This paper aims to look at what CRM 2.0 is and how it impacts customer insights. It will show how CRM 2.0's incorporation of social tools and strategies with traditional operational functions meets the demands of twenty‐first century “social” customers.
The paper presents a combination of independent research by the author for the last decade and third‐party sources. This means direct client consulting, interviews with senior corporate management and copious access to expert sources and documents.
The new breed of customer requires corporate transparency, authenticity and interaction. To affect this intelligent, aggressive social consumer, richer insight than that of the past is necessary. CRM and social tools use combined provides the capability for this insight.
CRM 2.0 as a fully integrated strategy and system remains immature, though the integration of CRM traditional technologies with social networks is ongoing and increasingly coexistent. CRM 2.0 thus must be seen as strategically maturing but technologically immature.
Any company that understands that their customers are demanding something more and different will adopt CRM 2.0 strategies to gain greater insight into their customers and to support creation of mutual value.
By systematically providing an understanding of how contemporary customers act and what they demand and how CRM 2.0 satisfies that, this adds to contemporary scholarship and modern business practice.
