By Gina Blitstein

When you have business contacts or customers, you most likely keep track of them in a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM). Along with a customer's name and contact information, these programs allow you to track information about your interactions and communications with each customer. That information is vital to keeping connected with the people with whom you've done business and hope to do business with again.

With the dawn of social media (sites where people share their interests, opinions, preferences and other personal information like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin) there's a lot more information readily available about the average Internet user. This is information that people freely provide in the interest of making connections with others. It seems a natural evolution to want to use this information for the purpose of deepening business relationships as well. Is there a way for businesses to leverage information gathered from these sites as a means to enhance the relationship between them and their customers? According to the concept of the "Social CRM" the answer is a definitive "Yes!"

Pamela O'Hara, President of BatchBlue Software, developers of BatchBook, a web-based CRM service explains, "While the idea of social CRM is really just developing, Social CRM puts the "relationship" back into customer relationship management. It’s about joining the ongoing conversations our customers and contacts are having in social media places like blogs, Twitter, forums etc. It's using the social tools that are out there to build new and deepen existing relationships. Social CRM allows a two-way conversation between a business and its network."

Pamela says that BatchBook is expanding the information it captures to accommodate this evolution in relationships with customers and contacts. "Traditional CRM focuses heavily on contact management, opportunity management and activity management. BatchBook allows you to track those things, but it also allows you to follow what people are saying about your company or even your competition on blogs, on Twitter, anyplace these conversations are happening. It's about having a more open dialogue and engaged customer base. A social CRM provides a holistic view of someone not just as a "lead" or a "prospect", but as an actual person."

Here are some benefits of Social CRM Pamela offers:

1. It helps small businesses build more personal relationships with their customers and business contacts.
2. It helps small businesses glimpse what their network is saying about their product.
3. It helps small businesses promote word-of-mouth more easily.
4. It allows a more personal interaction with customers and people prefer to do business with people they know and trust.

What does Social CRM look like? Basically the program incorporates feeds from the various social media outlets. So in addition to basic, transaction-based information about a customer or contact, a user would have access to more casual information about that person as well. This information may be feedback about the company's (or their competitor's) products or services. It may just as likely be information about the hobbies, travel or musical tastes of their contacts. Having this information allows you to gain a more personal relationship with your contacts.

Technology presents new opportunities for expanding your business' network from advertising to customer service. By helping to build more insightful relationships, the Social CRM is yet another way that the social media evolution can help businesses be more responsive to their customers. The more you know about your customers and contacts, the greater the opportunities you will have to connect with them and meet their needs.

Could using a Social CRM help you to better serve your customers?