Microsoft Ireland CRM Research-27% of Irish businesses do not plan to use social media
How does social media support your customer relationship management processes?
That was one of the areas recently reviewed in research undertaken by Microsoft Ireland in a survey of 400 businesses.
The research uncovered that social media is making significant inroads into Irish customer relationship culture with:
- more than 31% of the companies surveyed using Facebook to interact with customers
- 23% using Twitter
- 26% using LinkedIn.com
- and 10.6% using YouTube to provide video content to their customers.
Almost one-quarter of respondents had not used social media platforms but wished to in the future and 27% of the Irish businesses who participated in the survey commented that they do not use social media and had no plans to do so in the future.
Microsoft Ireland undertook similar research 5 years ago – in comparison to then the biggest change the respondents have seen in managing customer relationship management that customers now expect faster responses (29.1% of respondents) – this supports the recent UK research I wrote about where customers expect a response on twitter or Facebook within 60 minutes.
- 22.9% commented that customers are more cost conscious
- 17.9% commented that competition is tougher as customers have more choice
- 13.9% commented that customers are more savy about what they are buying
- 11.8% commented that customers are spending less
- 5% commented that customers are buying more items online.
What I did find concerning was that of the respondents, 18.2% commented that no one in their business had specific accountability for customer relationship management – that clearly presents and opportunity to enhance customer relationships if processes and accountability is defined.
You can access the full report on the Microsoft Ireland website (there is a 30 day free trial there to their CRM platform, Microsoft Dynamics) or read it below in the SlideShare presentation.
In the report there are also articles from Mervyn O’Shaughnessy, CEO of the Sales Institute of Ireland and Tom Trainor, CEO of the Marketing Institute of Ireland. I was also invited to comment on the integration of social media into customer relationship management.
You will also find case studies in the document of how some Irish businesses are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.
Are you integrating social media into your customer relationship management?
What questions do you have about customer relationship management best practice? Do leave your comments below as I’ll be hosting a free webinar on this subject in the forthcoming weeks.
Microsoft Ireland CRM Research-27% of Irish businesses do not plan to use social media is an article post from: Biz Growth News. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.