Many customer relationships start with a comment, a DM, or a simple question. Without a social CRM, it’s easy for conversations to get lost.
In this article, we’ll explain what social CRM is, how it works, our top tools, and why it matters for marketing, sales, and customer service.
Key takeaways
- Social CRM (social customer relationship management) uses social media to help teams connect with customers across channels.
- It supports customer service, sales, and marketing by making customer interactions more personal and timely.
- Social CRM tools like Hootsuite, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 bring social listening, lead tracking, insights, and team collaboration together in one place.
Bonus: Get a free, easy-to-use Customer Service Report Template that helps you track and calculate your monthly customer service efforts all in one place.
Social CRM, short for social customer relationship management, is a way to use social media data to better understand your customers, prospects, and leads.
By adding social media data to a traditional CRM, customer-facing teams can do their jobs more effectively. Everyone has the context they need, right when they need it.
With social CRM, brands can:
- Offer better customer support on the social channels customers already use
- Find new customers and leads through social conversations
- Build and grow relationships over time, not just at the moment of purchase
- Learn what their audience cares about and create more relevant content
How does social CRM differ from traditional CRM?
Traditional CRM focuses on past customer actions like emails and purchases, while social CRM adds real-time social conversations to the mix. Together, this creates a more complete picture of each customer.
Here’s a quick look at how they compare.
| Traditional CRM | Social CRM |
| Focuses on past actions | Focuses on real-time conversations |
| Tracks structured data (emails, purchases, support tickets, phone calls) | Tracks structured + unstructured data (comments, mentions, DMs) |
| Usually managed by one team | Shared across marketing, sales, and support |
| Mostly reactive | Proactive and relationship-focused |
A social CRM works by pulling in social media activity and linking it to customer profiles in your CRM. This includes comments, messages, mentions, and other interactions from platforms like Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
For example, if a customer sends a direct message on Instagram, that message shows up alongside their past emails, calls, or support tickets. Teams can see the full picture in one place and respond with the right context.
Social CRM in customer service
Social CRM software gives your care team a more meaningful way to have conversations with your customer base – no matter which platform they choose to make contact.
Here’s what social CRM can do for your customer service team.
Increase relationship quality
Recent research shows that using social media for CRM can improve customer relationship quality. That’s not too surprising, since social CRM helps brands respond in more personal and timely ways.
In Hootsuite’s 2024 Social Media Consumer Report, 53 percent of respondents say timely replies to questions and comments are the most appealing part of a brand’s social presence when deciding to follow a brand.
Responsiveness also matters. 28 percent of respondents will unfollow a brand that ignores negative or challenging comments. And 32% will unfollow a brand that fails to interact with or respond to the community.
Take Starbucks, for example. The brand gets plenty of positive comments, but also negative feedback. When that happens, the team responds quickly and publicly, offering help right away or moving the conversation to DMs when follow-up is needed.
Source: @starbucks
Provide faster and smarter responses
Sometimes your social and customer support teams may interact with the same customer on multiple channels.
Social CRM tools connect messages to people — not just profiles — so everyone can see a customer’s full history in one view. With that context, teams can give consistent, personalized replies without duplicating work or asking customers to repeat themselves.
Social CRM also improves response time and accuracy. Incoming contacts and requests can be auto-routed to the best team member for the job.
Social CRM in sales
Your first contact with someone on any social media platform is generally not the best time to go in with a hard sell. But social connections can absolutely become real, qualified leads.
Here’s what social CRM can do for your sales team:
Turn social conversations into leads
Social CRM helps fill your funnel. By focusing on relationships first, teams can connect with people and slowly build interest over time. The idea is to work toward a sale over the longer term.
For instance, after KiwiCo tested ads on Instagram Reels, their paid social marketing manager, Lisann Arndt, said: “We’ve seen that Reels can be a significant acquisition lever if we engage audiences in an authentic way that reflects an understanding of their needs.” (Emphasis added.)
