Social CRM – Social media response – “Community changes everything”
Social media is changing the way people communicate:
Communities are driving behavior- People are meeting and interacting in different places and they are “broadcasting” their views to a wider audience than they did in the past. More and more people are joining social media sites and changing their behavior as they start to interact. For example, social networking giant Facebook will surpass 750,000,000 monthly active users in 2011, up from 500 million active monthly users in 2010 (Source: TechCrunch).
Collaboration and content sharing are the norm-People share content, they influence others and they comment.
People move between communities - They may interact in multiple communities in one day, or even ‘post’ to several communities at the same time. People may have different levels of influence and wildly differing contacts in (for example) Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
People interact on the move -Smart phone application and mobile web capabilities have dramatically increased the use and reach of social media – 81 minutes was the average daily use of mobile apps in June 2011, compared to 74 minutes for the Web (Source: Flurry).
People don’t need permission to comment -In the social media world, they have an inferred right to make comments no matter how qualified or informed they may be. They are also attuned to reaching out to others to ask for help or support.
People help each other -The members of many communities have developed a desire or even need to provide help and support to others with no immediate expectation of reciprocity – at least not from the individual they helped.
Social media is changing the relationships between you and your customer:
The communities’ members are empowered -People have more opportunity and reach to be influential in the social media world than they did before, but this empowerment has a down-side as people can sometimes be more vitriolic than they would otherwise be about you and your products or services. Anonymity can also give a voice to ‘trolls’, and chronic complainers who can influence other.
The community is trusted more than companies themselves -Both individual members, but more especially a common view or theme within the community will significantly impact members buying and other decisions. In July 2010, 38,000,000 people in the US age 13 – 80 said their purchasing decisions are influenced by social media, a 14% increase in the previous six months (Source: Knowledge Networks).
The communities often move faster than companies -With little need to seek corporate guidance or policy advice, individuals can and do quickly respond to a fellow community members’ post before you can.
Others can see the entire conversation with your customer -Potentially hundreds or thousands of others can see how you are responding to a customer issue, judge how they think you are doing in real time, and indeed in some cases “pile-on” to the conversation itself.
Prioritization becomes harder than in the “old world” -Influence, value, relevance, reach, trust and importance all become factors in how you respond to a customers’ question or issue in the social media world.
Non-customers can influence your customers -Individuals about whom you may have little or no information could post a comment and have as much impact on others as a high-value customer based on their on-line “credibility”, the number of “followers” or “friends” and a host of other factors.
Social CRM-Social media response – Community changes everything
Tags: Behavior, Communities, CRM, IT, Social Media