Dears,
In the past decade, the Internet has revolutionized how we see the world and how we communicate with each other. You can video chat with someone in another country—for free—at the click of a button. Messages are sent and received in seconds, making customer service much easier for businesses. There’s also a variety of channels to reach your customers, and for them to reach you. For organizations striving to build and maintain strong customer relationship management (CRM), the Internet and its myriad services provide a key tool for doing business.
There’s no doubt that social networking is a hit—but how can it be integrated with CRM? While still associated with teens and twenty-somethings, social networking is quickly catching on with older generations. Many experts are now saying that in order for businesses to stay competitive, they must start using social networking tools to stay in the game. Here are some of the most popular social networking tools and how businesses can integrate their customer relationship management programs with them.
Twitter
While it took a few years to really become an Internet sensation, Twitter has become a vital tool for social networking. Organizations can use Twitter to find their customers online, and to begin two-way communications with them. The service is free and requires only as much upkeep as you want. Twitter engages customers (and potential customers) in a conversation and helps both the company and the user develop a unique relationship. Twitter can be used for anything—announcing a new product, hosting a contest, or just updating customers on what’s happening in the office. Perhaps most importantly, customers recognize a bond with the company—a key goal in CRM.
Facebook
Not just for college students anymore, Facebook has become a corporate world darling. This is due in part to the nonexistent barrier to entry—all that is needed to sign up is a name and an e-mail address. With millions of users logging on daily, and more and more joining each day, Facebook is another great way to connect to customers and build relationships. Companies can set up pages for themselves and attract people using low-cost advertising, or simply network through employees and customers to get the word out. Like Twitter, Facebook can be used for a variety of things. The challenge is to keep customers engaged and coming back for more. Still, it’s a great tool to maintain and build those key relationships.
Blogging
Having a company blog is a good way to build brand familiarity and product loyalty. Blogs work well with audiences because, unlike on an official website, the writing doesn’t have to be corporate and stuffy—it’s usually in a familiar tone and has language everyone can relate to. Like Twitter and Facebook, blogs are very low-cost; there’s a variety of services to choose from, too. WordPress and Blogger and the most popular platforms, and offer customizable tools to make the blog as simple or advanced as you need. Blogs serve as a casual way to create conversations with people and get genuine feedback, building customer relationships and connecting to their needs.
Being active on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace can also provide a way for a business to “eavesdrop” on what their customers—or their competitors’ customers—are saying about the products and services they offer. This source of feedback is much less formal, and therefore often more accurate, than official company surveys or polls.
As the technology advances and social networking becomes even more popular, a rising number of CRM platform providers are offering integrated social networking tools with their services, sothat customers can manage everything from one place. Others are even creating their very own social networking sites. Although it may have started as a fad, social networking has become, and will continue to be, a vital tool for customer relationship management.
Check this video link from Oracle Blog to see how Siebel CRM could be integrated with Twitter
http://blogs.oracle.com/dipock/2009/04/add_twitter_search_to_siebel_i.html
A good example of how easy it is to embed external UIs and how to possibly give an edge to customer management / siebel users. What puzzles me is why Oracle simply does not ship siebel with a bunch of these possibilities. It hardly costs any time and makes life so much easier for us as a customer. Yes we know we can do this, but we have to raise change requests, convince (old style management) people about the reason to do this and than spend outside consultancy hours to develop this. So much better if you guys create Twitter, LinkedIn, google map solutions in vanilla !!! Many Siebel users would immediately recognize the value and use it, opening up managers to a 'new' world.
I will explore this technology in detail in future blogs
In the past decade, the Internet has revolutionized how we see the world and how we communicate with each other. You can video chat with someone in another country—for free—at the click of a button. Messages are sent and received in seconds, making customer service much easier for businesses. There’s also a variety of channels to reach your customers, and for them to reach you. For organizations striving to build and maintain strong customer relationship management (CRM), the Internet and its myriad services provide a key tool for doing business.
There’s no doubt that social networking is a hit—but how can it be integrated with CRM? While still associated with teens and twenty-somethings, social networking is quickly catching on with older generations. Many experts are now saying that in order for businesses to stay competitive, they must start using social networking tools to stay in the game. Here are some of the most popular social networking tools and how businesses can integrate their customer relationship management programs with them.
While it took a few years to really become an Internet sensation, Twitter has become a vital tool for social networking. Organizations can use Twitter to find their customers online, and to begin two-way communications with them. The service is free and requires only as much upkeep as you want. Twitter engages customers (and potential customers) in a conversation and helps both the company and the user develop a unique relationship. Twitter can be used for anything—announcing a new product, hosting a contest, or just updating customers on what’s happening in the office. Perhaps most importantly, customers recognize a bond with the company—a key goal in CRM.
Not just for college students anymore, Facebook has become a corporate world darling. This is due in part to the nonexistent barrier to entry—all that is needed to sign up is a name and an e-mail address. With millions of users logging on daily, and more and more joining each day, Facebook is another great way to connect to customers and build relationships. Companies can set up pages for themselves and attract people using low-cost advertising, or simply network through employees and customers to get the word out. Like Twitter, Facebook can be used for a variety of things. The challenge is to keep customers engaged and coming back for more. Still, it’s a great tool to maintain and build those key relationships.
Blogging
Having a company blog is a good way to build brand familiarity and product loyalty. Blogs work well with audiences because, unlike on an official website, the writing doesn’t have to be corporate and stuffy—it’s usually in a familiar tone and has language everyone can relate to. Like Twitter and Facebook, blogs are very low-cost; there’s a variety of services to choose from, too. WordPress and Blogger and the most popular platforms, and offer customizable tools to make the blog as simple or advanced as you need. Blogs serve as a casual way to create conversations with people and get genuine feedback, building customer relationships and connecting to their needs.
Being active on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace can also provide a way for a business to “eavesdrop” on what their customers—or their competitors’ customers—are saying about the products and services they offer. This source of feedback is much less formal, and therefore often more accurate, than official company surveys or polls.
As the technology advances and social networking becomes even more popular, a rising number of CRM platform providers are offering integrated social networking tools with their services, sothat customers can manage everything from one place. Others are even creating their very own social networking sites. Although it may have started as a fad, social networking has become, and will continue to be, a vital tool for customer relationship management.
Check this video link from Oracle Blog to see how Siebel CRM could be integrated with Twitter
http://blogs.oracle.com/dipock/2009/04/add_twitter_search_to_siebel_i.html
A good example of how easy it is to embed external UIs and how to possibly give an edge to customer management / siebel users. What puzzles me is why Oracle simply does not ship siebel with a bunch of these possibilities. It hardly costs any time and makes life so much easier for us as a customer. Yes we know we can do this, but we have to raise change requests, convince (old style management) people about the reason to do this and than spend outside consultancy hours to develop this. So much better if you guys create Twitter, LinkedIn, google map solutions in vanilla !!! Many Siebel users would immediately recognize the value and use it, opening up managers to a 'new' world.
I will explore this technology in detail in future blogs
Your P&C
DC*
DC*
No comments:
Post a Comment