Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is use of social media services, techniques and technology to enable organizations to engage with their customers.

Social CRM has applications in marketing, customer service and sales, including:

• Social Engagement with prospects: SocialCRM tools allow businesses to better engage with their customers by, for example, listening to sentiments about their products and services.
• Social Customer Service: Ownership of social media is shifting away from Marketing and Communication as engagement increasingly relates to inbound customer service-based topics. Rather than social being seen purely as a space for companies to deliver outbound marketing messages, it is the inbound customer queries that allow for meaningful points of engagement and the building of brand advocacy.

A more complete view of your customers via what they say in social media. This is important because customers’ conversations with others in a naturalistic social media environment are more likely to reveal their true preference and opinions than self-reported data. Instead of forcing opinions out of consumers, consumers are volunteering all this information to companies who are willing to listen. This can be very helpful when it comes to offering support to customers, discovering new product opportunities, identifying brand advocates, etc.

Faster collection of information. Traditional feedback through the distribution channel is simply too slow in today’s environment, where consumers are fickle and their preferences are changing faster than ever. One advantage of social CRM is that it deals with real-time data. As a result, companies can gauge quickly how consumers are reacting to a marketing campaign, what they think of a newly announced product, etc.

Faster support and response time to customers. Let’s face it, the Internet makes us an impatient generation. When we run into problems, we want them solved immediately. This is where social media can help a lot. It’s not uncommon to hear anecdotal evidence of consumers receiving laser-speed response from companies when they complain about problems in social media.

Engaging Customers. Through better and faster understanding of customers and faster response time, social CRM can provide a more engaging experience to customers. The company successfully uses a blog, Facebook fan page, and a Twitter account to engage a large number of frugal savers. The Brand Engagement Report shows, effective engagement with customers is correlated with financial measures, suggesting social media’s potential to affect companies’ bottom line.