Essay: Social CRM - How Businesses Achieve Strategic Goals?

How social customer relationship management is helping businesses or organizations achieve its strategic goals and objectives in relation to the development and adoption of business technologies?

Using MIS to improve the quality of social CRM and the relevant changes involved

The modern corporate world has experienced gradual changes over time resulting from different business environments. These environmental changes both internally and externally have in one way or the other affected the growth of business organizations as well as the organizational performance. One of the best ways or improving organizational or business performance is through improving the organizational customer relationships. Business customers act as the greatest assets of the business and therefore their relationship with the business determines the overall performance of the business (Paliouras & Siakas, 2017). A satisfied customer will always end up being a loyal customer of the business and also becomes an ambassador of the company to other prospective customers. Many businesses or organizations have embraced the use of information technology in perceiving different organizational changes and developing effective strategies to counter these environmental changes. On the other hand some other companies have not yet shifted to the use of information technologies techniques due to lack of enough resource capacity whereas others have been due to the continued use of the traditional CRM techniques such as advertising. Through the use of management information systems technology, companies have developed social customer relationship management strategies to manage and analyze their customer relationships and interactions with the business.

Social customer relationship management is therefore in this case described as the use of social media services and platforms, techniques as well as technology to enable organizations to engage with their customers with the aim of strengthening business customer relationships through social media. It also aims at improving the relationships within the organization with the existing business or organization customers, creating a platform to attract potential and prospective customers as well as winning back the confidence of former customers who might have lost confidence and trust with the company due to lack of an established social platform where the company can interact with its customers (Chen & Wu, 2016). Business management has taken another shift due to the advancement of computer-based information technology which has led to the development of different management information systems that help the managers of different businesses to make and implement decisions concerning various operations of a business. Such information systems are developed for specific purposes and have been found to differ significantly from the standard data processing systems especially those used in financial management. Therefore managers have realized that the difference between their success and failure of their business and especially in customer relationship management is due to the extent to which the managers are able to use the systems to increase their effectiveness of their organizational performance.  

The modern corporate world as described earlier is characterized by increased social media use for business purposes. The rise in the use of social media has been adopted by business companies as one of the MIS tools to expand in the various sections of the business such as marketing. Through social media, businesses get good platforms for directly relating with customers. They can have their products reviewed hence giving the clients the opportunity of giving their positive or negative feeling towards the particular company products. As a result, the company will be able to make decisions to improve their customer services depending on the review of the clients. In other words, how MIS is adopted has a massive impact on how customers make decisions based on their consumer behavior and their purchase decisions to a certain company product or brand. These decisions are mainly influenced by how the brand interacts with the customers through the purchase cycle centrally to the prior opinion where customers purchase decisions were influenced solely based on an advert and brand promotion like it was the case 5 years ago (Choudhury & Harrigan, 2014). Through MIS, businesses and customers have embraced the use of internet which provides them with more opportunities to make a variety of choices and have an access to more information related to the product or brand. Therefore most customers have been found to make their purchase decision based on their value set on the product rather than on the need for the product alone.

Adoption of MIS in improving Social CRM by different companies

The development of social customer relationship management strategies is important as it helps in understanding the customer and company interactions and relationships based on the data obtained from social media platforms used by the company with the aim of improving business relationships with the customers as well as assisting the business in customer retention and driving the company product sales growth. The effectiveness of social customer relationship management has however been attributed to the growth of business information technology through management information systems. These systems have been developed for specific purposes in an organization or business and therefore in this case organizations or businesses have developed a management information system in form of a social customer relationship management with the aim of improving customer and business relationships and facilitate effective decision making (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). Through the use of management information systems businesses have developed decision support systems which have played a vital role in customer relationship management. The decision support systems are therefore a computerized information system used to support decision making in a business and allows users to analyze massive reams of data and other product or brand-related information that can be used to solve customer problems and make better decisions. Therefore management information systems act as bedrock in which social customer relationship management is built.

