A strong Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy is an essential part of today’s business organisation. CRM strategy helps a business organisation to maintain the relationship and interactions with customers and prospects (Sigala, 2016). A strong and customer oriented CRM strategy will help the business organisation to improve its customer relationships right across the board, which, in turn, will enhance the customer loyalty and increase the revenue. In this report, the first part includes the role of CRM and its impact on the business organisation. Further, the Social media CRM has been discussed. The first part of the report also includes the benefits of Social CRM that how it is beneficial for a business organisation. Social CRM is now an important aspect of any business organisation to build a strong relationship with customers and maintain a brand value in the mind of the customer (Trainor, et.al, 2014). Thus, it is necessary to strategies the CRM tool according to the need of Customers. The Second part of the report includes a brief discussion on the ways to improve CRM strategy using Social media. Further, a small summary of the report has been discussed as a conclusion at the end of the report.
In the past, maintaining the relationship with the customer through calling and messages were the only options available for these companies, and it was a big headache for companies to call every customer. Now in modern days, Chatbots and messenger aid start-ups help the business organisation in retaining their customers and satisfying them by providing better services. Now social media is one of the most modern tools to maintain a good relationship with customers. Social media has become a part of our lives. Most of the people spending their free time on social media such as FB, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. to interact with friends or to learn about the recent things and connected with the rest of world that what is going on (McCarthy, et.al, 2014). As a research, it was found that global internet users spend more than 135 minutes per day on social media.
What is Social CRM?
Using social media for maintaining a good relationship with customers and interact with them is called Social CRM. Social CRM helps the business organisations to strengthen the brand’s rapport with customers. Social media helps the company to collect data from the public without any expense and time consumption and it also helps in collecting market data by focusing on pain point of customers (Balling and VandenPoel, 2015). However, both traditional and social CRM focuses on quick interaction with customers and solve their problems. In compare to emails and phone calls, social media are faster communication channel and seamless analysis of customer brand perception. It is also possible through social media to directly communicate with them on calls and ask questions about their problems.
Benefits of Social Media CRM
The most convincing reason behind using Social CRM is to track customers live. It is the best place where the organisation can directly communicate with their customers and sole their issues if any. Another advantage of this is that an organisation can connect with the customer wherever they are. The social CRM provides benefits of anywhere-anytime connection and instant solutions to the customer problems, which helps in building a good relationship with the customer. Building greater relationship with customer helps in increasing the revenue of the organisation by enhancing the sales of the product. The Social CRM also helpful in cost reduction. The social CRM helps in fast resolution of the problem with faster feedback and response (Agostino and Sidorova, 2017). The Social media CRM is providing a large number of opportunities online for both customers and organisations to upsell and cross-sell the products.
Ways to Improve CRM Strategy with Social Media
Customers are the most important part of any business organisation. Thus, no business organisation would ever take customers regarding their brand journey for granted. Most of the organisations stated that caring of customer experience is an important part of business operations and retaining customers. But very few considered social media as an effective tool for customer relationship management (Agnihotri, et.al, 2016). Moreover, anything contrary in that excursion will surely come back to disturb your bottom line. The role of Social media in CRM is increasing day by day because it is possible to lively track your customer on social media (Rapp and Ogilvie, 2015). The business organisation which usage CRM as a tool for promoting other areas of marketing department cannot ignore the impact of social media on the business and on CRM as well. That is why it is necessary to use social media to improve the brand image with the CRM strategy of the organisation.
Break up the organisation’s Silos
If the business organisation wants to improve the CRM strategy through social media, the first and most necessary thing they should have to do is break down the organisation’s silos. The organisational management should understand the roles and responsibilities of every department according to their functions. Instead of marketing team holding all the responsibility of sales, it is tough to get sales, social media, and customer support all together on the same page. Each department should separately function in their respective work, thus when someone asks a question to the marketing team which they do not know. A strategic and integrated social media CRM helps an organisation towards task-specific conversation to customer support or sales inquiries (Agnihotri, et.al, 2017). The customer support team on social media should take care of the questions of the customers, and they should not let questions go unanswered, because the sales team does not work with social media. Thus, it is necessary to work together for better task management and assignment on social CRM.
Tracking Journey of Customers at Every Stage
The organisation should aware about the journey of customers through the conversations to the other engagement metrics of customers. The main goal of social media CRM is not to bring new customers rather it focuses on current customers to retain them with making a strong relationship with providing them value and be at the top of mind for customers (He, et.al, 2017). A business organisation should interact with their customers when they needed any help from the organisation. One of the great examples of using social CRM is ‘Wells Fargo’, which is a major bank of USA and handling more than 70 million individuals. Wells Fargo realizes that many of their customers using multiple bank accounts, thus they feel they should do different to be in touch with their customers. Then they find a solution and establish a connection with their customers through social media. Wells Fargo also uses social CRM to ensure that those who come to them with any problems are quickly linked with somebody who can deliver a solution (Appendix-1).
Response Time to Customer Complaints
Social media allows to response the customer issues in real time. The Social CRM staff should quickly respond to the customer (Yawised and Marshall, 2015). It does not mean that the staff of the Social CRM just engaging with customers by praising their company rather they should remove the negative brand perception of the customer at a faster rate. The negative perception or issue of the customer should be encounter first by the social CRM (Peerayuth and Sasatanun, 2017). In modern days, customers like to complain to any brands or product they have purchased on social media and it influencing so much the brand image of a business organisation. For example, Swiggy is India based company that best known for its online food delivery services. Swiggy provide instant solutions to the problems of their customers on their Facebook page and Twitter account. They instantly contact with the customer and solve their query as soon as possible (Appendix-3).
