The Role of Social Media in Managing Customer Relationship - Essay Example

?THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN MANAGING RELATIONSHIP INTRODUCTION Since recent past messages were communicated to the public through press releases, advertisements and press conferences. Over the years, new methods and channels of communication are developed and social media is one of them. Social media is an active channel which is used for maintaining social society. Interactivity of companies with its customers is a necessity for customer service, improving brand image and increasing customer loyalty. In the current world, social media has taken an important position in the lives of almost every individual and organization with connectivity (Boyd, 2013). 1.1. OBJECTIVES Social Media (here after referred as SM) plays a significant role in managing customer relationship. The main focus of this report is to signify the effect of social media on customer service, on brand loyalty and on the purchase intention of the customers. The significant importance of understanding the relationship has increased because with the passage of time the popularity of social media has increased dramatically. The development in the business world has increased the importance of social media in maintaining a healthy and long term relationship with the customers. An article published in Forbes discusses social media as business marketing and customer based development platform (Bosari, 2012). The presence of social media is considered flexible and well-managed must for businesses medium to enhance the customer relationship in this digital era. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are three most actively used social media platforms. The increasing significance of social media has pushed the colleges towards offering degrees in Social Media Marketing (Bosari, 2012). This clearly elaborates that social media plays an active and prominent role in managing customer relationship. According to Harrison (2012), written adoption of different forums of social media depends on five main objectives which shall derive the strategy. Several brands and businesses aggressively create presence on to the social websites without clear plan or strategy; hence, fail to achieve the desired goal. It is essential that the businesses have a proper plan of action to implement social media strategy which is in clear alignment to their long term and short term goals. All strategies at social media are directed by five aspects. These main objectives which the businesses plan to achieve on the social media include becoming popular and visible to the customers, start engaging with the existing and prospect customers, acquiring media attention by engaging with bloggers and journalists, establishing a reputation which promotes word of mouth sales for the business and maximizing the overall sales of the business. All the set objectives are essential to be implemented and they become an essential tool for the business’ social media strategy success. 2.0 THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN MANAGING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP Social media is considered very important for business marketers and being a new phenomenon it is spreading widely as a business development platform. 2.1. SOCIAL MEDIA Social Media is a forum which facilitates interaction of social community and allows the sharing of various contents through different social community based applications. It includes different forms which include blogs, social sites and videos etc (Kim and Ko, 2012). Gaining extensive popularity the business firms and governmental organizations have started using social media as an important communication tool. Social media based marketing requires comparatively less input and it is highly cost effective if managed properly. The claimed immense development of SM can be witnessed from the following statistics (Bosari, 2012): SM is used as a marketing platform by 94% of the businesses which have an organized marketing department. 60% of the marketers constantly devote their time in the development of the SM forum. 85% of businesses which use the SM platform have admitted that their marketing exposure has increased. 43% people belonging to the age group of 20-29 devote more than 10 hours a week surfing SM websites. Hence, businesses are constantly making efforts to increase their market share by communicating their products and services to existing and potential market. Businesses are also increasing their market share by developing insight about the customer behavior from surfing trends. For example, Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice campaign tested friendship of people. Campaign required friends to delete 10 friends from friendship list for the Burger and wickedly informed those friends who were deleted for the burger. The campaign resulted sacrifice of 233,000 people and won awards for Gold for Web Application and ADC Hybrid Award (Vo, 2009). The open forum is also critical in use for the fact as customer feedback get beyond the control of the company and can affect the position of the company among existing and potential customers. Similar Burger King had to face crises when the image of an employee standing on lettuce was circulated on social sites (Poston, 2012). Hence, the medium offers high magnitude impact on either way. 2.2. