Social Crm News & Articles

The pundits in the CRM world love to point out that, at some point, the term “Social CRM” will go away and we'll just describe those social media-enabled capabilities and operations as “CRM” with no prefix. 

Four out of every ten customers would rather experience a trip to their Department of Motor Vehicles than contact customer care. With all due respect to your local DMV, that’s a sobering reflection of the state of customer service, but only one of many in a new survey sponsored by Aspect Software, a customer interaction management vendor. 

Leading up to its annual SugarCon event this month, SugarCRM has announced an expanded partnership with NextPrinciples, a social analytics company.

A community, by definition, is a group bound together by common interest. In your case, it’s an interest in your brand, products and services. And as in any relationship, there are steps you need to take to make your community grow and flourish.

Nearly one-fifth of large organizations are still determining their approach to social media, and only about a third say they are proactive in their social customer care. Those are some of the takeaways in a new report, "How Companies Are Supporting the Connected Consumer."

In the annals of enterprise information technology, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has a storied, if not necessarily checkered past. The term has been associated with expensive implementations with hard to measure returns. CRM is also too often confused with Sales Force Automation (SFA), a system used to track deals and report to management. CRM is bigger, more comprehensive, encompassing Sales, Service and Marketing. 

Remember when the front office and the back office were separate things? When the folks who actually spoke to the customers had to dress nicely and even bathe daily, and use manners and speak in clear and coherent sentences, because they were the only representatives your customers would ever see?

There’s certainly not even a remote bit of controversy in saying that customers are truly the lifeblood that sustains the survival of businesses today. But are you doing everything you can to stay connected?

The Customer Life Cycle Experience belongs to everyone and no one. Every person within an organization who comes in contact with a customer is responsible for carrying the torch of customer service. And if you listen real close, your analytics can tell you what the customer wants. These and other insights were among those shared with us during this month's Tweet Jam.

Social analytics/CRM technology provider NextPrinciples is releasing a new solution called Insight-to-Action that the company terms an integrated social analytics and engagement platform for medium-to-large-sized users.

Hype drives us all: we cheer for our products and later duck the jeers from market pundits and customers. 2012 saw plenty of hype in CRM. Let's separate the substance from the hype and see where CRM is headed in 2013.  

In 2012, the focus on customer experience was all about delivering a great experience across platforms, channels and touch points. Leveraging key user data is integral, but so is delivering key messages and opportunities back to the user.

Social media management provider HootSuite is riding an app wave. In addition to the release of several apps last week for its platform, the Vancouver, California-based company is now unveiling several new apps.

Enterprise social technology provider Moxie Software is releasing a new social sales and customer service application that uses the Facebook Graph API to allow direct engagement with and targeting of customers via their Facebook profiles. The Engage Plus app is available with Moxie’s Chat Spaces live social chat support solution.

If you are considering implementing a Social CRM strategy, you should take some time to read what Adam Mertz, Director of Product Marketing at Jive Software, has to say about starting points, what successful Social CRMs include and what factors shape a competitive edge.