An exploration on the perceived benefits of social crm by telecom experts: Evidence from the nigeriantelecoms industry

Part of the greatest challenge facing modern organisations especially telecom organisations is responding to dynamic customers’ needs and building relationship in view of gaining customers’ trust and satisfaction within a very competitive market. Hence the aim of this study is to explore how social CRM is being approached by telecom organisations in Nigeria; a very fast developing telecom and technology market.

An exploratory research involving a semi-structure interview with 9-industry experts from the Nigerian Telecom industry. Three employees each from three of the leading telecom experts were recruited for the study.

A thematic analysis process was adopted in identifying similarities and differences across the interview data. Themes relating to industry's to customer orientation approach; adoption and implementation of social media technology, social CRM capabilities of the firms, social CRM implementation strategies being implemented by the organisations and the perceived benefits of social CRM in the local market.

Implementing social CRM offers a lot of benefits for Nigeria telecom firms including improving strategies for acquiring customer information; attracting new customers and keeping the older ones and in general influencing improvement in the telecom service delivery and customer perception and acceptance of such services