Social customer relationship management (CRM) & mobile care additions to CRM applications are proving to drive productivity, according to a recent study. Nucleus Research said in its report that sales personnel see an improvement in productivity by more than 25 percent with the use of social features and mobile access to CRM applications.
According to this Enterprise Apps Today report, social CRM & mobile care utilization has affected the workplace. The sales personnel who have access to social tools alone are nearly 12 percent (on average) more productive.
Nearly a quarter of those surveyed said they were 20-plus percent more productive due to the integration of social features in CRM. But people seem to be getting more value out of mobile CRM.
Sales personnel using mobile CRM alone see an average of nearly 15 percent more productivity, and nearly one-third of those surveyed said they see increases of 20 percent or better. Social CRM & mobile care integration is an area where vendors are realizing some growth potential.
Look at Salesforce and its acquisition of Model Metrics, a cloud computing consulting firm with more than 1,500 cloud computing implementations under its belt. In its partnering with Salesforce, Model Metrics is helping to develop Salesforce’s mobile applications. Microsoft is jumping on board, too – it is set to launch a CRM application for the iPhone (News - Alert), Droid, Blackberry, and the iPad.
Social CRM & mobile care is evolving beyond applications used to assist sales personnel connected to their clients. It’s now evolving into more sophisticated processes such as geomapping.
A company that added the geomapping feature to its mobile application saw a nearly 10 percent spike in sales productivity, but it also saw its usefulness in allowing staff to see their accounts in a different light and give insight into which accounts required more attention.
Despite the ubiquity of Facebook (News - Alert) and other social platforms, companies haven’t been as fast to adopt social CRM as they have mobile care into their business practices. In fact, nearly 75 percent of those surveyed said they have chosen mobile CRM over social. Some cite a lack of knowledge on how to describe social CRM, which is helping to slow its adoption.
Social CRM & mobile care adoption is forecast to improve analytics and reporting functionality for companies that take advantage of it. The productivity gains and the low cost of deployment should have any self-respecting company analyzing their abilities to take on social CRM & mobile care for the benefit of their bottom line.
Edited by Stefanie Mosca