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP Simply defining customer relationship management refers to the marketing tactics used for customer retention by creating a bonding with the customers (Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2001). Over the years the organizations have been working to propose methods for improving customer relationships. Businesses strive and consider managing a healthy relationship with customers as an essential measure for the success of the business. Businesses invest huge sum of their finances to develop a healthy relationship with the customers (Gordon, 2003). To develop strengthened relationship, companies constantly, make efforts for enhancing customer satisfaction. This can be done by acquiring feedback from the customers so that a healthy relationship can be maintained by integrating feedback. Additionally, customer attitudes are very important measure that directs companies for defining strategy in cultivating customer relationship. For building those attitudes it is required that satisfaction of the customers is constantly monitored and followed. Businesses must be aware that it is the values, attitudes and behavior of the customers which bring them closer to the brand and create future preference. These collaborative measures and the satisfaction derived from this form basis of customer relationship (Gordon, 2003). Organizations emphasize on customer relationship for increasing its profitability and sales. SM is being used by the businesses in innovating e commerce practices, improve customer relationship and understand consumer behavior (Baird and Parasnis, 2011a). The companies must take measures for making the experience of the customers valuable for the time and attention which they have given to the company’s web portal platform (Baird and Parasnis, 2011a). For example, Merck reported loss of its market share to Pfizer based on the customer relationship management when complimented with scientific expertise (Kotler and Westman, 2006) 2.3. ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN ECOMMERCE BUSINESSES The SM plays a very active role in promoting the ecommerce businesses. The affect can be specified by noting a prominent increase in the product rating and reviews. Besides this the customer experience widely becomes public and this in turn allows the organizations to constantly innovate the product according to the customer’s feedback. SM has reformed the marketing practices of the brands because it helps in deriving the experiences of the customers and it increases the interaction of the companies with the customers which significantly helps in increasing the brand awareness (Roggio, 2011). A practical example of the ecommerce business which had actively used the SM and excelled is Best Buy. It is an electronic retailer which used the SM to solve the customer related queries. A new service strategy was built; called the “Twelpforce” which is a system used by the employees during work to communicate and solve the queries of the customers via twitter (Heggestuen, 2013). Apart from responding to the customers’ queries, this tool allowed the employees to communicate with other employees within the organization in order to further improve the overall customer service. This shows innovation is increasing the interactivity of the employees along with the customers (Gremler, Gwinner, & Brown, 2001). 2.4. EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP WITH EXAMPLES The impact of the social media on customer relationship can be better explained with the help of different examples and case studies of real organizations. Examples of the companies which have brought changes in their marketing patterns by using the SM and developing great customer relationship are DELL: The organization being a technology giant adopted customer relationship management through the SM. It launched up a SM command center in which more than 25,000 of the employees were trained by the year 2011. These trained employees are now active on different social media networks in order to gather important customers’ insights and share it with other employees in the organization (Heggestuen, 2013). This in turn allowed the company to improve the overall customer relationship management. DOMINOS: In 2009 the company faced negative publicity from the posting of a YouTube video. Since then, the company sought responses of the individuals and brought dramatic changes to its operational structure. Media promotional activities were launched along with marketing of the new structure. With this the sales for the quarter increased by 14% and since then the company has not stopped prospering (Heggestuen, 2013). According to YEC (2012) there are five ways for improving the customer relationship with the use of social media. The article summarizes that in the past certain businesses like medical device companies and financial institutions hardly engaged with using social media. However, the changing trends of the industry have also made the businesses of such genre to engage with social media marketing. Businesses like the automotive businesses, financial and medical device companies have started engaging customer for feedback and promotional purpose using social media. Facebook is used by most of the businesses for building meaningful relationships. For example, HBFC has developed a separate page for its student customers. Similarly, GM has its own page on facebook etc. For this purpose the businesses start communicating through the social media which gives customers an opportunity to share their experiences. Social media helps connect the business with the customers especially to those which do not have physical existence and business setup. Using social media; hence, serves as platform for acquiring feedback and specifically understanding what the customers require. Social media is the most effective form of connecting with the customers with minimal communication barriers. 3.0. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA AND SERVICE QUALITY SM has a direct relationship with the promotion of the service related business. The quality of the services which is delivered can be easily assessed with being interactive to the customers on the SM. This platform is a reliable source for acquiring the responses or feedback from the customers and promoting new enhanced measures taken by the company. 3.1. SERVICE QUALITY The quality of service, delivered to the customers is vital for the businesses. The methods which can be adopted by the businesses for improving the service quality delivered should be designed by keeping in mind the factors which derive customer satisfaction. This requires that the supply and demand is managed, customer feedback is actively considered, customer complaints must be analyzed, the weaknesses must be rectified, and lastly a comparison must be made with what the competitors are offering. For this purpose, businesses are actively using SM for managing the quality of the service (Estep, 2011). 