Beyond check-ins and selfies, social media platforms have proved to be valuable partners for businesses all around the world looking to improve customer engagement.
Amidst the downpour of several social media strategies for enterprises across diverse industries, a rapidly emerging and key strategy is that of social CRM especially for businesses operating in the financial services sector where compliance is key.
The following insights will shed light on how a social CRM solution can improve customer relationship and engagement for a financial services firm.
- Social CRM tools help you be where your customers are. In today's times, wherein an increasing number of customers are relying on social medial channels/platforms for voicing their concerns, giving feedbacks/reviews and putting up their queries, in real time. A business can leverage these platforms to provide proactive and prompt customer service or solutions to its customers. Interestingly, a whopping number of folks today use social media platforms to voice their grievances or feedback. This seismic shift is radically changing the way a business interacts with its customers.
By taking your entire customer support to cyberspace, social CRM vendors shun the need for maintaining frantic call centers for financial services firms, which in turn helps save a huge amount of resources.
For instance, Bank of America is one such financial services institution that is doing exceedingly well in this league. They have a Twitter handle dedicated for customer service exclusively. The handle facilitates the bank to track customer relationships and allows them to respond to their queries or concerns in a prompt manner while keeping sensitive information off of the public forum by offering to call the social user. The account has more than 530,000 tweets now, which is in itself a testament for their performance. The bank has been able to spruce up customer retention substantially, all thanks to social CRM.
- Though offering responsive customer support might sound the need of the hour for call centers these days, a top social CRM software is sure to outperform the former. A financial services firm can make use of tracking and monitoring tools of social CRM to track grievances and complaints about their services or products. This means that finance services firms can locate specific interactions about their services, be it a Tweet, Facebook post, forum post or comments on other social media platforms, blogs or websites. Thus, by offering proactive customer support or service, a business gets to improve their brand reputation, loyalty and revenue through excellent word-of-mouth referrals and by addressing the various grievances of customers promptly. Social media platforms offer excellent potential for businesses in the financial services sector when it comes to offering prompt customer support services or solutions to their problems.
- Another great example is that of Tata Mutual Fund, an investment-banking firm in India, which is faring quite well in the game. They have a Twitter handle named Prof Simply Simple, which is regularly updated with news, stats and facts pertaining to investment, banking, mutual funds and other related financial info. The handle serves as an excellent platform to help its followers understand diverse financial terminologies, mutual fund investment plans, offers quizzes related to finances and addresses various other finance/investment related concerns or doubts. The handle is a great hit among a diverse range of folks that include but are not limited to businesspersons, salaried individuals, finance students and investors. This innovative and responsive social CRM strategy is doing well in terms of winning trust from a massive number of investors for the company.
- With the exponential outreach of social media to communicate with customers and prospects, it is extremely important for businesses to develop as well as foster communities across these platforms with the help of social CRM tools. Diving into the league here is American Express. They have a dedicated Facebook account, which testifies as why it is so important to develop and maintain communities for a brand across the Web. Taking a leap ahead, AMEX has some cool social marketing campaigns in place and one such initiative is their 'Extra Membership Rewards' program, which is a huge hit. The program is often accompanied by exciting travel and dining deals offered by the company as a means to reward customer loyalty and engagement on a regular basis.
Like Bank of America, American Express customer account concerns are handled off the public forum, but a topnotch social CRM will be able to identify a person's engagement across channels.
Developing and maintaining a strong, healthy and long-term customer relationship with your existing customers whilst getting new prospects has become the need of the hour for businesses operating in the financial services sector and social CRM software is your gateway to achieve that.
So, if you are getting aboard your social CRM journey afresh or are caught midway, then it is time to rope in the expert services of a leading and top social CRM software vendor to engage with your customers as well as prospects in a never before manner.
Author: Anwar Shaikh is a technical writer focusing on cloud computing, business intelligence/analytics, SMAC, social CRM, ERP and human resource technologies. Anwar is a wannabe cloud evangelist with great penchant for digital marketing. He writes for Sage Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a leading provider of budget and user-friendly CRM solutions to small and mid-sized businesses in India.
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