Michael Fauschette: “…The goal is to make the relationship with the customer more intimate and tied to the company by building a public ecosystem to better understand what they want and how they interact with the various company touch points…”
What is social CRM?
Social Customer Relationship Management is a crucial process for brands aiming to actively communicate and engage with the modern social customer.
SCRM is essentially an extension of the traditional CRM model, going one step further by placing the customer at the core of the company strategy. Its ultimate aim is to enhance the relationship between a brand and the social customer. The Social CRM process does this by engaging customers and encouraging the creation of content for specific markets. By cultivating collaborative experiences between companies and their customers many businesses hope to build more meaningful customer relationships.
Social CRM is all about the processes and changes needed to support and develop a business
By using data collected from social media and conversation platforms as well as traditional CRM analysis and management tools, social CRM aims to monitor, engage and manage conversations and relationships with both existing and prospective customers.
One of Social CRM’s leading authorities Paul Greenberg describes Social CRM as “…designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide a mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It’s the company response to the customer’s owning of the relationship”.
The Social Customer
In any kind of business, managing the relationship with customers is a vital element of success. With the emergence of the social customer, however, the traditional brand-consumer relationship has altered. With this transformation comes the need for companies to adapt to the social customer’s needs and methods.
Not only does the social customer find and consume information largely through the use of social media, but the social customer also uses social media as communication channels to share feedback about products and customer service.
The communication between brands and customers is now a two-way communication channel. The availability of social networks has allowed customers to communicate directly with a brand and to express opinions instantly and to an entire network.
Another way of looking at the evolution of CRM into Social CRM is that the way brands and customers relate has completely changed. With Social CRM, the customer has much more ownership of the relationship.
How does it work?
For businesses looking to become more social or collaborative, social CRM is a great process to integrate with. For each business, the effective use of social CRM depends on the specific business challenges facing that organization and how they aim to go about solving it.
As Jacob Morgan explains in his article, “Social CRM will mean different things to different organizations. The key is being able to understand the business challenge you’re looking to solve, and then solving it”.
For many businesses, integrating social CRM can benefit many different areas. Through the integration of different forms of digital analytics and CRM management tools, your company will be able to listen to customer conversations, analyze those conversations and then use the information generated to act on the challenges facing your enterprise.
Why is it beneficial?
Integrating Social CRM can largely benefit a company.
Analyzing the social customer more closely gives very valuable insights into the general online behavior of target customer groups. This is very beneficial to both sales teams, who are able to use the data collected to social media to find targeted leads and create more targeted pitches.
By using social media, companies are able to more easily strengthen customer loyalty by communicating directly with existing and potential customers. Social CRM is a great way for customer service teams to respond to customer questions, queries and comments more quickly and instantly.
Social CRM also benefits marketing, as the use of social media is extremely beneficial in directly communicating a message to customers through various social networks and with the added help of social media analytics tools, which help businesses to follow consumer trends and conversations and to overall more thoroughly understand the customer base.
