Use of Social CRM for Customer Service Will Grow Rapidly Over the Next Two Years
During the next two years, 30 percent of leading companies will extend the goals of their online community activities to the design of enhanced service processes, such as social CRM, according to Gartner, Inc. Social CRM for customer service has the potential to bring new and dynamic methods for improving customer service, and in doing so is creating opportunities for new and existing providers in the customer service and contact center infrastructure markets.
Most deployments of social CRM are taking place in corporate marketing departments as an exercise in brand management, such as maintaining a presence on Facebook or Twitter. However, savvy customers are learning that the employees that manage interactions across these channels can also provide customer service functions -- sometimes with much-faster responsiveness than that provided over formal contact center channels. As customer awareness and use of social CRM for marketing as a back door to customer service increases, Gartner believes it will rapidly progress from an exception-handling situation to a process that needs to be standardized to scale to broader use.
CRM Software Spending Is Expected to See the Largest Increase of all Application Software Markets
Spending on customer relationship management (CRM) software is expected to see the largest increase of all the application software markets worldwide in 2011, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Overall, 31 percent of respondents expect an increase in application software spending in 2011. In comparing their 2011 fiscal budgets with 2010, 42 percent of survey respondents indicated that they expect to increase spending on CRM in 2011, compared to 39 percent on office suites and 36 percent on enterprise resource planning (ERP), which ranked second and third, respectively.
Gartner added that buyers of CRM continue to focus on investments that promote customer retention and enhance the customer experience, and they are increasingly interested in technologies that encourage development of customer communities and social networks. SaaS adoption continues to be a key driver. SaaS within the CRM industry is expected to exceed $4 billion in total software revenue in 2014, representing more than 32 percent of the overall CRM market. Marketing automation remains the market segment with the strongest growth, with the greatest demand coming from campaign and lead management and analytics.
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