Friday, May 04, 2012
According to Gartner, social customer relationship management (CRM) is an essential business tool, affecting organizations' marketing, sales, customer service and virtually every other area.
However, despite increasing awareness of social CRM's importance, Gartner research director Adam Sarner recently claimed that approximately half of all Fortune 1000 companies will not see positive results from their social CRM projects. This, he explained, is due to these companies' failure to set clear objectives for or monitor the ROI of their social CRM efforts.
According to Sarner, many of these businesses are taking steps to monitor the social success of their CRM projects, such as tracking fan pages and Tweets, but this information is not enough to determine whether a social CRM project is truly yielding results. Without that crucial information, an organization has no way of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of its efforts, and cannot adjust its strategies to maximize results.
Gartner predicts social CRM use to grow significantly this year, with the global market for social CRM software expected to reach $2.1 billion. Last year, the market was valued at $850 million.
