Question

Explain customer relationship management systems and show how Facebook could use it to understand their customer’s needs and discuss whether Facebook has improved having a satisfying social life or undermined people offline relations (400 words)

Answer 1

Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM) is a marketing & core strategy that every company/business adopts to maintain good relations with every customer for repeat purchases on product or services, maintaining loyalty which enhances a business to cultivate good customer relationships. The system CRM traditionally due to customer focus has been a primary tool to sales & marketing but in recent years CRM's have evolved & developed so rapidly that it has a more central role beyond expanding sales & marketing into almost every department.

The CRM systems involve the following:-

• Providing sales force automation by tracking customer data, analyzing, forecasting, visualizing trends on sales to increase productivity.
• Providing Marketing Automation helps in reducing repetitive tasks where the potential customer may get a mail or tweet from the company website directly which impacts the interest in new product lines & details of prospects for the business.
• With the advent of technologies, the CRM has also developed in recent whereby there are plenty of CRM providers & partners with a constantly emerging landscape of social networking providing a complete picture of the customer and thier data & connecting,
• Business intelligence provides the insights of data in growth & adoption and going into predictive interaction which allows a business to act proactively by seeing behavioral trends soon and going in to change the selling strategies.

Facebook as a social media giant could use this strategy of CRM to understand thier customer needs by & has improved the satisfying social life or undermine offline relations due to the following means-

• By creating a sense of belongingness among the various customers with a need to belong is satisfied most by communication with close ties through an online mode & offline as well at wide spheres.
• By understanding the rationale maintenance of frequent substantive communication grows and maintains social ties by creating communities through online & offline means.
• Facebook tries to utilize its prospective customers well by understanding each class of customers & connecting them as the businessman, social change-makers & final customers as people for the good cause and better maintenance of relationships amongst them and the company for long.
• Facebook by adopting CRM strategy well can surely make reliable data available for every class of customers and the company as a win to win situation to incorporate the change very easily and adjust as per the customer needs and produce the various services across globally.

Overall this will help facebook not to stand alone as just a social media marketer but also creating sustainable relationships among the company & the millions of customers connecting globally with sound strategic decisions & adjustments at a corporate level.