The effect of social media interactions on customer relationship management

Abstract In recent years, social media have become a popular channel throughwhich customers and companies can interact. However, companies struggle toassess whether their investments in establishing and maintaining brand pages insocial media actually meet their high expectations with respect to developing andretaining customers. Based on three empirical studies, the authors explore the role ofinteractions through corporate social media channels, such as Facebook brandpages, in customer relationship management. The results indicate that social mediainteractions indeed ease the upselling efforts and reduce the risk of churn. Thesepositive effects offset the observed increases with regard to the number of servicerequests and the higher overall service cost. Thus, we ultimately find customers whointeract with the brand on social media to be more profitable