CRM embracing Social Media: Opportunities & Challenges
by Nishith Gupta
I had been thinking a lot lately about how CRM systems could use external feeds and how different CRM vendors would leverage it in the near future. As I was looking up on various features provided by social networking sites, I came across a recent acquisition news - 'Attensity Buys Biz360 for Social Media Monitoring'. This justifies my belief that in the time to come CRM product vendors would either plug-in the external data as an inbuilt enhancements or would try to integrate it with players like Biz360.
Companies now have at their disposal a plethora of external sources of data owing to the increased reach of networking sites, external forums on the virtual world. They are now putting efforts into getting this data plugged into their systems. This data can help to companies to know what is the public is saying about them, and a deeper analysis on this data can actually lead them to identify new target segments, retention strategies and other CRM activities.
Having said that, I feel there are many features within these websites that can take the customer engagement to a higher level. But, at the same time the extent to which these should be leveraged is a point to ponder upon.
Let me start by highlighting certain features that could be used as regular feeds into the CRM systems:
- Official Group pages : An official group/community can be used as a one stop portal to connect with all prospects/fans/customers. These pages provide a forum-like platform using which members can discuss and communicate on news/events related to the group.
- Quiz : This feature can be used for periodic feedbacks and user reviews. Many networking sites like Facebook have additional paid options to customize quiz features. There are also plug-ins available from specialized vendors like Survey Gizmo for well known networking sites.
- Poll of the Day : Upfront this looks like a random feature. But, it also attracts many responses at one go. Hence, this can be effectively used as a subset data pool for a larger base.
- Sub Groups/Pages : This again is one of the latest features that has been added in varied networking sites like Linked in. This feature could be used to connect with different target bases and hence can be better utilized for data capture when compared to a generic group page.
Certainly, many have already identified these features and are using them as tools to connect with their target groups. But, the next challenge is how CRM systems will use this platform as a two-way communication tool. In my next few blog posts I shall highlight features from specific networking sites and their possible integration with a generic CRM system. Do let me know your thoughts!
About the Author
Nishith Gupta is an Associate Consultant with Enterprise Solutions. He has worked on developing custom built CRM applications for a leading telecommunications provider with focus on customer retention & campaign management. Nishith will blog on Customer Retention, Social CRM, Campaign Management.
Comments
I feel the biggest challenge is doing the 'sentiment analysis' of the gathered data. I agree that it makes sense to integrate CRM systems with social media and in-fact many CRM vendors have done it in past. But a bigger challenge is to "analyze" the collected data. If we fail to do it, I am afraid to say that there is no point in collecting data from social media sites.
Posted by: Puru Govind | May 27, 2010 8:19 AM
@Puru,
I second your thoughts. Most of them fail to do so. They somehow manage to collect data but are not sure about the further steps to take. This is where CRM vendors and service providers like Infosys should collaborate to provide a go-to-market solution.
Posted by: Nishith Gupta | May 31, 2010 4:15 AM
i think you should look into what Salesforce.com has done with Chatter. Also, the integration with facebook.... they released it sometime back and it provides a lot more functionalities that you just mentioned.
Posted by: Milin Mathur | June 10, 2010 6:52 AM
I think, we should better use tools like RTD (Real Time Decision making) to analyse by devising rules and other criteria. I believe these tools really help service provider to understand and analyze history to get future predictions.
Posted by: Vamshi | June 16, 2010 4:24 AM
Hi Milin,
You are absolutely right. Salesforce.com has done a lot in the social crm space. I have been looking at its capabilities and so far they have been doing good work on this front.
So far among major players only Salesforce.com and Microsoft dynamix have a go-to-market solutions.
Let's see how the market evolves in the context of CRM Market leaders.
Posted by: Nishith Gupta | June 16, 2010 11:05 AM