Unlike traditional models which were originally developed to be customer-centered but quickly devolved into customer focused, company-centric strategies, Social CRM brings a whole new level of authenticity, accountability, immediacy, and builds upon trust and its foundations with customers in the relationship.
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Social networks have greatly amplified the voice of consumers in the marketplace and it is predicted they will continue to have profound and extensive effects on how companies manage their clients. Conversations that take place on these virtual communities are uncensored, unmoderated and allow individuals to express their opinions on companies, products, and services, as well as share their experiences with other members of the community.
More and more companies are looking to access these conversations in search of insight into client preferences and are continuously expanding their efforts to integrate systems into social networking sites. Social CRM eliminates friction and allows customers to interact with each other and discuss information they care about. How a business takes advantage of this information determines the success of integrating social CRM strategies/technologies into the business.
Potentially, Social CRM can improve Marketing ROI thanks to information gathered that allows companies to better target their products to a particular group of customers, better development of products or services as well as improving upon them based on customer preferences, improve the customer’s experience with your company and everything that your brand has to offer, and generate interest through word-of-mouth.
Social CRM can also improve a company’s ability to market itself effectively by gaining insight and exploring new market segments.
By building communities around the brand and tapping into its collective intelligence businesses can:
- Identify new opportunities that will aid in developing better cross-sell or upsell abilities.
- Increase research and development capabilities.
- Cut down on commissions costs.
- Promote transparent dialogue and improving/expediting the efficiency of customer interactions.
- Decreasing customer service costs through self-help communities.
Different areas of the business can find themselves benefiting from social CRM applications. Sales teams are more equipped with an integrated view of online conversations of their customers and as a result can obtain more relevant information that is crucial to sales operations. Marketing teams can connect much earlier in the buying process while meeting customers at their point of need and gain insight into the behaviour, sentiment, and effectiveness of how they conduct their marketing strategy.
Product development teams can collaborate directly with customers throughout the development phase and encouraging new product ideas and opinions through forums, communities, polls, and contests. Customer service teams can provide a more memorable customer experience by proactively responding to customers on their terms and making use of an integrated view of their entire interaction, engagement, and conversation history.
This is basically achieved through integration of digital analytics through the web, email, mobile, and search, as well as social media analytics and other CRM relationship management analytics to identify and articulate social media ROI
Social CRM is part process, part people and part technology – get all these three pillars right and you will be on your on way .