Source: Instagram
Qualify and nurture leads faster
Social CRM adds social activity to lead profiles, giving sales teams more context right away. Instead of starting from scratch, they can see past interactions and better understand what someone is interested in.
Of course, social leads still need nurturing. Offers like opt-in newsletters, drip campaigns, or helpful resources keep the relationship warm as teams work toward a sale.
Understand the true value of social leads
A full picture of how social interactions convert to sales gives you a true understanding of the value of a social lead. This will help you plan your social media budget, especially the amount you plan to spend on social ads.
Social CRM in marketing
Connecting CRM and social media provides a fuller picture of who your customers are and what they expect from your brand.
Your marketing team can use these insights in a couple of key ways.
Create targeted content
Social CRM makes it easier to create content that feels relevant and personal. Instead of guessing, your team can speak directly to the needs and interests your audience has already shared.
Forty percent of respondents to the Hootsuite 2024 Consumer Report said they would unfollow a brand that posts boring content that doesn’t appeal to them. Social CRM helps you better understand what type of content will appeal, making it easier to keep those hard-earned followers.
Say you happen to sell filled doughnuts. You suspect your customers want to see what’s inside those doughnuts before they buy. So, you create a series where you rip them open on Instagram.
That’s exactly what dohhut does. They’ve hit a nerve with their target audience. One recent tear-open Reel got more than 1,300 likes and 57 comments.
Source: dohhut
It’s a simple example of how content that matches audience interest can drive tons of engagement.
Social listening at scale
Social CRM helps teams look beyond the people they already engage with. Social listening tools can track:
This wider view makes it easier to understand what people really think and care about. You can spot early feedback, optimize marketing campaigns, see how conversations are changing, and pivot your marketing strategy in real time.
All of this feeds into smarter content planning, stronger messaging, and better customer engagement.
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Brand mentions, trending topics, and sentiment at your fingertips. Enhance your social strategy with the insights that matter.
Build lookalike audiences
Social CRM data can also be used to create highly targeted lookalike audiences for social ads. You can base them on characteristics like age, location, demographics, and customer behaviors.
Since existing customers have already purchased from your brand, they’re a strong starting point. Lookalike audiences based on real buyers are more likely to convert than audiences based only on followers or fans.
Connect social activity to real results
Finally, social CRM helps you understand the true impact of your social marketing efforts. In Hootsuite’s 2024 Social Trends Report, 33 percent of respondents said they were facing an unsatisfactory connection between social metrics and business metrics.
By linking social activity to CRM data, actions like comments or clicks can be tied to outcomes like purchases or subscriptions. This makes it easier to prove social ROI — and improve it over time.
Social CRM tools bring customer conversations together in one place. This helps marketing, sales, and customer service stay on the same page, respond consistently, and avoid duplicate work.
Here’s what the benefits of social CRM look like in practice:
- Improved response times: Social CRM routes conversations to the right team to streamline responses across teams. It also gives everyone the context they need to get up to speed quickly.
- Clearer connection to business results: By linking social conversations to CRM data, teams can see how engagement turns into leads, sales, or customer retention.
- Smarter cross-team collaboration: Marketing, sales, and customer service all work from the same customer view, so nothing gets missed or repeated.
- Better audience insights: Social CRM turns everyday comments and feedback into actionable insights teams can use to improve messaging, products, and customer experiences.
- Stronger relationships with customers: Ongoing conversations on social media help current and potential customers feel heard, which builds trust, loyalty, and even customer advocacy.
The best social CRM tools let businesses do the following in one place:
- Manage customer profiles
- Listen to online conversations
- Analyze sentiment
- Drive social selling efforts
- Efficiently manage multiple social media management platforms
Here are our top picks.
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a comprehensive social CRM tool. It’s an all-in-one platform that allows brands to monitor social media conversations, engage with customers, and analyze data with clear, efficient reporting.
Hootsuite also integrates with leading traditional CRM platforms. So, you can keep using the tools that already work for your business as you transition to social CRM.
