A Literature Review of Social CRM and Future Prospects

Abstract

In recent years, based on the current status and development prospects of social media technology applications, as well as the reality that enterprises are beginning to operate within the customer ecosystem, traditional customer relationship management （CRM）, which focuses on customer transactions and process automation, is no longer suitable to today’s business environment. Therefore, social CRM, which establishes the relationship between business and customers through social media in the form of two-way collaborative dialogue, came into being, and attracted extensive attention from the academic community. Scholars from different fields have explored social CRM from multiple perspectives. However, there are some problems in the study of social CRM at present, such as the divergence of conceptual understanding, the contradiction of some research conclusions, the relative dispersion of research and the existence of theoretical gaps, especially the exploration of local related problems by domestic scholars is in its infancy. In order to clarify the development of social CRM, this paper systematically reviews the existing research results of social CRM. Firstly, this paper expounds the necessity of transforming from traditional CRM to social CRM by analyzing the adaptability advantages of social CRM in constructing two-way communication channels between enterprises and customers, improving the insight of enterprises to social customers, and promoting the co-creation of enterprises and customer value. Secondly, by summing up the concept definition of social CRM by different researchers, this paper divides the three conceptual perspectives of social CRM: strategic strategy perspective, process integration perspective and technological innovation perspective, and shows the differences in conceptual understanding of existing research in the form of tables. At the same time, this paper summarizes the differences between social CRM and traditional CRM in terms of customer positioning, data mining, business focus, technical tools and value creation, and further defines the connotation definition and essential characteristics of social CRM. Thirdly, according to the different research priorities, this paper systematically demonstrates the influence of social factors, organizational factors and technical factors on the construction and implementation of social CRM, and analyzes the differences between the influencing factors of social CRM and the influencing factors of traditional CRM. Fourthly, through the comparison with traditional CRM, this paper shows the positive utility of social CRM to the employee level, such as the employee’s attitude, professional ability and service level, as well as its positive utility at the enterprise level, such as customer insight, business and customer relationship and market performance, and points out the theoretical gap of social CRM effect research at the customer level. Finally, this paper constructs a social CRM research integration model, which vividly presents the research status of socialized CRM, based on the deficiencies and gaps found in the literature review, prospects the future research directions of socialized CRM concepts, empirical studies and localization studies, and puts forward innovative and constructive thinking, hoping to provide reference for the follow-up research and practice.