Revised January 13, 2022
Revised September 9, 2021
Revised January 23, 2020
Social customer relationship management (CRM) was being written about as a distinct product category as far back as 2008, but market interest really began to take off the following year. According to Google Trends, the average number of monthly web searches for the phrase “social CRM” quadrupled from June 2009 to June 2011. Market interest has remained fairly strong since then.
How does social CRM differ from traditional CRM? Both capture prospect and customer contact data, organizational structure, and interaction history. Both help sales, marketing, and customer service personnel plan and schedule follow-up activities.
But social CRM extends traditional CRM features by adding social media accounts to each contact record, and capturing social interactions as well as more traditional communication like phone calls and email messages.