Social media generates a lot of information, but also a lot of noise. Companies need to find ways to filter the multitude of posts, tweets, comments, pictures, and videos that are generated about their brands and offerings every day, and analyze only what matters to them and their customers.
One big advantage of any social media platform is that it enables its users to share their thoughts and opinions with other people. However, companies may see this freedom of expression as a potential threat, as the spreading of confidential data or incomplete information might have an adverse impact on their image or brand.
Though companies have a tremendous source of feedback in the information created using social media, they need to be careful in analyzing their customers’ needs and behaviors so that boundaries and privacy rights are respected. There is ongoing debate over privacy rights on social media platforms and who owns the data people create.
Anyone using social media can have an impact on the companies and organizations they interact with, by posting or commenting on blog entries, videos, or presentations about a specific company, whether it be about a product they bought, a service they utilized, or even a comment about a company they’ve worked for. Companies are now realizing that they can not only listen to what their customers or prospects are saying about them and their products and services, but they can also communicate with their customers—both satisfied and dissatisfied—in order to improve these offerings and their overall image.
Enter social CRM. Created in response to companies’ need to better manage customer and prospect relationships in an increasingly socially connected world, social CRM solutions are software products that gather and manage data from social platforms. By integrating their solutions with any of the current crop of social media platforms and tools, CRM vendors are able to respond wherever and whenever there’s an online conversation about them, which allows vendors not only to monitor what’s being said about them, but also to attract new customers.
Social CRM tools should be part of a bigger overall social CRM strategy if companies want to be sure they are getting the most out of their social media strategies and the tools available to them. First, companies need to be present in the social media universe and to focus on those tools that their customers are more likely to use. Second, once companies have established which social communications channels are best for them and their customers, they need to come up with a strategy for gathering information and responding to it.
The analysis of social customer data is perhaps the most important step in a social CRM strategy. This data can help a company evaluate the effectiveness of its social media strategy, but it can also be used more broadly to determine patterns in customer behavior—ultimately allowing companies to target and serve their customers better. For example, as part of a CRM solution, social data can be used to better create and manage campaigns, better address issues, or build knowledge bases for customer service. Behavior patterns with analysis from the sales and product development perspectives can have a large influence on a company’s overall market strategy.
There are many CRM and social CRM vendors offering many varieties of solutions (e.g., functionality integrated into CRM, add-ons or apps, separate solutions, etc.) so research into the types of solutions available and the functionality they offer is crucial before making a decision, but no matter how it is done, the end result is an ongoing transfer of data between the CRM system and any social tools and platforms that the company is using.
Here we’ll take a look at the four main components of managing social data in the context of customer relationship management. Each type of social CRM software has differing functions in terms of how social data can be managed and the types of data used in the analysis, but all have their use in improving customer relationships and engagement.
Social analytics enables companies to filter through the large volume of available data that comes from social communications and content. The main challenge here is that social data is unstructured, as opposed to data that is stored in tables with predefined structures. So before analyzing social data, there’s a need to define some algorithms in order to organize all the comments, tweets, blog posts, etc. The data can then be manipulated by the software, which interprets and analyzes it; some solutions are offered by traditional business intelligence (BI) companies (e.g., MicroStrategy, QlikTech, SAS, IBM Netezza, and Teradata), while others specialize in social data (e.g., Cymfony, Salesforce.com, Astute, IBM Digital Analytics for Social Media, and Clarabridge).
One aspect of social CRM data analysis is determining the type of feedback received from social media users (i.e., positive or negative). This is called sentiment analysis or opinion mining. By applying natural language processing and computational linguistics to customer content in social data (blog posts, posts and comments on social platforms, etc.), companies can determine customer behavior patterns and attitudes. A basic approach to this kind of analysis involves counting the occurrence of negative versus positive words in social data to determine whether people agree or disagree, or like or dislike companies, products, brands, etc. But since support and criticism can be expressed in ways that cannot always be clearly identified as positive or negative, social CRM software vendors have created sophisticated algorithms that allow companies to better analyze the data and draw more accurate conclusions regarding the opinions and attitudes of customers and prospects. A sound analysis can generate valuable feedback that can be used to improve the products and services companies offer, and thus increase customer satisfaction.
Source: Technologyevaluation
