Customer relationship management systems with extended capabilities for direct customer outreach through social media and messengers are called Social CRMs. Businesses utilize these systems at every level of the customer journey to attract new customers via targeted campaigns, provide personalized shopping assistance and support, gather feedback and public sentiment. As a result of such mulit-dimensional use, a Social CRM has to incorporate a number of components to assist in all of these tasks.
Multichannel integration
Every day, more people utilize social media, and new platforms emerge quite regularly. The amount of channels that a Social CRM covers should be taken into consideration if you want as effective communication as possible. Surely, it's ideal to have a lot of channels, but it's also important to have the support of the ones that are most popular with your audience, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Viber, Telegram, or any other platform.
Social listening
An important part of a social CRM is its capacity to gather data from clients by monitoring what people are saying about the company on social media: in stories, blog posts and comments. In order to enhance customer service and public opinion of the brand, it is helpful to change marketing, selling, and support according to the gathered insights.
Customer profiling
Social CRM should be able to compile information from social media profiles to assemble a complete picture of every customer: their activities, interests, and prior interactions with the company. Additionally helpful are customization features that let CRM users organize and display data from particular sources.
Performance analytics
Without having precise numbers on hand, it is difficult to judge Social CRM's efficacy and suitability. Thus, pick a system that offers strong analytics features and measures customers’ activity across channels, as well as staff performance — conversion rate, average transaction value and tickets resolvement time.
Does your business need Social CRM?
Whether a large national corporation or a small local shop, digital services provider or physical goods supplier, social media plays an important part in marketing of every type of business. Social media platforms aid in the development of customer connections, increase brand recognition, help acquire leads, and improve sales.
Better lead generation
People nowadays regularly find items by scrolling through their Facebook feeds or other social media platforms. Neglecting social media means your business might be missing out on a sizable portion of a prospective client base, which will invariably be acquired by competitors. While having an active and diversified social media presence is an important step in acquiring new clients through digital channels, reaching out to them with Social CRM tools takes things to the next level and can noticeably enhance lead generation.
High-quality customer engagement
These days, two-way communication is essential for nurturing long-lasting brand-customer relationships. Remaining in customer’s sight and promoting products with less-explored methods than through emails or cold calls is a working strategy to boost sales and purchase frequency.
More satisfied clients
Social media and messengers are excellent tools for gathering feedback and providing customer help. Using a practice of messaging a customer after purchase to learn about their experiences and remind them that there is always someone to help if they run into an issue can not only improve your relations with that specific person but also get valuable feedback that can be used to improve company's products and services, resulting in higher proportion of satisfied customers in the future.
Conclusion
For businesses of all sizes and industries, social media serves as a key point of interaction with its target audiences. A Social CRM system, with its tools that allow integration into social media and messengers, helps to streamline and make the work of sales reps, marketers and support agents more efficient and measurable. Also, its social listening tools makes Social CRM a key instrument for tracking public sentiment towards the company as a whole, as well as particular products or initiatives.