CRM has become Social CRM, or sCRM, gathering information about a customer based on everything they do and say across all media, to give the complete picture.
The 1990s: THE PRIMORDIAL SOUP
In the beginning there was CRM. Customer Relationship Management let Sales Executives:
- Build lists
- Customise campaigns
- Record contacts with each individual
It worked mainly because previous “Contact Managers” had been desktop applications that sometimes functioned without even a basic shared database.
Customer Relationship Management provided salespeople with a unified view of their customers. However, who came up with the term CRM? We don’t know. It allowed for conversations over the phone, in-person, and via email to be organized sequentially, making it possible to tailor communications and offers to each customer’s needs and wants. The cost of implementation was $60-130 million, but finally, customer information gained relevance beyond just Sales, being timely and accurate.
This was just the start of the journey.
The 2000s: THE CAMBRIAN ERA
CRM evolved from a simple application to a full ecosystem. Thousands of plug-in apps made CRM customizable and valuable to everyone (it supported up-selling and cross-selling, not just in Sales). A customer in CRM became a person, not just a name and title. A company has many employees, but its customer saw just one relationship. At least, that was the idea.
The 2010s: THE MODERN ERA
A few years later, the world moved its opinions and its customer relationships onto social media. They laughed on LinkedIn. ‘Fessed up on Facebook. Tattled on Twitter. So CRM evolved again: into Social CRM, or sCRM. sCRM realised a customer isn’t an email thread or a series of calls. A customer lives in Tweets, Posts and Status updates, Likes and Follows and memberships. Moreover, so do their buying signals, service needs and business pains so sCRM evolved to deal with them.
Today’s sCRM lets you build a holistic view of the customer, including what the customer says to you, says on social media, or even what they say to others. sCRM lets you participate in all these conversations as if they were the same conversation.
Today, businesses use sCRM to:
- Track
- Analyse
- Gain insight into customer behaviour
Across the whole business.
On average, this leads to a 19% increase in conversion rates, improves data capture and increases ROI.
That’s Social CRM.
Use this guide to gain a holistic view of your customers and place them at the centre of your business strategy to build long lasting and loyal relationships: ‘The Ultimate Guide to: Creating customer centricity with CRM’
This post first appeared on the Redspire blog.