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224 7 Social Commerce: Foundations, Social Marketing, and Advertising

nonmilitary robots. According to their website, in 2015, iRo- are encouraged to contact iRobot directly. For how the com-
bot generated $617 million in revenue. iRobot makes robots pany listens to social media, see informationweek.com/
for the government, defense and security, military and civil software/social/roomba-robots-listen-to-social-
defense forces worldwide, commercial applications, industry, media/d/d-id/1100404?. For a podcast, see moneybasicsra-
and home use. The public is mostly familiar with the Roomba dio.com/2013/04/irobot-social-media.
vacuuming robot. Due to the technical nature of its products, Responding to issues quickly is important because, as dis-
the company’s customers may require specialized support and cussed earlier, customers can attract a considerable amount
service. On their customer care website, the company provides of attention using YouTube or Twitter (the company runs
self-diagnosis, support videos, live chat, product FAQs go to promotions, such as giveaways and games on Twitter), to
“customer help” and (type in a problem and receive automatic publicize their complaints. In addition to problem resolution,
answers), and more (e.g., see homesupport.irobot.com/app/ the company gets valuable feedback from the customers, so
answers/list/session/L3RpbWUvMTQwMDQzNjk4NS9z it can improve its products and services.
aWQvODJsX1ZBVWw%3D). However, there are home iRobot has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
market customers who may need more technical assistance YouTube, and Tumblr. The company uses these sites to dis-
since many are new at using robots. The company’s objective seminate information and collect customer feedback and
is to expand the sale of home market products. Therefore, they complaints.
must provide extensive assistance to inexperienced customers. Sources: Based on irobot.com/About-irobot.aspx (accessed
The company supports a community and provides discussion March 2016).
boards, community search capability, and live chat.
Questions
1. What is meant by the term multichannel service support?
Social CRM: Serve the Customers While What is the benefit of multichanneling?
Learning from Them 2. What are the activities related to social media at iRobot?
What are their benefits?
iRobot utilizes a CRM system with the help of Oracle 3. Describe how the company listens to their customers’
RightNow Inc. (see Oracle Service Cloud at oracle.com/us/ complaints, and how they resolve the problems.
products/applications/rightnow/overview/index.html).
The system enables customers to contact iRobot’s service
group via several different communication channels, includ- The Evolution of Social CRM
ing e-mail, live chat, social networks, and Web self-service.
This way, iRobot can respond to any online customer com-
munication in a timely manner, regardless of the channel Now that you have a basic understanding of CRM, e-CRM,
and SCRM, we can look at the evolution of SCRM as well as
used. All this needs to be done at a low cost; therefore, it is
necessary to automate the services. some differences between SCRM and e-CRM. SCRM can be
viewed as an extension of e-CRM. Most e-CRM software
companies, such as Salesforce Inc. (salesforce.com), offer
Specific Social Media Activities
social media features in their products. However, there are
some significant differences between e-CRM and SCRM.
iRobot customers can post service and support requests or These differences can be seen at slideshare.net/JatinKalra/
complaints on homesupport.irobot.com or they can con-
tact the help desk. Customers can also communicate with e-crm-112520123741 and Turban et al. (2016; Chapter 7).
Social CRM today is delivered in many cases by mobile
each other. The company monitors these messages and
tries to provide immediate responses. iRobot tries to find devices (see Goldenberg 2015).
the identity of the customers that have problems by moni-
toring relevant conversations in the various social channels
(e.g., in forums on social networks). Once identified, iRo- Cipriani’s Multidimensional Presentation
bot communicates with the customers privately to resolve
the issues. Fabio Cipriani (2008) outlines the difference between CRM
The social media-oriented activities are integrated with and SCRM (referred to as CRM 1.0 and CRM 2.0) along the
documents and videos in a knowledge base managed by following dimensions: landscape, customer touch points,
RightNow. The company uses RightNow’s monitoring tools business processing modeling, technology, and organiza-
to identify the customers who post the comments. Some cus- tional mindset. The differences between CRM 1.0 and CRM
tomers may provide their real names. Anonymous customers 2.0 are illustrated in Figure 7.4.