Many researchers and authors have conducted different researchers which have led to the development and adoption of the current social customer relationship management. This is because social customer relationship management is seen as an emerging concept in the modern corporate world that integrates the traditional customer relationship management and social media in order to provide benefits for organizations and customers. Some of the early or constant reviews which have been done to develop the concept of social CRM include the works of Awasthi and Sangle, (2012) who in their research was on understanding customer relationship management technology in multichannel environments. The research covered the literature content gathered between 2006 and 2010 and was focused on the adoption of technology and especially in CRM in the context of multichannel environment and therefore provided categories on some of the multichannel as the; CRM, Multichannel CRM, eCRM, and mCRM. The review was presented at the Malaysian conference on the information system. In their comparison, the authors were able to agree that both kinds of literature and approaches view social CRM as an extension of traditional CRM which is aimed at customer engagement and interactions. However, they were able to identify a difference in both kinds of literature whereby the scholarly literature was found to focus on specific issues related to the theoretical concept of CRM while the practitioner literature was found to focus on how organizations will respond to new challenges and opportunities resulting from the emergence of social CRM. A more detailed review was also done in 2013 by Lehmkuhl and Jung which focused on the development of organizational approaches to design social CRM systems. This review provided an overview of current social customer relationship management and also provides further directions for research as these were found to be limited to the scope of the CRM concept. And lastly, a review was done by Kupper et al. 2014 which focused on social CRM performance measures. These performance measures were categorized to be measured in terms of infrastructure, the process, customer service and organizational performance and therefore provided a greater scope of the concept of Social CRM, however, these reviews failed to factor in the key factors and outcomes of CRM adoption in businesses.

Social customer relationship management is the developing concept in the modern corporate world and has increasingly gained great importance in the effectiveness and growth of most businesses or organizations. The concept integrates the traditional customer relationship management strategies such as advertising and product promotions and social media platforms in order to provide benefits for both organizations and customers. The concepts have employed the use of management information systems due to the rising growth and advancements in internet information technology to help the businesses and organizations implement within their organizations the decision support system (Farid et al., 2016). The development of social channels is essential for an organization or business to both acquisition and retention of customers since many businesses are increasingly adopting social paradigms to improve on productivity as well as the breakdown of organizational social sites. The growth of social platforms is seen as the future of customer relationship management and that customer intelligence will make the difference in the current competitive market between success and failure of a business in the current rapidly evolving sales environment.

Customer intelligence and social CRM are seen as the future of business performance because customer intelligence provides analysis and discussion support engines facilitated by the management information systems for managing the current vast social media sphere as customers no longer make their purchase and consumption decisions based on adverts and brand promotions. The rise of social media has, therefore, had a great impact on how different customers make their decisions which are now shaped by the customer’s interactions with the company brand or product during the purchase lifecycle (Hajli & Lin, 2016). The rapid growth in information technology and advancements in internet services customers now have more choice and access to a variety of information concerning a company brand or even concerning various company products. And in most cases, customers have been found to make their purchase decisions based on the value attached to a certain product rather than their needs. This calls many organizations to therefore to develop effective communication strategies as well as marketing and sales strategies to meet the current customer needs which have shifted towards the use of social media platforms. The social media has been found to have certain factors which influence or trigger customer perception on the worth of a brand. These factors include personal recommendations found on social media about a brand, the customer service experience as well as how well the brand value match customer expectations. And therefore the customer's purchase decision is in form of a process and this is the strategy that builds the social customer relationship management systems by many organizations (Jun et al., 2014). The customer purchase process starts with the creation of product awareness, gaining interest in the product, then desire, purchase and retention. Such a process could not be achieved through the traditional CRM which involved adverts and promotions and provided little information guided by the seller’s interest since an advert could, for instance, create an awareness then the potential customers who may then develop an interest but may not help the customers have a desire for the product as the desire would come from more knowledge about the product which calls for an effective customer relationship management strategy and hence the importance of social customer relationship management.

