Outsourcing of Social CRM Services in German SMEs

摘要

Outsourcing is a common market practice that supports companies to focus on the development of their core business. Innovative SMEs, especially, can highly benefit from this support. Although outsourcing is commonly adopted in the field of Digital Marketing, services are changing as companies require more analytical and technological skills from suppliers. These new demands overlap with the concept of Social CRM and its integration of social media data into CRM tools to improve insights on customers. Based on Social CRM services, as well as the reasons for companies to outsource, this paper provides insights on current practices derived from a questionnaire applied to SMEs in Germany. Results show that German SMEs outsource to increase customer satisfaction, focusing on core business, service quality and cost reduction. Additionally, they invest more on services related to the interaction between brand and customers on social media. These results support companies in the field to understand the current and future demands and service suppliers to focus on specific needs when approaching German SMEs.