The blending of Social Networking and CRM is also a smart way to target specific demographics.

There’s been a tremendous amount of hype over the past year regarding the integration of customer relationship management (CRM) systems and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and how businesses can leverage the two to tighten their customer connections.

Salesforce.com arguably led the way among CRM vendors with support it added for both of the aforementioned social networks under its Service Cloud 2 offering. Salesforce also introduced ‘Chatter’, a sort of Twitter for the enterprise where users in the same company can share real-time information through a private cloud.

These types of features are all useful stepping stones in the continued maturation of Social CRM. Companies have devoted a lot of attention to customer management during the economic downturn in order to retain and leverage their most profitable customers and to grow those relationships where possible. For these and other reasons, the trend among companies to develop a multichannel CRM strategy, including the use of social networking sites, makes perfect sense.

The blending of social networking and CRM is also a smart way to target specific demographics. If you have a teenager or a ‘tweener’ (or both, like me), you know all too well how devoted they are to brands like Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch, Forever 21, Zumiez, PacSun, etc. Given teens’ penchant (addiction?) to texting and using social networking sites, it’s a smart play for retailers and other companies to leverage social networking to not only tighten relationships with customers but also to better understand what these consumers are looking for in products and services.

Still, it’s necessary to put some perspective around Social CRM. For starters, it’s important to recognize that the use of these types of applications for customer management is still early stage. Plus, there are many more advancements to come, such as filtering customer feedback from social networking sites through data marts to help corporate decision-makers gather additional business intelligence on customer buying habits and preferences in order to better position products and services.

It’s a good start but it’s just the beginning in what should be a long journey for mixing social networking with CRM.

by:  Tom Hoffman