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.
The rising tide of online collaboration is highlighted by a new infographic. But why are businesses finally turning to online collaboration tools?
Most businesses know that online social collaboration tools can form part of the solution to inefficient working practices, but they’ve been around for ages and, for various hotly discussed reasons, never seem to have caught on.
Until, now, it seems
Big news recently from Facebook: companies can now link their customer data, including phone numbers and email addresses to those provided by people on Facebook.
It mightn’t seem like much, but this move, initially for ad targeting only, could be huge.
Those brands that have embraced customer reviews are now starting to look at how they can drive increased engagement with their customers by facilitating, embracing and in some cases participating in customer to customer conversations, to drive sales and advocacy.
With 89% of consumers reading reviews before some or all purchases, most now see reviews as a must-have for brands.
Another day, another social media marketing acquisition.
Two weeks ago, Oracle announced the purchase of social media marketing platform provider Vitrue. Yesterday, Salesforce announced that it’s acquiring Vitrue competitor Buddy Media.
Over the past two years Our Social Times has hosted social CRM conferences in London, New York and Paris.
It’s a fast-growing industry with many specialist themes, but the first question the speakers always get asked is: “How does social CRM differ from traditional CRM?”
The following H&R Block case study is excerpted from my latest report, Online Communities Part Two: Engaging Your Community Across Multiple Platforms. This 17-page report is the second in a series of four that I’m writing for Econsultancy, and develops material covered in last month’s Online Communities: Starting a Community.
One example of a company who is “rocking customer service issues via Twitter” is the tax services company, H&R Block. Whether or not you use H&R Block for your personal or business tax preparation, it’s clear they have invested time and money into growing and engaging with their online community on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.