Social CRM is the use of social media to interact with prospects and customers. With the rise of social media, it’s safe to say that the majority of consumers now use it, in one way or another. This is important, because if that is where people are, companies need to be leveraging social media to both generate new leads and engage existing customers. Here, we take a closer look at how to utilize social CRM, as well as the benefits and challenges involved.
How to Use Social CRM?
The best way to streamline your use of social CRM is by adopting a software solution to automate much of the process. For example, we looked at Agile CRM, an end-to-end sales, marketing and support automation solution that provides an entire suite of social CRM features. With software such as this, you can:
Monitor mentions of your brand. Systems like this allow you to monitor brand mentions through an RSS feed, making it easy to respond as soon as someone mentions your company.
Address customer concerns. When you are monitoring brand mentions, you can easily address customer concerns on social media in a timely manner. This is important, as leaving negative comments unanswered can quickly generate a negative brand image.
Capture new leads. Some software solutions sync with social media platforms and allow you to pull lead information from that platform right into your CRM.
Join the conversation. Social CRM makes it easier to jump into a conversation taking place on a topic pertinent to your business. That helps you establish yourself as an authority, which will expand your brand recognition.
Be active on various platforms. You can use social CRM software to schedule tweets on Twitter, gain insights into prospects’ interests on Facebook, search public Google Plus profiles and find leads to bring into marketing campaigns, and a lot more.
Engage with industry influencers. Use social CRM software to follow them, join their conversations, and influence potential customers through the process.
Master social selling. Sales reps can use social CRM to share thought leadership content, interact with leads, and qualify prospects based on the information available on social networks.
Benefits of Social CRM
Process Alignment: When your teams are interacting with customers and prospects through the use of a CRM, those interactions are tracked back to the same system that you use to track all other types of interactions, streamlining your process and bringing your data under one roof.
Internal Collaboration: When those interactions are all tracked back to one system, everyone is on the same page and understands what kinds of interactions your company has had with each customer or prospect in the past. This lets them build on past interactions, rather than repeat them.
Deeper Insights: You can find information about customers and prospects on social media that you just wouldn’t find elsewhere, such as personal interests, hobbies, etc. Armed with this insight, sales and marketing teams can outperform expectations.
Competitive Advantage: You can use social CRM to keep tabs on your competitors’ social feeds. You’ll know if their customers are unhappy, and you’ll know why. Then, you can use that to help differentiate yourself from your competition.
More Personal Relationships: Because people increasingly prefer to find information on social media, interacting with them there provides a more personal touch than formal communication methods like email.
Challenges of Social CRM
Expectations Around Response Times: One of the main challenges of social CRM is that users expect you to respond to them there much more quickly than through other forms of interaction and communication.
Information Overload: There is simply so much information flowing through social media platforms that keeping tabs on it all—on every platform—certainly seems daunting. This is why it’s so helpful to have a social CRM software solution in place.
You Don’t Control the Conversation: Well, that is to say that you can’t control the conversation in the same way that you can control the comments on your blog. You can’t delete comments you don’t like. But, again, using social CRM software can help you put out fires before they spread.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, social CRM is a great way to generate leads and engage customers. The benefits are certainly worth the challenges, mostly because the challenges involved should be seen as opportunities to grow. When expectations are higher and you can’t control the conversation, it forces you to ramp up your game and focus more on customer satisfaction and delight, which is a good thing for the long-term sustainability of any business. Ultimately, in the years ahead, businesses will find it very difficult to be competitive without the use of social CRM.
