One of the biggest mistakes organizations do is plunging into the social media without knowing what to do. They do know how to open an account on LinkedIn or Xing but as far as managing their social CRM activities – after a short time they give up and the account just lays there like a stone.
In worse cases it could harm the image of the company. There is something sad about an inactive social account. This is why planning your social activities is everything about social CRM.
Plan your Marketing Activities first
With social CRM the tactics is to put the customer at the center of the process and let him or her shape their own experiences – set the rules of engagement.
The first step is to identify the exact social environments where your potential customers are hanging and where you may engage with the customers – offline as well as online. This interaction should be led according to defined goals and should be targeted to create emotions on the customers’ side.
A good example is participating in a certain group that relates to your products or area of business. I knew a manager of a recording studio that established a special group for wannabes singers which exchanged experiences, emotions, suggestions etc; Wannabe Madonna Group, wannabe Freddy Mercury Group, wannabe Britney Spears Group etc. Each member of this group is a potential customer.
During this interaction with the customer you must take the opportunity to understand their problems or needs and find for him or her optimal solution that will get them thinking: Hey someone is listening to me. This manager uses this platform to promote playbacks and sell them over the internet.
SalesForce has an app for Twitter and Facebook. This feature enables you from within your SalesForce CRM to connect to running conversations on Twitter and Facebook and stay updated with social feeds and relevant data. This application allows you to integrate information and data from your CRM system with the social media; create individual cases for customers, import contacts and leads, share and publish information.
Social CRM changes the Tools and Methods
Dynamics and creativity are the name of the game. The organization should literally change his ways and methods in order to adapt to the new reality that is building each day in front of our eyes. The changes occur in an exponential rate. The principle is simple – the customer dictates everything.
There are new rules – the rules of the social network. Which traditional methods should be changed? The most of them. The effort is great but it is worth it.
For example, American Express, the multinational financial services corporation rewards existing customers while using its CRM program to engage socially with customers. The Clients link their bank accounts with their Twitter account and by using specific hash tags, earn savings from designated partners.
Bank of America allows customers to send inquiries through their Twitter account and so reducing response time. Think about it – logging to your bank account in a café through wireless internet is not recommended. By most of the customers are already linked to their Twitter account anywhere anytime.
Rules of Engagement
Let us review the rules of engagement. We found the optimal environment where our potential customers are hanging out and now we need to hear the voice of the customer and capture his expectations, preferences and aversions – update profiles, post blogs, participate in forums, or sign in social networking sites.
Today the customers may look for a solution online or offline. Either way you must be out there to capture them and be able to grasp the information that the customer is releasing. In this case the sentence “The early bird catches the worm” (as much as it sounds corny) is the appropriate one.
This information may be valuable. This is why you need to plan for each platform the right tools to collect the right data. CRM Capsule has an interesting feature – managing contact details and profiles on social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn. The function links your account with the social media and searches for your contacts on the network. After finding and registering the contacts the system follows update from the contact such as tweets or profile updates. Pretty cool isn’t it? Such a tool is priceless because it enables the organization to automatically follow its contacts over the social media.
SugarCRM allows embedding connectors to sites like LinkedIn and Twitter that enable SugarCRM users to monitor their social media accounts and maintain the relationships, post and conversations with potential and existing customers over the social platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
SugarCRM has also the SurveyMonkey – a tool for surveys conducted on social media platforms. It is a good tool because it enables the business to conduct marketing surveys with almost zero resources. Can someone please tell me how much it costs to conduct a survey through a marketing firma??
Text mining may serve as powerful tool for gathering the valuable data that may serve you. With this information you build together the customer profile, gather his or hers history, preferences and other customer data.
SAP Social OnDemand has the ability to handle tens of thousands of social media messages and identify the most critical ones. The solution allows you to keep your head above water in the sea of today’s social media inputs.
Processing CRM Data
After you performed all of the above your reach a critical point – using the information in order to initiate a conversation and interaction with the customer – sending a response to a call. Salesteam is required here. This is his job but in a new environment. Instead of luring the customers into the store in a traditional way you meet them on a new turf.
The advantage of the social CRM system is that the response may be visible to other customers with the same need but who had not took the opportunity post their call. Through the conversation the organization initiates friends, partners and collaborators. You guessed it; the loop goes on and on. Your response is out there 24/7 looking for an attentive ear.
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