Earlier in the year I wrote a beginner’s guide to customer relationship management entitled What is CRM and why do you need it? Welcome to the next chapter.
Here we’ll be investigating the next vital stage in your CRM strategy: social CRM, and how this can help your company track its relationships in an increasingly multichannel landscape.
First though, for anybody who needs a refresher, a quick recap of what CRM actually means….
Social media is still growing rapidly. I’m pointing out the obvious here but social networks are a dynamic medium for entertainment and interaction, including content discovery and product recommendation.
As such, the auto industry seems almost uniquely suited to social.
While most consumers buy cars infrequently, their interest in them (based on price tag, necessity and if you indulge me, the embodiment of the American dream) often transcends the purchase event.
As such, social analytics has cause to mature in the automotive industry, where it surely stands to play a part in the sales funnel other than simply branding.
I’ve been reading a nice little CMO Council report on social analytics in the auto industry. Here are some thoughts on integrating social into automotive sales.
The more digital we become (define and measure that how you will), the more advantage we can gain from being ‘human’ in our communications and sales approach.
As community and privacy is eroded, social skills and the ability to network become high-value attributes, where once they may have been called soft skills.
In recent years social customer service has endured crises and successes in equal measure. Here’s a quick evaluation of where we are today, with some pointers for the future.
For an increasing number of people, social media is the first place they turn when they experience a problem.
Fewer than 50% of companies are actively responding to these enquiries and many of those are using cost-cutting copy and paste tactics, which is exactly what call centres were criticised for.
We need to invest in finding ways of supporting customers more effectively on the channel of their choice and ensuring a consistent customer service experience across all service channels.
Are you missing a critical social media KPI?
‘Social media disconnects’, or when consumers unfriend/unlike or unfollow as a result of a social media marketing initiative or campaign, isn’t a term in many marketers’ vocabulary.
Perhaps it’s time for that to change.
CRM strategist and consultant Andrew Campbell is the author of our recently published Customer Relationship Management in the Social Age Best Practice Guide.
Here, he answers some questions about social CRM and other topics covered in the guide.