TMCnews Featured Article
February 28, 2011
Hosted CRM Adds Enhanced Value when Combined with Social CRM
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Customer relationships – how important are they to your overall success? If your success depends on customers to make profitable purchases of your products or services, relationships should be at the cornerstone of every strategy you execute and every performance metric you measure. When you implement hosted CRM as part of your customer strategy, you are on the right path for maximizing the power of those relationships.
Interestingly, this Smart Data Collective blog recently focused on this topic. The writer stressed that while it is important to manage the relationship, it is probably even more important to manage the flow of knowledge of information. With the role Social CRM plays in the enterprise today, this control of the knowledge flow can make or break your customer initiatives.
In relation to hosted CRM, your organization may stand to gain much more benefit in situations where you use knowledge and expertise as the foundation for customer engagement. Your ability to succeed may rest more on your ability to aggregate and filter conversations for common problems and solutions across social media platforms than your ability to navigate one customer relationship.
With this approach firmly in place, you are more likely to build a repository of tried and tested methods for solving problems, optimizing products and identifying resources to gather more information. When you provide the certified answer to a customer’s question, even if it didn’t begin with them, you strengthen the engagement and the relationship as you are providing access to verified solutions.
At the same time, there is also an opportunity to add more information to extend what you deliver beyond the customer’s expectations. This is truly the concept that is behind hosted CRM as it allows you to better manage the information that is shared with your customer base. The combination of this approach with your Social CRM strategy can help to ensure you get the most out of every interaction while your customers build their loyalty to you and your company.
A robust hosted CRM enables you to better understand your audience segment and can help you to not only track the customer who is expressing a problem, but also the customer who shares the solution. At that point, you can focus on getting the right message to the right customer. This enhances your interactions, as well as the relationship, increasing your value to the customer and their value to you.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Juliana Kenny
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