One trend that may be hot this year is Social CRM. This basically is the use of social media technology to enable organizations to interact with their customers. The use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has been adopted across larger enterprises but less so by small and medium firms. Social CRM allows smaller firms to be reactive with applications such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Social CRM for smaller businesses will allow almost a one-on-one conversation with customers to gain insight and information that they would normally not have. By quickly reacting to comments from users and customers a small company can show that they can adapt to the needs of their customers and improve customer satisfaction. The information that is obtained through Social CRM can help develop products, sales strategies, and even direct companies to markets that they had not identified previously.
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Social CRM is a must for small businesses. It is important to communicate with their customers to find out what the issues are with products and services. Twitter is a great way in which a business can instantly get information, and also reply instantly.
“One trend that may be hot this year is Social CRM.”
Wrong, it *will* be hot this year. In fact, Social CRM might even become more popular than regular CRM for a couple reasons:
1. Small businesses are taking the plunge into social more and more daily, because social is a smaller investment than CRM.
2. CRM applications (with the exception of Insightly and JobNimbus) are terribly designed and have horrible interfaces with terribly complicated feature sets. On the other hand, social CRM apps are lighter weight and generally better designed making them easier to implement.
I would bet social CRM could eclipse normal CRM apps going into 2014.
Social CRM is very important and I believe it will be the number one topic for 2013
Social CRM is already a big benefit for many companies. Twitter is a great tool for small businesses to communicate with their clients to gain real-time interaction and knowledge.
I am still not sure what Social CRM is all about – is it an application or just getting a Facebook and Twitter account? Any help please……
Our company has used a CRM application for about two years and we have found it very useful for the external sales team. We have not looked at Social CRM, but have started a Twitter feed in addition to a Facebook page. We don’t seem to update them very much (I think we have 34 Twitter followers) and its sad that a company grossing $12 million in sales can’t update a silly webpage.
Social CRM is very important. I use facebook to communicate with companies that I have issues with or that I want to write a comment to.