Social CRM for E-Commerce Companies

Opening up an E-commerce site, becoming one of most prominent brands and earning a lot of profit can be not much of a trouble. In fact, the trouble only starts when you do something wrong, which might not even count as a mistake in your mind! However, your customers are just looking for a chance, just one mistake by you and then there is social media to rant the ‘exaggerated’ anger. Consider this, according to a research by The Statistics Portal, the total number of Facebook and Twitter users, combined stands at a huge 1703 million. Take a look at the various social media platforms, and the number of users, to understand the count of people waiting to be answered, every time they face a problem with your brand.

Why Social Media?
In today’s date, social media has become the largest open space for communication. It connects people from across continents and hence is the most populated space as well. Keeping this in mind, social media has also become one of the most important and easier ways to increase brand visibility as well as practice free advertising. What better place to show off your brand than a place which brings your customers to you! However, just like all other things, this has a flipside to it as well. Let’s talk about it!
1. Reputation and Crisis Management
Shocking as it may sound but creating brand specific social media profiles is almost like committing suicide. One mistake, whether online or offline, does not matter, and your brands reputation is gone for a toss. Somebody did not like the service your brand provides, well be ready for long abusive session on Facebook and Twitter! Also, it works like a magnet! People who had decided to keep quiet in the past get instigated to talk about their bad experiences and the trail continues. Here’s an example:

This however can be avoided, especially if you have a strong customer support team at handy and a dashboard which helps you keep track of when, where and who has mentioned your brand. This also provides the sentiment in which your brand’s name has been mentioned. Another important aspect is keeping track of comments, complaints and queries posted by people on your social media channels. A more humane response to those comments can actually help curb the adverse effect it has on your brand’s reputation. It also helps reduce the mayhem it might cause among your loyal customers about their choice of brand, hence allowing you to take control of the situation and preventing any form of crisis.
2. Response Time Management
Shocking as it may sound, 42% of the customers complaining on various social media channels expect a response within 60 minutes (Edison Research). Therefore every E-commerce company needs to have a dedicated customer supports team, which looks specifically into the social media space.
Even with this, keeping track of every comment or mention made about your brand might not be an easy task, if done without using any tool. Using a cloud based tool like Simplify360 can help resolve this problem with ease. It helps recognize the problem areas, and assign tasks accordingly. This helps in better management of the entire task with a more systematic route in place, making timely answering possible. Here’s an example of how JetBlue does this perfectly.

3. Integrating CRM Database with Social Media
The general CRM management requires maintaining a database of your customers which allows one to refer to a customer, their duration of relationship with your brand, their choice of products and more. The same customer, who called you few days back about an issue they might be facing, might be frustrated with the response they received from your brand’s end and is now venting their anger on social media. Managing such customers might be tricky, however once you have their database at handy; the negotiation might just get simpler.
Using software which helps keep your customer database just a click away, allows your customer support team for the online space perform better and reduce the risk of crisis. This also makes sure that less filth is spread about your brand and lesser people are involved in the conversation reducing the risk of losing valuable customers.
4. Problem Identification and Faster Solutions
To meet all the above mentioned factors, it is necessary that the problem areas get identified quicker. The human eye can only do a little to keep track of all mentions, however deploying software which allows easy identification based on keywords, searches and mentions can help reduce the gap between problems and solutions. Simplify360 is one such solution which can be of great benefit for the customer support desk, allowing easy identification, assigning and resolving of cases. Here’s a screenshot from the dashboard: