Student number: 693399

ii Social CRM is a new buzz word in the marketing and technology fields and has become an important strategic initiative for companies to employ. Social CRM arose from the need to transform the way we communicate with our customers due to the emergence of social media. In South Africa Social CRM is still a relatively new field with not many companies implementing it successfully. This research explores the benefits of implementing a Social CRM strategy as well as what the critical success factors are for implementing such a strategy. Five organisations that are implementing Social CRM were identified and eleven managers within those companies were interviewed. Eight companies that provide CRM or social media services for their clients were also identified and one executive or manager was interviewed from each. The respondents were interviewed over email using a semi-structured interview approach, which yielded qualitative data. The data was analysed using conten