRM. In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear we’re looking at the holistic business, across multiple business departments –not silos or roles.
Social Media: The New Customer Service Channel « Eco-Bridge Blog Friday, June 4th 2010 at 3:37 pm
[...] this service, eventually integrating processes across social-CRM and legacy-CRM domains (see this blog by The Altimeter Group and Charlene Li’s book on Open [...]
Social Media: The New Customer Service Channel « Eco-Bridge Technology Blog Sunday, June 6th 2010 at 12:19 pm
[...] new leadership thinking about policies, processes, systems and training for employees (see this blog by The Altimeter Group and Charlene Li’s book on Open [...]
Eco-Bridge Technology Blog Sunday, June 6th 2010 at 12:54 pm
[...] new leadership thinking about policies, processes, systems and training for employees (see this blog by The Altimeter Group and Charlene Li’s book on Open [...]
Just What is Social CRM? Tuesday, June 8th 2010 at 12:37 pm
[...] by no means have I provided a comprehensive look at the market, for that I would suggest you get Altimeter’s Social CRM report which does a good job of laying out the [...]
Better Junk Mail – Quick Analysis from the Enterprise 2.0 World Monday, June 14th 2010 at 5:25 pm
[...] Altimeter Group has a nice paper, and category, touching on much of this: Social CRM: [C]ompanies need an organized approach using enterprise software that connects business units to [...]
Social Media: The New Customer Service Channel - eco-bridge.com Wednesday, June 16th 2010 at 2:29 pm
[...] new leadership thinking about policies, processes, systems and training for employees (see this blog by The Altimeter Group and Charlene Li’s book on Open [...]
Social CRM is a Beautiful Emerging Thing | We Blog The World Tuesday, June 22nd 2010 at 12:08 am
[...] great read is the report that Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang from the Altimeter Group published earlier this month on the "18 Use Cases of Social CRM and the New Rules of Relationship [...]
Social Media: The New Customer Service Channel « eco-bridge.com Saturday, June 26th 2010 at 4:39 pm
[...] new leadership thinking about policies, processes, systems and training for employees (see this blog by The Altimeter Group and Charlene Li’s book on Open [...]
Social Media Chimp » Social CRM: A recycled buzzword or a sustainable business strategy Tuesday, June 29th 2010 at 6:25 am
[...] Jacob Morgan’s infographic on the Social CRM process to be extremely insightful. And of course, Altimeter’s recent report – The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, the New Rules of Relationship Management – gives insight [...]
L’outsourcing diventa di massa | Yes Well Done! Sunday, July 11th 2010 at 6:43 am
[...] uno dei campi di applicazione prioritari, un mercato che è stato mappato in una recente ricerca di Altimeter Group, “Social CRM: the new rules of relationship management”. Startup come Get Satisfaction, Crowdflower e l’italiana Crowdengineering, ma anche player [...]
Social CRM Use Cases (Social Business Series II) | MarcioSaito.com Friday, July 16th 2010 at 10:41 am
[...] reference today for an approach to evaluate a Social CRM tool is Altimeter Group’sreport “The 18 use cases of Social CRM”. That is a great report for vendors and enterprise users, but in this article we will try to [...]
joe Saturday, July 17th 2010 at 7:32 am
For companies, real time is not fast enough.
I can only agree with them !
4sq + SCRM Sunday, July 25th 2010 at 5:38 am
[...] le caratteristiche di Foursquare all’interno dei 7 obiettivi di business proposti dal framework di Social CRM di [...]
Foursquare and Social CRM – woorkup.com Sunday, August 1st 2010 at 1:32 pm
[...] decline Foursquare features into the seven business objectives proposed by Altimeter Social CRM framework in order to illustrate how Foursquare now seems to work very well in providing insight, developing [...]
Foursquare and Social CRM Sunday, August 1st 2010 at 1:39 pm
[...] decline Foursquare features into the seven business objectives proposed by Altimeter Social CRM framework in order to illustrate how Foursquare now seems to work very well in providing insight, developing [...]
Foursquare and Social CRM | Talk about Deal Monday, August 2nd 2010 at 3:10 am
[...] decline Foursquare features into the seven business objectives proposed by Altimeter Social CRM framework in order to illustrate how Foursquare now seems to work very well in providing insight, developing [...]
Best Tutorials for Web Development » Blog Archive » Foursquare and Social CRM Monday, August 2nd 2010 at 4:02 pm
[...] decline Foursquare features into the seven business objectives proposed by Altimeter Social CRM framework in order to illustrate how Foursquare now seems to work very well in providing insight, developing [...]
It’s time for Social Media to grow up! « Engaging Times – Alterian on Customer Engagement Thursday, August 5th 2010 at 12:34 pm
[...] What I mean by that is that social media is maturing and starting to develop definable disciplines. As once Online grew into email, search, display, etc. specialties so too is social today. Many of the pundits have picked up this theme and have started to lay claims around the emerging areas, most notably with the good folks over at Altimeter and their 18 practical uses of social media. [...]
Foursquare and Social CRM | Web Design North East Sunday, August 8th 2010 at 12:41 pm
[...] decline Foursquare features into the seven business objectives proposed by Altimeter Social CRM framework in order to illustrate how Foursquare now seems to work very well in providing insight, developing [...]
Lets DO This! SCRM in Practice, Work in Progress Sunday, August 15th 2010 at 9:42 pm
[...] Obama’s Citizens’ Briefing Book prior to his inauguration) or how a use case outlined in the Altimeter Group’s 18 Social CRM Use Cases was implemented; or how success in SCRM or some social customer interaction was measured – the [...]
Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management | Social Studies Blog Tuesday, August 17th 2010 at 8:30 am
[...] friends at the Altimeter group have been [...]
Ich Wednesday, August 25th 2010 at 3:32 am
Muh macht die Kuh!
Ich Wednesday, August 25th 2010 at 3:33 am
Muh macht die Kuh
Ich Wednesday, August 25th 2010 at 3:33 am
Muh macht die Kuh.