Cerebra

I touted Social Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) as one of the key trends in social media in South Africa for 2012, and I think it needs some explaining.

What is it?

Social CRM is the process of linking customer profiles (back-end data) with customers’ social profiles (front-end data), providing a 360 degree view of the customer when engaging.

Why is it important?

Social CRM has seen huge growth in the more established social markets overseas due to the rich data that social brings to the table. But there are some key reasons why it’s important for those companies who engage in social media.

1. As social platforms become a customer’s interaction point of choice with a brand, it’s important to know what these customers mean to your business.

   e.g.Person X regularly interacts with your brand on Twitter, complimenting and referring other potential customers to your brand – you’d surely like to link the valuable promoter’s social ID to your CRM system, making known to the frontline employees that this user is a promoter of the brand.




2. Traditional CRM links other qualified contact details to your profile, allowing the company to track a history of a conversation for improved current and future interaction. Imagine that same ability within the scope of their conversations with your brand on social media, the application of that data within the customer profile could swing a future upgrade / product push.

   e.g. You realise the customer has previously been interested in product X via Twitter or Facebook engagement, so when it’s available, let’s provide it to him or her first This has the potential to create brand advocates, and probably spark some real surprise and delight for the customer. This can also be applied to a customer’s visit to a store; their social profile is visible to the personnel, helping them to make a more informed decision, or giving the customer better advice.




3. High cost contact deflection - Understanding the lifetime value of the customer before you interact with them offline (via e-mail, phone call etc) will help you either reduce the reliance on making the offline interaction, and possibly keeping it online, or visa versa.

   e.g. Customer X complains vehemently about a service that is not available to him / her, but is not aware that it’s not available within the current contract or customer/service tier. With their lifetime customer information at your fingertips, you can make a calculated decision to engage online, and clear the misunderstanding up there, without having to call /e-mail / ask for more details. This can also fall the other way, where a customer might be a “Platinum level customer” and therefore the engagement or resolution could be different. Like many hotels that upgrade loyal customers once the card is provided, the same applies in the social space, just without having to show any form of loyalty card.




4. Customers might have preferences to certain communication. With linked access to the customer details to tap into the back-end system, the community manager has the ability to select the preferred way to contact the customer if needs be.

   e.g. If the customer has requested to be contacted only via e-mail / phone, this request can easily be fulfilled if the community manager knows this up front.

There are simple material benefits (for the customer and the brand), long-term customer value benefits, real ROI benefits and tangible brand advocacy numbers to social CRM. The challenge is more often than not that the current CRM / Customer service interface doesn’t have this functionality built in yet. This being said, there are various companies who provide social CRM product integration, such as Oracle, SalesForce, SAP & Lithium (a product I am familiar with), but these tools can take months, if not years, to implement and align to current CRM tools.

If it’s not something your social media team (whether in customer service or CRM) is planning on investing in the near future, I’d suggest you start investigating now. The capital and systems outlay may be large, but the long-term return on investment is already showing huge benefits to those companies that have implemented it.

*Image source Mashable