Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management through Social Media, aka sCRM) is technological extension of traditional CRM which enables businesses to interact with customers in real time using variety of social media platforms in a cost effective way. In the world of conversation-centric and community-oriented Social Media, customers are gaining more importance and their voices are being heard more seriously by businesses now a days, resulting in enhanced and improved customer experience. Increased customer control has ultimately changed the existing traditional CRM model. Traditionally CRM plans are developed in an “inside-out” direction whereas Social CRM is considered best “outside-in” direction. Thus information democracy is more and more prevalent.
Social media has given liberty to customers to interact with each other using blogs, social networks and customer reviews sites, regardless of whether businesses are taking part in the conversation or not. To lessen the power of social customer; businesses should adopt Social CRM as a business approach. Social CRM is the business’s response to customer’s ownership of the conversation. Businesses should strategically engage in the conversations with their target audience while filtering the noise. It is great opportunity for providing customer service, managing online reputation, finding customers needs and satisfying those in timely manner, getting real-time feedback and ultimately having increased brand awareness and loyalty, and most importantly, increased sales.
Paying attention to feedback and bringing improvements accordingly is pre-requisite for success in any business however Social CRM has changed the way of doing business and getting feedback. Earlier, it was possible for businesses to ignore their unhappy customers. This is now impossible for any business. Social CRM now forces businesses to pay close attention towards how customers think and perceive any business. Any business that ignores this precious customer feedback cannot survive the competition.
Unfortunately, few businesses may devise ethically and morally disapproved strategies to survive and sustain e.g. by writing excessive fake reviews that can build their reputation or harm the reputation of competitors. However such strategies must be avoided as few countries have already formulated rules and regulations for the wrong use of Social media to protect its consumers.
Social CRM can be helpful for business in many other ways too; particularly to create positive Word of Mouth (WOM), provide memorable service and to get deeper insight into their customer’s behaviour by real-time listening and monitoring. I’ll focus on these positive perspectives of Social CRM in future posts.
See also: Top 10 Benefits of Social Media for Business ; SEO and Social Media Marketing Integration ; SEO Specialist’s Website ; Should Facebook Have a Dislike Button? ; Using Social Media for Business Success
