There’s no denying that social media is changing businesses for good. It has opened up new avenues of marketing, sales and customer service which have never been imagined earlier. Many businesses have adopted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as the preferred means to get closer to customers. Social Media has also played a key role in popularizing CRM with innovative apps and unique self-service models.
When it comes to deriving maximum gains for a business, a right combination of social media and CRM is the perfect tonic. Social media and CRM compliment each other and it’s fair to say that they are “made for each other”.
In fact, the use of social media and CRM in conjunction has gained phenomenal popularity over the last couple of years and is now coined as “Social CRM”.
Social Media
Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or any other social network, millions of businesses worldwide are using social media for marketing and advertising. It is increasingly being adopted as a means for online customer service and a platform to solicit instant customer feedback as well.
CRM
The underlying principle of CRM is simple – “Customer is king” and you definitely don’t want to mess up your relation with the king. CRM is no longer limited to surveys, focus groups and wikis – social media plays a key role in determining the overall impact of CRM applications for a business’ operations.
Since Social Media is far more intuitive than traditional CRM tools such as surveys and questionnaires, they are natural allies for each other. CRM brings in workflows and process-orientation to a business, while social media brings in a unique way to reach out to customers.
The Lethal Combination
The USP of social media + CRM combo is that it provides an intelligent community-based solution to bring customers closer by leveraging the unmatched power of social networks. A business can link its customer facing CRM app to Facebook/ Twitter in order to make it a fun experience for its users. Or it could even tie its employee CRM module to use Twitter feeds for real time updates. Using YouTube channels to train your work staff on the latest CRM modules is another option. The possibilities are endless.
A business is all about customer experience and the social media CRM combo helps a business build great customer relationships. While CRM brings in the technology, social media brings in the required attitude.
Social CRM
Social CRM platforms are evolving fast and processes are being streamlined to gain maximum advantage from social media engagement. Social CRM is the new voice for online customers and it offers a win-win situation for enterprises as well as their customers.
With Cloud Computing gaining grounds, a number of enterprises are looking at exploring cloud-based social CRM solutions in order to save costs on their customer management needs. Such solutions help improve an organization’s overall efficiency by streamlining workflows, managing real-time responses, providing cross-reference social media content across various teams (e.g. sales, support, IT) and customers.
IMO, Social CRM might be the next big game changer for social media adoption in the enterprise.
