Over recent years, Social Media has become even more prominent, both in our daily lives and for businesses. People are beginning to rely on it, simply to communicate and share information or as a tool to improve business and customer relations.

Pros and Cons of Social Media

As the number and presence of social networks increase, businesses are using these as a means to publicise and develop the awareness of their company. This is a smart means to do so, with it acting as a link to your customers, engaging with them without the formality of a letter or phone call and being able to view and share opinions. Sometimes this can have a negative effect, as customers are using Facebook and Twitter as a tool to complain about an experience, event, place or company. Yet, any smart business will understand that the best cause of action is to engage with the upset customer immediately to try and rebuild the consumer-brand relationship.

This progression has reached such a point that it is now being implemented into software. New business software solutions are able to integrate with social networks, in order to help users deal with and interact with customers using these platforms.

The Social Customer

It has become more apparent over recent years how much the public are relying on the internet for many aspects of their life. Online shopping has become prominent, as it is far easier and quicker to go online in the comfort of your home than spending time and money going to a shopping centre. E-mail is no longer the only form of online communication as many people now find it quicker and simpler to message people and companies via Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ or other social networks.  At the same time, people are more likely to search for companies and businesses online, than they are to use the Yellow Pages as they would have years ago.

This means that it is essential for companies to keep up with this change if they are to continue being relevant in their market.

Social Media networks enable businesses to consistently have real-time feedback, both from satisfied and dissatisfied customers taking to Twitter and Facebook to voice their opinion on a certain experience, product or service. Although a happy customer’s view can be beneficial to the business, this form of press can also be vastly damaging to a company’s reputation as the viral nature of Social Media messages can mean they spread far quicker and wider than mouth-to-mouth gossip. Within seconds a negative tweet can be trending and thousands of people will have a bad impression of a business. This is why it is essential for businesses to be present in social networks so they can monitor and respond to this feedback.

Social Media and Software

As businesses are understanding the importance of social networks, they are in greater need of having the tools to monitor it and incorporate it into their processes. Software developers know of this importance and Microsoft in particular, has designed solutions which include the aspect of social networks.

In order to connect your people with those outside of the business, Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses the capabilities of Enterprise Social by Microsoft. These powerful functions enable your sales, marketing and customer service teams to better connect with your customers and help your business to achieve its goals. This software provides the tools so that users can listen and effectively analyse the message, so that they can identify the correct form of response. Businesses need to engage with both satisfied and dissatisfied customers, as by maintaining contact with happy customers will reinforce their positive disposition towards the company. This connection with customers via social networks, enables your employees to better manage the customer experience, improving customer satisfaction, increasing their loyalty as well as the potential of driving additional revenue.

What’s Prodware’s role?

As Europe’s largest specialist in deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Prodware is ideally placed to show you how CRM will help your business to “Go Social” and put Social Media at the heart of your customer engagement strategy. To talk to us more about CRM, please click here.