One of the opportunities presented by Social Media to marketers is that there is less of a need to maintain databases of customer data as more and more people maintain their own profile on sites like LinkedIn. Our CRM systems can now start to shift to becoming integration points / aggregation points for social media profiles and conversations about our products and services.
The concept of a social media CRM or Social Relationship Management has really started to gather pace this year. Whilst it is possible to track your individual Social Media interactions via tools like TweetDeck and Twhirl, the next generation of Social CRM applications for organisations is only just starting to take shape.
I was consulting in CRM systems before the term was coined and co-founded one of the only successful Partner Relationship Management software companies in 1997 and as a result feel very close to this issue from a system design and company impact point of view.
I can see a great opportunity for companies to integrate both links to social media profiles and conversations on many of the social media platforms into their CRM systems to understand better how they can serve their customers.
Is this next wave in Relationship Management going to at last give us the opportunity to really connect with customers? I think it could. What do you think?
You can plug into the conversation on SCRM by following the hashtag #scrm on Twitter.