Benefits of CRM Going Social

White Paper

Benefits of CRM Going Social
The era of the passive customer is gone and a new
concept, that of the social customer has evolved. The
customer of today is vocal – expressing his thoughts
about the products or services used; creative –
suggesting innovative ways to change the products
or services for the better; and collaborative – helping
marketing companies decide upon their next course
of action. All this has been made possible by the
phenomenal growth of social media.
Social media is an incredible way to sell oneself to,
literally, billions of people at the same time, provided
one invests in learning how to do it the right way. It
gives marketing companies useful insights into the
customer’s mind and, if harnessed well, can make a
huge impact on the sales and brand value of a
company. With social media gaining such immense
importance, it is now more than essential to try and
understand the customer’s mind by tracking
customer conversations about the products and
services they use as this can go a long way in
improving the company’s sales. The company must
also keep abreast of all such conversations about
themselves, their industry and their competition.
In this paper, we will look at how the power of social
media can be leveraged to increase one’s market
presence and build healthy relationships with
customers by introducing products the customers
want.

About the Author
Chidanand Bollapragada
Chidanand Bollapragada has over 16 years of experience in the IT
industry. He has worked on numerous projects across various
verticals, for example, HiTech, Healthcare, Telecom, Manufacturing,
Government and others. He is currently heading the CRM Centre of
Excellence for HiTech and the Professional Services (PS) segment,
involved in providing technical solutions to HiTech and PS
customers.
He has won a number of awards and recognitions from GE Plastics
and Blue Cross Blue Shield. He is TOGAF and Certified Software
Quality Analyst (CSQA) certified.
Chidanand holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the
University of Pune.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction                        4
2. Social CRM – Needs and Challenges   4
3. Social CRM Solution                 6
4. Business Benefits                   6
5. Conclusion                          7
6. Acknowledgements                    8
7. References                          8

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Introduction
Customers today are no longer the passive users of products or services. They are vocal, creative and
collaborative using the power of social media – forums and blogs – to express their thoughts, ideas and
concerns. All this information can be very valuable to marketing companies seeking to understand their
customers’ minds and how their brand is perceived in the market.
Social media serves a dual role – helping a company learn about how it and its products are perceived and
also helping a new buyer gather feedback on a particular product or service before deciding to invest in it.
According to a study conducted by DEI Worldwide (a leading social media marketing agency) in 2011, 70
percent of consumers use social media to get information on a product, brand or company. Furthermore, a
report from the Conference Board found that 77 percent of adult Internet users considered blogs a good
way to get information about a company or product.
Since the birth of Facebook and other digital communities, social media has been deemed a territory of the
marketing and communication departments of several companies. As the landscape matures, companies are
beginning to realise and embrace the medium’s wider potential. Social media can play a vital role in
enhancing customer service, obtaining customer feedback and even developing the right kinds of products.
Hence, it is critical for businesses to get social data out of a silo and into the hands of business leaders.
Some of the leading HiTech and Electronic companies are already going social, using the information
available on the various social media sites to analyse customer buying behaviours, their needs, segments
and so on, listen to customer conversations and take customer feedback. This has helped them to actively
engage with their customers and respond faster to customer queries and conversations.

Social CRM – Needs and Challenges
The business world today is increasingly focused on improving customer experience, but some companies
lack the expertise and tools to make this happen. One of the best ways to enhance customer experience is to
leverage what one knows about their customers, and to do that it is required to integrate Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) systems with the available social data.
Traditional CRM systems
The purpose of a CRM system is to help companies maintain constant connect with their customers. The
previous CRM systems – available as two-tier architecture systems, are now available as web, mobile and
cloud-based services. These can be used to send automated emails to customers on new products or
services. However, this connect can be made with only a subset of customers, details of whom who are
recorded in the CRM system. Other ways to update customers on new products is through campaigns and
events. CRM marketing helps to budget, plan, organise and launch campaigns for the new products or
services. Campaigns or events can draw the attention of only a few customers. Traditional CRM may not be
able to link with social media and connect with larger customer groups and get their feedback on new

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products or services. This means that the company must create focus groups, purchase customer research
reports and conduct surveys to understand the customer better.
Inadequate customer insight
Organisations are currently faced with the challenge of inadequate insight into their customer’s
requirements, their ideas and grievances. This can be effectively met by aligning CRM business processes
with social media. For organisations seeking to understand their customers, their needs and wants, this is
one of the best ways. These social channels contain valuable customer information – ideas on innovations,
and product and service enhancements. This information can be used as social intelligence, helping to
analyse customer profiles, and their behavioural patterns – a valuable input to increase sales and enhance
customer service.
Operating in reactive mode
Most marketing companies operate in a reactive mode – providing sales and service support only when the
customer asks for it. This is not only costly but also ineffective, requiring as it does a special focus by sales
and service personnel to gain customer attention. The revenue, profit and growth of a company depend on
the creation of prospective customer leads and increasing the lead-to-order ratio. The generation of leads is
often associated with high costs as it involves advertising, trade shows and events, camps, and customer
and partner conferences. An effective alternative to these expensive lead generation methods are
marketing initiatives such as social campaigns. Responses from these campaigns (seen as potential leads)
can be directed to the CRM system and further connect be made through chat, call or instant messaging.
Improper analysis of customer need
Other challenges include lack or improper analysis of customer buying behaviours and their needs, leading
companies to focus on products not entirely suited to their customer’s actual need, which may in turn lead
to customer churn. Adding to this problem of customer churn is when companies fail to address customer
grievances on time. Such problems can be effectively countered through social monitoring. Social
monitoring can accelerate customer acquisition and decrease customer churn. Social monitoring can also
help with obtaining customer feedback and suggestions when introducing new products into the market.
Typically a customer who opts to buy a product would have done a detailed analysis of the product
available from other vendors and will have a detailed knowledge of all such products in the market. This
customer can post an open and un-biased feedback on the products launched, on social channels as blogs,
forums or discussions. With a listening and monitoring platform in place, all this information can be
captured and processed in the CRM systems for follow-up activities by sales personnel. This information is
also useful for the cross-sell or up-sell of products and services.

