Social media are increasingly adopted by both people and businesses and have a major impact on our daily lives.

The social networking phenomenon has influenced the way people communicate with their friends and family and, obviously, the interactions between people and businesses.

Although the major part of communication between customers and business, for instance, regarding customer service, still occurs via more traditional channels such as telephone or email, there is a continuing shift to emerging media.

One of the marketing areas that is influenced by the increasing importance of online communities and social networking platforms is CRM.

Social CRM is not about technology (alone)

While many people see “Social CRM” in relationships to CRM platforms, the term Social CRM mainly involves a change of mentality and approach regarding Customer Relationship Management.

A convergence of social media and CRM opens new opportunities for building customer relationships and changes how customer service is practiced.

Here are some of the main changes in this area:

1) As customers use several channels, often at the same time, so are customer service and CRM becoming cross-channel marketing activities
2) CRM is becoming a cornerstone in a customer-centric and data-driven marketing reality where an integrated and real-time view on the customer needs is key
3) CRM and customer intelligence data in general are fed through all online and offline interactions with customers and prospects
4) Customers, prospects and communities become part of the CRM process themselves