Thursday, June 21, 2012
The market for social customer relationship management (CRM) tools is growing. According to a recent Gartner report, spending on enterprise applications will reach $120 billion this year, a 5 percent increase from 2011. Notably, companies are projected to spend $13 billion on CRM application software.
According to Mikkel Svanne, CEO of a leading cloud-based customer service software company, as valuable as social CRM tools are now, they are likely to become even more vital for companies in many industries in the near future.
Speaking to Computer Business Review, Svanne argued that businesses are increasingly moving toward a subscription-based model. Instead of generating the bulk of their profits through upfront sales, organizations are coming to depend on long-term agreements. Consequently, it will become more and more important for businesses to develop lasting, substantial relationships with their customers.
Social CRM can help companies develop and maintain these relationships. Millions of individuals use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks as their primary modes for communication. In the future, this trend will likely increase. The more time that consumers spend on social media, the more important it becomes for businesses to have the means of reaching out to people via these channels. Social CRM tools offer a way to achieve this degree of engagement.