The understanding of the effectiveness and the role played by social customer relationship management in modern business we have to examine the role played by management information systems in transforming businesses. Information systems in this case refer to a set of interrelated components which help in collection, processing, storing and distribution of information.  They help in support of decision making, coordination, and control of business operations. One of the great roles played by management information systems in an organization or business is improving customer relationship and supplier intimacy (Diffley & McCole, 2015). This is based on the fact that a satisfied customer will always come again which leads to increased revenue returns for the business and profit and may even refer other customers while creating an intimacy with suppliers allows them to provide vital inputs to the business at a lower cost and therefore contributes to increased productivity and reduced operational costs. Information technology has led to improved decision making as we will see through decision support systems as decision are made after data is collected and analyzed based on various issues affecting the business. Management Information technology and systems have enabled most businesses to increase their competitive advantage through responding to customers and suppliers in good time, charging less for superior products and offering quality and unique services (Pick et al., 2016). They also play a vital role in enhancing business survival since information system has become a necessity of every business in the modern competitive business world. It helps the business keep at level with the industry growth levels and also meets with the government regulation requiring record keeping for businesses.

The figure below shows how different social media traffic referrals in business have increased since 2011 to 2014 indicating the growth in social customer relationship management and the growing importance of social media in attracting new customers and retaining the existing ones.

Businesses operations have shifted to the use of the internet due to the development and the need for global electronic business and collaboration. The growth of the electronic businesses has grown due to the fact that business processes are a set or a collection of activities required to produce a product or a purpose (Krishnan et al., 2014). In most cases, therefore, the performance of business firms depends on how well the business processes are designed and coordinated. Most companies have therefore changed their social channels designs and configuration of their information systems and even their coordination to bring about more data available to the websites or to the different social media channels. They have also customized most of their websites in accordance to the demands of their customers both the existing as well as the prospective ones. The development of new information technology has therefore changed the flow of information and therefore making it possible for many people to access and share information concerning a company product or brand. This has therefore helped in replacing sequential steps and hence reduces or eliminates delays in decision making.

The figure above shows how social CRM has improved the scope of the traditional CRM by being more customers centered as compared to the traditional CRM which was centered on organizational goals and objectives.

The growth of social customer relationship management strategies has therefore been initiated by the technological advances in information technology and management information systems.  Therefore the growth of social media usage and continued increase in the number of social platforms has changed the business operations and especially through marketing strategies (Jain et al., 2017). Many managers in the current corporate world have now believed the fact that when consumer relationship management is harnessed with social media it can deliver financing benefits to the company. Organizations performance and success will, therefore, be achieved through the embracing of the social customer relationship management strategies. SRM is a business strategy aimed at engaging customers and improving business performance (Rad et al., 2015). Social media, therefore, has enabled the business brand and products to extend its business engagement with all customers based on the consumer interests, at the time they need or want the brand at any place and through any channel they choose. Most consumer marketing experts are working with partners to develop data light ultra-low cost CRM approaches which may be able to first identify and target high-value consumers. Even though it is costly, it provides an opportunity for the business to interact with thousands of customers across the globe hence used by many companies to expand their market.

The growth, development, and adoption of social customer relationship management have helped business to increase their trading profits. This is because this strategy enables businesses to increase their sales while reducing the costs associated with the traditional CRM such as television advertising and promotions which are very expensive as compared to the use of social media platforms (Warren, 2016). Most consumer and customers have been found to be more trusting of their friends and colleagues than they are to television advertising and other business corporate communication. Many consumers and customers talk to each other more frequently through the social media and therefore this has attracted the focus of most business managers.  It is believed that the opinions and thoughts shared by consumers through social media as well as confidence, experiences, videos, and photos through small networks can be rapidly amplified into large networks of people and hence enhance business growth through increased sales (Chang & Cheng, 2015). In future, effecting harnessing of social customer relationship management strategies with continuous changes of MIS technological developments information systems will provide market analysis tools. Such tools will be used by businesses to analyze consumer consumption behavior through analyzing different product consumption data gathered from the social media platforms which will greatly help the managers in the decision-making process and more especially in decision support systems.

Conclusion

It is therefore important for businesses to become cognizant of the role played by the social media in enhancing customer relationship management strategies in businesses. Social customer relationship management is seen therefore as the next effective strategy to improve business- customer relationship and contribute to increased business growth and performance. However, it is important for businesses to adopt the relevant information technology in order to develop effective management information systems which will help the company in enhancing its social customer relationship management objectives and help the businesses or organizations in making relevant decision support systems and in overall business decision making.

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