Yes, Even Your Small Business Needs Social CRM

Large companies may have taken the lead in Social CRM, but your small business can do Social CRM just as well.  You may think your business can’t afford to implement Social CRM.  But the truth is, you can’t afford NOT to.

The fact is that social care is no longer a bonus feature for your customers; it’s expected!  Your customers already use social media to engage customer care; 47% of social media users use this medium for their customer care needs and 33% prefer social customer care to calling on the phone.  And 50% already complain (vocally!) about products and services on social media.  Your customers are already talking about you in the social space, so you may as well listen and try to engage them.

Small businesses have an advantage in the social space over big firms because small businesses already excel at building customer relationships.  Large firms are desperately trying to achieve the direct personal connection inherent in small business.

Succeeding in this space will help you make an impression and increase customer loyalty and their rate of return.  Costs are minimal but the rewards are huge!  Your time and efforts spent attending to a customer’s problem are seen and appreciated by the greater community, potentially answering questions of other customer’s in the process.  Additionally, Social CRM will save you time as you can access all your social media communication in one spot, facilitate easy analysis of your content to maximize its value, and follow up and reconnect with customers.

Large firms have implemented complex and expensive programs, such as Salesforce and Nimble, that provide an incredible level of detailed “listening.” Fortunately, software firms have recently focused on small businesses, too.  The tools are customizable to your business size, customer base, and are adaptable as your online presence evolves.

So, give your business an edge and create happy, connected customers.  As Social CRM expert Alvaro Saltur says, “Fast, easy, and personalized is the new way to keep your customers happy, engaged, and loyal.”  Below are five highly recommended Social CRM platforms for your small business.  Now, go out and engage your happy and loyal customers!

1. Batchbook

2. Nimble

3. BlueCamroo

4. Insightly

5. GreenRope

Past and Future of CRM: CRM to Social CRM

Past and Future of CRM: CRM to Social CRM:  From Customer Relationship Management to Social Customer Relationship Management. It seems a bit simple to change a word in the equati...

CRM to Social CRM

 From Customer Relationship Management to Social Customer Relationship Management.

It seems a bit simple to change a word in the equation but now a days this is certainly not that obvious nor simple to organizations all over the world.

The power of the internet can be used in favor by many companies but it also represents problems and challenges.

The world wide web is so powerful, immense and it makes it impossible for companies to differentiate between who is a customer and who is not. It is because of this that the company's relationship with the society in general takes a whole new form and it should be addressed and managed differently.

From CRM to Social CRM we have to change our mindset from  multicanal  to a net  and understand that in multicanal we can control the flow of information between a company and its customer. Now we have to understand that customers can network among them and so on and so forth which makes imperative to be aware 24/7 of the image a company might be giving through the social networks and the web in general to the society either if it is bad to correct it ASAP or if its good to take as much advantage as possible from it.

Another challenge for companies today is to go from inernal to a perfect mix of internal and external information,to create the perfect algorithm to combine the internal data a company posses from its customers with the external data that can be analysed and extracted from the social media in order to accomplish a better understanding of its customers. In addition companies must change the focus of the analysis from only transactional to behavioral to go from mainly quantitative analysis to a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to understand more deeply its customers and to design better strategies , better marketing etc.

It is now that  Business Intelligence with morecreative parameters obtained via Social CRM  makes more sense than ever!

It is with great challenges that come great opportunities ,,, and so the battle begun and it has been going for a couple years now:

How To Not Fail At Social CRM

Social CRM can be a powerful tool to interact with customers like never before.  Businesses are jumping into the space lured by the prospect of increased brand loyalty at affordable prices.  They effectively have no choice but to engage their customers through social channels now.  Unfortunately, many don’t recognize the risks involved and pursue a half-hearted effort.  Such as approach can bring tremendous damage to a brand’s reputation in the blink of an eye.  It is better to not engage the customer at all, then to engage in a way that increases customer frustration.

There are few best practices for Social CRM, as every business must pursue a strategy appropriate for them.  However, the following are common themes in the numerous epic fails in Social CRM.

• The customer service process must be clearly defined.  The social media team is often far removed from the customer service team.  Thus, defined processes must exist to quickly obtain the answer from the appropriate personal.  A speedy reply is critical as engaging the customer only to leave them hanging later is the worst situation.  It is also important that multiple personal don’t duplicate their efforts while attempting to answer the question.  Additionally, the level of service provided must be defined if different rate service plans are offered.  Customers with the basic service plan will seek higher tier service through interaction via social channels.
• While automatic or semi-automatic responses are tempting to conserve resources, customers will see right through canned responses.  All communication must be authentic.  There shouldn’t be any attempts at upselling the customer either.
• With the plethora of social channels, it is easy to be stretched thin.  Rather than having a presence on all platforms, determine which will yield the most beneficial interaction with your customer base and devote the necessary resources to succeed on that channel before expanding.  A presence in fewer fields is better than apathetic efforts in many.
• Only 5% of problems posted to companies’ Facebook pages are answered sufficiently.  71% of consumers don’t get an answer after posting via twitter.  These stats indicate significant room for improvement in this field.  It is critical that posts are answered sufficiently and promptly.  While tempting to ignore vocal complainers, remember that these complainers are often influential and their criticism spreads like wildfire.

A well-devised process involving a cross-functional team of experts can power a highly effective Social CRM program.  Unfortunately, many businesses enter this space without properly considering the significant risks. Social media amplifies successes and failures and lightening speed.  Thus, it is imperative to enter this space fully committed, for it would be better not to participate at all than to do so with a passive effort.

Social Media and Entrepreneurs in the fastest growing country in the number of Twitter users!!

If some one asked you to guess what country has the highest growth is twitter users? Which country  would you guess? I bet Saudi Arabia will not be it! 

According to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo thats not true!

“Twitter is seeing some of its most torrid growth in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is the fastest-growing country with a 3,000 percent growth last month,”  he told The Los Angeles Times.

 Shea Bennett Co-editor at AllTwitter, stated that "In addition to the high increase in twitter users resulting in 50 Million tweets a month there are six million Facebook users and 90 million daily YouTube views" !! Those are big numbers.

Entrepreneurs and business owners tried to take advantage of that in different ways.

Here I will share an experience that I was close to its details.

 A restaurant  company attempt to take advantage of this social media “ maddens”  to have free publicity that will guarantee sending their message to millions of potential customers for a fraction of the usual advertising coast. The management of this company targeted a group of new popular (non celebrities)  twitter users and simply invited them to lunch. Each of them had a high number of followers. The theme of the event was just to connect active twitter users together face to face and go beyond the virtual life. 

Banners where printed and simple name tags to introduce the  popular “tweeps” to each other. 

There was nothing in this event stating there was an advertising advantage for the hosting restaurant. Yet, “Check ins” in the location based Apps like “foursquare” and tweeted photos of the event created high activity in the trending hashtag that was created for the event.  This simple event was more effective than an expensive advertising campaign especially for a B to C business. 

Generally, The effective utilization of  Social media is becoming a crucial component of any advertisement or PR campaign for most types and sizes of businesses but small startups and entrepreneurs are the ones who will benefit from it the most due to the easy access to it.

Sources:
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/07/15/226499.html

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-saudi-arabia_b33808