Introduction
Social networks are increasingly business minded. It is difficult for any business to monetize their presence in social networking sites. It provides complete information about the customers. For example, there are more than 30 million people on Facebook in the UK. The increase of monetization opportunities such as Facebook Deals, Facebook credits and F-commerce provides a tangible difference to bottom line of the business. In this report, two case studies such as Zappos and HCL technologies will be discussed with their present activities that support social networking. Along with this, the impact of social networking sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest for improving the overall business success will be discussed. In addition of this, impact of social networks for business transactions will be analyzed.
Zappos
Social media trends, challenges and application in business
Zappos is an online retailer that sells shoes, clothing and accessories. They are popular for developing real relationships with their customers. Social media is not just a business strategy for the company but it is a part of the culture. The goal of social media is to connect and build relationships with customers (Zappos, 2013). Company believes that it is important to listen and love their customers and fulfill their needs. Companies are trying to decide the right social media platform for them but according to experts, the best strategy is to use the social media where their customers are. Along with this, connection with customers is more important rather than use of technology. So, it is important for the company to do internal testing of new technologies to identify that they are right for the business.
Along with this, Zappos use social media to build its online retailing business. The CEO of company has 800,000 followers on Twitter. But twitting and blogging are not the secret of the success of the company while it is the most successful seller of shoes on websites. The company spent as much time as possible to talk with customers on phone. There is no benchmark on average time spent with a customer on the phone (Steinert-Threlkeld, 2009). Through telephone calls and email conversation, company builds relationships with customers. In USA, around 58 million people use social sites on daily basis (Appendix: Figure 1), so, social media is good strategy for the company.
Impact of social networking sites
As Zappos’ culture includes both a personal and professional outlook, so, Facebook is a good medium to attract potential customers. On Facebook, their tagline “Let’s be in a Like-Like relationship” (Appendix: figure 2) shows that they treat their potential customers equally and maintaining their relationship with effective manner (Porterfield, 2011). On the Facebook page, Zappos is showing that they care for building relationships with their customers at first. In addition, company uses a strategy “fans only content” where they show their content after become a fan of company.
Once a person clicks the Like button, he/she get instant access to exclusive content, videos and special promotions. Along with this, company uses Twitter, personal blogs and LinkedIn to provide company information and opinions (Porterfield, 2011). These social networking sites serve as an excellent word of mouth platform for marketing. The company really builds relationship with customers through social media. Twitter and blogs are helpful to create relationship with customers and share information with them.
Impact of social media on business transactions
The success of company depends on loyalty and relationship marketing strategy as well as corporate culture. The company has a social media policy that allows employees to access their social media accounts at work to maintain relationship with customers. Zappos is passionate and single minded about its culture that focused on employees fit with its customer service culture (Baker, 2008). Company shares its culture through using social tools for connecting employees and customers. In 2009, all employees are introduced to Twitter in their training section and more than 400 are active employees on the site who interact with customers.
According to the company, develop relationship with customers and employees is the best way for providing best customer service. In the organization, the liberal use of social media provides the network that links employees with each other and customers. At the same time, many companies view that employees waste their time on social media, so, they blocked these sites. But Zappos thinks that social media sites increase the communication between staff members and business transactions from customers.
Evaluation and presentation of efficient plans
It is a successful company with a well publicized and aggressive use of social media through employees. It is the most popular social media model company in all companies that use social media. It has 13 blogs and 50,000 videos and their employees tweet regularly about the company. For example, it is safe to blog and tweet about shoes. In many companies, the use of social media by employees may be risk rather than benefits (Baker, 2008). In various organizations, Twitter induced SEC violation, a leak of valuable information and national defense breach decrease the use of social media. So, it is important to develop policies to deal with customers.
At the same time, in Zappos, conditions are different. The culture of company supports employee engagement. The leadership of the company understands the model of social media and customer base is active on the social web. If the conditions are not met, the free love policy of social media cannot work in the organization. But, it is not concluded that social media won’t work when there is lack of appropriate training, role clarity, effective policy and boundaries (Porterfield, 2011). For the success of social media, it is important that tactics are fit to the strategy and culture. A marketing leader makes effective decisions based on information systems. In Zappos, social media policy is successful because of company’s culture and dedicated employees.
HCL technologies
Social Networking Trends, Challenges and Applications in Business
In recent times, social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Linked In, micro blogs like Twitter, etc become an essential aspect of the business. Organizations use social networking sites to hire and contact with employees, communicate and maintain relationship with people or stakeholders, promoting its products and services, creates its brand image and reputation among the people, etc. According to the Harvard Business Review Analytics Services report around 58% of companies are currently using social networking sites in business practices to improve its global performance (Ennes, 2013). HCL Technologies use social network sites such as Facebook and Linked In to hiring in talented people internationally through share information regarding the requirement of candidates.
HCL Technologies also use social networking sites to promote its products and services and create awareness among the people. It uses social networking sites to share information related to its offers, social responsibility campaigns, passive candidates, staff stories, new products and services to create its image in the people or attract them (Bhattacharyya, 2013). Passive candidates, need of requirement and staff story information are inspired and attracted the employee’s to work with the HCL. Moreover, HCL uses social media to communicate and maintain contact or relationship with users or people that helps it to retain and attract the customers.
