Adoption of Facebook for Customer Relationship Management for SMEs

Abstract

This study has explored organizations' motivations to adopt Facebook for customer relationship management purposes. Interviews with twenty small to medium sized Australian organizations in this study showed that market pressures, direct customer service, brand promotion, and testing and experiencing are among key motivations for organizations to begin having presence on the Facebook. Ease of use, ease of receiving customers' feedback, availability of rich tools, and the opportunity to reach a large number of potential and existing customers are found to be amongst the key benefits of such presence. Furthermore, the findings show that dealing with negative comments, finding qualified human resources, ensuring the reliability of Facebook policies, and scalability of Facebook pages are some of the key issues that organizations have experienced with using this website for managing relationship with their customers.