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Social CRM Solution
The social CRM solution is nothing but a listening and monitoring platform that allows the real-time tracking
of and responding to customer conversations from within CRM system across various social channels. To
optimise the use of such a solution, it should be embedded within the CRM application so that customer
support activities can be carried out in an integrated manner.

The platform should be configured to connect to one or more selected social network sites for it to capture
all customer discussion about the company’s products and services. It is also important to separate the
unrelated information or noise from the real conversations so that only the useful / filtered information can
be processed. There can be an added mechanism whereby companies can send automated responses to
customer queries or participate in customer discussions, and where an interested customer is found, track it
as a lead or opportunity. Some of the advantages of this are better understanding of what the customer
wants, their behaviours and emotions; and a constant connect with the customer. Further, loyal and
influential customers can be turned into brand advocates, helping to bring in more customers. References
and quotes by influential customers can also serve to attract other customers. New ideas, if any, can be
implemented to enhance the products and services.

Business Benefits
Organisations are totally dependent on their CRM applications for tracking the customer from a prospect to
an asset. Having a presence in the social world can really be an added advantage to understand the
customer’s views, thoughts and concerns. The best CRM systems change a company and its relationships for
the better. Implemented well, CRM systems can take a business into entirely new markets while solidifying
leadership in existing ones.
Following are a few of the business benefits of CRM systems going social:
n   Ability to access and integrate all the social media data coming through social networking sites, micro
    blogs or forums
n   Augments customer information with rich social data enabling cross-sell and up-sell
n   Helps get insight into customer behaviour and their feedback on products and services by analysing the
    conversation from social media sites and communities
n   Helps gain valuable feedback on product and services. This can lead to innovation.
n   Helps in generating more leads and hence, more opportunities
n   Helps to respond to opportunities or customer grievances from within the CRM application and thereby
    reduce customer churn

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n   Helps to respond faster to customer and thereby increase customer satisfaction and retention
n   Lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO)
n   Helps engage in meaningful conversations with the customers via contests and online campaigns
Several organisations today are taking advantage of social media by building collaboration and engagement
platforms to connect with social networks and linking them with their CRM systems. Organisations which
have implemented this solution have had the following benefits:
n   Build social leads from collaboration platforms
n   Create product and service forums for customers and partners to exchanges ideas
n   Provide a linkage to knowledge base to answer technical queries
n   Provide customers with timely information, guidance or assistance
n   Obtain rapid social response from Facebook, Twitter and other such social sites
n   Enhance customer service

Conclusion
With the social web continuously growing, a good social CRM system would allow for constantly building up
the profiles and statistics of customers. CRM going social can have many other benefits, which are mutual to
the organisation and their customers. Organisations that are in constant connect with their customers can
understand their needs and grievances and take immediate action. This would lead to higher customer
satisfaction and retention and improve the revenue, market share and brand value of the organisation.
Organisations should think of socially enabling their CRM applications and consider this as one of the
building blocks of their growth and innovation. The inputs and ideas received from customers can also be
used for future research and development.
With the ability to launch social campaigns from CRM System the sales funnel would increase and result in
higher prospect-to-lead ratio. Organisations need to adapt and align their CRM applications to use social
intelligence and data for building better relationships with customer. Organisations with good customer
relationships can build trust and confidence in them. Customers with good relationships can influence other
prospective buyers by sharing their experiences, positive feedback on the organization’s products or services
over social networks. This would source or generate new customer connects which can be an opportunity
for creating new business and revenue growth. Customers now-a-days are creative, innovative and exchange
a lot of ideas over social networks. This information is valuable and therefore becomes essential for an
organization to tap and use it for building innovative products and services which can improve customer
satisfaction

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In the future, a knowledge base can be created from the social information collated. This can act as a hub for
all the social customers to connect with each other and search for a possible solution to their problem,
submit an idea or propose an innovation. Also, making the CRM system intelligent enough to process the
social data to create leads, opportunities without the intervention of sales agents can be considered as a
future development of the solution. Integration with loyalty systems for automated scoring and rewards
based on the profiles and buying patterns of influential social customers is also a possibility.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mr. Mohan Masson, HiTech TEG Head for his constant support in authoring the white
paper.

References
[1] The Art of Social Sales – The customer collective – by Oracle
[2] Social CRM goes mainstream – Market Analyst report

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