Unified Communications

Batchbook to Expand Social CRM Availability, Integrations

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC  |  March 15, 2013

This article originally appeared in the March 2013 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY.

Batchbook is opening its social CRM service to a broader swath of users’ employees, bringing blogger comments into its tool, and integrating with a wide variety of other business solutions.

Ray Bonachea, Batchbook’s vice president of marketing, at ITEXPO (News - Alert) Miami told INTERNET TELEPHONY that the company plans to come out with new pricing to enable small business users to make its CRM tools available to as many of their employees as they wish. That’s not always possible for organizations today, because many CRM pricing plans are based on the number of users, so business managers are sometimes forced to pick and choose who gets to use these tools.

Batchbook wants everyone at its business users to be able to leverage CRM, said Bonachea, adding the company will offer more details on this strategy during its formal announcement of it at the South by Southwest event.

Bonachea also revealed that Batchbook will integrate blogger comments into its CRM solution as well. The really powerful thing about social CRM, he said, is that it allows companies to develop more powerful relationships with their customers. An individual who blogs about a company is already engaged with that company, he added, so the Batchbook CRM solution will enable companies to act on that.

“That really is the beauty of our system,” he said. “There are so many times businesses spin their wheels because they don’t know what customers to go after. We help them identify those champions.”

Batchbook, whose CRM solutions are offered via the SaaS (News - Alert) model, is also integrating with a variety of other business tools. For example, the company recently announced that Batchbook social CRM users can now connect the data in their accounts with information in Xero online accounting software. That way, Bonachea explained, companies can open up information once only available to accounting folks – like pending invoices, customers’ sales histories, and more – to marketing and sales employees.

Among the users of this integrated Batchbook-Xero solution is a New Zealand-based company that sells beanbag chairs for yachts.

Batchbook is also working on integration with help desk ticket systems, as well as with social media management dashboard, HootSuite.




Edited by Braden Becker