Use of Keywords and Hashtags to uncover potential customers
Hashtags and keywords help an organisation to discover conversations, mentions, and even the customers. The usage of Keyword and Hashtags helps the organisation to locate the opportunities and discover the potential customers. The Hashtag facility on social media helps a business organisation to categorize the product according to the customer needs and make it easier for others to locate (Lee, 2018). This facility of social media also helps to locate potential customers who might not have any idea about the online marketing, or social interaction with their familiar brands. The keywords and hashtags should be according to the industry terms and what your audience search on social media (Roshan, Warren, and Carr, 2016). For example, Coke is best known for its Hashtags. In 2017, Coke share a Hashtag on twitter #ShareAcoke that was a catchy marketing campaign that made people want to buy coke and share their pic with Coke products on social media (Appendix-2).
Maintaining the Organisational Brand Voice across Channels
The organisation should keep a consistent brand experience across all the social networks. Through this, an organisation needs to maintain their brand voice and social interaction with customers. There will be a negative impact on customers if one of the social channels solves the issues of customers and other completely silent. Maintain a good relationship with the customer through a consistent brand voice helps an organisation to drive overall identity. There should be transparency between customers and the organisation (Choudhury and Harrigan, 2014). The service and brand what the organisation offered to the customers should be as per the expectations of the customers. For example, the senior executive of ‘General motors’ launched his first blog called “fastLane” and communicate with their customers through their feedback and replies. Customer’s feedback on that blog saves $180,000 per year against the traditional method of CRM policy of company and their focus group. This blog also aware about the product of GM to its customers and establish a relationship with them (Appendix-4).
The social CRM play an important role in tracking the sentiment of customers. It helps in knowing what customer feel and think about the certain products or marketing approach. According to a survey, 96% of business organisations did not hear from complaints from unsatisfied customers that are ridiculous for the growth and brand building of the organisation (Paniagua and Sapena, 2014).
Although in the time of social media and digitalization world, it is completely dangerous for any business organisation to avoid the effect of social media on their brand. An exceptional brand experience is what gets consumers to refer to others and ultimately come back again. One of the major problems, that most of the people who never experienced the use of social media, or never operate such types of social network sites cannot experience the advantage of social help from companies. Most of the old age people are unaware about the use of social media and even in some rural areas illiterate people does not have any idea about the internet.
Conclusion
Social media is a new way that recognizes customers have robust sentiments about relationships as customers being managed in a social media context. Moreover, it helps the business organisations to recognize their inclination to involve with businesses organisations, which should not be expected or taken for granted. Using social media in CRM helps the company to retain their customers. Social CRM helps many business organisations to sustain in the market by improving their brand image and improving their competitive advantage. The main purpose of social CRM is not only building a good relationship with customers rather facilitates collaborative social experience and communication in real time that increases the value for customers. Social media holds huge potential to get in touch with the customer in real time, and by doing so, the organisation able to reduce their operational cost, increase the revenue, and improve efficiencies of the organisation. Thus, it is necessary for every business organisation to improve their CRM practice and integrate it with the social media. Thus, CRM gives immense benefits for the organisation and create a brand image for the organisation.
References
Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M.Y. and Krush, M.T. (2016) Social media CRM: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53(8), pp. 172-180.
Agnihotri, R., Trainor, K.J., Itani, O.S. and Rodriguez, M. (2017) Examining the role of sales-based CRM technology and social media use on post-sale service behaviors in India. Journal of Business Research, 81(26), pp. 144-154.
Agostino, D. and Sidorova, Y. (2017) How social media reshapes action on distant customers: some empirical evidence. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 30(4), pp. 777-794.
Ballings, M. and VandenPoel, D. (2015) CRM in social media: Predicting increases in Facebook usage frequency. European Journal of Operational Research, 244 (1), pp. 248-260.
Peerayuth, C., and Sasatanun, P. (2017) Social media use for CRM and business performance satisfaction: The moderating roles of social skills and social media sales intensity. Asia Pacific Management Review, 22(1), 25-34.
Choudhury, M.M. and Harrigan, P. (2014) CRM to social CRM: the integration of new technologies into customer relationship management. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 22(2), pp. 149-176.
He, W., Wang, F.K., Chen, Y. and Zha, S. (2017) An exploratory investigation of social media adoption by small businesses. Information Technology and Management, 18(2), pp. 149-160.
Lee, I. (2018) Introduction of Social Media Platforms and Social Media Analytics for Social CRM. Diverse Methods in Customer Relationship Marketing and Management, 28(45), pp. 28-45.
McCarthy, J., Rowley, J., Jane Ashworth, C. and Pioch, E. (2014) Managing brand presence through social media: the case of UK football clubs. Internet Research, 24(2), pp. 181-204.
Paniagua, J. and Sapena, J. (2014) Business performance and social media: Love or hate?. Business horizons, 57(6), pp. 719-728.
Rapp, A. and Ogilvie, J. (2015) CRM and social media. The Dark Side of CRM: Customers, Relationships and Management, 16(25), pp. 150-250.
Roshan, M., Warren, M. and Carr, R. (2016) Understanding the use of social media by organisations for crisis communication. Computers in Human Behaviour, 63(25), pp. 350-361.
Sigala, M. (2016) Social CRM capabilities and readiness: findings from Greek tourism firms. Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2016, 18(6), pp. 309-322.
Trainor, K.J., Andzulis, J.M., Rapp, A. and Agnihotri, R. (2014) Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp. 1201-1208.
Yawised, K. and Marshall, P. (2015) Social CRM: a review of the literature and the identification of new research directions. International Journal of Virtual Communities and Social Networking, 7(1), pp. 14-20
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