Acquiring customers through Social Customer Relationship Management : An explorative case study within the telecom industry

Social media is a rapidly rising phenomenon, providing new opportunities for consumers and businesses to communicate and share information. The development of social media has allowed for customer relationship management (CRM) to extend its area of use, coining the now common concept social CRM. Social CRM allows for new levels of interactivity between companies and consumers, however the effectiveness of social CRM is uncertain in many areas, mainly due to it being hard to tie customer interaction in social CRM to tangibles for the company. One of these areas is customer acquisition, where there are difficulties for companies to see how actions in their social CRM efforts affect customer acquisition. Being able to reach out to customers in an effective way is not enough for companies to acquire a customer. The value the company is proposing also has to be attractive for the customer, to be considered. There are several attributes that a company has to consider for its value proposition, in order for it to be successful. Depending on the industry the attributes can have different weight, emphasizing that companies should know what customers in their industry value. For this reason, having better knowledge of what customers value than the competition, thus having a stronger value proposition, grants a competitive edge. The purpose of this research project is to provide better understanding of how to conduct social CRM, while at the same time investigating how value propositions of telecom companies can be improved, to eventually increase customer acquisition. In order to fulfill the purpose, extensive literature has been evaluated, in addition to data gathered in focus groups. Three focus groups were conducted in Luleå, Sweden, with a total of 18 participants of ages 20-30. The results of the research project point towards the customer being in charge of social CRM interaction with companies, meaning companies have to adapt their social CRM strategies to fit the customers’ desires. The social customer have high demands of privacy in social media, which implies a thin line companies have to walk to convey their message, while at the same time not intruding on the customer’s privacy. The findings also indicate that customers want high flexibility, simplicity, and trustworthiness from telecom companies’ value propositions, emphasizing companies to adapt their value propositions to meet these demands