Customer loyalty and a targeted customer approach are becoming increasingly important. Of course, this means that most companies must rely more and more on successful customer relationship management (CRM) in order to retain their own customers and, if necessary, acquire new ones.
The various social media channels and platforms offer a whole range of new possibilities and opportunities. Because social media in the CRM offers fast access, large data sets and therefore easier success. We show you five ways to Social media at CRM use and benefit from this combination.
1. create a uniform and conceptual basis
In the course of the integration of social media in the CRM area, clear problems become apparent time and again. Particularly in large companies, IT is overburdened with uniform solutions and unable to react quickly enough.
However, this also means that many departments, such as marketing and service, are looking for their own solutions and can therefore react quickly accordingly.
While these standalone solutions may work and give individual departments better access to socia media data, all of these solutions rarely contribute to a unified Customer Relationship Management in the process. However, since such a solution requires the highest possible data density and data quality, it will sooner or later lead to various negative effects.
In the worst case, the same customer is notified by different departments with a different data basis and thus receives contradictory offers and proposals.
However, this also means that it becomes much more difficult to create a uniform basis, as the various departments need a solution as quickly as possible. Have the individual departments present the various focal points and needs for integrating social media into CRM.
While it is a significant extra work for IT if various solutions have to be integrated and adapted, it is not possible to develop a completely separate concept in the short time available. So look for as uniform a solution as possible for all departments, which will be used from now on.
IT is then called upon to provide this solution with its own Customer Relationship Management and to ensure accurate integration of the data.
2. consolidate data - use effects
The sheer volume of data is already overwhelming. Through the integration of social media in CRM, this effect will increase significantly once again.
This is a real problem for many companies, since a Data oversupply tends to lead to difficulties rather than improvements. For this reason, it is particularly important to collect only relevant data and to Customer Relationship Management to store and use.
Even within a company, opinions differ as to which data is relevant. So the first thing to do is to determine which data is relevant to your company at all and to what extent this data can be used effectively.
For this purpose, it is necessary to obtain the respective focal points from the various departments.
The data can be selected according to the following criteria:
- Relevance for different departments
- High weighting for marketing
- Important information for the service
- Data sets with relevance for product development
Try to consolidate the different requirements as far as possible. The more departments benefit from certain data, the more effectively it can be used.
In addition, you can prevent the data volume from growing too much in your Customer Relationship Marketing by these actions in a targeted manner. In addition, it can often be helpful to go through this data again with the individual departments and divisions and to discuss whether these data sets can also be used in the respective company segment.
It effectively applies the Limit the amount of data and thus not only from the lower memory requirements, but also from the lower utilization of the CRM system.
The more work you put into these details as a company, the more effectively social media can be used in CRM. And effectiveness is especially crucial in this area, as it means a significant advantage in the direct economic battle with the competition.
3. create points of contact and process them in a targeted manner
Customer relationship management is a fluid process, which ultimately is not only focused on collecting data. While it is important to use social media in CRM to collect data and thus expand knowledge about individual customers and various target groups, this is only half the job.
After all, this data must also be used and effectively evaluated in order to create a direct benefit for the company in the area of customer retention and customer acquisition. This means that you should already consider during the conceptual phase which data and which content you can use specifically in your company. The relevance of the data for the different departments remains unaffected.
However, the company itself must demand and push for the data to be translated into concrete changes and actions. It is therefore necessary to adapt the workflow in the various company departments to the new data source and the new data availability. The various customer relationship management tools and software solutions offer different interfaces and options for this.
The better this use of data is made and the easier it is for individual employees to access the data relevant to their area, the greater the benefit to the company and, of course, the greater the benefit to customers.
If customers complain via social media about certain product features, for example, this data can be used both in the Service, in which Product development and also in the Marketing be used to improve the next generation of a product, to provide assistance with problems, and to promote the innovations in marketing.
4. forming interdisciplinary teams for customer relationship management
Up to now, customer relationship management has generally been subordinate to marketing alone, which has provided it with content to address individual users and target groups in a targeted manner.
However, in the context of social media in CRM, it makes sense and is purposeful to break down this dogma and bring about change within the company.
This is because customer relationship management affects many more areas of a company and should be set up more comprehensively, especially with the fast and current social media channels. This has led to restructuring in many companies, as customer relationship management has become much more important and relevant.
Interdisciplinary teams of different business units may be a real challenge for many companies and employees at the beginning, but in the long run they can sustainably improve productivity and the effectiveness of customer relationship management.
For example, also in the decision-making process as to which social media data should be included in the CRM and where the focus should be set. The targeted integration of a wide variety of company departments, from product development and marketing to the service area, enables a wide variety of focal points to be covered and customers to be addressed more effectively.
5. use social media in CRM not only reactively
Many companies make the mistake of using social media in CRM exclusively reactively. This means that although the data from the various social media channels is used and integrated into CRM, all active customer relationship measures are carried out on the previously traditional channels. This results in the problem that many customers can hardly be effectively addressed via these channels or even deliberately ignore these channels.
Targeted customer approach via social media
It is therefore also necessary to rethink one's own CRM activities and align them with the new strategy and the new data. In this way, the social media channels can also be used for targeted customer contact and for targeted marketing and customer loyalty campaigns.
A good example here is Facebook, which allows companies to focus their own advertising and marketing measures on very narrowly defined user groups. Thanks to the data that ends up in the CRM via social media, the individual target groups of such CRM campaigns can be very well focused and thus specifically addressed.
Flowing processes with high customer focus and strong proximity to the customer
Social media in CRM is therefore not a one-way process, but a lively exchange of data with changing focal points. A fact that often puts pressure on the marketing and service areas in particular to find their own solutions. But as already mentioned in points one and two, such interactions should only be used on a common technical basis and with jointly consolidated data packages.
Sophisticated solutions with high weighting for companies
You can see how important a good connection of social media is in CRM.
It is therefore necessary to apply the ways and strategies shown above to your company and, if necessary, to personalize and modify them for your individual case. After all, every company has its own and traditional structure and set-up.
The better and earlier you manage to integrate the various social media channels into your customer relationship management, to use this data effectively, and thus to address customers in a targeted manner, the greater your advantages over your direct competitors.
