Customer relationship management is essential for any company. Fortunately, these days, social media has made it easier than ever before. However, this only holds true if you're using it the right way. Keep the below advice in mind and you'll marry the two perfectly for better engagement.
Choose Your Primary Platform
There are too many social media platforms to keep up with at the moment. Obviously, we all know Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, but that's just a fraction of what's available and more are definitely on their way. While you may have accounts on the main four and many others, this could actually be doing yourself a huge disservice.
Instead, it makes more sense to pick one and have that be the primary hub for your customers to keep in touch with you. You might choose this particular CRM interface because it simply works best for getting your message across. Maybe it's because that's where your market is already at and active. Whatever the case, pick one and start cultivating conversations there.
Still stay active on other sites, though, or at least vigilant. If you pick Facebook for your focal point, you don't want to be left in the dark if a critical conversation is building about your company on Twitter.
Whichever one you choose, the important thing is to let your customers know where they can find you when they need support. Every profile should point to the other profiles you use, explain which one is the "primary" account and then provide an email and phone number to use if they need anything.
Engage, Engage, Engage
Having a social media account is important, but actually using it is where you have a real chance at improving CRM. In fact, if you don't leverage your social media presence, you're probably doing more harm to yourself than good.
It's certainly helpful to post updates about sales you may be running and new products you have to offer, but know that people are going to message you with their own concerns. Not responding to them is sometimes the best move. However, never responding to your market is a great way to cast your company in a terrible light. Better to not have an account at all than to use one to make your company look inept or, worse, indifferent to your clientele.
Develop Best Practices for Responding to Customers
At some point, it's possible you'll need an employee to take over the role of social media manager (or you may have to hire one). That's a huge win for your CRM campaign as it means so many people are engaging with you that you need someone to take over responding. However, further successes could mean that one person is no longer sufficient.
While hiring another person may be one option, this is also a good time to develop best practices. You probably already have them for the CRM component of your company, meaning they'll just need to be massaged a bit until they conform to your new needs.
For the most part, social media should be looked at the same way you do your inbox for customer support. You're going to get inquiries about your service or product, praise for it and dissatisfied comments regarding it, for the most part. Put a system into place for organizing these messages and, as much as possible, how you'll respond to them. Now's not the time to leave your customer relationship management approach to chance.
Leverage Software
Hopefully, you've taken advantage of customer relationship management software in order to see better results where this important component of your company is involved. If you haven't, you should explore what this technology can do.
However, you should also be doing the same for your social media platforms too. As we just covered, future success will only bring more interactions with it, meaning you could easily be overwhelmed, even if you add staff. Instead, leverage the power of social media software that's been designed specifically to help customers like yours.
Options like HootSuite, Zendesk, Desk.com, Buffe, and TweetDeck are just a handful of possibilities that can help you organize your posts, track your followers and generally keep you on top of what's happening in the sometimes confusing world of social media.
Measure the Data
When you have best practices in place, sufficient staff and the right tools, measuring data should be fairly easy. However, this should be a part of your CRM strategy since day one. While social media sometimes gets a reputation for being a vague science at best, understand that it is every bit as important as your marketing campaigns. Treat it as an integral part of your company's CRM by constantly analyzing related data and you'll see equally impressive results. Neglect to do so and your competition will appreciate the opportunity.
Social media can be the most important tool where your company's customer relationship management is concerned. However, if you aren't applying the above advice, this revolutionary technology won't amount to much.
Sources:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/4-steps-social-crm-strategy/