How to Implement Social CRM

The ability to effectively manage customer information to build loyalty and drive revenues is an important goal for any organization. Developing that ability in the social media platform still presents a learning curve for many organizations. If you’re seeking to leverage this platform to strategically interact with current and potential clients, it’s important to know how to implement social CRM (customer relationship management). Here, you can explore seven steps on how to implement social CRM and how it differs from standard software implementations.

How to Implement Social CRM: Start with personality

• When you implement social CRM a critical first step is to develop the persona of how you will engage customers and prospects through social media. To develop this online identity, you need to start by establishing core values based around the brand persona. In this stage it’s necessary to develop values around the brand that your audience will care about.
• The next stage is develop the brand pillars that support the brand. Here you determine what’s unique to your brand and the central themes of the brand that you want to represent in your social media circles. These brand pillars will be the driving force that governs the perception of your online personality.
• Following the brand pillars come the brand characteristics. These are the traits that become associated with the brand, such as whether the personality is sarcastic, funny, jackass, sincere, etc. It’s very important during this stage to know your audience. You need know what you aim to portray to your listeners and how you want them to describe you.
• Establishing a clear mission statement, or your brands promise, is an important step in having your customers understand what your online presence is all about.
• Every brand has to grow, and as a result your online persona must grow through experience and maturation, while giving people a reason to connect with you and join your social circle.
• As you continue to grow your online personality, you will slowly begin to merge your brands characteristics and attributes, while identifying missing attributes based on your day to day conversations. Once this is done, you need to continue to strengthen and protect your brand to earn the respect and confidence of others with shared attitudes and goals.
• Once all the above steps have been fleshed out, a personality begins to manifest behind your social media persona, and you should continue to portray this personality throughout your community.

Processes and Requirements Define How to Implement Social CRM

Like software implementations, how to implement social CRM depends on a clear definition of your needs. Implementing social CRM isn’t a simple one and done process. By identifying your current customer situation, you can establish the proper processes and requirements for implementing social CRM to produce the desired results. For instance, if your customer base traditionally does not use Twitter, your processes and requirements won’t have a clear Twitter focus from initial launch.

How to Implement Social CRM Demands Specific Use Cases

Once you have clearly defined your needs based on your valuable customer data, and established your processes and requirements, you’re ready to create use cases specific to your integration points. This approach allows you to capture data. You’re not just looking for technology; you’re looking to capture the entire customer experience, including the culture and the processes. You can’t derive value from social CRM if you aren’t measuring your customer interactions at each point.

Is Your CRM Ready Before You Learn How to Implement Social CRM?

Social media introduces new dynamics to your current CRM implementation, demanding that you capture even more information and interactions. Can your current solution support the increased workflow, rules, processes and data structure? If not, it’s time to upgrade. You need a solution that delivers the necessary support and functionality, while also integrating with your call center, managing your communities and social media channels.

How to Implement Social CRM Requires Total Enterprise Support

Like any software implementation, you have to have support from the top down. You need to recive support from every level of the organization, and you need to put together a team to handle your social media strategy. Social CRM all happens in real-time, thus it becomes necessary to have a team ready at the helm to respond to customer and prospect questions and issues. Having a properly trained team for this can vastly enhance your customer experience, and can help promote your brand with your online personality.

Improve the Ecosystem When You Learn How to Implement Social CRM

The implementation of social CRM within your organization demands that you rely on a number of key elements and participants for success. Once you have social CRM in place and supported/encouraged by top management, measure the effectiveness of the system. If you’re having difficulty managing your social CRM, take a look at the structure and the team itself, and work towards improving all processes. Your social media presence will grow and mature as your organization gains a better understanding of how it fits within the organization.