The Impact of Social CRM on Franchising
Posted on 14. Feb, 2010 by borourke in Franchising
How a franchise manager or executive looks at the key functions of their business must, in many instances, evolve significantly. Rapid changes in how customers, employees and strategic partners interact with the world requires people to rethink methodologies and creates significant implications to all business models, including franchising.
A recent report by Gartner, which you can obtain for free at http://bit.ly/cJ7SmJ , sets forth some pretty exciting opportunities regarding how companies can and will need to deliver effective support experiences and the franchise industry has a lot to consider as a result.
Some key findings and recommendations from the report, which was commissioned by salesforce.com, are here:
• Expectations for social CRM (tapping into social networks to improve marketing, sales and service processes) will dramatically exceed the measurable benefits;
• For much of the world, Facebook will – or already has – become the dominant social networking site. Marketeers and customer service managers will need to take this into consideration when planning social networking projects, while monitoring for shifts in user sentiment;
• A new generation of Internet Protocol (IP)-based contact center solutions with preintegrated IP interaction recording platforms will be far more effective and less expensive than previous platforms; and
• Consumer willingness to perform all possible customer service functions themselves (self- service) will be universal by 2011.
The report shares these and other recommendations:
• Vice presidents of customer service or customer experience should be sure to measure the consistency and effectiveness of customer interactions across all touchpoints from the customer’s point of view;
• The popularity of social networking sites means that the service organization cannot expect the customer to come to the corporate website only, but must work on ways to reach out to the customer at these destinations as well; and
• When developing a long-term strategic road map for contact center infrastructure, include call recording as part of this single-vendor solution.
If Cloud adoption that encompasses social media is not at the center of your business development, operations support, marketing and strategic planning you should consider talking with the flywheel group to learn more about how these solutions can benefit you and your organization.
