You don’t need a market report to understand how people communicate. Scroll through your phone: WhatsApp messages, LinkedIn DMs, Instagram replies, maybe a few comments on a TikTok or a tweet (well, an “x”). That’s the same landscape your customers are in. And it’s where they expect you to meet them. The challenge isn’t where they’re reaching out. It’s whether your systems are designed to respond.
Most traditional CRMs were built around structured communication: cases, email chains, phone logs. But modern customer journeys don’t work that way. A product question might begin in a story reply on Instagram, lead to a support ticket via chat, and wrap up with feedback in a public forum. If your CRM isn’t tracking that path, your teams are reacting without full context, and customers feel it. According to Salesforce, 83% of customers expect immediate engagement when they contact a brand. That expectation spans every channel. And with over 4.8 billion social media users worldwide, ignoring social platforms creates a serious disconnect.
What Social CRM actually does
Social CRM integrates social messaging, comments, mentions, and community interactions directly into your CRM. Not as an afterthought or a marketing add-on, but as a core part of the customer record. That means every DM, tag, and comment can become a lead, a case, or a conversation trackable across your business. Done well, it connects the dots between platforms and people. Social CRM tools can:
- Automatically convert messages into service tickets or sales leads
- Enrich customer records with social behaviour and sentiment
- Trigger workflows based on real-time interaction
Visibility is not enough. You need action.
Monitoring social feeds isn’t new. But too often, it sits disconnected from core systems. A customer complaint might be noticed by a community manager but never make it to the support team. Or a lead comment on a LinkedIn post goes unqualified because there’s no route to capture it in the CRM. Native integrations are key. When someone messages your business on Instagram, it should create a record in your CRM automatically. When someone tags your brand with a complaint, it should trigger a workflow. Anything else adds friction your customer will notice.
From reactive to proactive
A strong Social CRM approach gives you more than just responsiveness. It helps you anticipate and prioritise. That includes:
- Tracking sentiment before and after campaigns
- Spotting at-risk customers based on tone and frequency
- Prioritising high-visibility interactions with potential impact
Gartner reports that by 2026, 60% of large enterprises will use social listening as a key input for customer experience strategies. But reaching that point requires more than tools. It demands clarity in roles, workflows, and what insight actually means across teams.
Where it breaks down: unclear ownership
In many organisations, social responsibility is scattered. Marketing runs the platforms, service teams handle support, and sales might dip in occasionally. Without clear processes, messages fall through the cracks, insights stay siloed, and no one truly owns the outcome. The breakdown usually isn’t due to poor tools, but because key decisions (like what counts as a lead, how to handle a complaint, or when to escalate) haven’t been worked through together. These are strategic questions, and they require coordination across teams.
How Sirocco helps
At Sirocco, we work with clients to make Social CRM practical. That means mapping the platforms that matter, clarifying how leads and cases should flow, defining triggers, and building the handoffs that keep things moving. The goal is to create a system that identifies which interactions matter most (and makes sure they get to the right place at the right time). If your CRM still treats messaging and social channels as separate, it’s time to rethink. Because your customers are already talking. The real question is whether your teams are set up to hear those signals, understand them, and do something useful with what they learn.
LinkedIn caption: Your customers are talking. But can your CRM keep up? From WhatsApp DMs to LinkedIn tags, today’s conversations span channels—and too many systems still treat them as noise. We break down what Social CRM really means, why it’s more than monitoring, and how the right approach turns signals into action.
