Helpstream, a provider of customer service communities, recently announced the spring release of its social customer service solution. It includes ActivityStream, a Twitter-like feature that allows users to subscribe to and follow their favorite experts in the community. There is also an enterprise application mashup capability that seamlessly embeds Helpstream communities with Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM solutions.

I spoke with Bob Warfield, CEO, and Bill Odell, VP of Marketing, of Helpstream. Bob explained their concept of Social CRM that, in Web 2.0 style, allows customers to control the conversation. He said that Social CRM does not replace traditional CRM, it enhances it while allowing for greater customer engagement.

I asked Bob how they are able to motivate customers to engage in the community. He said that Helpstream covers the complete sales cycle but they start with customer service to incite initial participation.  This provides immediate value as the community can help each customer unlock greater functionality from the product they have already purchased through the sharing of best practices. Bob pointed out that people are more likely to trust fellow users than the vendors, and I agree, as I know this from personal experience. These customers are then more likely to provide a positive referral to others.

Marketing initiatives can be based on the positive buzz generated through greater customer service support. Helpstream provides several ways to pull more users into the community. Sales representatives can subscribe to a feed of customer conversations within the community. It is like a 24 x 7 user conference that allows for more knowledgeable conversations.

There are a number of social media features within Helpstream that support this social side of CRM. Conversations are fostered through Q&A, discussions, and the IdeaStream. Users are able conduct expert searches, engage in groups, set up social profiles, and make use of the ActivityStream to convey their actions and see what others are doing. The ActivityStream automatically creates a feed of a user’s activity, much like the Facebook newsfeed.

A variety of features support content including: a wiki, checklists, feedback, and voting. Social monitoring allows you to keep track of what is being said about your brand, topic and competitors on the web through Twitter, blogs, and Facebook.  This enables you to find people discussing your product and/or the market areas it serves, and to invite them into the community. Here is a sample Helpstream home page.

We looked at a sample community run by RainDance Technologies. RainDance Technologies is a provider of droplet-based microfluidic solutions that accelerate human health and disease research.  The Helpstream community is accessible to guests, and uses community-generated content for marketing purposes to attract new members. Each content entry has its own URL, which, combined with the cross-linkage, provides great Google search results that increases awareness with potential new members. You can also set up blogs within the community and bring in blog content from the outside through RSS. There is a Twitter integration that allows you to bring in tweets based on defined key words. You can invite a Twitter user to expand their conversation through the Helpstream discussion forum so they can go beyond the 140 character limit.  Each tweet can serve as the foundation for a separate discussion within a forum. You can also use the tweet to launch a customer service response.  There is also a search box within the community to allow users to ask questions. The federated search allows you to both search both the Web and the knowledge base within the community.

Helpstream uses their own software to support their customers and build their following. One of their goals is to increase community participation in content creation and have this content help resolve customer issues. We looked at several reports on how content is created within the community. We looked at reports generated for January 08 – June 08, June 08 – December 09, then January 09 — June 09.

There was steady progression in the desired direction. The percentage of problems resolved through agents went from 76% to 37% to 11% during the specified time periods. The percentage of problems resolved with existing content went from 4% to 48% to 76%. You can see how their customers came to rely more on the existing content and less on the more costly option of asking an agent. I think this is a great testimony to the value received from developing customer communities and the usefulness of the reports that Helpstream generates.

Traditional CRM has always seemed to provide more of a record keeping function, however, adding the social side as Helpstream does, makes CRM come alive and provides more benefits to both companies and their customers. Helpstream’s Web site has a saying — “A customer is a terrible thing to waste.” I would add that wasting the opportunity to get their input can be equally problematic.

Post Script: Since our conversation Helpstream has announced an expansion of its Social CRM Suite with a new social marketing module. It allows companies to integrate conversations occurring in public communities such as Twitter and Facebook with their existing customer communities and respond back to these conversations. The features include “Overheard” Cloud Feeds that enables an organization to bring in feeds from any public social network into their Helpstream community. Twitter Monitoring brings selected search and keyword content from Twitter into the community for immediate visibility into relevant conversations.  Then you can use the Tweet Backs feature to tweet community content from your personal or corporate Twitter account without leaving the Helpstream community. The Mention This feature allows users to use pre-defined replies to Tweets with built in tiny URLs. Marketing automation integration connects the Helpstream community with existing solutions for lead scoring and nurturing.

This is a nice collection to further connect a Helpstream community with what is happening elsewhere on the Web and engage with these other sites.  It is a natural extension of the social CRM concept. Helpstream is sharing its vision for Social CRM in a blog series called the “Social CRM Manifesto.”