Social CRM: A bane or a boon?

The concept of Social CRM still poses question marks in relation to its use or misuse. The entire process is considered by some to be as infringement of privacy and as obtrusive. This notion about social CRM can lead to customers not being appreciative of an organization’s efforts to know more about him and often lead to the company losing business. Another notion attached to social CRM is the manipulation that can follow once details about a customers’ likes and dislikes are known. An example of this is provided by the popular family sitcom, Modern family, in its latest episode (link below). In this episode, the star cast is trying to sell a house to 26 year old software engineer and after a scan of his facebook, twitter, tumblr and instagram account, they manage to know a whole lot about their customer. Following this revelation, the Chicago blackhawks poster comes on the walls, a kickboxing gym is installed, Indian food is served, a doggie door is put in place for his dog, his choice of alcoholic beverage is stocked and old school funk music is played. The customer is welcomed into the house and immediately feels an attachment to it given that all his favorite things are merged with the property. Things go very well until the moment the customer becomes suspicious of all the things that the sellers know about him, freaks out and leaves. This anecdote provides us insight into customer reaction after knowing that a seller of product or services knows more about the customer than he ought to and this can actually lead to loss of sale for the seller.


http://videobam.com/UnFjv

This is an example of how data from social media can be misused by companies in order to sell products to their customers. However there is a fine line between the right and the wrong approach to using social media. So rather than trying to manipulate the customers into buying products social media should be used to identify the opportunities when the customer would appreciate being contacted. Such occasions might include instances when a customers expresses his dissatisfaction with a product or a service of a company or when is actively searching for a product. Most of us have asked for advice on facebook about a good restaurant to eat or a place to stay in a city we are about to visit and monitoring for occasions like this is an example of good social CRM.