Social CRM : The Technology Enabler

The word SOCIAL CRM has gained a lot of interest in me for the last few months and among others and grows in significance.

When we say CRM (Customer Relationship Management), we are talking about a business  strategy influenced by a tool to manage customer relationships effectively.

Now I said EFFECTIVE, when I say that, In all sense that should be it and I believe a social CRM fills the customer experience gap. With CRM being social, we will be able to,

• Listen what your customers feel. Ex: Hear them tweet.
• See what your customers are up-to. Ex: Facebook Likes
• Learn which events your customers are attending and follow them. Ex: Linked-In  events.

All the above will really help you to catch your customer’s nerves and helps you serve/manage them better. Result – Happy customers !

Over the years, CRM systems has evolved to a great extent and at present we are in the xRM era. Now to compliment it more, the evolution of social CRM.

As you can see a lot of companies started using Social Media as a part of their sales and marketing activities. A recent survey from the HBR (Harvard Business Review) says that,

79% of companies are using or planned to use social media and among them 58% currently use and 21% planning to incorporate in their business.

So social media awareness and its significance is growing and would it be the best chance for organizations to incorporate this with their CRM systems which goes one step ahead from managing your customers to ENGAGING them.

B2B companies are using social media to make buying decisions, now it is just a strategy away on how your sales people can get through them – A proper social CRM system, gets you there.

 

How Social, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is,

Social Networking Accelerator for Dynamics CRM: This accelerator was released for CRM 4.0 and had more than 5000 downloads,

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/us/details/c8c07884-86f6-4aa4-b617-daf65daa2f80

http://crmaccelerators.codeplex.com/releases/view/29979

Social Activity Dashboard for Dynamics CRM:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2010/11/16/social-activity-dashboard-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011.aspx

InsideView and Dynamics CRM:

http://dynamics.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/applications/insideview-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-sales-intelligence-socialcrm-4295022357

Vibe Social Networking for Dynamics CRM:

http://dynamics.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/applications/vibe-social-networking-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4295028209

and plenty more to come which can make the platform even better and beneficial.

Happy CRM Socializing!

Cheers,

Francis Edwin