Social Media Spells Out CRM Today!
In today’s crossover world where business, social and personal can often mingle, traditional CRM is not necessarily eclipsed by Social Media connections, but informs the new platforms and channels, which are bringing to business and their customers, alike, opportunities and rewards not possible just months ago!
Great claims are made for the dizzying array of social networking forums and messaging mediums buzzing incessantly around today’s web 2.0 space. But for many companies, just getting to grips with the idea of a blog, or a Twitter account, when they are perfectly happy with their original website design announcing ‘Welcome’ to their visitors, and simply using email, the whole social media thing is starting to gnaw!
Business owners perfectly understand traditional CRM as ‘customer relationship management’, which helps them by collecting different sales and customer information from the various areas of their company. They are able to get a close up profile of individual customers or companies which directly feeds into ongoing and future sales drives to best serve customer requirements.
Social Media takes the CRM model and builds an online marketing concept to utilise the social web and kickstart the conversations. Potential customers expect online interaction and closer engagement. Now different parts of a company, from customer services and sales/marketing teams can either listen in or enter customer conversations, bringing added value information in real time.
Business owners should recognise the intrinsic value of being seen to be actively engaged in customer engagement in a social media context. Providing daily fresh content via blog, Twitterfeed or Facebook update will require optimising for greater website accessibility, which actively embraces closer customer contact and ultimately drives increased, repeat traffic.
Social CRM gives real, key benefits:
• A User Friendly Company Face - Visitors are reassured that behind the big company facade there are real people they can talk to. A website is not just about selling! Impressed visitors will talk about your brand identity and provide site links to their work colleagues, friends and peers – not unlike the traditional referral!
• Listening and Watching – Running alongside website analytics data as an invaluable insight and research tool to monitor changing customer behaviours. This means a quicker, more timely response to catch customers new needs for products, services – just at the right time.
By putting your customers at the heart of your business, conversations are transformed into collaborative experiences to drive sales opportunities and develop meaningful relationships based upon real customer engagement. As a result, businesses can now operate campaigns ‘on the fly’ rather than spend weeks in preparation and miss peak opportunity!
All you need to know about your visiting customers, their behaviours, their likes and dislikes and what they want from you is live on the web right now – social CRM gives you the tools to directly serve your customer whenever and wherever needed.