3.2. SOCIAL MEDIA ACTS AS MAINTENANCE STAFF IN A BUSINESS SM and its increasing popularity result in use of different social media networks as a maintenance tool for the business. Constant interaction with the customers keeps them aware about the promotions of the business. The use of the social wave has been helpful for the organizations in following domains; better flow of information, collaboration internally between the employees, new improved methods can be innovated and new opportunities can be explored by the organizations (Cognizant, 2013). Social media has acquired excessive priority in the business scenario. It has become an essential component to ensure the companies online presence. Companies regularly post content on website develop view of the changing trends in customers’ behavior by following the trend of such of responses on posted content. Blog posts and other social media responses from the customers also contribute significantly in understanding the requirement of the customers and solving those problems with the passage of time. Traffic of the customers which is attracted by different forums on the social media contributes in generating idea for future trends towards growth of the businesses. 3.3. SOCIAL REVIEWS AND RATINGS AFFECT CUSTOMER’S EXPECTATIONS, PREPARATIONS AND SATISFACTIONS The development of the SM took place through the ratings and reviews which the consumers give as a feedback for the product online. The consumer’s perception towards online buying has evolved very quickly. These days the consumers conduct active researches about the products and make complex purchase decisions online. Ratings and reviews help the customers in understanding the product and the service quality effectively and this assessment is mostly done on the basis of reviews and rating which others have made. The buying decisions of the consumers widely depend on the ratings and reviews which also contribute in the final satisfaction derived (Evoc Insights, 2006). More than 85% of the consumers actively purchase travel, electronics and automobile online. Users give preference to the brands with which they are more familiar and the portals which are easier to use. E.g. Amazon and Circuit City 63% of the consumers in a survey replied that they would give higher shopping preferences to the portals which offer proper rating and reviews about the products. 3.4. EXAMPLES: Best Buy appointed Gina Debogovich as community manager in 2007. Gina Debogovich initiated program to launch the social media platform for the customers on Twitter and blog forum. This was developed in response to the customers’ feedback that business teams are hesitant to interact on the social media. The effort and input paid off and company was regarded as the leader on Social customer Support according to Business Insider on June 12th, 2012 (Social Media Today, 2012). Reviews and ratings play a prominent role on the customers buying preferences. Many businesses provide this facility which informs customers an assessment of success of the products in the view of other customers. Retail online selling store like Amazon.com relies heavily on the users for rating products which they buy from the portals. These ratings help others in searching best goods as have been rated by the users. Besides this the users’ comments for the products or about information’s usefulness also contributes significantly. The rating and review method is used as a filter process and helps online buyers trace reasonable product for buying. Similar to this example is Netflix.com which allows the users to rate the movies and provide a comparative view of the movies (PennState, n.d.). The process of reviewing and rating the products on the social media forums is used by the visitors for assessing the products before they actually purchase the products. This helps customers in generating the idea about the actual and promoted values of the product. . This connection among different users also gives them an opportunity for sharing their experiences. This connection which is formed amongst the users through the social media has increased its popularity and has pressed business to value customer feedback in fear of bad fame on open platform. Hence, marketers today require constantly assessing social forums for evaluating customer expectation and making arrangements for meeting them. 4.0. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRAND LOYALTY The impact of SM is very high on building brand loyalty for the customers. The feedback and ratings which the products get improves the overall brand image of the product. 4.1. BRAND LOYALTY In an article written by Robert Branson on September 23, 2013 on Building Brand Loyalty it was clearly stated that winning the people is more important and the profits will automatically follow. The article also proposed that the business must be built on the employee’s idea (Branson, 2013). The workforce must be pushed to come up with ideas and interact with the customers to increase the brand image and find out the view point of the customers about the product. By being nice to the customers a positive image will be delivered to the customers. This will in the end significantly result in increasing the profits for the company. All the three steps contribute to accomplishing the organizational success and attracting new customers towards the business. Companies spend millions of dollars for enhancing the brand loyalty of the customers but only a few of those brands succeed in doing so. These loyal customers are very important for the brands as they constantly advocate the overall features of the product in their own social circle. These advocates have now become more important for the business with the excessive advancements in the use of social media. The brand loyal customers go at lengths do their best in publicizing the product and making others familiar of the attributes which they found enticing about the products. Such customers also play important role in advocating brand against negative comments generated on social media. Several brands are very renowned for having excessive brand loyalty which is namely Apple, Samsung, Wal-Mart, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Dunkin Donuts, L’Oreal etc (Business Insider, n.d). Recent statistics revealed important position of Google 1+ in enhancing loyalty of hotel customers (Buuteeq, 2013). The list is never ending for such products and they consistently gain popularity through word of mouth popularity of the products. 