Social media and customer relationship management (CRM) experts share their tips for how organizations can leverage social media to improve customer engagement.
In today's hyper social world, customers are likely to voice a complaint or offer a compliment about your product, service or business on Twitter or Facebook. And woe to the organization that does not acknowledge or respond to that Facebook or Twitter post promptly.
Indeed, today, it is difficult to separate social media management from customer relationship management (CRM)--hence the increasing number of social CRM services. But just having a social CRM offering is not enough. Just like any technology, you have to first pick a customer engagement and management solution that is right for your organization and create a strategy and guidelines around using it.
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To help you devise a successful social CRM strategy, queried dozens of CRM, social CRM and social media experts. Here are their top 17 tips.
5. Use list and group features.
"The big three (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) make this easy," says Acevero. "For example, create (private) lists on Twitter in these categories: Clients, Prospects Who Have Considered Us, Positive Feedback from Clients, and Desired Clients or Influencers. Add people accordingly, and create social campaigns to keep each segment engaged."
6. Talk with your customers, not at them.
"If your brand is looking to build a social media presence, make sure that you are having a two-way conversation with your customers," not just pushing information at them, says Constantine.
14. Unify and centralize your customer-related communications.
"Conversations with your business prospects and existing customers happen everywhere including email, Twitter, Facebook and even your help desk ticketing system," says Root.
"Problems surface when communication is inconsistent across those lines. For example, when sales doesn't know a customer had a bad experience in response to a help desk issue, or when a customer doesn't get a reply back on Twitter," Root says.
"Having one portal where communication with your customers or prospects is available to everyone paints a comprehensive picture and allows problems to be solved quickly and lets your customer know that every department in your business is in tune.," Root says.