Web 2.0 technologies and social sites have contributed heavily in socializing internet and making it a favorite media for all people around the world. Although only a handful Web 2.0 sites are there, they are the most popular destinations on internet and the most promising media for advertisement and marketing. The social sites like FaceBook, MySpace, Technorathi, Orkut, Digg, etc have a vast collection of users and visitors having very high customer value for any company. May be this is the reason why all CRM vendors goes after Web 2.0.



Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have proven their effectiveness in business management. Most CRM software solutions present today are powerful enough to handle multiple tasks including data, employee, product, customer, marketing and contact management, and scheduling of events. Although first created as stand alone systems, today’s CRM systems are mostly web based offering all the benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS). According to CRM vendors the next main improvement is the socializing of CRM systems. But creating CRM 2.0 or Social CRM for exploiting customer value in Web 2.0 sites has both pros and cons.



The most important benefit of CRM 2.0 is its wide reach. Companies can exploit new niches and can reach out to new peoples. The marketing also seems to be less costly as low cost techniques like blogs, RSS feeds and viral marketing can be better utilized for marketing a product or service. Web 2.0 CRM software systems are proposed to offer better interaction with customers; like discussion forums, comments, messages, etc. in which the customer have an active part. Theses systems will also have much more easy to operate features such as more customizable dashboards and reporting tools and one-click solutions.



Like most 2.0 sites these CRM systems will be much simpler in nature; even though they have more powerful tools and supporting databases. Most Social CRM systems are open-source solutions that enable companies and users to customize it to their taste. By combining the resource of social websites they enable companies to form online communities.



But most users of social websites want to keep their personal life out of their business life. They just enter these sites for entertainment or to meet some one they love and to share their thoughts, feelings and pictures. Most of them regret to this type of marketing. CRM 2.0 also shall not work for small businesses how do not have enough resources, both money and technical knowledge, to implement and reap from these systems. Most of these systems are fairly costly from a small to medium business point of view. For companies which are extremely territorial and offer some high class products for limited peoples (just like CRM software for business managers) creating a strong customer community will be difficult.



About the Author



Praveen Ortec works for eSalesTrack.com, the provider of small business CRM software which is a high-class web based document management solution and online workforce management system.