The social CRM market is set to witness exponential growth – from $1.91bn (£1.2bn) in 2013 to $9.08bn (£5.7bn) in 2018 – according to a new report which claims companies are at last waking up to the potential to interact with customers on social media.
The study, by Markets & Markets, predicts the overall CRM sector will break through the $24bn (£15bn) mark over the next five years.
The figure does not quite match a recent Gartner report, which claimed spend on CRM will grow faster than for any other sector of business software, and valued the market at $37.1bn (£24.3bn). But it is social CRM which will be the driving force, representing a compound annual growth rate of 36.5% from 2013 to 2018.
Major forces driving this growth are the rising focus on customer engagement, emerging SMEs, social platforms and the recognition of sharing ideas on a real-time basis, said the study.
Enterprises are coming up with solutions for social monitoring, social listening, social middleware, social management and social measurement for providing the best in class customer experience to customers. Today, CRM is not limited only for increasing sales and improving marketing activities, but to bring in more customer engagement with the business, the study added.
However, not everyone is convinced. Michael Maoz, a senior analyst at Gartner, recently argued that the rush to adopt social CRM was threatening the very ethos of good customer service because most businesses have underinvested in systems and staff for years.
He maintained that brand owners’ obsession with switching customer engagement to social media channels could seriously backfire, as firms are simply piling on the burden for the already “uninformed, time-pressed agents”. Whether the customer interacts with a brand over the phone, via email, chat, or social they are still interacting with the same agent – it is just another channel, Maoz claimed.
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RT @DM_editor: Social #crm market to grow 36% annually to hit £6bn within five years http://t.co/2bgti524O9 #digitalmarketing #data #direct…
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