CRM + Social Networking = Faceforce

Via Dennis Howlett. Interesting example of the synergies between operational applications (such as CRM) that are mostly psuedo-transactional and designed around certain task/functional activities) and social networking sites that can help correlate any possible relationship and community connections that might be contextually relevant to that activity. Click on the links below to read more about the mashup (via Jeff Grosse) and a flash demo (via Clara Shih):

Now in Salesforce, if you look at a Contact that you’re friends with on Facebook, you can see their Facebook profile right inline with their Salesforce contact record.  It even allows you to perform regular Facebook actions such as Send a Message, Send a Gift, Write on Wall, Message, view their Full Profile, and even the curious Poke. 

At the Lead level, the S-control will search Facebook for the lead and show possible matches.  If that is the person, you can link them to into the lead so you have access to all their Facebook data inline with your lead data.

At the Account level, the S-control will display all the Facebook connections you have with that company and allow you to take numerous Facebook actions, right from the Account record.

The mashup was built by Clara Shih, an AppExchange Product Manager at Salesforce.com.  She did it because she too is a huge fan of both platforms, but more importantly, she demonstrated a way of mashing up two products, that were never made for each other.  Yet, as a user of both platforms, you can now connect the dots, having more information at your fingertips, inline with the applications you use everyday to build deeper relationships with your customers and prospects.

What Clara is doing with Faceforce is only going to spark more ideas of how to make use of data available to us.  I’m interested to watch what she and others do to enhance this type of integration.  We’re bound to see more like it.

..... If you’d like to see a demo of Faceforce, Clara provides a short Flash demo of how Faceforce works.  If you’d like to try Faceforce for yourself, you can install it from the AppExchange.  Her next experiment will see what you can bring from Salesforce into Facebook.  Kudos to Clara for helping us get a taste of the possibilities.

Faceforce; Social Networking Reaches Into the Enterprise | CRM FYI

Comments

[Nicole]

This is an excellent example of CRM and social networking going hand-in-hand, although I am a fan of more truly integrated social networking capabilities in contact management/CRM; for example, www.octopuscity.com offers a free contact manager that ties in quite well with your social network.