Defining and measuring social customer-relationship management (CRM) capabilities

Companies find it necessary to develop new social customer-relationship management (CRM) capabilities to facilitate their customer-related performance. This study seeks systematically to conceptualize and measure social CRM capability, defined as a firm’s efficiency in integrating and converting social media marketing resources into desired sales revenue and customer-relationship outcomes. This definition focuses on the firm’s competency in obtaining, generating, organizing, and integrating information from customers’ social media engagement to maintain and improve the custome-relationship and its own financial performance. Adding to the conventional input–output stochastic frontier model, this study proposes including social media resource inputs and customer-related outcomes to measure social CRM capabilities. An empirical application suggests that social CRM capability is critical; investing in social media technology can lead to substantial CRM benefits and greater market value for the firm. Marketers should focus on developing strategies that emphasize customer-relationship building through social media, which allows for more customer involvement and interactions between the customer and the business.