4.2. SOCIAL MEDIA ACTS AS ADVERTISER IN A BUSINESS In this recent time SM is used as an advertiser in the business. It offers opportunities to the marketers which are potentially unique (Business Insider, 2013). Most of the active businesses today are considering that the social media is a much effective way of interacting with the customers. It has become the most powerful mode of advertising which the businesses are adapting. The SM marketing is used actively by the marketer and this platform is used by nearly 94% of the businesses which have a properly organized and a developed marketing department (Bosari, 2012). According to Turner (2013), 2013 is excessively growing in the advertising technology industry and will be a breakthrough year for the social media marketing domain of digital advertising. The social media domain is on the verge of constant innovation and media forums like Facebook and Twitter are actively becoming popular. Companies are investing both their energy and time on making social media as an important segment of their marketing plan. Facebook, Google +, and Twitter have connected the people and social groups which is changing social marketing into digital marketing. These forums have become major components through which companies acquire their goals and analyze methods of enhancing their performances. Companies post on these social media platforms the contributions in the form of the pictures and posts and spread the word massively. This form of advertisement is able to generate instant feedback from customer and hence provides companies opportunity to attract wider potential of customers through promotions. This change in the trend is pushing social media forums towards becoming advertisers for the products. Advertisements on the social media forum succeed in generating the desired responses very actively as compared to the previous practices of advertising. Companies such as Nike, Burger King and Uniqolo have been awarded for their super hit campaigns of advertisement using social media (Walker, 2013). One of the best examples of the social media advertisement is witnessed in the general presidential elections in USA in 2012. Barrack Obama used social media wisely considering his popularity among the young voters. Obama used Twitter and used #Romnesia for the initiating and turning the debate around was the played an immensely positive role for fetching victory for the Obama in an election that were considered a mere loss (SMSS, 2012). 4.3. SOCIAL COMMUNITY AFFECTS BRAND LOYALTY IN CONSUMERS’ BUYING BEHAVIOR The social community and advertising on the SM affects the consumers buying behavior. Based on the earlier discussion the customers carefully assess the ratings and reviews which have been given to the products or services this attracts the users and establishes their end buying decisions (Szmigin, Canning, & Reppel, 2005). According to a study conducted by Kim and Ko (2010a), brand reputation is significantly impacted through the SM as around 36% of the respondents responded positively about the companies that are marketing through blogs. Similarly in a research conducted in 2008 of DEI Worldwide showed that 70% of the consumers visited the SM website to extract information about the company and its products. In the same study 49% of the respondents affirmed that they had made their purchase decision based on the responses which they got through the SM websites. 60% of the respondents affirmed that they were more likely to pass the information to others and lastly 45% of the respondents who selected using SM engaged with the product through word of mouth communication (Kim and Ko, 2012). With these statistics a conclusion can be developed that companies which are not engaging in using the SM for marketing are missing the opportunity for reaching the customers. The impact of social media on the customers is high and it significantly helps in developing a brand image which in turn affects the overall consumer buying behavior. In an article published in Forbes magazine it is clearly stated that brands are excessively using social media for engaging with the customers (Knapp, 2012). Brands constantly work for improving their interaction with the customers and acquire feedback through the social media forums. Knapp (2012), reported that the beverage maker Arizona has over more than 3,000,000 fans following its Facebook page. Furthermore, from the survey it has been concluded that customers who follow social media on daily basis turn into purchasing the product twice than those customers and brands that are engaged only once a month (Haller, 2013). The practice of using the social media differs from organization to organization. Some engage with enormous zeal and use major portion of their activity for doing this. However, the success in not hidden in constant engagement but in effective engagement as is realized by the small businesses. Small businesses in USA are failing to reap the desired statistics (ROI) despite enormous investment of time (Casserly, 2013). Among reasons mentioned for the purpose is the inability of the business in deriving brand loyalty (Casserly, 2013). It is also estimated that the businesses which are not adapting social media in due course will face serious damage to their brand image in the future. This can be safely concluded that the key for surviving in competitive market is building loyalty for the customers and excessively engaging with using the social media. 5.0. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONSUMER PURCHASE INTENTION The feedback and word of mouth generated through social media networks directly influence the purchase intention of the consumers. 5.1. PURCHASE INTENTION The decision of the consumers to buy or not to buy the product is referred to as the purchase decision. From various studies it has been derived that the attitudes and the preferences of the consumers towards the Brand is detrimental to measuring the attitude of the customers. The purchase intention is based on the attitude of the customer which develops with the equity (Kim, Kim & Johnson, 2010; Kim & Ko, 2010b; Kim & Lee, 2009; Lloyd & Luk, 2010). 