eCRM: Benefits, Features, Components

eCRM (electronic way of customer relationship management) uses social media, forums, and other channels to track customer engagement with the business.

For decades organizations did all the talking but Social Media allows two way dialogue and allows organizations to communicate with stakeholders. Customers can now easily post their thoughts about products, services, and policies. As a result, the Marketplace has transformed due to these changes.

Studies suggest that retaining just 5 percent more customers, online companies can boost their profits by 25 percent to 95 percent.

Thankfully for businesses, marketing automation technology is easily available that can be used to create scheduled and more relevant emails and personalized communications on company websites.

What is E-CRM?

e-CRM stands for Electronic customer relationship management. e-CRM is the creation of strategies and plans for how digital technology and digital data can support CRM.

Digital marketing activities within the scope of E-CRM include:

• Using the website and online social presences for customer development , offline sale using email and web-based content to encourage purchase.
• Customer profile information and email list quality management
• Managing customer contact options through mobile, email, and social networks to support up-sell and cross-sell

Benefits of E-CRM

E-CRM helps manage the multichannel customer experience as they use different media as part of the buying process and customer lifecycle.

It makes it easier to offer online customer service facilities (such as frequently asked questions, call back, and chat support). It helps manage online service quality to ensure that first-time buyers have a great customer experience.

E-CRM enables data mining to improve targeting and provides opportunity for online personalization or mass customization.

Social-CRM

The traditional one-to-one relationship between companies and their customers is rapidly evolving. Traditional customers bought products and services based on utility and price, and communicated using letter, phone call, and occasional e-mail.

The ‘SOCIAL CONSUMER’ however is more informed. Consumers now have access to new technologies, they access social media and broadcast their thoughts.

Consumers are shifting their trust away from corporate marketers and brands and are instead talking and listening to their fellow consumers (Reviews before buying).

As a result, companies are moving away from traditional one-sided, product-centric, transactional thinking.

Social-CRM is the process of managing customer-to-customer conversations to engage existing customers, prospects, and other stakeholders with a brand and to enhance customer relationship management.

Social CRM gives customer insights across marketing, sales, service, innovation, collaboration and customer experience. Social Media integration of CRM enables the concept of customer-centric services. Organizations can grow sales, deepen long-term customer relationships and drive customer advocacy.

Benefits of social media for the consumer:

It serves as a platform to gather more information (fake news can be an issue) and also to voice one’s opinion

Benefits of social media for the company:

A business gets valuable insights about the products, services, brands and competitors directly from the customers without having to make much investment in research. Harnessing the collective intelligence of online communities can help find solutions to business challenges.

Customer Engagement

Customer Engagement is the “Repeated interactions that strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment a customer has in a brand.”

Customer engagement is ‘marketing’s new key metric’. Customer engagement is used to maximize customer value through using customer interactions leading to more profitable relationships.

Parts of Engagement (offline and online) that can be measured:

• Involvement such as website visits, pages viewed
• Interaction such as comments and online reviews posted.
• Intimacy such as sentiment tracking online, opinions expressed n customer service calls.
• Influence such as likelihood to recommend, brand affinity, etc.

Benefits of e-CRM to support Customer Engagement:

By bringing various digital platforms into play, businesses can carry out cost-effective targeting, they can develop better customer understanding, and are able to customize marketing messages.

Businesses are able to deliver loyalty programs and there are more opportunities for gamification.

How Social CRM Engages the Customer

• Captures indirect feedback from customers on social networks and communities that adds insight
• Shares ideas for innovation by leveraging customer insights that can result in co-creation
• Generates brand awareness and visibility
• Increases web traffic and advertising income
• Assists in sales, marketing, and service efforts by sharing contacts in a sales community, marketing trends in a marketing community, and service issues in a service community.

Social CRM and Customer Engagement helps support the entire customer management strategy and lifecycle. it should lead to increased sales and decreased costs.

Social Networks and Virtual Communities

Manuel Castells (1996) has developed the concept of ‘networked individualism’. This is when individuals build their networks online and offline on the basis of values, interests and projects.

Virtual communities enable organizations to establish relationships with these communities. Focused content attracts new members, who in turn contribute to the quantity and quality of the community’s pooled knowledge. As the community grows, it attracts advertisers to fund it.

As the size and sophistication of the community grow: its data-gathering and profiling capabilities increase, it enables better-targeted marketing and attracting more vendors.

As a result, it is important for businesses to create and grow Social Media communities.