Highly informational webinar session with Shweta Sharma on the importance of integrating Social media and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategies with the core business functions.
The addition of social element in CRM processes helps businesses to get closer to their customers by linking their conversations from social networking sites with the CRM processes, facilitating cost reduction, increased revenue and efficiencies.
Some of the questions discussed in the webinar are-
Q. For social CRM initiative is there a need to deploy some special teams or just train the existing employees?
A. To this Shweta answered that today almost all organisations have resources at different team levels which are doing social in some way or the other. For example- Star TV is using social in a really big way and there are different teams such as the marketing team, content team and consumer insides team which are using social. However, there are teams which have not implemented it yet. Like the HR team which is not using social right now. They’re doing it at a very adhoc level.
So, we tell the organisations that we would do the implementation and teams that are using social right now can have access to the system. So we try to bring a kind of standardisation and use resources that are already there.
But there are certain companies which have not really implemented social at a huge level as yet. So, then arises the need of having more resources and training those resources.
Companies which have already understood the use of social and have already implemented it at a big level already have the resources. While the companies who have not implemented it or implemented a very small part of it, would need the resources.
Q. Like social CRM for customers, what example can be quoted for Social ERM (Employee Relationship Management) as employees are internal customers for the company?
A. This is an interesting topic and there are a lot of things that people are looking to implement on this angle. For example- Cisco has implemented a programme called Social Brand Ambassador where they consider their employees as their brand ambassadors and ask them to spread the word around or use social networking sites to talk about them.
A lot of companies are looking forward to use intelligence on intra-network sites to integrate the data and profile their customers better.
Q. Is it good to have social CRM initiatives in-house or should it be outsourced to an agency?
A. it is more of an organisation’s call because some organisations believe that experts should handle certain things. Whereas some organisations believe that they should have everything in-house. But what we as a platform facilitate is that social CRM initiatives should have a systematic approach. It is really important to have control on your profiles and have a kind of approval system in-house. Even if you outsource, you should be able to keep control of all the activities that are happening within the organisation. It is highly important to keep a track of everything in-house.
To check some more questions discussed during the session you can go on the following link:
