{"id":54616,"date":"2012-09-18T14:01:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/10_steps_to_successful_social_crm\/"},"modified":"2012-09-18T14:01:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T21:01:00","slug":"10_steps_to_successful_social_crm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/10_steps_to_successful_social_crm\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Steps to Successful Social CRM"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM) is inte­gral to the long-term suc­cess of a com­pany. Now, with online com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pa­tion and social media usage at an all-time high, social CRM is quickly being adopted. Quite pos­si­bly the miss­ing link between sales and mar­ket­ing, social CRM allows com­pa­nies to mon­i­tor and engage cus­tomers like never before.<\/p>\n

Def­i­n­i­tion of Social CRM (sCRM)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are many def­i­n­i­tions of social CRM avail­able, but this one best defines the concept.<\/p>\n

[Social] CRM is a phi­los­o­phy and a busi­ness strat­egy, sup­ported by a sys­tem and a tech­nol­ogy, designed to improve human inter­ac­tion in a busi­ness environment.<\/em><\/p>\n

Este­ban Kol­sky, Three Rea­sons You Will Do Social CRM<\/em><\/p>\n

The core func­tion of suc­cess­ful sCRM is to inte­grate data pulled from social media plat­forms and use ana­lyt­ics to deter­mine cus­tomer sen­ti­ment, indus­try trends, and social media return on invest­ment. Social cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment is the act of mon­i­tor­ing, engag­ing, and man­ag­ing online con­ver­sa­tions with prospects and clients.<\/p>\n

Ben­e­fits of sCRM<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The key to effec­tive social CRM is trans­parency. And the secret to suc­cess­ful trans­parency in a busi­ness envi­ron­ment is to have a plan. Sales­peo­ple have call objec­tives, mar­keters have con­ver­sion goals, and cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives have issue res­o­lu­tion plans. Social CRM com­bines all of these depart­men­tal aspi­ra­tions into one uni­fied customer-centric strat­egy. The num­ber one ben­e­fit of suc­cess­ful sCRM is being able to actively seek out and engage prospects in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel of their preference.<\/p>\n

10 Step Check List for Suc­cess­ful sCRM<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Social cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment is a nec­es­sary busi­ness strat­egy. How­ever, what works for one com­pany may not work for another. The specifics of what will make your company’s sCRM efforts suc­cess­ful are unique to your busi­ness and its tar­get audi­ence. When lay­ing the foun­da­tion for your social strat­egy, here are ten key steps to consider:<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong> Assem­ble a team<\/strong><\/p>\n

An effec­tive sCRM team should include employ­ees from all rel­a­tive depart­ments, and a super­vi­sor or man­ager who over­sees daily activ­i­ties, con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion, and over­all strat­egy execution.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong> Audit all social media accounts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before imple­ment­ing a social cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment ini­tia­tive it is impor­tant to iden­tify what accounts a com­pany cur­rently uses, deter­mine which employee accounts will be used for brand advo­cacy, and cre­ate any accounts that are miss­ing from the social media portfolio.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong> Cre­ate a style guide<\/strong><\/p>\n

To ensure con­sis­tent mes­sag­ing, it is essen­tial to cre­ate a style guide. A style guide will out­line the tone, industry-specific terms, desired hash tags, and gen­eral mes­sag­ing guide­lines for all online conversations.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong> Cre­ate a dis­as­ter plan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Be pre­pared for neg­a­tive engage­ment. A dis­as­ter plan will dic­tate how employ­ees should respond to neg­a­tive feed­back and any poten­tial dis­as­ter. Cre­ate sce­nar­ios and openly dis­cuss with employ­ees to deter­mine the most appro­pri­ate response timeline.<\/p>\n

5. <\/strong> Train team members<\/strong><\/p>\n

The nuances of online com­mu­ni­ca­tion are inte­gral to build­ing and main­tain­ing suc­cess­ful cus­tomer rela­tion­ships. To guar­an­tee suc­cess, all team mem­bers should par­tic­i­pate in com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills train­ing<\/a> to improve their abil­ity to con­verse effec­tively online.<\/p>\n

6. <\/strong> Mon­i­tor prospect and cus­tomer conversations<\/strong><\/p>\n

Actively mon­i­tor brand name men­tions, cus­tomer and prospect con­ver­sa­tions, and indus­try experts across a vari­ety of social media plat­forms. Proac­tively mon­i­tor­ing will aid in deflect­ing cus­tomer issues, stay­ing aware of indus­try trends, and know­ing what cus­tomers need and want.<\/p>\n

7. <\/strong> Respond and resolve<\/strong><\/p>\n

Response time is cru­cial to suc­cess­ful sCRM. Always respond to every­one, pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, and do so in a timely man­ner. Be sure to include spe­cific time­frame expec­ta­tions in your social cus­tomer ser­vice strat­egy for ques­tions and ser­vice or prod­uct issues.<\/p>\n

8. <\/strong> Amuse fans and followers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Social media chan­nels are an ideal plat­form for pro­mot­ing con­tent, and also for cre­at­ing amuse­ment and dis­trac­tion. Add value to your con­tent stream by includ­ing the occa­sional witty quote or funny office photo. Peo­ple bond to peo­ple, and show­ing a human side every once in while will go far in build­ing rapport.<\/strong><\/p>\n

9. <\/strong> Engage and edu­cate audience<\/strong><\/p>\n

While it is fun to see a funny photo go viral, do not for­get the goal of your social media activ­ity is to engage and edu­cate cus­tomers and prospects with your con­tent. Always aim to add value and attract read­ers by appeal­ing to their var­i­ous needs and wants.<\/p>\n

10. <\/strong> Con­vert<\/strong><\/p>\n

Effec­tive sCRM opens the door for devel­op­ing a permission-based dia­logue between a com­pany and cus­tomer. Suc­cess­ful social cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment will increase rev­enue by direct­ing a higher vol­ume of qual­i­fied leads to your web­site and\/or spe­cific con­ver­sion pages.<\/p>\n

The value of social busi­ness prac­tices and engag­ing in social sell­ing is unde­ni­able. Are you max­i­miz­ing your social media activities?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM) is inte­gral to the long-term suc­cess of a com­pany. Now, with online com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pa­tion and social media usage at an all-time high, social CRM is quickly being adopted. Quite pos­si­bly the miss­ing link between sales and mar­ket­ing, social CRM allows com­pa­nies to mon­i­tor and engage cus­tomers like never before. Def­i­n­i­tion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,101],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54616"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}