5.2. THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL COMMUNITY ON CONSUMER PURCHASE INTENTION The purchase intentions of the consumers are significantly dependent on the social community. The consumers of the products purchase more if they find a trail of purchase on the social channels. The customers seek reviews on the web and base their buying decision on the word of mouth saying. The comments and reviews of other customers on different social communities directly influence the perception and purchase intention of other people. This is because of three main social capital dimensions as highlighted in the research by Kate (2010), and is elaborated in the image below: (Kate, 2010) 5.3. EXAMPLE Purchase intention of the customers is affected by the information availability. Master Card and Visa card when assessed for their responses on social accounts revealed positive response of the Master Card social account while Visa Card disappointed with no response. Using these platforms for the customer responses and feedback master card can effectively market itself for driving customers on the basis of immediate information provision to direct purchase intent (Knight, 2013). Fidelman (2013) states, that 78% of the sales people are actively engaged with the social media for promoting the sales. The practices which were adopted in the past have now been reformed and new and improved methods for the sales have been initiated. Sales people are using twitter and Facebook for generating the leads on the internet. This plays an important role in providing customers with much more customized service than would have been possible otherwise. From a report of Keenan, a famous professional who has generated huge sales through using the social media, most interesting findings of 2012 was that 78.6% of the sales which were made using the social media outperformed the sales of those who were not on the social media (Fidelman, 2013). It was also estimated that 23% of the social media users were more successful as compared to the peers who were not using the social media. Successful sales have been generated from the use of the social media. It was also concluded that social media was playing a clear role in dominating the intention of the customers while making the purchase. This is extremely beneficial for the sales people who remain in constant pressure for meeting sales targets in rising competitive business environment (Fidelman, 2013). 6.0 IMPLICATIONS The implications of this research clearly elaborate the significance of Social Media and its contribution in effectively managing customer relationship. From this report an assessment has been developed about the effect of Social Media on customer service, brand loyalty and purchase intention of the customers. It has been noted that worldwide social media is progressing. The Nielsen report shows that nearly 4 out of 5 users visit the social media web pages and blogs (Nielsen, 2012). The popularity of the social media has significantly developed and 10 major global markets are actively using the social media portals for the active usage (Nielsen, 2012). The use of social media has improved the customer managements for the firms and it has proved as a turnaround for American Airlines. When ranked amongst the US firms American Airline ranks ninth amongst all the US brands. The response rate of the company with its customers and the interactivity on the social platform is 94%. The effect of the sandstorm sandy was reverted by the airline by using the social media (Heggestuen, 2013). The use of social media is highly effective in creating customer relationship and in increasing the brand loyalty for the customers. The increasing popularity of Social Media shows that in the future interactivity and advertising on the social media of the products and services will be the strongest form of advertising. The impact of social media and review drawn on such web sites will contribute significantly in developing consumer purchase intention. 7.0. CONCLUSION This report is a combination of three prime concepts which shows the significance of social media and its impact on the service quality, brand loyalty and the consumer purchase intention which affects the consumers. Social media is actively growing in the field of advertising. It is a mode of communicating with the customers and builds a long lasting relationship. The customers seek service quality and the view point which is delivered and communicated on the social media as a word of mouth impacts on the purchase decisions of the customers. When the organizations communicate with their customers and consider their feedback a long term relationship is developed. This relationship between the customer and the company leads to brand loyalty. The company which succeeds in acquiring all the three steps and manages a healthy relationship with the customers succeeds in delivering values to the customers. 8.0. LIMITATIONS The benefits associated with the social media marketing are enormous. The limitations associated with using the social media are that if the applied methods are inappropriate then the consequences face can be disastrous (Eley & Thilley, 2009). For example, McDonald’s campaign on social media to share the stories about McDonald’s Happy Meal turned immensely unexpected. Customers were asked to share regretful experiences about McDonald’s Happy meal. People in turn resulted with horror stories and McDonald’s collected only pessimistic notices about its working conditions and falling product quality (Kim, 2012). Even minor mistakes are prominently highlighted when marketing on the social platform. Other disadvantage of social media is that the interactive nature of social media marketing may impact on the productivity of the employees. The return of social media advertising is long term and the marketing might take time in significantly showing its effectiveness. These are the limitations associated to the use of social media for advertising and creating customer relationship (Zarrella, 2010). LIST OF REFERENCES Baird, C., and Parasnis, G. (2011a). From social media to social CRM: what customers want. 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