CRM + Social Media = Better Customer Relations, Increased Sales

By Carol Tice
Exclusively for BVR Times


For most companies, their customer relationship management programs and their social-media efforts are still living in two separate worlds. But bringing them together can turbo-charge your CRM, building stronger customer bonds that can drive more sales.

I recently got to chat with CRM expert Josh Sweeney of ALT-Invest in Atlanta. Josh helps companies get the most out of popular open-source CRM system SugarCRM.

The problem with many CRM systems is that the data in them gets stale fast, Sweeney notes. Two years ago you met with a client and heard about his kids and entered a few notes in your CRM program. By now those kids may have gone off to college, so your chat topics are out of date and you look lame.

But if you can get your CRM to talk to popular social-media programs such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can read recent updates and get much more useful, current information.

"If you're reading LinkedIn updates and a client is saying she's sick and tired of being in bed, and I was about to send her a sales call, maybe I want to send her a 'get well' card instead," Sweeney notes. "Then I can follow up with a sales call later."

The best CRM programs now integrate social media directly within the program, Sweeney says. There's no retyping information you spot on Twitter – the tweetstream appears within the customer's CRM record.

Once you've hooked your CRM up to social media, you can also use the social-media feeds to create new sales leads or customer-service referrals, Sweeney says. You can set up a tracker for key words – say, a few of your product names. If you spot chatter from a shopper comparing brands, the message can be routed to a salesperson for followup.

By the same token, if you spy a disgruntled customer complaining about your company on social media, a customer-service rep can be notified. Followup through social media will show not just that customer but others tied into that customer on the social site that your company is reponsive and caring.

Dell's gotten a lot of attention with the $2 million in sales it's made through Twitter, so it's quickly become a proven method of reaching customers you might not land otherwise.