Impact of social networks sites in HCL Business
In recent times, millions of potential candidates connected to employees, so through social networking sites HCL attract the talent pool to take the competitive edge on its competitors. HCL uses social media as a tool or ways for attracting talent and looking of saving the time and money of the organization for searching and recruiting talent. Online and social media hiring process saved costs and times of HTC compared to traditional hiring method (Hope & Player, 2012). Moreover, social media sites help HCL to understand the candidates’ career graph, interest areas, professional network and educational and family background that is beneficial for it to select the best talent. Social media helps HCL to attract and retain talented employees and improve its effectiveness to face any challenges, problems and competition in the market.
In addition, HCL uses social media to communicate or contact with the employees and solve the dispute of employees to improve their performance and overall productivity of the firm. Furthermore, HCL uses social media sites to create awareness in between the people and to promote my products and services that positive impact on its business through generates more sales and revenue (Bhullar, 2011). Moreover, social media websites present huge opportunities for HCL to grab the attentions of people at worldwide and building its brand image in the people. HCL uses social media as a marketing channel that helps it to influence the buying behavior of the customers and improve its performance of the business.
Impact of Social Networks for HCL Business Transactions
Social networking sites have played major role in developing the social network of any individual and organization those impacts on its business transactions. Social relationships are shaped HCL economic opportunities by providing unique business information and business arrangement of HCL through creating impersonal market interactions and formal contractual relationships. This integrated of HCL within social network may reduce the risk or uncertainty and diminish the cost of a business transaction (Harris, 2008). Social network provides business information that is beneficial of HCL for business arrangement and improve its product differentiation. In addition, social network helps the firms to collect information related to market that is beneficial of it to control and manage business transactions.
In addition, social network creates linkage and connections in between the business partners and also bound them to work together. The bounding flow information and resources from one node to another that reduce uncertainty and beneficial of HCL to control or manage its business transactions. Moreover, a social network is the flow of information between business network and relationships members that are improving business transactions (Todeva, 2006). Social network and interdependent business relationships improve business transactions of HCL that create goodwill and trust between it and its partners, suppliers, government agencies, customer and others.
Evaluation and Presentation of Efficient Plans of HCL for Businesses
HCL is effectively embraced social networking sites and social networks to communicate and contact with the customers and to solve customers’ problems and queries related to its products and services. The HCL social network plan focuses on customer relationship management to cover the entire customer Lifecycle management such as sales support, customer service support and marketing support that helps it to optimize profitability, sales and customer satisfactions (Wagner & Hollenbeck, 2009). HCL utilizes of social networking sites in the customer relationship management service and develops transformation enabled customer service or solution framework to improve customer support and earn more revenue.
Moreover, HCL adopting business intelligent services along with customer relations management processes to improve customer support that is an efficient plan of its business. The company also established 24/7 virtual customer service center to provide customer services and create its social network in different market that helps it to improve its business performance and generate more revenue (HCL Technologies Limited, 2013). In addition, the HCL emergence of social media in its customer related services that help it to properly support of customers and provide the proper satisfaction of its customers. So, on the basis of this, it can be evaluated that the HCL business plan is effective to adopt social networks and beneficial of it to improve customer support and improve its financial performance in a competitive market.
Conclusion
On the basis of above discussion, it can be concluded that social media is useful tool for organizations to promote their business and maintain relationship with customers. Organizations like Zappos and HCL technologies monetize their presence on social networking sites. Zappos uses Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn profile and Blogs to communicate with people and hire talented employees in the organization. On the other hand, HCL also uses Facebook and LinkedIn to recruit talented people and share information with people. Zappos has followed customer centric culture in the organization that supports the use of social media by employees. Social media is helpful to provide best customer service and maximum satisfaction to customers.
References
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Ennes, M, 2013, Social Media: What Most Companies Don't Know, Harvard Business School Publishing.
Harris, M.M, 2008, Handbook of Research in International Human Resource Management, USA, Taylor & Francis US.
HCL Technologies Limited, 2013, Customer Relationship Management [Online]. Available at: http://www.hcltech.com/business-services/customer-relationship-management [Accessed 10 November 2013].
Hope, J. and Player, S, 2012, Beyond Performance Management: Why, When, and how to Use 40 Tools and Best Practices for Superior Business Performance, USA, Harvard Business Press.
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Steinert-Threlkeld, T, 2009, The Real Case in Social Media: Zappos CEO Not All Atwitter About Twitter [Online]. Available at: http://about.zappos.com/press-center/media-coverage/real-case-social-media-zappos-ceo-not-all-atwitter-about-twitter [Accessed 10 November 2013].
Todeva, E, 2006, Business Networks: Strategy and Structure, UK, Taylor & Francis.
Wagner, J.A. and Hollenbeck, J.R, 2009, Organizational Behavior: Securing Competitive Advantage, UK, Routledge.
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Appendices
Figure 1
Figure 2
