Technology buzzword today?
Social CRM is a concept that combines social media technology with the well-established business practice of Customer Relationship Management. It is gaining importance as an approach to enhance customer engagement. Though most companies are in the early stages of deploying social CRM programs, its execution is a concern when it comes to calculating Return on Investment. Organizations need to grow and move beyond isolated projects to reinvent the customer relationship and use social Customer Relationship Management.
Social CRM encompasses the power to shift from traditional CRM which focuses on management solutions for dealing with customers to communicate through social media and influence others in its network.
The success of any CRM implementation largely depends on the ability of the users to efficiently work with the system. This is the best way to know more about SuiteCRM Implementation & SuiteCRM Training.
Need to take a deeper dive!
Whilst the practices of Social CRM are making their way into the list of best practices, it is yet an evolving field. Hence, relying too much on published ways of working may not be a very wise idea. One needs to be aware of successful parameters and methodologies, yet, a deep dive into one’s own business needs is imperative. Adapting and adopting the established practices to your own business scenarios is the key differentiator when it comes to leveraging the benefits of Social CRM for an enterprise.
Overcoming shortfalls
With Social CRM, the employee or the business firm has the opportunity to interact with the customers or potential audiences at any time across multiple platforms. Such systems require constant monitoring of the customer data. Employees might not have that much time to watch too many customers simultaneously or to research the concerns of the customers that require immediate attention and action. With Social CRM, relationships are driven by information access and availability. Grouping the information or problems according to the different subjects can help in addressing the issues more quickly. At the same time, using technology aids like software intelligence to sift through the huge volumes of data, grouping it into similar bundles, and then applying data analytics as well as perhaps, automated first-level resolutions, may be quite helpful in accelerating the entire Social CRM journey.
Survey and Findings
The company’s current Social CRM progress and its ability to provide value to customers via social media can be mapped and accessed via surveys and even track the systems on the ground. Investment in such data collection is important to unearth findings that are currently showing the majority of companies as having the need to incorporate multiple elements of social media programs to progress toward an integrated Social CRM approach. Some of these studies have common results that have been extrapolated and shared for the general public view and interested parties. Some of the key findings are:
- No turning back
The social media footprint has grown rapidly because of which the pressure to embrace social media is high for late adopters as well. Everyone is trying to jump on to this bandwagon. It is surely set to fundamentally change the way the business is done. It is an industry agnostic need. But there is still room for much more that needs to be done by small as well as medium and large companies to fully exploit the benefits the social media offers for business opportunities. Evolvement is the name of the game and surely Social CRM is riding this path.
- Companies struggle to overreach social CRM program
Social media has grown rapidly across enterprises, but the key characteristics like executive sponsorship, consolidated guidelines and policies, integrated cross-functional governance, and sharing of customer insights that enhance the innovation are still existing in silos. The practical challenges to manage the huge volumes of data that exist in digital forms include the unstructured and structured data formats. One of the major challenges is to integrate the intelligence to manage and monitor all types of data that seem incompatible across a unified interface. Social media data is an important part of the data intelligence plans for companies.
- The challenges of social media vary widely
The concern of return of investment tops the list of challenges that social media engagements have to face. Given the free nature of the internet, a lot of applications provide data for free. Investing in intelligent systems around these come with a price, as the offerings are niche and the players are few, although they are growing rapidly in number. The quality of the output from these tools is also questionable, fuelling doubts as to which vendor to select. Around sixty percent of companies are able to track the return on investment to some extent. There is no consensus on a standard approach on this. About a third of the executives believe that they do well in these analytics. About fifty-three percent offer training on social media to employees despite fears of negative brand exposure.
So how does it look from here?
The social media engagement strategy has become a noteworthy priority for many businesses very quickly. Companies invest time, financial resources and efforts to build a strong relationship with their customers for creating values and benefits for both employees and customers. These benefits can be in terms of time savings, convenience, developing interpersonal relationships, getting greater financial rewards, a more efficient decision-making process, and so on. These relationships which are financial, social, or structural in nature can bring huge benefits to companies and to customers if utilized properly and efficiently.
The road to Social CRM becoming an inseparable and natural part of a company’s roadmap looks plausible in the near future. Surely, the ride will have its own hiccups and hurdles, but soon it will be a given practice just like the sales & marketing funnels are established functions of any business. Companies that are ready to experiment, learn, and reinvent will surely stay ahead of the curve.
With years of experience in sales, marketing, and customer support automation, Fynsis is the most preferred SuiteCRM training & development Partner who always aims to meet your budget while delivering a measurable ROI on your CRM investment. We create best-in-class business solutions that deliver a competitive edge and ROI, with power and flexibility.
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