Three unique ways to use Social CRM to grow your business

You've got tons of customer data, but often your customers aren't talking directly to you. They're talking to other customers and a lot of people who aren't your customers. This mass of unstructured data in the social sphere (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, Facebook) is a goldmine not just for immediate feedback, but for a host of unique customer service and product development opportunities.
At the CRM Evolutions Conference in New York, I spoke with analyst Ray Wang of Constellation Research. He offered up three unique ways companies are taking advantage of Social CRM:
1. Steal sales from competitors -- By following your category and your competitors, you can discover people in purchase mode you never would have found. This is the best time to intercept and introduce yourself into the consideration mix.
2. New uses for your product -- Videos of people with your product may introduce new ways to use your product that you hadn't considered. Feed this information back into product development or new ways to market your product.
3. Triage a problem before it blows up -- When a customer has a complaint, escalate that problem to your company's contact and action center and close the loop quickly so as to solve the problem in real time.
Are you not ready for Social CRM yet? That's quite alright, says Wang. While you're waiting to launch your Social CRM campaign, start collecting Twitter handles from your users so you can connect their social activity with your customer database.

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• CRM
• customers
• Zoho
• customer management
• retain customers
• SMB
• CRMe11