Key benefits:
- Track trends, hot topics, popular keywords, brand mentions, and social sentiment to understand what your customers want from you and how they feel about your brand.
- Manage all social conversations in a central inbox and share information between your social inbox and your CRM so all conversations are fully up to date and complete.
- Measure and analyze your social results across all your social accounts in one place, so you can understand social ROI.
- Offers 100+ apps and integrations, including Slack and Monday.com.
Pricing: Hootsuite plans start at $99/month.
2. HubSpot
Source: HubSpot
HubSpot is a CRM platform designed to manage contacts at every stage of the pipeline. It integrates marketing, sales, and customer service functions to improve customer experience and maximize leads. Each functional area gets its own hub, and they are all connected to a Smart CRM.
Key benefits:
- Create lead-generation forms, landing pages, and email campaigns
- Detailed contact tracking and management
- Solid analytics
- Cross-department collaboration features
- CRM social media integration though Hootsuite supports contacts and tickets from X (Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram
Pricing: HubSpot offers free basic tools. Individual plans start at $15/month and professional plans at $1,170/month.
3. Salesforce
Source: Salesforce
Salesforce uses artificial intelligence to guide your sales process and provide valuable insights into your current and future deals. The system is built on Salesforce’s proprietary “Einstein 1” platform and includes a conversational AI assistant.
Key benefits:
- Metadata framework integrates data sources to provide a unified view of the customer
- Detailed insights and analytics for marketing, sales, and customer service
- AI assistant provides recommended actions after an interaction with a customer
- Connect Salesforce to Hootsuite for CRM social media integration to identify and capture new leads on social media channels
Pricing: Basic small business plans start at $25/month, and professional plans start at $100/user/month.
4. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers customizable CRM systems to unify your teams and provide a holistic view of your customers. It uses AI to make predictions about customer intent and provide recommendations about new audiences and audience segments.
Key benefits:
- Create personalized customer journeys
- Use AI-based scoring to prioritize leads and opportunities
- Track and report on selected KPIs
- Collaborate in Microsoft Teams
- Connect to Hootsuite to create leads and opportunities from social posts
Pricing: Individual CRM components start at $50 per user per month. Combine the components you need to create a full CRM that connects all teams.
5. SugarCRM
Source: SugarCRM
SugarCRM is a customizable CRM that allows you to choose the focus you need for your team.
Key benefits:
- Get a complete picture of your customers across touchpoints
- Thorough analytics to help you understand what’s working and how to improve
- Business process automation for sales
- Recommended updates after customer interactions
- Link with Hootsuite to incorporate Instagram and Facebook connections for social CRM capabilities
Pricing: Limited plans start at $19 per user per month, with the standard plan starting at $59/month.
FAQ: Social CRM
What is a social CRM and how does it work?
A social CRM is a system that helps brands manage customer relationships using social media data. It works by pulling in social conversations (like comments, messages, and mentions) and connecting them to customer profiles in a CRM.
This lets teams see who they’re talking to, what’s already been said, and how to respond in a helpful, consistent way.
How is social CRM different from traditional CRM systems?
Social CRM is different from traditional CRM because it includes social media conversations, not just past actions. Traditional CRM mostly tracks things like purchases, emails, and support tickets. Social CRM adds real-time social interactions, giving teams a more complete picture of each customer.
Why do enterprises use social CRM to manage customer relationships?
Enterprises use social CRM to manage customer relationships because it helps them respond faster, stay consistent, and build stronger trust at scale. With many teams and channels involved, social CRM keeps everyone on the same page and makes it easier to support customers without missing messages or repeating work.
How do social media interactions connect to CRM data?
Social media interactions connect to CRM data when social accounts are linked to customer profiles. For example, if someone sends a DM or leaves a comment, that interaction can appear alongside their past emails, calls, or purchases. This helps teams respond with better context and avoid asking customers to repeat themselves.
What tools support social CRM for large organizations?
Large organizations use social CRM tools that combine social media management, customer data, and team collaboration. Tools like Hootsuite help teams listen on social and manage conversations.
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