Social CRM (customer relationship management) is becoming the expected standard for businesses of all sizes. Brands can no longer afford to use social media alone.
Valuable insights from social interactions need to be available to all departments. In contrast, customer data from other departments can be invaluable to the social media team.
Social CRM stands for social customer relationship management.
It involves connecting social media channels to your CRM system and gives all team members within the company a complete record of their interactions with the customer or prospect. Including the interactions that take place on social channels, of course.
This means that social connections can become real leads. Your first contact with someone on social media is often not the best time to make a hard sale. But without a way to track that lead, it’s impossible to nurture the relationship and work towards a sale in the long run.
Integrating social media into your CRM also allows you to build a more complete picture of the success of your social marketing strategy. Customer interactions on social networks can be explicitly linked to business results such as purchases or subscriptions.
Finally, social CRM data allows you to create highly targeted custom audiences for social ads. Existing customers’ attributes are the best foundation for effective lookalike audiences.
Social CRM benefits any department that works with customers or prospects. It gives everyone a more complete picture of the people they’re talking to. This includes sales, customer service, technical support, marketing and even product development.
Here’s how to run social CRM for your business.
1. Create a social listening program
Social listening includes watching brand mention, including conversations about:
- of the company
- your products and services
- key people in your company
- and keywords targeted on social channels
… even when you’re not tagged.
Finding existing social conversations about your brand or niche is an important part of building relationships online.
This could mean raising a customer complaint on Twitter that needs to be addressed. Or identifying a potential business leader on LinkedIn. All this information can benefit teams across the company and provides a good starting point for adding social data to your CRM.
If you want to dive into the details, we have a post on social listening.
2. Reinforce social interactions
Your social and customer support teams may be interacting with current and potential customers across multiple channels. Combining this information into a single inbox ensures that your CRM data is linked to contacts, not just profiles.
If you’re just getting started with social media CRM and don’t have an existing CRM system, just these first two steps are a good start. If you have an existing CRM system, skip to step 3.
3. Incorporate social data into your existing CRM
Ideally, you will be able to integrate social data into your CRM using platform integrations. We’ll get into the details in the Tools section below, but for now we know this doesn’t have to be complicated.
Social CRM is a growing focus for companies of all sizes. Therefore, many existing CRM systems already allow for easy integration with social tools.
Social CRM challenges you need to be aware of
There may be some bumps along the way when setting up a social CRM. This may be why only 10% of marketers surveyed for the Moyens I/O Social Transformation Report said they had effectively connected social data with an enterprise CRM.
Here are some potential hurdles you should be aware of.
Change can be irritating
Changing the nature of your company’s approach to CRM can be difficult for sales and customer service teams. They may need to learn how to use new tools or re-evaluate how they always do it.
Make sure you help them understand how to leverage social media CRM so they’re motivated to embrace change. The main advantage for customer service is a more complete customer history, while for sales, more and better leads.
You may not see results overnight
Depending on the size of your social following, you may not get a ton of social data right away. In this case, you may feel a bit like you are spinning your wheels.
stay with him. As you increase your follower count, so will the social data fed into your CRM. In turn, this better data will help you further grow your social media following. This is a virtuous cycle that may need some time to progress.
You can drown in data
On the other hand, maybe you have a large social following or there is already a lot of talk about your brand on social media. In this case, you may be overwhelmed by the large amount of potential new data to be included in your CRM.
You will have to make some decisions about what kind of interactions and data to include in CRM. For example, you can include interactions that include a direct question or comment but not mentions of your brand.
Moyens I/O
Moyens I/O performs several valuable social CRM functions. It allows you to create a social listening program and combine social messages from multiple platforms into one inbox.
You can assign social messages to the appropriate team members in the relevant department from the inbox. They will be able to see their entire social conversation history by providing full context.
Moyens I/O also integrates with top CRM platforms such as:
- sales team
- Zendesk
- Microsoft Dynamics 365.
spark center
Sparkcentral is a social customer service tool that collects messages from different channels (social media and others) and distributes them to dedicated teams or support agents.
It allows customers to access the service via social messaging apps (including WhatsApp), SMS, and live chat on your website or app.
Sparkcentral also integrates with Zendesk, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365, making it possible to synchronize all customer contacts.
Source: Sparkcentral by Moyens I/O
sales team
The Salesforce integration for Moyens I/O lets you associate social interactions with leads, contacts, accounts, and cases. All teams get a more complete picture.
You can trigger Salesforce workflows based on social interactions. You will also be able to create targeted marketing lists based on social data.
Source: Moyens I/O Apps
Zendesk
Zendesk integration for Moyens I/O allows you to view, update and comment on Zendesk tickets within Moyens I/O. You can also export social data to Zendesk tickets.
Customer service representatives can respond to customers through the original point of contact while following the entire social thread.
Source: myndbend
Microsoft Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration with Moyens I/O brings social data to your Microsoft CRM. You can generate leads and deals based on social posts and conversations. You can also use case management to resolve customer issues.
Within Moyens I/O you will be able to see your CRM information and connect with potential customers and contacts between social activities and conversations.
Source: Moyens I/O
1. Use social CRM to understand the true value of a lead and customer
Having a complete picture of how social interactions turn into sales allows you to truly understand the value of a social leader in the long run. This will help you plan your social media budget, especially the amount you plan to spend on social ads.
2. Use social data for effective customer service
More than three-quarters (76%) of customers say they expect consistent interactions from all departments. But more than half (54%) say teams don’t share information: They get different responses from sales, service, and marketing.
This can be very frustrating for customers:
I was told 1 hour ago by your tech support chat that there is a known outage in our area, they are “researching the issue”. Could you please correct your stories? I’m working from home and if you can’t access it, I need to access it through someone else.
— Doug Griffin 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈 (@dbgriffin) 30 August 2021
Social CRM provides a complete picture of your customers’ relationships with your company, including social connections. Build your social media CRM strategy around this extra data and how it will help you engage better with real people.
3. Better qualify leads with social data
Social leads can help fill your sales funnel. Better still, incorporating social interactions into leads and customer profiles can help qualify leads faster and more accurately.
Make sure you have appropriate offers and campaigns to nurture leads discovered through social media platforms. Consider an opt-in newsletter or a drip campaign and special deals available only to social leads. This will help you build your credibility as you build the relationship as you work up to the sale.
4. Use CRM data to create custom audiences for social ads
CRM helps you understand who your customers are. Social CRM collects this data based on age, location, social behavior, etc. It allows you to convert into new highly targeted lookalike audiences for social ads based on features such as
A lookalike audience based on people who actually bought from you is more likely to convert than a lookalike audience based on fans or followers.
Save time building an efficient social CRM with Sparkcentral by Moyens I/O. Quickly respond to questions and complaints across channels, create tickets, and work with chatbots from a single dashboard. Try it for free today.
