Social CRM - Have you heard about it?
by Will Morgenweck on 07 Oct 2008 06:25 PM
Have you heard the term Social CRM yet? If you search for Social CRM you will find various articles talking about marketing to users of social media. I have always found it frustrating that the majority of information about CRM tools, processes and use cases are focused around lead generation. This also seems to be the case with the term "Social CRM". Don't get me wrong, in most cases you need to have sales to keep a business running and you can't have sales without leads. However, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, NOT Potential Customer Relationship Management, but that's another topic. Social CRM should be about interacting with your customers (and potential customers) through social tools and other social media. I'm sure you use some of these social tools on a daily basis to interact with customers.
Maybe you run a social site or forum community as hobby and you think Social CRM doesn't apply to you. Social CRM can be a part of any site that is driven by user interaction. Small businesses, Fortune 500, non-profits, fan sites and gaming communities can all benefit from some aspect of Social CRM.
Think about all the different ways that you interact with current and potential customers or site members. Some of which could be Forums, E-Commerce, Help Desk, Leads, Email Marketing, etc. Wouldn't it be great if you could do all of this through your website and give your end-users more self-service options at the same time? Now think about how great it would be if you already had most of this capability already, but just didn't realize it. (Assuming you are already an Active Modules customer of course).
How's that for a teaser?
Will Morgenweck
Active Modules