Critical success factors for social CRM strategies for South African companies
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Date
2015-02-13
Authors
Reynecke, Taryn
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Abstract
Social CRM is a new buzz word in the marketing and technology fields and has
become an important strategic initiative for companies to employ. Social CRM
arose from the need to transform the way we communicate with our customers
due to the emergence of social media. In South Africa Social CRM is still a
relatively new field with not many companies implementing it successfully.
This research explores the benefits of implementing a Social CRM strategy as
well as what the critical success factors are for implementing such a strategy. Five
organisations that are implementing Social CRM were identified and eleven
managers within those companies were interviewed. Eight companies that provide
CRM or social media services for their clients were also identified and one
executive or manager was interviewed from each.
The respondents were interviewed over email using a semi-structured interview
approach, which yielded qualitative data. The data was analysed using content
analysis, more specifically, thematic content analysis and concept mapping to
determine recurring themes. Findings from the interviews resulted in nine benefits
of implementing Social CRM and seven critical success factors of Social CRM.
The findings of this research shows that the benefits gained from implementing
Social CRM are great and include reduced costs, improved customer service,
increased reputation and brand building, better segmentation and targeting of
customers, enhanced communication and customer collaboration, interactive
customer engagement, improved customer insight, increased sales and proactive
issue resolution. It also shows that companies need to ensure certain factors are
successfully put in place when implementing Social CRM strategies. The critical
success factors include organisational readiness (strategy, culture and
processes), commitment and buy-in (champion leadership, company-wide
commitment and buy-in, senior management commitment and buy-in, staff
commitment and buy-in), interaction with customers, knowledge and skills,
technology, relevant, high quality content and measurement and monitoring.
Description
Thesis (M.M. (Strategic Marketing))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2014.