Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Salesforce.com Adds Twitter Analytics to CRM Offering


I think we can all agree that collecting customer feedback is a good thing, right?

What we may not all agree on is whether we should go out and collect that feedback in the places where our customers hang-out, or if we should serve coffee and donuts and entice them to come to us.

There are pros and cons to each approach and if you like the idea of building a customer feedback “mousetrap” then SuggestionBox.com or GetSatisfaction.com are just two of the many providers willing to provide the blueprint.

If you’re more inclined to strap on your boots, grab your flashlight, and go looking for your client’s feedback then CRM provider SalesForce is happy to be your sherpa on the journey. Back in January, the company launched its Service Cloud offering and today it’s announced the addition of Twitter support.

We’ll let VentureBeat explain how it works:

Let’s say you’re a mobile phone manufacturer, for example. Within Salesforce, you’ll be able to search for any relevant “tweets” — for example, complaints about a broken phone — track any responses, and then use the company’s Twitter account to respond yourself. Of course, you can already do all of those things within Twitter, but this makes the process more convenient, and, more importantly, allows you to capture that information and respond, all within a single application, one that lets you perform similar tasks on Facebook and elsewhere.

SalesForce doesn’t come cheap and it would be overkill to get a license just for Service Cloud, especially when there are plenty of other social media monitoring options, but if you’re a Salesforce.com user then this video demo suggests it might be worth your consideration.

PS. Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang suggests Twitter should get in on the analytics game instead of leaving it up to companies like Salesforce.

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