Managing Customer Relationships in the Social Media Era: Introducing the Social CRM House

• Published in: Journal of interactive marketing Vol. 27; no. 4; pp. 270 - 280
• Main Authors: Malthouse, Edward C., Haenlein, Michael, Skiera, Bernd, Wege, Egbert, Zhang, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Elsevier Inc 01.11.2013; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Business metrics; Convergence; Customer insight; Customer relationship management; Customer services; Digital media; Employees; Engagement; Houses; Information technology; Interactive marketing; Key performance indicator; Manpower; Marketing; Shortages; Social media; Social networks; Strategy; Studies; Engagement; Key performance indicator; Customer relationship management; Social media; Employees; Customer insight; Information technology
• ISSN: 1094-9968; 1520-6653
• DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2013.09.008

CRM has traditionally referred to a company managing relationships with customers. The rise of social media, which has connected and empowered customers, challenges this fundamental raison d'etre. This paper examines how CRM needs to adapt to the rise of social media. The convergence of social media and CRM creates pitfalls and opportunities, which are explored. We organize this discussion around the new “social CRM house,” and discuss how social media engagement affects the house's core areas (i.e., acquisition, retention, and termination) and supporting business areas (i.e., people, IT, performance evaluation, metrics and overall marketing strategy). Pitfalls discussed include the organization's lack of control over message diffusion, big and unstructured data sets, privacy, data security, the shortage of qualified manpower, measuring the ROI of social media marketing initiatives, strategies for managing employees, integrating customer touch points, and content marketing.