Relating Social Media Technologies to Performance: A Capabilities-Based Perspective

In response to the dramatic social and technological shifts that are now shaping business–customer relationships, businesses are finding it necessary to alter their approach toward customer relationship management (CRM) and develop new capabilities that facilitate customer value co-creation. This paper presents a conceptual framework that extends a traditional view of CRM by incorporating social media technologies, and it suggests how these technologies can lead to greater firm performance. Forwarding this framework has two goals. First, despite the common use of the term “social CRM,” there is no clear linkage between the existing body of CRM literature and the extensions provided by the social and technological developments in recent years. The proposed framework attempts to provide this linkage and to expand the view of how CRM can influence firm performance in the age of the social customer. The second goal is to provide managers with a depiction of how existing CRM investments and resources can be integrated with new technologies and processes to form capabilities that can improve business performance.