Twitter and CRM Integration – What’s in Store?

I’ve gotten the same question several times recently — what currently are and what will be the integration touchpoints between CRM and Twitter?  It’s still early in the game, but here are a few strategic and technological answers to that question.

Integrating CRM Strategy with Twitter

Looking at CRM as a strategy, there are many ways that companies can use Twitter to improve their customer relationships.  I recently received a marketing email from our Web hosting company, @SiteGround, which communicated that they were now on Twitter.  Having something I wanted to communicate to SiteGround, I decided to Tweet the following:

From the formerly faceless company, Tina (I’m guessing, based on info from their new blog) responded:

After receiving this response, I immediately had a higher comfort level with our Web hosting vendor.

Using Twitter, @Wholefoods has done an excellent job of engaging their consumer audience around things ranging from new store opening dates to taking care of customer concerns.  Here’s a example customer Tweet and @reply:

Pre-Twitter, Rick would have had to go through a more extensive process than a quick Tweet to get his issue heard and handled.

Is there a way that the above two scenarios could have been handled via a CRM system?

Twitter and CRM Technology Integration

It’s not clear what technical integration with Twitter has been done to date by CRM vendors or by CRM VARs like us, but here are some ideas.

1. Feed Tweets from your profile into your CRM system as new Tickets or Service Requests.  Twitter would be a new inbound channel that’s added on to the existing Email, Web Form,  Customer Portal and Phone Call channels for Service Request submissions.

If you store customers’ Twitter screen names in their Contact records, a new Ticket can be automatically linked to a customer Contact record — bringing information such as the customer’s email address into the Ticket record, even though the Ticket was generated via a medium that does not expose email addresses.

2. When new Service Requests that flow in from Twitter are actually sales or reseller inquiries, use the CRM system to convert these requests into new Leads for your sales or channel management departments.  We have already done this for existing customers with a “Convert to Lead” button in the Service Request record.

3. Use your CRM system to obtain Twitter metrics.  Use keyword searches to find out what types of issues are coming in via Twitter.  Look at trends in Twitter traffic and compare Twitter to other inbound channels such as email.

4. Put appropriate TwitterFeeds or similar widgets in the dashboard of your CRM system based on CRM user type.  The TweetFeed filters could be your brand, your industry or topics that are relevant to sales, marketing or customer service staff.

I’m sure there are many other examples and I look forward to reading some comments with other ideas and suggestions.

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