Past and Future of Customer Relationship Management

PAST AND FUTURE OF CRM

Over the past couple of years we have seen a broad shift in the use of Internet and one that continues to accelerate. With the rise of websites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube companies now recognize that every potential/existing customer is engaged in some form of Social Media. Gone are the days where customers waited for even a few hours for a reply from their suppliers for their queries or problems, the response time is down to a FEW MINUTES.

Recently, one of our group members Deep Mehta was having problems with his AntiVirus Protection. Instead of the traditional way of contacting Norton either with a phone call or writing an email he tweeted to them asking for a solution. Deep got a reply withing a FEW MINUTES!!!  

 

















Social Media is connecting customers across geographical boundaries and forming virtual relationships between people. Customers now reach out to each other to get an honest feedback about a product or service, to know more about a company amongst other things. So where does this leave the traditional "Customer Relationship Management" (#CRM)?

This increased interface between customers and companies has led to the advent of a fairly new concept "Social Customer Relationship Management" (#SCRM or #SocialCRM). Social CRM recognizes that instead of managing customers, the role of the business is to facilitate collaborative experiences and dialogue that customers value.

Traditionally, conversations with the customers were either managed by calls, emails or in-person meetings but now there is a whole new level of conversation with the customer, that is, through SOCIAL MEDIA. More and more there is an increasing expectation from the customer that the companies are there to listen to them across all social media channels and that the company is expected to have an overview of all the conversations that they have with them across all channels. This is where Social CRM comes in.

"Social CRM is a philosophy and business strategy designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide a mutually beneficial in a mutually beneficial trusted and transparent business environment"
                                                                                           - Paul Greenberg, Godfather of CRM. 

 
Social CRM enables companies to harness the energies of their customers to enhance customer relationship. As we saw in the twitter example above the Deep (customer) guided the conversation with Norton Antivirus (supplier). This is a paradigm shift from the way traditional CRM process and is a more "REAL TIME" conversation. 

There are different successful examples where companies have used Social CRM for marketing, sales, support and even to build partnerships. One of the most successful application of Social CRM is by Jet Blue, an airline company.

 

JetBlue has been able to use social media to enhance customer satisfaction through social media by answering their queries, providing alternatives for problems facilitating them to build everlasting relationships with them through "REAL TIME" conversation, improve brand image, and most importantly increase sales. PROOF? Their 1.7 Million followers on Twitter.   

Social CRM does not end only through conversation of customers but it goes further and integrates the main value of CRM - build customer relationship. Social CRM software's such as Nimble help companies track participation metrics such as number of replies, number Twitter mentions and video views. It also helps us track top content or "mileage" generating "tweets", "posts" or "videos" so that the companies know exactly how to build relationships with customers. Ultimately, Social CRM is used to measure how increase in participation is used to increase in ROI, productivity and customer success.

Hence, in times where information moves faster than light through the 500+ million active users of Facebook, and 140+ million tweets send per day it is imperative that the companies use Social media to their advantage. Social CRM is in its infant stages but we can assure that unlike a lot of technological innovations Social CRM is here to stay.